Book review: soccernomics


I just finished reading the fascinating book "SOCCERNOMICS: why England loses, why Spain, Germany and Brazil win, and why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey - and even Iraq - are destined to become the kings of the World's most popular sport".

It is the first time I ever read anything interesting about football!



The authors, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, are two economists interested in sports and they enjoy to apply - in sometimes an unconventional and surprising way - their economist's tools and reasoning to sports. Using plenty of data, they try to answer the following questions:

  • Why do clubs have so much debt? Is a club a business?
  • How efficient is the transfer market?
  • Should we regulate more the sports markets? aka limit debt, share the revenues more equally among clubs
  • Is it worth hosting a major sports event like the World Cup or the Olympics?
  • How to shoot a penalty?
  • What does the rise and decrease of some clubs tell us?

Rather than giving you an unbalanced and poorly-argumented summary, I advise you to read this book. It makes great holiday reading, especially if you want to look smart in front of your friends who talk about the Olympics!

Comments

  1. Cyrille_UKSeptember 3, 2012 at 4:41 PM

    Interesting article by Rob Simmons who criticizes UEFA financial fair play rule:

    http://www.voxeu.org/article/own-goal-uefa-s-financial-fair-play-initiative-misguided

    A lot of the arguments are similar to the book:
    - Footballers market is competitive
    - Fans like big clubs
    - Problems of insolvency are greater in lower leagues

    ReplyDelete

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