The influence of income, across countries, on the proficiency of leisure, as measure by international football achievement is addressed. It is widely concluded that leisure is a normal good, however; little research has been conducted on the influences of efforts to become proficient at a specific leisure activity. While the law of diminishing marginal productivity indicates that leisure proficiency will increase at a decreasing rate with increases in time allocated toward the leisure activity, the second-order effect of income on neither leisure nor leisure proficiency can theoretically be determined. To estimate these effects, an empirical examination of FIFA's World Rankings has been conducted. The results indicate that leisure proficiency on an aggregate level is positively associated with income and increases at a decreasing rate. This subsequently provides evidence that the consumption of leisure on an aggregate level also increases at a decreasing rate with increases in income.

Using data from the 2007, 2008, and 2009 National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) seasons, this article shows that the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis pertains to both race attendance and television audience, with the former only responding to season-level uncertainty and the latter responding to both race-level and season-level uncertainties. Counter to conventional wisdom, the price of gasoline and unemployment were unrelated to the reported level of attendance. Furthermore, NASCAR broadcasts lose audience when competing against other high-interest sporting events and declines in both television ratings and audience size during the NASCAR season were not unique to 2009. Overall, the empirical evidence suggests that declining competitive balance might have been the common factor that reduced both television audiences and race attendance during this period.

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This paper tests consumer and co-worker nationalistic preferences by measuring the effect of team nationality composition on fan attendance and overall team quality using professional football teams in the world's five largest football leagues. Little evidence is found to support the hypothesis that fans or co-workers discriminate based upon the player's nationality. Thus, the under-representation of various nationalities can be concluded to originate from a club's ownership and/or management. These results are similar to the racial bias revealed by English club owners as found by Szymanski and Preston.

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