UTEP study reveals how financial pressure shapes NFL officiating

EL PASO, Texas (Oct. 8, 2025) – A new study from The University of Texas at El Paso has uncovered how financial incentives may subtly shape officiating decisions in one of America’s most iconic institutions: the National Football League. By analyzing more than 13,000 penalty calls from 2015 to 2023, researchers found that postseason officiating has disproportionately favored the Patrick Mahomes–era Kansas City Chiefs, coinciding with their rise as one of the NFL’s most marketable franchises.

Published in the journal Financial Review, the study provides one of the clearest empirical looks at how financial pressures can influence real-time rule enforcement, the UTEP research team said. Unlike traditional regulatory settings, NFL officiating — which is carried out by referees and judges — offers immediate and publicly visible decisions. This transparency offers a testbed for whether economic reliance on high-profile entities alters enforcement behavior — a phenomenon known as regulatory capture.

“Our findings suggest that when the league’s financial health is at stake, rule enforcement may subtly shift to protect market appeal,” said Spencer Barnes Ph.D., assistant professor of finance in UTEP’s Woody L. Hunt College of Business and the lead author of the study. “The fact that postseason penalties consistently favored one franchise, while similar dynasties showed no such pattern, points to the powerful role of financial incentives in shaping supposedly neutral decisions.”

The study shows that during the playoffs, which the research team identified as the NFL’s most commercially valuable period, penalties against opposing defenses of the Chiefs’ offense were significantly more likely to result in first downs, cover more yardage and fall into subjective categories such as roughing the passer or pass interference. Importantly, these effects were absent for the Tom Brady–era New England Patriots and other recent Super Bowl contenders, suggesting the phenomenon is unique to Kansas City’s emergence as a television ratings powerhouse.

This, Spencer explained, may be the result of financial pressures on the league stemming from the sharp decline in TV viewership and ratings during the politically charged 2015–2017 seasons, just before Patrick Mahomes became the Chiefs’ starting quarterback.

The implications extend beyond football, the research team says. The study draws parallels to financial markets, corporate governance and regulatory agencies, where dominant players may enjoy advantages not because of explicit corruption, but because institutions under pressure adapt to preserve stability and revenue.

“This research not only deepens our understanding of sports governance, but also illustrates a larger societal concern: when financial pressure weighs heavily, impartiality can erode,” said John Hadjimarcou, Ph.D., dean of UTEP’s Woody L. Hunt College of Business. “Spencer’s work demonstrates the power of academic inquiry to reveal hidden dynamics that affect fairness, competition and trust in institutions.”

About The University of Texas at El Paso

The University of Texas at El Paso is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. Located at the westernmost tip of Texas, where three states and two countries converge along the Rio Grande, 84% of our 26,000 students are Hispanic, and more than half are the first in their families to go to college. UTEP offers 171 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs at the only open-access, top-tier research university in America.