How economists are tackling sports injuries

FT.com / Reportage - How economists are tackling sports injuries:

"Brady’s story shows vividly how injury can affect a team, and in particular injury to a star player, whose performance is doubly critical. And since sport is increasingly obsessed by Freakonomics-style analysis, where economists and statisticians (and mere stats nuts) hunt for inefficiencies in the system, his case raises questions, too....

Sport is not a conventional business (Barnwell says that getting to the playoffs can cost a team more than they earn from it) but an NFL team’s raison d’être is to win, and one of the biggest constraints they face is the salary cap. In this context, the $14m spent on Brady represents a massive opportunity cost – a cost made painfully clear by his season on the sidelines as he convalesced. With so much at stake in the big money world of professional sport, the questions become more urgent. Do teams and their owners understand the economics of injury?"