I’ve giving a talk this morning at Camp Nou at an event organized by the Ernest Lluch Foundation. Lluch was a Catalan economist, who was also health minister in the Spanish government between 1982 and 1986 and is credited with extending full coverage to all citizens within the national health system. In later life he became an ardent supporter of Basque self determination, which made it all the more shocking when he was assassinated by the Basque terrorist organization ETA in 2000. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets of Barcelona at his funeral. The Foundation exists to preserve his memory and work as an economist, social thinker and also as an advocate of sports. He was a committed Barca fan and had close connections with the club.
Here is a copy of my slides for today’s talk on Financial instability in football.
Isn’t it the rarity of games between top clubs that creates their value? If Bayern played Barca four times a season, wouldn’t the novelty soon wear off?
That would be the same as saying that Manchester United v Arsenal is a bit of a bore and it would be better if they both played Southend instead- no disrespect to Southend, but I think it’s not a credible argument.
Shocked by your response Stefan, surely you appreciate marginal utility
Somehow it does ring a bell 🙂 I would think it would go something like this – marginal utility of game 1 in a given season between Arsenal and Manchester United is 1000, marginal utility of game 2 is 900, game 3 is 800…and so on. Marginal utility of game 1 between Arsenal and Southend United is 100, game 2 is 50 and game 3 is almost nothing. So, after Arsenal and Manchester United have played 9 times in a single season, the marginal utility of a Southend game would exceed the marginal utility of a tenth Arsenal-Man Utd game, but not until then.