Measuring Customer Discrimination: Evidence From the Professional Cricket League in India

Abstract

This article examines customer discrimination considering a unique data set from the most popular sports industry in India, that is, cricket. Relying on Playing XI vote in the Indian Premier League, we analyze whether supporters have different personal preferences toward players based on their location of origin and religion. In contrast to the often-heated rhetoric surrounding discrimination and previous literature, we overall do not find any discrimination in voting. We instead find a positive preference for popular foreign players. Our results further suggest that if we examine discrimination by controlling for proxy productivity characteristics, it may produce bias results.