Book Review 2023.09: An Economist Goes to the Game by Paul Oyer, 176 pages, Hardbound, 2022
A blend of Economics and Sports was a combination too good for me to resist as I finished this page turner within a week, a testament to the engaging content and the fluid writing style of the author. The book captures many key economic concepts and has applied them to sports and bring to light multiple instances from the industry, predominantly from the USA with an occasional reference to soccer from Europe.
Oyer covers a wide range of hardcore yet unconventional topics like the cost-benefit analysis of getting your child to focus on sports, why the use of performance enhancing drugs is more common in certain sports and among certain athletes and what makes certain geographies dominate particular sports as well as how discrimination leads to specialization of certain roles in sports to name a few. This book also covers topics that are associated to economic analysis such as what contributes to a players’ contact value, why a secondary market or black-market for match tickets thrives, the impact of betting on games, and whether events such as the Olympics or the World Cup are economically rewarding to the cities hosting them.
Some other concepts such as PAPI (Population adjusted Power Index), WAR (Win Above Replacement) and the trade-off in Collective Bargaining Agreements between players association and owners’ association are reasons to hold on to this book long after you have finished reading it. The only drawback I could find, was that many examples were centred around American Football, Baseball and Ice Hockey, which unless one is familiar with these American sports, requires an effort from the reader to draw parallels and relate to.
This book explains what contributes to the million dollar pay-checks for sport stars and the billion dollars media rights that major sports leagues command today. This book is a perfect read if you are a serious sports fan who enjoys every aspect of sports. Happy reading.
