From the perspective of economic demand theory, this study examines the factors that determine daily changes in Twitter following of Major League Baseball teams as a form of derived demand for a sport product. Specifically, a linear regression model is constructed by taking consideration of factors relevant to fan interest: team performance, market characteristics, scheduling, and so on. The results reveal specific determinants that have significant relationship with Twitter following. From a team management perspective, factors such as the content of social media messages, certain calendar events, and postseason appearances can be used to enhance fan interest on social media. In so doing, it brings together communication inquiries and economic literature by delineating a comprehensive and nuanced account of interpreting sport social media from a consumer demand perspective.

Taylor and Trogdon found evidence of shirking under some, but not all, draft lottery systems used in three different National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons. The authors use data from all NBA games played from 1977 to 2007 and a fixed effects model to control for unobservable team and season heterogeneity to extend this research. The authors find that NBA teams were more likely to intentionally lose games at the end of the regular season during the seasons where the incentives to finish last were the largest.

Previous research using attendance‐based proxies for sentiment bias in sports betting markets confirmed the presence of investor sentiment in these markets. We use data from social media (Facebook “Likes”) to proxy for sentiment bias and analyze variation in bookmakers' prices investor sentiment. Based on betting data from seven professional sports leagues in Europe and North America, we find evidence that bookmakers increase prices for bets on teams with relatively more Facebook “Likes,” indicating the presence of price‐insensitive investors with sentiment bias. These price changes do not affect informational efficiency in this market. (JEL L81, G14)

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If the team changes the coach, does the team’s performance change? From the literature on leadership succession and organizational performance, three perspectives have emerged that seek to answer this question: common sense, vicious cycle, and ritual scapegoat. We extend these leadership perspectives by drawing on organizational theory to explain leadership succession and organizational performance in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division Football Bowl Subdivision football. We develop a model and use the Arellano and Bond (1991) linear dynamic panel data estimator to examine this relationship from the 1950–1951 season to the 2008–2009 season. Our results show that organizational performance decreases initially following a leadership change. However, as a coach’s tenure increases at the university, organizational performance improves. This offers some support for vicious cycle theory and suggests that sport managers should do a better job of managing performance expectations following a coaching change as our results show that coaching changes lead to a drop in performance.

Governments world-wide increasingly rely on gambling revenues, increasing the importance of understanding who gambles and why. Previous literature used Tobit and Heckman models to statistically analyse participation in gambling. These models make strong assumptions about the nature of gambling participation. We examine the double hurdle model as an alternative to other statistical approaches to modelling gambling participation and spending for lotteries in the province of Alberta, Canada. Our results for lotteries, based on data from a 2002 survey of gambling prevalence in Alberta, clearly prefer the double hurdle model, which yields different results than the commonly used Tobit model. This has important implications for governments who rely on revenues from lottery to fund many different programs in their jurisdictions.

Previous research has examined the effect of changes in upper management positions on actual organizational performance; however, the influence of leadership changes on performance expectations has been largely neglected. This gap in the literature is surprising given that failure to meet expectations leads to dismissal. The purpose of the present research is to analyze how coaching changes affect expectations of a sports team’s performance. Betting lines are used as performance expectations because they are unbiased forecasts of game outcomes. This study uses data from 13 seasons of the German Football Bundesliga. Significant positive timelagged effects on performance expectations are evident when examining underlying expected performance. These positive effects are evident 8 weeks after the leadership change, indicating that new leaders are expected to need some time before significant performance improvements are expected to occur.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the complexity of – and conflicts inherent in – managing sports leagues at both the league and franchise level.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on changes to the National Basketball Association's (NBA) amateur entry draft, which has attempted to balance the need to preserve league parity and reduce the incentive for teams to deliberately lose games in order to improve draft position.FindingsThe discussion reveals the conflict between league and team goals. In addition, using Oliver's strategic decisions as a framework, the findings also illustrate how sport league commissioners have to balance pressures from both the internal and external environments.Originality/valueThis paper expands our understanding of how leagues manage institutional pressures, and how these pressures impact the team, leagues, and the decision makers involved.