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.