Player Rights 1951 and 1957

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This chapter examines one of the most contentious issues in professional sports leagues that were tackled at the Congressional hearings in 1951 and 1957: player rights. The reserve clause and the player draft allowed owners to minimize competition for players and therefore to have salary-setting power over their players, giving them discretion in how much they paid them. Owners and their commissioners employed novel arguments supporting the necessity of having the reserve clause. This chapter first provides an overview of the sorry state of player salaries in professional team sports before considering the owners' explicit use of the reserve clause and how players began challenging it. It concludes with a discussion of Congress's inquiry into player rights, the challenges to the player draft, the formation of players' associations, the outcome of the hearings, and the inquiry's impact on owner-player relations.

scholarly journals Executive Pay Regulation: What Regulators, Shareholders, and Managers Can Learn from Major Sports Leagues

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut M. Dietl ◽  
Tobias Duschl ◽  
Markus Lang
Keyword(s):  
Level Structure ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Executive Pay ◽  
Corporate Sector ◽  
Sports Industry ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Regulatory Measures ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

Executive pay regulation is widely discussed as a measure to reduce financial mismanagement in corporations. We show that the professional team sports industry, the only industry with substantial experience in the regulation of compensation arrangements, provides valuable insights for the regulation of executive pay. Based on the experience from professional sports leagues, we develop implications for the corporate sector regarding the establishment and enforcement of executive pay regulation as well as the level, structure, and rigidity of such regulatory measures.

Economics of Antitrust

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Revenue Sharing ◽  
Antitrust Law ◽  
Competitive Balance ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Sherman Act ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This chapter examines the economics of antitrust, with particular emphasis on how antitrust law affects professional team sports. In the late 1800s, Americans worried about the growing concentration of power in the hands of a few producers such as Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and other large firms that consolidated their holds over industries by merging and acquiring other companies. Other industrial leaders sought to fix prices above those obtained under competition. The Sherman Antitrust Act, enacted in 1890, contains provisions addressing “contract,” “conspiracy,” and “trade and commerce.” This chapter first considers how courts applied the Sherman Act to cases involving professional team sports before discussing the characteristics of professional sports leagues, how owners of professional sports teams reported profits and losses, the issue of player salaries and exploitation, and competitive balance and revenue sharing in professional leagues. It also describes franchise relocation and expansion and how television created demand in sports.

A Look Back at the Hearings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
Professional Sports ◽  
Revenue Sharing ◽  
Financial Data ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

This conclusion discusses the aftermath of the Congressional hearings. During the hearings, the owners' general prerogatives survived essentially intact, although free agency of some sort was imminent in all sports by 1976. Legislators did not repudiate the reserve clause, the reverse-order draft, or territorial rights, despite their qualms regarding these institutions. The legislators and their aides missed some opportunities to subject the team financial data from the 1950s to analysis, which could have shed light on such questions as the effects of revenue sharing. Some fans gained when their hometown landed an expansion or existing franchise, while other fans lost when legislators did not prevent franchise relocation. Congress has held several hearings in the intervening decades since 1989. The professional sports leagues have also evolved. Technology has altered the landscape.

The Big Leagues Go to Washington

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Economic Data ◽  
The West ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues ◽  
Ownership Control

Between 1951 and 1989, Congress held a series of hearings to investigate the antitrust aspects of professional sports leagues. Among the concerns: ownership control of players, restrictions on new franchises, territorial protection, and other cartel-like behaviors. This book chronicles the key issues that arose during the Congressional hearings and the ways by which opposing sides used economic data and theory to define what was right, what was feasible, and what was advantageous to one party or another. As the book shows, the hearings affected matters as fundamental to the modern game as broadcast rights, drafts and players' associations, league mergers, and the dominance of the New York Yankees. It also charts how lawmakers from the West and South pressed for the relocation of ailing franchises to their states and the ways by which savvy owners dodged congressional interference when they could and adapted to it when necessary.

Economics of Sports Leagues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Price Setting ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Sports Team ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Ticket Prices ◽  
American Economy

This chapter is a general overview of the economic aspects of professional team sports leagues as well as the American economy. The NBA's turbulent birth as the BAA demonstrated that professional sports team owners' twin advantages of price-setting power over ticket prices and enhanced bargaining power over players were not sufficient conditions to ensure profitability. Price-setting power without sufficient demand could still lead to losses. The challenge was to increase demand, which would have led to higher ticket prices, more attendance, and greater revenues and profits. Greater profits would have enabled owners to pay higher salaries and to improve conditions, helping to erase any fly-by-night image. Thus the chapter looks at the issues surrounding profits, player salaries, technology, expansions, discrimination, and so on; as well as how the American economy performed during the years 1945–61 and how it affected attendance and demand for professional team sports leagues.

An Overview of the Hearings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
World War ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Major League ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Professional Sports Leagues

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.

Professional Team Sports in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 128-146
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Engerman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Ice Hockey ◽  
Spectator Sports ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Degree Of Similarity

This chapter presents several of the major issues of analysis in certain of the major spectator sports. It focuses, among the professional sports, on baseball, football, basketball, and ice hockey—particularly on baseball, which has a much longer history and a more substantial literature than do the other sports. While each of these sports leagues is operated as a separate entity, there is a great degree of similarity in their actions and activities. The chapter does not cover all economic aspects of sports, but focuses on those considered most significant. The four major economic issues to be discussed are (1) the economics of cartels; (2) the labor market (the institutions and the behavior of labor markets); (3) racial and gender discrimination in sports; and (4) government subsidies to teams to influence their location.

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.

The NFL’s Big Television Score 1961

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
National Basketball Association ◽  
American Football ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Broadcasting System

This chapter focuses on the National Football League's (NFL) bid for an antitrust exemption regarding its national television contract. The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the American Football League (AFL) already had national television contracts in place before the NFL negotiated its contract with Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). However, the NFL was the only league called before a congressional subcommittee on antitrust to defend its national television contract. Although the Congressional hearings of 1961 pertaining to “Telecasting of Professional Sports Contests” occurred at the behest of the NFL, the bills, H.R. 8757 and S. 2427, covered the four major professional team sports. This chapter first considers NFL teams' television revenues prior to 1961 before discussing NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle's negotiations with CBS over a new television contract and the hearings on the issue of antitrust exemptions that led to the passage of H.R. 8757, signed by President John F. Kennedy on October 10, 1961.

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