Value of public goods from sports stadiums: the CVM approach

Many state and local governments have subsidized the construction of arenas and stadium for the use of professional sports teams. They often justify the subsidies by claiming the projects generate valuable public goods and positive externalities, though such benefits are difficult to measure. This article reports an application of the contingent valuation method (CVM) to measure the value of public goods generated by two proposed projects in Lexington, Kentucky: a new basketball arena for the University of Kentucky and a minor league baseball stadium. Neither project would generate sufficiently valuable public goods to justify public financing. Although the results cannot be generalized to other cases, they do shed light on some of the main issues involved, and they demonstrate the feasibility of applying CVM to the evaluation of the subsidized stadiums.     

INTEGRATION OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN PLAYERS IN JAPAN'S PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL LEAGUES

Teams in Japan's two professional baseball leagues began to add foreign players in the early 1950s, with the average number per team reaching 5.79 in 2004. This was primarily because foreign hitters outperformed Japanese hitters. Hazard analysis shows that a poorly performing team was more likely to hire its first Caucasian and African American players earlier than a successful team. Econometric analysis of team use of foreign players over 45 seasons (1960–2004) shows that losing Central League teams used foreign players more often in following season(s), whereas past success of Pacific League teams did not affect their use of foreign players.     

The effect of professional sports on the earnings of individuals: evidence from microeconomic data

This article examines the impact of professional sports franchises in labour markets using data from the March Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) for workers employed in specific occupational groups in all large US cities from 1983 to 2002. Results from a standard wage model suggest that professional football franchises increase average hourly and weekly earnings of males employed in these occupations, but professional baseball franchises reduce them. These results support growing evidence that professional sports affect labour markets. However, the mixed nature of the association between sport and earnings provides little economic justification for government subsidies for professional sport.     

DOES ATHLETIC SUCCESS INFLUENCE PERSISTENCE AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS? NEW EVIDENCE USING PANEL DATA

This study examines the relationship between athletic success and student persistence toward a degree. We build an updated panel of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I institutions and utilize within‐institution variation to identify the effects of athletic success. Using a ranking of all institutions, we find that having more successful men's basketball and football teams has a significant positive effect on first‐year retention rates. We also find some evidence that improved basketball rankings increase graduation rates, and that success in the NCAA tournament may have a sizable impact on retention. Although the estimated effects are generally modest in scale, we find rather limited evidence of other institutional factors affecting persistence, suggesting that athletics can be one avenue for institutions of higher education to engage and retain students. (JEL I23, Z20, L83)     

Customer preferences,attendance and the racial structure of professional basketball teams

This paper examines the importance of customer-based discrimiantion in professional basketball over the 1980–81 to 1985–86 seasons. Empirical rsesults offer strong support of the hypothesis that, if fans prefer to see players of their own race, teams will be influenced in their selection of players by the racial composition of their market area. By the same token, attendance is found to be positively related to the extent to which the racial composition of the team matches that of the corresponding market area.     

REVENUE DIVERGENCE AND COMPETITIVE BALANCE IN A DIVISIONAL SPORTS LEAGUE

The North American model of resource allocation in professional sports leagues is adapted for English (association) football. Comparisons are drawn between the equilibrium allocations of playing talent under objective functions of profit maximisation and win percent maximisation subject to a financial constraint. Empirical revenue functions are reported for 1926–1999. These indicate a shift in the composition of demand favouring big‐city teams and an increase in the sensitivity of revenue to performance. An analysis of match results in the FA Cup suggests an increase in competitive imbalance between teams at different levels of the league's divisional hierarchy, as the theory suggests.     

