scholarly journals Return to sport for North American professional sport leagues in the context of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
pp. bjsports-2020-103227
Author(s):  
John P DiFiori ◽  
Gary Green ◽  
Willem Meeuwisse ◽  
Margot Putukian ◽  
Gary S Solomon ◽  
...  

COVID-19 is a respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. A range of clinical scenarios exist, from an asymptomatic disease course to SARS and death. This document describes important considerations for 5 North American professional sports leagues (Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, National Basketball Association, National Football League and National Hockey league) assessing when and how to resume phased operations, including practices and games. Sports should prioritise and promote the health and safety of athletes, team and operational staff, and other participants, and should not unduly increase those individuals’ relative health risk while contributing to economic recovery, providing entertainment for the public and leading a responsible restoration of civic life. Because elite professional sport ordinarily is conducted in a controlled environment, professional sports leagues may be able to achieve these goals. This document is focused on professional sports leagues in North America, and although many of the statements are generalisable to professional sporting settings throughout the world, other considerations may apply to sports in other countries.

2021 ◽  
pp. 152700252110227
Author(s):  
John Charles Bradbury

Major League Soccer (MLS) is the top-tier professional soccer league serving the United States and Canada. This study examines factors hypothesized to impact consumer demand for professional sports on team revenue in this nascent league. The estimates are consistent with positive returns to performance, novelty effects from newer teams, and varying impacts from roster quality and composition. Other factors hypothesized to be important for MLS teams (e.g., stadium quality and market demographics) are not associated with team revenue. The estimates are similar to findings in other major North American sports leagues, even though MLS operates with a unique single-entity ownership structure that has the potential to disincentivize individual team investments by league owners.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Brown ◽  
Natasha T. Brison

The use and integration of wearable technology (wearables) into professional sports is increasing rapidly. At a minimum, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS have all integrated wearables into their training. Teams’ hope the biometric data obtained from the wearables will sharpen athletic performance, create competitive advantages, enhance fan experience, and generate new revenue streams. However, to obtain these desired outcomes leagues must adequately protect their athlete’s biometric data (ABD).  The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the CBAs of the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS management of wearables and ABD. Specifically, this paper will discuss the potential gaps in protection of ABD within the CBA and explore whether federal and state laws are applicable to protect the data. Findings from this analysis improve our understanding of professional sport leagues management of ABD and expose the limitations of protection at the league, state, and federal level.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane Rockerbie ◽  
Stephen Easton

Revenue sharing is a common league policy in professional sports leagues. Several motivations for revenue sharing have been explored in the literature, including supporting small market teams, affecting league parity, suppressing player salaries, and improving team profitability. We investigate a different motivation. Risk-averse team owners, through their commissioner, are able to increase their utility by using revenue sharing to affect higher order moments of the revenue distribution. In particular, it may reduce the variance and kurtosis, as well as affecting the skewness of the league distribution of team local revenues. We first determine the extent to which revenue sharing affects these moments in theory, then we quantify the effects on utility for Major League Baseball over the period 2002–2013. Our results suggest that revenue sharing produced significant utility gains at little cost, which enhanced the positive effects noted by other studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (7) ◽  
pp. 813-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gemar

The theory of the cultural omnivore has been applied to many cultural domains. However, given the pervasiveness of professional sport in contemporary societies, less is known about omnivorous behaviour when it comes to consuming this cultural form. This study sets out to find if indeed there is an omnivorous consumption profile for professional sport. Using a latent class and regression analysis of survey data on five major professional sports leagues from Canada, this paper seeks to determine if this professional sport omnivore exists, how prevalent it might be, and if it maps onto wider socio-economic differentiations. The latent class analysis does show that there is an omnivorous consumption profile. However, it is the second smallest professional sport profile and does not map onto wider socio-economic differentiations, even as other patterns of professional sports’ consumption do display such distinctions.


Author(s):  
David George Surdam

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.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 563-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Mills ◽  
Jason A. Winfree ◽  
Mark S. Rosentraub ◽  
Ekaterina Sorokina

2021 ◽  
pp. 152700252110595
Author(s):  
Marco Runkel

Competitive balance regulation is more widespread in North American than in Europan sports leagues. The present paper addresses the question whether this observation can be explained with the help of differences in the degree of player mobility. Using an extended version of the workhorse contest model of sports leagues, the paper shows that the answer depends on the kind of competitive balance regulation. While player mobility may help to explain the difference with respect to salary regulation (e.g., salary caps), the choice of revenue sharing schemes turns out to be independent of player mobility.


Author(s):  
Ryan Gauthier

This chapter examines restrictions that professional sports leagues and governing bodies place on the freedom of movement of professional players—both negotiated and imposed—and how these restrictions fit within the antitrust/competition and labor law regimes. This chapter engages in a comparison of the North American and European “models” of restrictions and finds that the North American “model” is more likely to withstand antitrust/competition law scrutiny. The North American model falls under the protections offered to collectively bargained agreements, while the European model currently faces scrutiny for potential violations of European competition law. Nevertheless, this chapter suggests that these two models are likely to converge as the internationalization of sport continues. European governing bodies may be pushed to negotiate with players more in the future, while North American leagues are already adopting “European” practices in regard to facilitating player movement among other professional leagues.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gemar

Despite the prevalence of professional sport in contemporary societies, there is little known by academics about professional sports consumers. We know much more about other cultural domains, such as music and the arts. This study examines consumption and sport in Canada to further understand how patterns of sports consumption fit into broader leisure lifestyles. Through investigation of how five professional sports leagues in Canada are consumed, this paper draws conclusions about the lifestyle of these consumers to assess which prevailing theories of cultural consumption are most useful for this segment. By utilising latent class analysis and regression modelling, this paper finds that cultural omnivores are the most likely consumers of these leagues. This group also maps onto theorisations of omnivores as high-status persons. Additionally, this paper suggests that theories of cosmopolitanism in omnivorous consumption may have particular salience for the Canadian case.


Author(s):  
David George Surdam

This chapter provides an overview of the hearings conducted by Congress in the wake of player unrest after World War II and growing demand for new baseball franchises. The Congressional hearings began in 1951, when Emanuel Celler (N.Y.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Anti-trust and Monopoly, initiated an inquiry into Major League Baseball (MLB). For the first hearings, Celler told reporters that the committee's purpose was to “help baseball against itself.” During the hearings, few of the legislators impressed with their savvy. Some did not appear to understand the testimony. On occasion a few made dubious comments. The hearings occasionally lapsed into farce. The chapter considers sports owners' reluctance to release their financial records as well as professional sports leagues' search for antitrust exemptions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document