Looking back at the 17th ESEA Conference on Sport Economics
Last week the Center for Research in Sports Administration welcomed the European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) e.V. to the University of Zurich. Over three days, researchers from across Europe and beyond presented 78 papers in 24 sessions, and the City Campus stayed busy from Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon.
The week began with the ESEA PhD Workshop in the days before the conference, which brought early-career researchers together to sharpen their work and connect with the field they are entering. Most of them stayed on for the conference itself.
The conference opened with a panel on Innovation in Sports, where Dennis Coates (University of Maryland Baltimore County), Nicolas Evans (FIFA), Hippolyt Kempf (Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen SFISM) and Winnaretta Zina Singer (ThinkSport) took questions from a full room, moderated by Raphael Flepp (University of Zurich). It closed on Friday with a keynote by Tim Pawlowski (University of Tübingen) on sport as an "emotions lab".
Between these two plenary events, four sessions ran in parallel at almost every hour of the program, on officiating and tournament design, labour markets and club finances, women's sport, mega events and sustainability. The discussions did not stop at the end of a session. They carried on over coffee in the Lichthof, over lunch, and into the evening at the FIFA Museum.
The conference dinner at the FIFA Museum was also where the European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) e.V. presented its awards. The Peter Sloane Award 2026 went to Helmut Dietl and Egon Franck, recognised by ESEA for research that moved sport economics forward, for the young scholars they brought into the field and supervised through it, and for years of service to the community that grew up around it. The Best Young Researcher Paper Award 2026 went to Lara Deniz Alper (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) for "Panels Under Pressure: Incentives, Bias and Institutional Design in Judged Sports", which was presented in Zurich on Friday morning. Again, congratulations to all three.
Papers presented in Zurich are as usual invited to submit to the special conference issue of the International Journal of Sport Finance, ESEA's official journal. The call for papers will follow.
Thank you to everyone who presented, chaired a session and stayed for the discussion afterwards, and to our sponsors and supporters. Special thanks go to the organizing committee, Helmut Dietl, Raphael Flepp and Marco Henriques Pereira, and to everyone who worked behind the scenes over the past months to keep three days running.
The 18th ESEA Conference will be held in Poznań in 2027, and we are already looking forward to it.