"Mr. Szymanski, an economics professor at the Cass Business School at City University in London, tackles the apparent paradoxes of the sports business in the head-on style of an N.F.L. linebacker... He displays an impressive global knowledge of sports ranging from basketball and cricket to tennis and rugby, and provides a wealth of revealing financial information as well as entertaining sports trivia."--Harry Hurt III, New York Times "Playbooks and Checkbooks is not a snoozer but a sleeper; equal parts eminently readable and wholly fascinating... Szymanski's non-elaborated notion places his book with the best art history, for art also is a creature of its time."--David M. Gordon, The Browser "Szymanski covers most relevant topics in modern sports economic theory in a very elegant and in my opinion comprehensible fashion. Personally, I really enjoyed his explanation of wage formation in sports labour markets, and his (sociological/historical) views on the development of sport as business... It is well written, well structured and sometimes even funny."--Kjetil K. Haugen, Nordic Sport Studies Forum