Racial Disparities in Soccer Player Share Prices: Evidence From an Online Gambling Platform

Abstract

This paper exploits data from a now-defunct online gambling platform to investigate the extent to which the virtual demand for soccer players, as reflected in a player's share price quoted online, is related to race. The data are drawn from soccer players employed in the highest tier of the top five European leagues and contain a rich array of player-level productivity and other attributes. The study finds that the skin tone of the player matters with the darker the shade, the lower the player's online purchase price. The statistically significant negative effects are generally found to be concentrated within the bottom part of the unconditional price distribution. In addition, decomposition methods using players classified unambiguously as either “White” or “Black” confirms the presence of an unequal treatment for the latter with the statistically significant effects again detected below the median of the unconditional price distribution. These effects are generally found to be robust to the use of both unweighted and weighted decomposition techniques.