Petr Parshakov at the 3rd UMBC Sports Economics Conference

On June 9, 2026, Petr Parshakov, Head of the International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy at HSE Campus in Perm presented at the 3rd UMBC Sports Economics Conference at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which took place from June 9 to 11, 2026.

The conference brings together researchers studying sports from the perspectives of economics, management, law, and public policy. This year's program featured 48 presentations. Key topics included referee bias, regulation of compensation for student-athletes in the NCAA, the transfer market, and the impact of major sports tournaments and star players on tourism and city economies. The conference was organized by Dennis Coates, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sports Economics.

Petr Parshakov presented his paper, "Compatriot Bias in Evaluation of Football Players." The research was conducted in collaboration with Dennis Coates, Dmitry Dagaev (Head of the HSE Sports Research Lab), and Sofya Paklina (Research Fellow at the International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy).

The authors investigate whether national proximity between a commentator and a football player influences how users rate players' actions in a digital environment. To achieve this, they analyzed a dataset of over 1.17 million comments. The results show that, on average, the correlation between shared national identity of the commentator and the player is negative. However, this effect is heterogeneous, depending on the football player's media popularity and the activity levels of the commentators themselves.

The study demonstrates that digital ratings of sports events can reflect not only the quality of play but also social perception mechanisms, including national proximity, athlete popularity, and the behavior of the online audience.