STADIUM CONSTRUCTION AND MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL ATTENDANCE

The established literature shows that new stadium construction for major league baseball (MLB) teams can increase attendance, but there are limited studies at the minor league level. We use a data set encompassing all A, AA, and AAA minor league baseball teams from 1992 to 2006 to estimate the impact of stadium construction on minor league attendance. This data set includes almost 200 teams, over half of which constructed a new stadium during the 15‐year observation period. Over a 10‐year period our results show that new stadiums increase attendance by 1.2 million fans at the AAA level, 0.4 million at the AA and high A level, and 0.2 million at short season low A. A cost benefit analysis suggests that increased ticket sales do not offset the stadium costs, in line with previous works on MLB. (JEL H0, L83)     

RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND PRO SPORTS LEAGUES

We put a new set of shoes on that old workhorse, the competitive talent market (CTM) model in sports economics. There exist unique rational expectations equilibria for both national football league (NFL‐type leagues) and major league baseball (MLB‐type leagues) under the CTM model. A cursory statistical test fails to reject the empirical implications for the NFL‐type league. The model also suggests empirical tests of whether or not talent demand (marginal revenues from talent), including induced effects, actually slopes down. But like all models, the competitive talent model should be applied in its context. It describes highly cooperative North American sports leagues that have a wealth of common information. But it may not do the same for other leagues if they lack this common information.     

A college athletics recruiting game to teach the economics of rent-seeking

The authors of this article describe an adaptation of the rent-seeking game by Goeree and Holt (1999) to the recruiting of athletes by NCAA Division I football and basketball teams. Students engage in an effort-based lottery, i.e., recruiting to sign a blue-chip prospect. The winner gets the prize—the player's marginal revenue product in excess of his grant in aid. Students recruit in three scenarios: by recruiting legally, by recruiting legally or with illegal bribes, and by offering wages to athletes in an auction. The authors demonstrate the game's use in a principles course, but it is easily adaptable to other courses. To aid instructors unfamiliar with sports and NCAA recruiting, they include a comprehensive lesson plan with suggested readings and multimedia.     

Estimating the market value of collegiate football players from professional factor shares

Although the level and growth of revenue in college football has drawn increasing public attention, reliable estimates of the value of college and associated rents remain elusive. Many players do not have easily observable performance statistics and there are significant complementarities. Using a simple estimation strategy based on professional factor shares and rooted in economic theory, we generate estimates of market value for college players across seven National Collegiate Athletic Association conferences using professional football and basketball salaries from 2011 to 2013 as shadow prices. With this method, market value of an average starting football player in a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conference ranges from $120,000 to $1.7 million per year. The value of superstar players may exceed $4 million per year. We find that rents can flow from the institutions to players in some cases at relatively low-revenue institutions outside the BCS.     

The NBA and the influx of international basketball players

The determinants of salaries for professional athletes in the National Basketball Association (NBA) are examined to investigate how international athletes have fared relative to athletes trained in the United States. It is found that international basketball players were paid a large premium above other players of similar skills and characteristics for the 1996–97 and 1997–98 seasons, after which the premium disappeared. This temporary premium is likely attributable to a?‘winner's curse’?experienced by NBA teams before investing significant resources in scouting and evaluating international players.     

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS, HURRICANE KATRINA, AND THE ECONOMIC REDEVELOPMENT OF NEW ORLEANS

Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans in late August 2005, resulting in damage to much of the city’s sports infrastructure and the departure of both of New Orleans’ major‐league professional sports teams, the National Football League Saints and the National Basketball Association Hornets. What should the city provide in the way of financial accommodation to encourage them to return? This paper suggests that post‐Katrina New Orleans will have a difficult time retaining their franchises over the long run and in attempting to do so may hinder the redevelopment of the city. Furthermore, the very incentives designed to attract teams in the first place leave cities vulnerable to their departure in times of crisis. Finally, playing host to professional sports and mega‐events does have symbolic significance, but it is arguable that this is an amenity the city cannot currently afford. (JEL H25, H71, H40, L83, Q54)     

The extent to which unbalanced schedules cause distortions in sports league tables

The Australian Football League (AFL) has operated its fixture on the basis of an unbalanced schedule since the league expanded from 12 to 14 teams in 1987. This system contains a number of factors (some random) determining the set of bilateral combinations of teams that play each other on an extra occasion during the course of the season, not least of all maximising attendances. While the status quo may be unavoidable to some extent (it is also a bone of contention to many fans), its implications for within-season measures of competitive balance are nonetheless obvious. This is because of the potential for biases being created in the end-of-season league table as a result of the unbalanced schedule. This paper uses a modified model to correct for this inherent bias over the seasons 1997–2008, and the results are discussed in detail. The model is also generalisable to many unbalanced schedule designs observed in professional sports leagues worldwide.     

