Professional Sports Teams Grapple with Radio and Television

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
National Football League ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Active Role ◽  
High School Football ◽  
Sports History ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Minor League ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines professional team sports' history with radio and television. Congress played an active role in the marriage of sports and television by passing legislation concerning national television contracts and television blackout rules. Legislators denounced Major League Baseball (MLB) for broadcasting and telecasting their games into minor league territory as well as National Football League (NFL) owners for their blackouts of telecasts of home games. Legislators also worried about the effects of NFL telecasts on college and high school football games, although little evidence was presented regarding these effects. This chapter first considers the early history of television in sports before discussing the effects of televising home games upon attendance and gate receipts, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust suit against the NFL regarding its policy of blocking telecasts of home games, and the controversy surrounding the NFL's blackout policy. It also explores the issue of national television contracts and television revenue sharing.

A Brief History of Professional Team Sports

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David George Surdam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Supreme Court Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
National League

This chapter traces the history of professional team sports in order to place the issues covered in the Congressional hearings in the proper context. It first considers the rise of baseball as America's national pastime and Major League Baseball (MLB)'s decision to maintain two separate leagues, the American League and the National League. It then discusses the dispute between MLB and the rival Federal League, along with the emergence of other sports that achieved Big League status, namely, football and basketball. It also examines the prosperity of the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) as well as the appearance of new challengers to their dominance after World War II. Finally, it looks at the Flood v. Kuhn, a Supreme Court case that challenged baseball's reserve clause, along with the rise of free agency.

scholarly journals The Liability of Professional Team Sports Physicians

1969 ◽  
pp. 247
Author(s):  
Lonny Balbi
Keyword(s):  
Sports Medicine ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Standards Of Care ◽  
Medical Negligence ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Professional Team Sports

Sports medicine is emerging as a new specialized field of medicine. The author discusses the liability of doctors working for professional sports teams and the problems of using a standard of care similar to that used in other medical negligence suits. Other possible standards of care are outlined and analyzed.

Professional Team Sports in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Riess
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Employee Relations ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Successful Operation ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Set Up

Professional sports teams are athletic organizations comprising talented, expert players hired by club owners whose revenues originally derived from admission fees charged to spectators seeing games in enclosed ballparks or indoor arenas. Teams are usually members of a league that schedules a championship season, although independent teams also can arrange their own contests. The first professional baseball teams emerged in the east and Midwest in 1860s, most notably the all-salaried undefeated Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869. The first league was the haphazardly organized National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (1871), supplanted five years later by the more profit-oriented National League (NL) that set up strict rules for franchise locations, financing, and management–employee relations (including a reserve clause in 1879, which bound players to their original employer), and barred African Americans after 1884. Once the NL prospered, rival major leagues also sprang up, notably the American Association in 1882 and the American League in 1901. Major League Baseball (MLB) became a model for the professionalization of football, basketball, and hockey, which all had short-lived professional leagues around the turn of the century. The National Football League and the National Hockey League of the 1920s were underfinanced regional operations, and their teams often went out of business, while the National Basketball Association was not even organized until 1949. Professional team sports gained considerable popularity after World War II. The leagues dealt with such problems as franchise relocations and nationwide expansion, conflicts with interlopers, limiting player salaries, and racial integration. The NFL became the most successful operation by securing rich national television contracts, supplanting baseball as the national pastime in the 1970s. All these leagues became lucrative investments. With the rise of “free agency,” professional team athletes became extremely well paid, currently averaging more than $2 million a year.

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.

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.

The Impact of Free Agency on Competitive Balance in North American Professional Team Sports Leagues

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Maxcy ◽  
Michael Mondello
Keyword(s):  
National Football League ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
National Hockey League ◽  
Competitive Balance ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Free Agent ◽  
Professional Team Sports ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
The Impact

Free agency was reintroduced to professional team sport leagues in the 1970s. Sport enthusiasts expressed concern that competitive balance would diminish as star players congregated to large market cities. However, the economic invariance principle rejects this notion, indicating that balance should remain unchanged. This article empirically examines the effects of changes in free agent rules on competitive balance over time in the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and National Hockey League (NHL). Regression analysis using within-season and between-season measures of competitive balance as dependent variables provides mixed results. The NFL and NHL provide evidence that an aspect of competitive balance has improved, but results from the NBA indicate that balance has worsened since the introduction of free agency. We conclude that the ambiguous results suggest that the effects are not independent, but instead depend on the interaction of free agent rights with other labor market and league rules.

scholarly journals Women’s team sports in the activities of the University Sports Association in Poland in 1945–1989

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Michał Skalik
Keyword(s):  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Team Games ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Football Field ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World

The emergence of women’s team sports in University Sports Association (Akademicki Związek Sportowy – AZS) in Poland took place in the second decade of the 20th century. In the 1930s female student teams competed in Polish championships in Czech handball, basketball and volleyball. After the Second World War, team games continued to be popularized in the academic community. Women participated in university, inter-university and international competitions in basketball, handball and volleyball. A competition had the greatest popularity in of the Academic Polish Championship and the Polish Championship of Higher Education Institutions. In addition, sports teams representing AZS participated in professional sports in basketball, football, field hockey, handball and volleyball. In the professional sport most successes had teams AZS Warsaw, AZS Wrocław, AZS Katowice and AZS Poznań. The development of team sports games in the academic community was related to, among others with the decisions of institutions managing physical culture in Poland in 1945–1989. These guidelines had an impact on organizational changes in the structures of AZS and on shaping the academic model of sports competition.

scholarly journals On modeling player fitness in training for team sports with application to professional rugby

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Revie ◽  
Kevin J Wilson ◽  
Rob Holdsworth ◽  
Stuart Yule
Keyword(s):  
Support Vector Machines ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Performance Models ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Vector Machines ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Explicit Measures

It is increasingly important for professional sports teams to monitor player fitness in order to optimize performance. Models have been put forward linking fitness in training to performance in competition but rely on regular measurements of player fitness. As formal tests for measuring player fitness are typically time-consuming and inconvenient, measurements are taken infrequently. As such, it may be challenging to accurately predict performance in competition as player fitness is unknown. Alternatively, other data, such as how the players are feeling, may be measured more regularly. This data, however, may be biased as players may answer the questions differently and these differences may dominate the data. Linear mixed methods and support vector machines were used to estimate player fitness from available covariates at times when explicit measures of fitness were unavailable. Using data provided by a professional rugby club, a case study was used to illustrate the application and value of these models. Both models performed well with R2 values ranging from 60% to 85%, demonstrating that the models largely captured the biases introduced by individual players.

scholarly journals Using Experiential Client-Based Projects in Sport Sales Courses

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
David Pierce
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Sport Management ◽  
College Athletics ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Organizational Model ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Minor League ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
Independent Model

Sales has gradually gained traction in the sport management programs over the past 15 years. This article examines the extent to which client-based experiential projects are used in sport sales courses and determines if teaching practices are different in client-based and non-client-based courses. Online survey responses were received from 36 of 85 sport management programs that offer a sport sales course. Results indicated that 58.3% of sport sales courses utilized a client-based experiential sales project. The sports properties that partner with sales classes the most are college athletics, minor league teams, and Big Five professional sports teams. Clients provided students with leads in 55% of the projects. The most popular organizational model was the independent model, which was employed by 70% of the courses engaging in a client-based project, followed by the on-campus and in-venues models. Client-based courses were more likely to use mock sales calls, guest speakers, and the Sales Huddle game. Implications for teaching client-based experiential courses are addressed.

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.

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