经济学院2018年第三十次学术讲座

 主讲人: Kwok Ping Tsang 副教授

单     位：弗吉尼亚理工大学 (Virginia Tech) 经济系

题     目: Why Are Inferior Seats “Underpriced”? Evidence from the English Premier League

时     间: 2018年6月29日（周五）下午16:00

地    点: 经济学院307会议室

摘要： This paper studies the practice of loss-leader pricing strategy in the English Premier League (EPL). While the TV broadcasting revenue for EPL clubs has increased over the past 20 years, the importance of revenue from ticket sales has declined. The theory of multi-product pricing suggests that a change in the relative importance of revenue sources can induce profit-maximizing firms to underprice one product in order to raise the demand for a complementary one. Using other leagues in England and Scotland that do not have as much TV broadcasting revenue as a control group, we find that inferior seats are underpriced among the ELP clubs. Consistent with the growing importance of TV broadcast revenue, we also find that such "loss-leader pricing" is stronger in later years of the sample. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the underpricing of inferior seats is more pronounced in (i) EPL clubs compared to clubs in other European leagues; (ii) elite clubs in ELP compared to non-elite clubs in ELP that have less TV broadcasting revenue; and (iii) clubs promoted to ELP as compared to clubs that are either promoted or relegated to different leagues in England and Scotland. These findings suggest that clubs that rely more on TV broadcasting underprice their inferior seats as loss leader to attract more passionate fans.

                                                             经济学院

                                                      2018年5月15日