Broadcasting revenue sharing after cancelling sports competitions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the partial or total cancellation of most sports competitions worldwide. Sports organizations crucially rely on revenues raised from broadcasting. How should the allocation of these revenues be modified when sports leagues are cancelled? We aim to answer that question in this paper by means of the axiomatic approach. Two extension operators (dubbed zero and leg operators, respectively) will play a major role in our analysis. We show that several combinations of axioms (formalizing ethical or strategic principles) characterize the image via those operators of two focal rules: the equal-split rule and concede-and-divide.