In the business of professional league sports, market conditions are the key determinate of the financial success or failure of a team. In the last few years, major league sports has experienced both growth into new markets and relocations of existing teams. Owners and the leagues use demographics, economic data, and governmental support to decide on where and when to expand and relocate. This book examines the sports business from 1950 through 2000. Historical demographic, economic, and team-related data provide the context. The authors apply metropolitan area statistics such as population growth and income, game attendance, and estimated market values to examine the business decisions made by individual teams in professional baseball, football, and basketball. The book looks at specific teams in terms of their long-term viability as a franchise and ranks their performances in economic and business terms. It also examines the related issues of taxpayer subsidies for new venues and the economic impact of professional sports on cities and regions. The book is a fascinating and comprehensive look at the business of sports and its place in American society, business, and economics.
How did the professional baseball, basketball, football, and hockey leagues become the most successful sports organizations in the United States? Jozsa investigates the major leagues' histories with unparalleled depth and rigorous economic analysis. He marshals relevant data, facts, statistics that measure the performance of professional sports teams and players, the strategies of franchise owners, and the loyalties of fans. Delineating the development, maturation, and revitalization of the leagues throughout the 20th century, he highlights significant events and reforms of the era and discusses the future of sports leagues in the marketplace. Sports fanatics, casual fans, professional coaches and players, journalists, economists, administrators, and owners will discover a goldmine of information in this unique volume. Readers will learn about key owners, investors, coaches, managers, and players of teams that won divisions, conference titles, and league championships from the 1950s through the 1990s. The book includes information on attendance, operating incomes, payrolls, win-loss percentages, and the estimated market value of individual teams. Specific franchise owners are noted for their wealth and success factors. The author also predicts that league commissioners, franchise owners, local business and community leaders, and government officials will be forced to bargain in good faith and compromise on the question of whether to use taxpayer money to invest in sports facilities.
This study considers the importance of location for new and relocated major league franchises in the more than 130 years since the National League was founded. Included are an analysis of market differences and similarities, team performances and demographics and area economic comparisons. Market data are used to predict future expansions and relocations of major league teams.
During the second half of the twentieth century, Major League Baseball and its affiliated minor leagues evolved from local and regional entities governing the play of America's favorite pastime to national business organizations. The relocation of teams, league expansion, the advent of free agency and an influx of international players has made baseball big business, on an increasingly global scale. Focusing on the last fifty years, this work examines the past and present commercial elements of organized baseball, emphasizing the dual roles--competitive sport and profitable business--which the sport must now fulfill. Twenty-five essays cover five areas integral to the economic side of baseball: business and finance, human resources, international relations, management and leadership and sports marketing. Detailed discussions of the redistribution of revenues, the history of player unionization, aggressive global marketing, strategies of franchise owners and an evaluation of fan costs, among other topics introduce the reader to the important issues and specific challenges professional baseball faces in an increasingly crowded--yet geographically expansive--sports marketplace. The work is also indexed.
The book focuses on how, when, where and why the US-based professional sports leagues extend their brands and penetrate markets in nations across the globe. The book examines the strategies, progress and expectations of each league despite the cultural, economic and political barriers that exist between and within countries and areas. It offers a model of the sports business and, where appropriate, the emergence, evolution and growth of prominent women's sports leagues are documented. This book is unique as there are no other academic publications that study and report the global ambitions of this special group of organizations in one volume. Readers such as college and university sports history, management, marketing and international business professors, students and researchers can use and apply the book, as either a teaching supplement, reference and/or literature source. It will also appeal to targeted groups beyond the academic community with strategic economic incentives to learn about sports capitalism, such as sports entrepreneurs and league officials.
The book focuses on, identifies, and analyzes various divisions and conferences of four professional sports leagues and their teams' historical regular season and postseason performances, and also provides a recent financial profile of them while being competitive, profitable or unprofitable, and well-known enterprises. The parent sports organizations are the American League and National League in Major League Baseball, American Football Conference and National Football Conference in the National Football League, and the Eastern and Western Conference each in the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League.
This interesting book discusses the emergence and development of five extremely popular team sports OCo baseball, basketball, football-soccer, ice hockey and cricket OCo since the 1800s in 15 different countries. It addresses some of the most provocative, recent and unique economic and business issues associated with team sports in the various nations. For example, to what extent has each of these spectator sports prospered as industries, and will they expand into other regions of the world during the early to mid-2000s? This book answers these questions, and compares the performances of each country''s amateur, semiprofessional and/or professional sports leagues and their respective teams by providing detailed statistics and other relevant historical information."
