They are not all the same: Determinants of attendance across different sectors in a stadium

Previous research inspecting the demand for tickets for professional sports has mostly used aggregate data in their estimations. In a nutshell, it implies that all fans would be driven by the same determinants. In this research, we test whether this hypothesis holds. We analyse all first-tier Brazilian League home matches of both Flamengo and Fluminense at the iconic stadium Maracanã (Brazil) from 2014 to 2019. Ordinary Least Square regressions model individual equations for each sector for comparing their determinants. Our empirical results offer evidence that ticket price and Uncertainty of Outcome have different impact on demand for tickets according to the sector. Further research is encouraged to inspect whether similar behavior is detected in other settings

Playoffs or Just League: A Debate in Brazilian Football

After several consecutive seasons in the league, the Campeonato Brasileiro may return to the playoffs format. The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and some Brazilian clubs commented that this format will provide higher competitive balance and increase the interest of Brazilian football fans. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess the competitiveness and the interest of Brazilian fans in the last twenty-four seasons: Playoffs (1991-2002) and League (2003-2014). The competitiveness is evaluated by Herfindahl Index of Competitive Balance (HICB) and C4 Index of Competitive Balance and the interest measured by the average attendance to the stadiums. The results show that Brazilian League has become more balanced since 2003 season and football fans are more interested in the tournament with league format. The main conclusion is that the change to the playoffs would not improve the competitiveness and the interest of fans. Moreover some problems of the Brazilian football market are commented and some solutions proposed to improve it

Streaming demand for eSports: Analysis of Counter-strike: Global offensive

The eSports industry is growing at a rapid pace. The expansion of streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube Live played an important role in this leap and greatly contributed to the rise in popularity of electronic sports. Despite this success, there is no research on the topic of streaming demand of eSports to date. This paper aims to fill this gap using a demand approach of traditional sports to analyze the streaming demand of an eSports discipline, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The dataset comprises 865 matches between 2018 and 2021. Multiple Linear Regressions are taken as econometric tools. Main findings indicate that eSports enthusiasts value factors such as quality of tournament, match quality, and individual skill of the athletes when watching matches. In addition, the obtained results reveal that the Uncertainty of Outcome plays a significant role at streaming broadcasts of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where viewers prefer to watch those games in which there is a high level of competitiveness between the participants. Current research contributes to the existing eSports literature with a new framework for analyzing streaming demand. The empirical findings could be of the interest of tournament organizers as well as streaming platforms for maximizing audiences

Economic effects of promotion and relegation in parallel competitions

Previous research evidence some negative effects after league relegations. However, these works focused only on domestic league figures, overlooking that football clubs play in simultaneous tournaments. Therefore, the effects of relegation in a domestic league on those simultaneous championships remain unclear. Our dataset comprises twenty men’s Brazilian State Championships from 2013 to 2017. Panel Data Ordinary Least Squares models are employed as econometric techniques. The results suggest that the promotions to the second tier of the Brazilian League increase both attendance and revenues of clubs while relegations impact them negatively. Nonetheless, the promotion to the top tier produces no significant increase, which may indicate a potential adverse demand effect. Further research may inspect whether it happens in European football

Wage dispersion and sports performance: does gender matter?

Purpose Previous studies focused predominantly on wage dispersion within men’ sports teams. This study aims to reveal how the relationship between wage dispersion and team performance applies for women’s sport. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprises 168 observations of four consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) regular seasons (2018–2021). Eight econometric models are performed for comparing the leagues. Findings The findings indicate that the wage dispersion within the squads affects the women’s and men’s basketball teams differently. Cohesiveness theory is applicable for WNBA teams, while NBA teams follow the tournament theory. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper which inspects the relationship between wage dispersion and team performance using data from women’s sports. Further research may examine whether the differences found in sports also apply in different labor markets

Candida albicans enhanced phospholipase production after exposition to a static non-uniform magnetic field

