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The Centre for Sports Economics & Law (CSEL) is a collaborative unit of academics based across the Department of Economics and School of Law.

The mission of CSEL is to be a centre of excellence in research and a leading hub internationally for sports economics and sports law study and practice. Given the Centre’s interdisciplinary strengths, our members endeavour to conduct research at the nexus of the two specialisms.

Through our research, teaching and external engagement we strive to be a key part of the CUBS mission, matching the Business Schools' vision of being nationally and internationally recognised for research while having a meaningful scholarly impact on our students and society.

"Sport matters economically in terms of employment but is also important to physical and mental health. So many care about sport and identify with sporting institutions - in some cases, sport provides a lifetime of entertainment."  - Dr David Butler (CSEL)

Research

CSEL members bring expertise from a variety of backgrounds in their core discipline and have published sports research in many recognised international journals and books. This research has featured in general outlets such as;

  • The European Journal of Operational Research, The British Journal of Industrial Relations, Public Choice, The Scottish Journal of Political Economy, The Journal of Institutional Economics, Kyklos, Regional Studies, Applied Economics, The Journal of Economic Studies, Economic and Social Review and Oxford Economic Papers.

CSEL members have published research in numerous sport specific outlets such as;

  •  The Journal of Sports Economics, The European Sport Management Quarterly, The International Journal of Sport Finance,  The Handbook on EU Sports Law and Policy, Sport Management Review, Soccer and Society and the Sport and Entertainment Review.

CSEL members

  • Economics - Dr David Butler, Dr Robert Butler, Dr John Considine, Dr John Eakins, Dr Declan Jordan & Prof.Robert Simmons (Adjunct - Lancaster University)

  • Law - Prof. Maria Cahill, Dr Seán Ó Conaill, Prof. Conor O’Mahony & Dr Aisling Parkes (Director)

“Sport and the Law engage with each other on many levels including within the rules and laws of the games themselves and how the operation of sport and sporting bodies interact with the law. Law’s relationship with Sport helps us understand why crossing the white line makes an act which normally would be illegal is granted an exception in the sporting context”.  Dr Seán Ó Conaill (CSEL)

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

David Butler, Alex Farnell & Rob Simmons (2024) Do sports analytics affect footballer pay?. Frontiers in Behavioural Economics

Labor economists aspire to understand how workers' productivity impacts pay. While professional football is a well-established domain to explore this relationship, so far, research has relied on basic productivity measures. Football is now awash with advanced and granular performance metrics that can allow a deeper understanding of the pay-performance relationship. We specify a salary model considering the newly available data and use sophisticated performance measures to explain contracted salaries in the English Premier League and Italian Serie A. We make a methodological breakthrough by identifying a sample of players who are in the first year of a new contract only. This results in a much tighter relationship between pay and performance. We estimate different salary equations using both basic and advanced performance statistics. Our main findings are, first, that few of our advanced performance metrics help to explain player salary and, second, that there is misalignment between individual performance determinants of team points and player salaries.

COntact:

For general enquiries relating to CSEL, and ongoing projects please contact the current directors Dr Robert Butler (Economics), Dr David Butler (Economics) or Dr Sean O'Conaill (Law), Dr Aisling Parkes (Law)