17th ESEA Conference on Sport Economics comes to Zurich
From 19 to 21 August, CRSA hosts Europe's sport economics community at the UZH City Campus for the second time
The Center for Research in Sports Administration welcomes researchers from across Europe and beyond to the 17th ESEA Conference on Sport Economics. Over three days, more than 90 papers are presented in 24 parallel sessions at the University of Zurich City Campus.
A field in motion
The programme maps where sport economics currently stands. Long established themes hold their place, with full sessions on spectator demand, tournament design and the work of managers. Alongside them sits a visibly growing body of research on women's sport, on officiating and rule enforcement, and on the wider social footprint of sport.
What is being discussed
The programme deals with sport as an economic and social phenomenon. It asks what draws people to sport as spectators and as participants, how performance is shaped by the pressure, the conditions and the incentives that surround it, and how the rules of competition and the institutions behind them influence what happens on the field. It looks at sport as a market for talent, where people are recruited, developed, valued and priced, and at the questions of fairness and bias that arise wherever human judgement decides outcomes. And it examines the relationship between sport and the world around it, from the events that reshape cities to what clubs owe the communities they belong to.
The conference beyond the sessions
The conference opens with a panel discussion on Innovation in Sports, moderated by Raphael Flepp with Nicolas Evans (FIFA), Zina Singer (Think Sport), Hippolyt Kempf (Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen) and Dennis Coates (UMBC), and closes with the keynote address by Tim Pawlowski (University of Tübingen). The ESEA PhD Workshop takes place ahead of the main conference to strengthen the skills and networks of early career researchers, and the Best Young Researcher Paper Award recognises the strongest full paper submitted by a graduate student as lead author. Papers presented at the conference are invited for submission to the conference issue of the International Journal of Sport Finance.
Practical information
Venue: University of Zurich, City Campus, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich. The full programme is available for download [Link]. Questions can be directed to ESEA@crsa.uzh.ch. The conference is organised by the local committee of Helmut Dietl, Raphael Flepp and Marco Henriques Pereira.
Sponsors: FIFA Museum, Zürich Tourism, Isey Skyr, Focus Water, waterdrop
Supported by: Swiss National Science Foundation, Finance Department of the City of Zurich
Findings and insights from individual sessions will be published on this website and on LinkedIn in the weeks following the conference.