INTRODUCTION: Microbial virulence factors are responsible for tissue damage in hosts. Candida albicans is an opportunistic pathogen that constitutes an increasing risk of infection, especially for immunosuppressed or immunocompromised patients. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the effect of a static non-uniform magnetic field on the phenotype expression of different strains of Candida albicans. METHODS: The strains of Candida albicans were grown on phospholipase-agar, according to Shimizu et al. (1996) and incubated at 37 ºC inside a magnetic field (except the assays used as blank). The magnetic field was generated by two magnetite plates (Figure 1) and standardized as a function of distance versus number of magnetic plates (Figure 2). The magnetic field was of 500 gauss in the central part between the two magnetic plates. RESULTS: The preliminary results show a visible increase in the halo formed due to phospholipase production, suggesting that the exposition to a magnetic field can enhance the expression of this virulence factor

Does the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) mitigate referee bias on professional football?

The purpose of the paper is to check whether the introduction of the VAR system mitigated the referee bias against away teams. The dataset comprises 2279 matches played in the first tier of the Brazilian League from 2016 to 2021. We analyze 6 seasons of the first tier of the Brazilian domestic football league– 3 seasons before and 3 seasons after the introduction of the VAR technology. Potential bias is viewed through the lens of yellow cards, red cards and number of penalties awarded for both home and away clubs. A paired t-test is used to reveal potential statistical differences between pre-VAR and post-VAR periods, followed by Ordinary Least Squares regressions to inspect whether certain referee’ categories have changed their behavior after the implementation of this technology. Our empirical findings offer evidence that the referee bias is diminished, but still present

Intelligent workpiece carrier for distributed data collection and control in manufacturing environments

Abstract The growing demand for customized products is challenging companies to change their organizational structure towards a flexible organizational model. However, small and medium sized enterprises (SME) do not have the necessary resources to integrate in their production processes new technologies which could help them facing such challenges. We propose a framework in which an intelligent workpiece carrier (IWC) is introduced in a traditional production line. We propose to integrate the knowledge of production steps in the IWC to make it able to take decisions about the process execution. A first prototype was developed and tested to verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Through the implementation, it has been shown that the IWC represents a promising component in the realization of flexible production systems

Prospects for detecting Gamma-Ray Bursts with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi gamma-ray satellite telescope observes Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) at energies above 100 MeV. Thanks to a new detection algorithm and a new event reconstruction, it is expected to publish a catalogue with more than 100 GRBs. This work aims at revising the prospects for GRB alerts with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) based on the new LAT results. We start by considering the simulation of the observations with the full CTA of two extremely bright events, the long GRB 130427A and the short GRB 090510; then we investigate how these GRBs would be observed by different subsamples of the array pointing to different directions, adopting the \u201ccoupled divergent\u201d mode

Football Fans’ Emotions: Uncertainty Against Brand Perception

Football is an industry driven by emotions. Fans experience many different emotions related to their teams. This paper aims to inspect how emotions impact attendance at football matches, examining whether football fans prefer to watch highly competitive matches or matches between good teams with star-players. The paper also considers behavioral and emotional differences of match spectators when brand-teams play away or at home. Importantly, we are also looking for the effects that the expectations of these emotions have on the tickets’ price mechanism. We use data from three seasons of the Brazilian State championship with information on more than 1,100 matches. The OLS estimator with the moderation marginal effects allows for analysis of a brand-team playing with different levels of uncertainty over the outcomes measured by the relative level of the divisions of rivals. We look for the difference between the marginal contribution of the brand-team and the uncertainty of outcomes that might change under some conditions. The analysis is performed later using two subsamples and, finally, we address the problem of endogeneity in price using an instrumental variable. From our results, the main findings are: first, that the price of tickets does not much affect the demand when a brand-team is playing. In case of competitive matches between non-brand-teams, price behavior correlates to the rationality of the demand curve having a negative impact. The fact that price is not relevant for matches with the brand-team comes to corroborate the idea that fans are driven more by emotions than by economic reasoning; second, the phenomena of highly competitive matches does not work when a brand-team is playing against a small one; and third, the effect of a brand-team playing is relatively more important than the uncertainty of outcome. The last two findings mean that the satisfaction of watching star-players or big-teams is stronger than the emotion brought by a competitive match