INTRODUCTION
The sentiment can be heard in any office break room, local tavern, or play field. The utter discontent of the increasing cost of attending professional sporting events. Distain ranges from players salaries to cost of parking and concessions. One local newscaster, channel 5 in Chicago, Illinois – April, 2003, reports that for a family of four to attend a major league baseball game on opening day costs between $160 and $200 dollars.
The precursor to this cost was a decade of skyrocketing salaries and the trend to build huge public ally financed megaplexis to house these professional athletes. The current response to this ostentatious decade is to put forth bills to prevent and/or set limits on public financed projects (Shafroth, 1996). The history of stadiums shows that it was always the norm of publicly building stadiums, however, with the cost of these projects astronomical the public is more skeptical (Rosentraub, 1991). The reason why state and local governments continue to want to finance these stadiums has been much debated. The main debate is one of economic impact. The following two excerpts illustrate this debate:
Stadium subsidies do not increase economic activity in total and are not necessary to keep sports leagues in existence. Cities, though, face competition for sports teams; small market cities particularly might need to offer subsidies in response to remain competitive with larger markets. Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati had not reached the end of its usefulness. But with other cities offering stadium deals, the Reds and Bengals secured new stadiums at a total cost ...
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Radio broadcasting was one development that kept “America’s Pastime” alive, and provided the sport with additional audience. During these rough times, many people could not afford tickets to baseball games, so listening to the radio was an option that was very appealing. Naturally, some baseball club owners claimed that putting games on the air was hurting attendance. However, evidence shows that the radio broadcasting caused more people to gain interest in the sport, causing more people to attend the sport. For example, the St. Louis Cardinals outlawed broadcasting during the 1934 season, and attendance levels decreased to 283,000 less than the 1931 championship season. The public clearly enjoyed the new radio broadcasting of games, and the media expressed their feelings. The Chicago Tribune released a fervent argu...
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Financial aspects and profitability of college athletic programs is one of the most important arguments involved in this controversy. A group of people expresses that college athletic programs are over emphasized. The point they show on the first hand, is that athletic programs are too expensive for community colleges and small universities. Besides, statistics prove that financial aspects of college athletic programs are extremely questionable. It is true that maintenance, and facility costs for athletic programs are significantly high in comparison to academic programs. Therefore, Denhart, Villwock, and Vedder argue that athletic programs drag money away from important academics programs and degrade their quality. According to them, median expenditures per athlete in Football Bowl Subdivision were $65,800 in 2006. And it has shown a 15.6 percent median expenditure increase fro...
Change is often met with opposition, skepticism, and even euphoria. All three of these feelings have been expressed with the announcement of the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team’s search for a new stadium to commence their 2017 season. The Braves current stadium is known as Turner Field, which originally completed construction in 1996 to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, is scheduled for demolition in 2017. The Braves announced that they are pursuing the construction of a new stadium in Cobb County, located in the northeast suburbs outside Atlanta. The new Cobb County stadium location far out weights the inner city location of Turner Field.
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He says that these facilities never pay for themselves, that there is an increase in overall community income, but not enough to offset cost. He states that though highly paid, a team employs very few workers. A new stadium offers more amenities that are more expensive, such as luxury skyboxes, thus bringing in more revenues than the old stadiums. The teams do see some of these profits but so do the cities. Noll writes that new stadiums force other entertainment out of town, this can be true, but it also brings in new business in the form of restaurants and pre and post-game entertainment. The profits from transportation can be much larger in the post stadium city.
I grew up in front of the T.V. watching bone-crunching hits and massive home runs in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. I saw the last game the Browns played there and I started bawling like a blubbering idiot when they left the field. Back then sports were much more simple. The games were played for fun. There were no high-school kids bringing down the quality of NBA games, There weren’t any greedy me-first 19 year olds trying to sue their way into the NFL. Nor were there any teams spending 190 million dollars to buy a World Series like the Yankees. But when the 1995 NFL season ended I was finally introduced to the most horrid part of sports... economics.
Sports are one of the most profitable industries in the world. Everyone wants to get their hands on a piece of the action. Those individuals and industries that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these sports teams are hoping to make a profit, but it may be an indirect profit. It could be a profit for the sports club, or it could be a promotion for another organization (i.e. Rupert Murdoch, FOX). The economics involved with sports have drastically changed over the last ten years.
While sports for the spectators are merely entertainment, the economics of the industry are what drives businesses to become involved. Sports have become more of a business entity rather than an entertainment industry due to the strong economic perception of the over all industry. There are several instances in which economics may contribute to the effect on the sports industry, such as: the success of a team, the price of a ticket, the amount of money an athlete will make, and the amount of profit a team will make. The success of an...