Most books that study professional sports concentrate on teams and leagues. In contrast, Home Team studies the connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where teams play. It examines the relationships between the four major professional team sports--baseball, basketball, football, and hockey--and the cities that attach their names, their hearts, and their increasing amount of tax dollars to big league teams. From the names on their uniforms to the loyalties of their fans, teams are tied to the places in which they play. Nonetheless, teams, like other urban businesses, are affected by changes in their environments--like the flight of their customers to suburbs and changes in local political climates. In Home Team, professional sports are scrutinized in the larger context of the metropolitan areas that surround and support them. Michael Danielson is particularly interested in the political aspects of the connections between professional sports teams and cities. He points out that local and state governments are now major players in the competition for franchises, providing increasingly lavish publicly funded facilities for what are, in fact, private business ventures. As a result, professional sports enterprises, which have insisted that private leagues rather than public laws be the proper means of regulating games, have become powerful political players, seeking additional benefits from government, often playing off one city against another. The wide variety of governmental responses reflects the enormous diversity of urban and state politics in the United States and in the Canadian cities and provinces that host professional teams. Home Team collects a vast amount of data, much of it difficult to find elsewhere, including information on the relocation of franchises, expansion teams, new leagues, stadium development, and the political influence of the rich cast of characters involved in the ongoing contests over where teams will play and who will pay. Everyone who is interested in the present condition and future prospects of professional sports will be captivated by this informative and provocative new book.
This Brief identifies and contrasts the groups of National Basketball Association (NBA) expansion franchises and of any teams that relocated from one metropolitan area or city to another from 1950 to 2013. It discusses historical differences and similarities in the teams’ markets and performances and then as members of divisions and conferences. It measures and compares the emergence, development, and success of the teams by analyzing demographic, economic and sport-specific data. It also discusses the respective mergers of the Basketball Association of America and National Basketball League in 1949, and the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association in 1976. National Basketball Association Strategies makes an important, relevant, and useful contribution to the literature regarding professional sports operations and to the NBA’s short and long run business strategies in American culture. Besides numerous sports fans within metropolitan areas and extended markets of these NBA teams, the book’s audiences are sports historians and researchers, college and public libraries, and current and potential NBA franchise owners and team executives. This Brief may also be used as a reference or supplemental text for college and university students enrolled in such applied undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars as sports administration, sports business, and sports management.
In September 1941, I was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. I completed elementary and secondary schools there and then in 1963 graduated with a bachelor of science degree from Indiana State College. After serving as a logistics officer for five years in the military, I worked for Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan, and later for Indiana National Bank in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the 1970s, I earned master of business administration, master of science, and doctorate of philosophy degrees, and since the late 1970s, I have taught classes in economics, statistics, and business administration to undergraduate and graduate students at various American colleges and universities. Besides teaching, I have also authored articles and books about the business, economics, and operations of leagues and their franchises in professional team sports. For activities, I became a reader of Advanced Placement examinations, an investor, and a distance runner. Being a competitive and dedicated athlete, I played varsity baseball and basketball while in high school and college, and performed as an all-star catcher and pitcher in Little League and on championship teams in Babe Ruth and Connie Mack Leagues. At a baseball tryout camp for major league prospects held in Columbus, Ohio, I tried but unfortunately did not play well enough to sign a contract with a professional team. As a student, I usually earned good to excellent grades in many subjects and, in fact, was salutatorian of my class at Gerstmeyer High School. Then I graduated with an accounting degree at Indiana State College (now University), master's degrees at two universities, and a PhD in economics at Georgia State University. To achieve academically at these schools, I disciplined myself to attend lectures, complete all assignments, conscientiously study my notes and textbooks, and maximize scores on examinations and class projects. Indeed, my accomplishments as a student in high school and colleges and universities led to a career in higher education. Between the late 1970s and 2007, I was a teacher and author who taught several types of economics and business administration courses to undergraduate and graduate students at accredited schools in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. In addition, I was a classroom instructor with the University of Maryland in Germany. The articles I wrote appeared in journals, magazines, and newspapers while my books analyzed the business, economics, finance, and operations of leagues and teams in professional baseball, basketball, football, ice hockey, and soccer. Besides these experiences, I was a captain in the United States Air Force and stationed for one year in South Vietnam. Furthermore, I trained as a long-distance runner, won many age-group awards, and competed in five marathons, including races in Boston and New York City. After 35 years of fulltime teaching, I retired from Pfeiffer University in Charlotte, North Carolina. I currently live in Tega Cay, South Carolina.
