The Financial Crisis in European Football—a Game Theoretic Approach

This paper proposes an alternative view of classical sports economic labour market theory. Through simple direct game theory, we are able to show explanations other than the traditional marginal or average revenue equality equilibrium models of Quirk and El-Hodiri (1971). For instance, the choice of objective is important, however not vital. We build our approach directly on preliminary research by Solberg and Haugen (2010) and extend their relatively simple modelling and conclusions. Particularly, we focus on the claimed economic crisis of European football and propose more complex explanatory patterns than objective function choice for observed financial differences between US sports and European football.