Football in Greater Manchester: Growth Effects of Premiership Status Teams

An extensive body of economic literature suggests that in the United States, there is little gain to a city from using tax revenues to subsidize or in other ways support professional sports franchises. One of the difficulties with these studies is the stability of professional team location. Manchester, England provides an opportunity to examine the growth effects associated with adding and subtracting top tier teams from a single sport in a single area over the course of several decades. Five different Greater Manchester area teams have been in the Premiership with as few as one and as many as four in any given year since the founding of the Premiership. Using Greater Manchester borough level data from 1991 through 2013 we look for changes in gross value added overall and in categories associated with professional sports when Premiership status changes. We find no sustained role for Premiership status, but do find a one off gain in gross value added growth when a team is promoted.     

Prospective measures of competitive balance application to money lines in the national hockey league

The authors have previously introduced the concept of utilizing point spreads to measure competitive balance in professional sports and a methodology for doing so. They assessed competitive balance in the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. This methodology was extended to measuring competitive balance utilizing money lines in major league baseball. This study starts by applying the same model to the money lines for the 2005–2015 seasons to measure competitive balance in the National Hockey League. It then statistically adjusts the money lines under various scenarios to estimate the effects of overtime rules and shootouts on competitive balance. Similar analyses of overtime effects on competitive balance of other sports are also completed for comparison purposes. The results indicate that competitive balance in the National Hockey League increased rather substantially during this period and that overtime rules and shootouts have had a much larger positive impact on competitive balance in the NHL than overtime approaches have had on the competitive balance of any of the other sports examined.     

Major league baseball’s Moneyball at age 15: a re-appraisal

In the 15 years since publication of the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game in 2003, major-league baseball (MLB) has seen the embrace of analytics by both fans and teams. Using 45 seasons of MLB data, since the introduction of the designated-hitter in the American League in 1973, the present study validates the central premise in Moneyball regarding the importance of certain performance metrics, such as on-base percentage (OBP). The terms in our empirical model are constructed such that our results permit a straightforward comparison of the relative contribution of each factor towards MLB teams’ success in winning games. We also provide evidence indicating that MLB teams have moved to align their payrolls with Moneyball analytics in the years following the book’s publication.     

Ownership of property-rights and the allocation of talents

Under the reserve-clause system that assigns the property-rights on the Major League Baseball players’ services to teams, player transfers are negotiated between teams without the involvement of players. In contrast, under the current free-agency system, players with free-agent status negotiate directly with potential suitors. Thus, the system assigns the property-rights to players. Using data extracted from the Baseball Archive (http://baseball1.com), this article examines the effect of the change in the property-rights assignment on the allocation of talents across teams. We find that the change increased large-market teams’ shares of veteran all-star players and the concentration of senior players.     

The impact of skilled immigrants on their local teammates’ performance

We use the Bosman ruling, which invalidated restrictions on the maximum number of foreign players allowed on professional football teams, to identify a causal positive impact of foreign players in German Bundesliga clubs on the individual performance of their domestic teammates.     

IS THE REVENUE ALLOCATION SCHEME OF FORMULA ONE MOTOR RACING A CASE FOR EUROPEAN COMPETITION POLICY?

Recent allegations from participants of the FIA Formula One World Championship (F1) suggest that its authorities violate European competition law in two ways. First, they allegedly abuse market power by forcing unfavorable contracts on media revenue allocation upon teams as a whole and on smaller teams in particular (vertical allocation of media revenue). Second, they allegedly form a cartel with selected teams to the detriment of smaller teams by providing unjustified extra payments to these teams (horizontal allocation of media revenues). In doing so, the cartel members allegedly secure supracompetitive rents from the authorities and cement an unfair competitive advantage over the outsider teams. Employing concentration measures from empirical economics, we present an assessment of whether the current antitrust allegations against F1 may be considered valid or not. We show that the allocation scheme employed in F1 considerably differs from those in other professional sports championships. We find the empirical picture to be consistent with an anticompetitive interpretation of F1 media revenue structures and policies. We conclude that there is merit in initiating an in‐depth antitrust investigation of Formula One motor racing. (JEL K21, L12, L40, L83, Z20)