Economics, Politics, Incentives and Disadvantages of a City Hosting a Professional Sports Team

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According to the old saying, baseball is America’s pastime. We love it. We breathe it. We live it. Why do we do all of these things? We grow up watching it on the living room couch with our parents, screaming at the T.V., and if we were lucky enough, maybe even go to a couple games a year. But what if you weren’t able to enjoy “America’s Greatest Pastime”? Most likely, it is because the state in which you live in does not have a professional baseball team. In this paper, I am going to discuss the economics, politics, incentives, and disadvantages of a city hosting a professional sports team ranging from the MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL. Most often, a team is placed in a widely urban area, such as Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago. However, not all teams are in large cities. There are “weak-drawing cities” (Fort & Quirk) that attract teams from all leagues, but many lack the profit incentives to compete at the national level, leading to many teams leaving the city in favor of a high profit incentive city. In the NFL, for example, the season is only 16 games long. This short season is an example of where a “championship model” (Fort & Quirk) would be used. A championship model shows a city’s desire to keep a team based on the number of championship won rather than factoring in a high win percentage and if the team makes the playoffs or not. Due to this championship model that cities adhere to regarding the NFL, many teams are placed in high populations, rather than in lower populations. For example, Green Bay, WI has a population of only 305,000 people according to the 2010 census, making it the smallest population wise city to host a professional team. Due to the championships won by the Green Bay Packers however (as well as the die h... ... middle of paper ... ...A: Routledge. Danielson, M. N. (1997). Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press. Euchner, C. C. (1993). Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them. Baltimore, MA, USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Fort, R., & Quirk, J. (1995). Cross-Subsidization, Incentives and Outcomes in Professional Team Sports Leagues. Journal of Economic Literature , 33, 1265- 1299. Lindholm, Scott (2013, August 16). Researching and explaining the "common knowledge" of baseball and other sports. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from Scott Lindholm Blog: www.beyondthescorecard.blogspot.com Rosenberg, M. T. (2000, January 1). About Geography. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from About Geography Web site: www.geography.about.com Storey, D. (2011). Sports and Geography. Teaching Geography , 36 (2), 67-69.

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