Sport is just one big puzzle to me. Why does anybody find it interesting? The economics of sport is another matter, and it would be remiss of me not to point out a review (in Prospect magazine) of a new book on the profit motive in the beautiful game, Why England Lose and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained. The authors are Simon Kuper, who writes about soccer for the FT, and wel-known economist of sport Stefan Szymanski. It gets an extremely favourable review here, although the review's author David Goldblatt concludes:

Yet, as with every attempt to apply economics to sport, and indeed to
any realm of human activity, both the authors and I also reached the
intellectual limits of the dismal science. When considering, for
example, the debate over the distribution of resources between clubs
and the impact of new money from sovereign funds and itinerant
billionaires, the authors recognise that there are moral questions in
play. They claim that they cannot judge the rightness of the case
either way. And indeed none of us can, certainly not with the precision
offered by regression analysis. But as fans, citizens and
intellectuals, we are obliged to assess it in other ways. The football
industry, as this book shows, is too stupid, too insular and too
unreflective at the moment to do so itself; those of us that can should
not bottle the opportunity to do so.

This last sentence rings true – although I know nothing about the game and care less, my sports-mad father spent his last years refusing to watch the professional versions of his passions, football and cricket, at all. He preferred the inadequacies of amateur games in the park and the local leagues. It was a moral, not an economic choice.