The Commissioner’s Power to Discipline Players for On- and Off-Field Misconduct

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Karcher
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues ◽  
Power And Authority

This article examines the power of professional sports league commissioners to discipline and suspend players for misconduct both on and off the field. It first provides a historical background on disciplinary measures for players in different professional sports leagues, including the National Football League, over the past century. It then considers the source of the commissioner’s power and authority to discipline professional athletes for misconduct as well as the rationale behind it, focusing on the adoption of personal conduct policies at the league level. It also discusses the commissioner’s authority and power to act in the “best interests” of the sport. Finally, it analyzes the limitations on the commissioner’s power and authority, including the collective bargaining agreements and some arbitration and court rulings that involved suspensions of players by league commissioners.

Revenue Sharing and Agency Problems in Professional Team Sport: The Case of the National Football League

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel S. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Agency Theory ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Revenue Sharing ◽  
Team Sport ◽  
Opportunistic Behavior ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

Although initially developed as cartels of independently owned and operated clubs joining to produce a sports product for spectator consumption, professional sports leagues have emerged as monopolies wielding significant economic power. By increasing revenue-sharing practices, and thus attempting to align owner interests, leagues have become single-business entities that maximize wealth for the league as a whole. Over the past four decades, the National Football League has implemented such practices to become the most popular team sport in North America. Using agency theory, this paper examines how the NFL's former commissioner, Pete Rozelle, and the League Executive Committee used these practices in order to increase League revenues and decrease opportunistic behavior by team owners. However, certain owners continue to act entrepreneurially, to the detriment of the League as a whole. This behavior is congruent with the tenets of agency theory, which contend that interests will diverge within a principal-agent relationship (e.g., the NFL— NFL teams). Until such time that team owners realize that the welfare of the other League clubs, along with their competitive equality, is paramount in retaining interest in and producing the League product, professional sports leagues will continue to be plagued with problems such as unnecessary franchise relocations and other acts of maverick owners.

Closing the Last Vestige of a “Free Market” In Labor 1964

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
National Basketball Association ◽  
Reverse Order ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This chapter examines the issues surrounding player draft in professional sports leagues. During the postwar era, baseball officials and players often mentioned free agents. Unlike the free agents of our era, however, these players were talented amateur players. Indeed, high school and college players constituted the remaining vestige of a free market for baseball labor during the postwar era. The owners quickly discovered that this free market for labor was costly and made attempts to curb spending on amateur players, sparking allegations of cheating that led to distrust among them. This chapter first considers the creation of the amateur draft in Major League Baseball (MLB) before discussing the reverse-order draft in the National Football League (NFL) and the player draft in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It concludes with an assessment of the impact of the draft on owners and players.

Damn Yankees and Relocations 1964 and 1965

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Major League ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This chapter examines the issue of franchise relocation. Legislators had two main concerns throughout the series of hearings: to procure teams for their constituents while avoiding losing teams via relocation. The legislators' concerns were imbued with an element of reality, at least. Cities with multiple Major League Baseball (MLB) teams usually had one team that was struggling, and legislators held a different attitude to such teams relocating than they would with regard to later relocations of prosperous teams. This chapter first considers three options for acquiring a big-league team: purchase an existing team, hope for an expansion team in an established league, or enter a team into a new league. It then discusses the economics of franchise relocations, along with the early histories of franchise turnovers in professional sports leagues, including the National Football League (NFL) and its predecessor, the American Professional Football Association. It also looks at Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) purchase of the New York Yankees during the 1964 season that sparked fears of an unfair alliance.

NFL team revenue distribution and revenue sharing: a median voter theorem

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Ehrlich ◽  
Shankar Ghimire ◽  
Shane Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Revenue Sharing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Average Revenue ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

PurposeRevenue sharing is ubiquitous among North American professional sports leagues. Under pool revenue sharing, above-average revenue teams of a league effectively transfer revenues to below-average revenue teams. Herein, the authors find and prove that a league will vote into policy a pool revenue sharing arrangement if and only if mean team revenue is greater than presharing median revenue, where this condition is equivalent to the presence of positive nonparametric skewness in a league’s distribution of team revenues. This represents a median voter theorem for league revenue sharing.Design/methodology/approachThe authors consider the case of revenue sharing for the National Football League (NFL), a league that pools and equally shares national revenues among member teams.FindingsThe authors find evidence of positive and significant nonparametric skewness in NFL team revenue distributions for the 2004–2016 seasons. This distribution is observed amid annual majority rule votes of League owners in favor of maintaining the incumbent pool revenue sharing model (as opposed to no team revenue sharing). Distribution of revenues – namely the existence of outlying large market NFL teams – appears to consistently explain the historical popularity of NFL revenue sharing.Originality/valueThe median voter theorem uncovered in the case of NFL applies to all professional sports leagues and can be used predictively as well as descriptively.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
National Football League ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Meat Packing ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This book examines the economics of the antitrust aspects of the three professional sports leagues—Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Basketball Association (NBA)—based on the information presented at the hearings conducted by Congress during the 1950s. In the late 1800s, Americans worried about the growing concentration of economic power in the hands of large corporations and big trusts such as oil, railroads, steel, meat packing, and tobacco. In response, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. While owners of professional sports teams may not have resembled industrialists, they labored under the same antitrust statutes. This book explores some of the major issues tackled in the Congressional hearings, including mergers between rival football and basketball leagues, player rights, general antitrust exemptions, territorial rights, franchise relocation and sales, franchise expansion, and television policies.

Collective Bargaining in Professional Sports

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabe Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Bargaining Process ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Labor Negotiations ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This chapter examines the complex collective bargaining process in professional sports leagues. The labor negotiations between players and owners present unique conflicts between labor and antitrust law. The resolution of these conflicts will have a significant impact on the future of collective bargaining between players and owners. This chapter provides a brief overview of the relevant principles of labor law, briefly traces the history of collective bargaining in professional sports, identifies and analyzes the conflict between labor and antitrust law, examines the recent conflicts in the NBA and NFL labor negotiations, and looks forward to future negotiations between players and owners.

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