High Stakes of Sports Economics

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Introduction

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Overview

As the 1988 baseball season gets under way, major-league team owners and their colleagues from other professional sports appear to be riding a crest of popularity and power. Attendance at major-league baseball games reached a record total of 52 million last year, up nearly 40 percent over the course of a decade. Professional basketball's popularity is also surging, after a period of decline in the 1970s. While the 1987 strike by National Football League (NFL) players cut into that sport's popular support, at least temporarily, team owners are still savoring their crushing defeat of the players union.

At least as important and gratifying to the professional leagues, though, is the extent to which they have been able to use their popularity to win favorable treatment from different levels of government. Across the country, state and local governments are providing concrete evidence of their citizens love of sport by lavishing public benefits on pro teams and their owners. The desire for pro teams—both as emblems of civic pride and, arguably, as levers for economic development—is so strong that cities are going to extraordinary lengths to get or keep teams. In some cases, they are engaging in cutthroat competition to attract teams form other cities.