Ethnic earnings inequality in professional European football

Dirk Witteveen examines the meritocratic nature of elite leagues by measuring ethnic earnings inequalities in players.

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Football on a grass pitch inside an empty stadium (Photo: Pixabay)

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Ethnic earnings inequality in professional European football

22 Jan 2025, 13:00 – 14:00

Room G03
55-59 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0NU
United Kingdom

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European football (soccer) consists of competitive and open market leagues, drawing from a global pool of athletes. These competitions still suffer from racial abuse in and around stadiums, which begs the question whether racial-ethnic bias trickles down to the payroll.

Here, Dirk examines the meritocratic nature of elite leagues – the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, and Italian Serie A – by measuring ethnic earnings inequalities in 10,442 player-season observations.

He will discuss how European football contains meritocratic wage-setting at the very top, though ethnicity and migration background remain significant factors in influencing earnings, indicating the persistence of ethnic inequalities in highly competitive and high-skill markets.

Image

Pixabay.

Dirk Witteveen

Departmental Lecturer

University of Oxford

Dirk’s research focuses on higher education, wage-setting mechanisms within firms and markets, wealth stratification, racial and ethnic earnings inequalities, immigration, intergenerational social mobility, elitism, mental health, and incarceration.