Mark Rosentraub

On any financial measure college sports programs in the USA dwarf college sports programs in all other countries combined. Even if the figures for the developmental professional sports programs in other countries for the 18-22-year-old age group were added to the non-US collegiate sports total, the USA figures would still dwarf those in other countries. In overall attendance and ticket revenues college sports in the USA is close to any of the four major US professional leagues. Because there is little media coverage of US college sports in other countries most people outside of the USA do not realize its scale. Conversely, most Americans have no idea that there is nothing like it any- where else.

Labor markets are central to the understanding of sporting activity. It is product demand that determines the demand for labor. The chapter begins by outlining the perfectly competitive model of the demand for labor, but emphasizes the fact that the market for athletes is more complex than this model implies. Contracts need to be specified in such a way that they induce maximum effort from the players with elements of both bonuses and long-term contracts. The market for sports stars is then monopsonistic, given a shortage of players with star quality and restrictions on mobility of players. Conditions of bilateral monopoly may apply with the probability of the wage diverging from the marginal revenue product. The reader should by the end of the chapter have some understanding of the nature of the player contract and how to ascertain the economic value of individual performance, which may be influenced in team sports by the dispersion of pay within a team. Historically, the reserve clause in North America and the retain and transfer system in Europe were the main mechanisms for achieving an acceptable degree of competitive balance, but have been weakened through key legal judgments such as in the Bosman case. Some economists have argued that they were in fact bound to fail, through the implications of the invariance thesis of the Coase theorem, and the actual impact of such restrictions is a matter of some debate. Other controversial issues are whether more equal gate-sharing will increase competitive balance and what are the likely results of the implementation of salary caps. Reference back to Chapter 2 suggests that these policies will be influenced by the goals of the club owners.

Each team’s facility is a ‘stage’ on which its home matches are presented. If owned by the team, the stadium or arena is its largest physical capital asset. That ownership, or else a contract for the use of a publicly-owned stadium, allows the team to sell tickets, broadcast rights and Internet rights. Teams have an obvious economic interest in convincing the public authorities to pay for the stadium. To justify the public subsidy teams claim that the benefits generated by their presence extend beyond the fans that watch or listen to a game. Many economists claim that the benefits produced by teams are almost entirely private in nature and limited to the team’s fans. The chapter explores these claims and develops a framework to determine the optimal portion of public sector support for a sports facility. Next, the chapter considers the benefits and costs of different financial instruments and strategies to pay for any public subsidy of stadiums and arenas. The model of optimal cost-sharing between the public and private sectors and least cost payment mechanism are then compared with recent contracts for building new facilities.

What determines the demand for tickets to a single sporting event? Given that demand, how are ticket prices determined? What determines the gradient in prices as the quality of the seats rises? How does the opportunity to sell ancillary goods at a sporting event — such as food, drinks, parking and souvenirs — affect the prices of tickets? Is an unrestricted market for resale tickets (called scalping in the USA and ticket touting in the UK) beneficial or harmful? How is a season ticket similar to a call option on the stock market? Why would a fan prefer a season ticket to buying tickets to individual games? Why would a team owner prefer selling season tickets to selling individual game tickets? What determines the demand for and pricing of season tickets? Starting with the assumption that the owner’s objective is to maximize profits, the main goal of this chapter is to answer these questions with simple microeconomics tools. Whether owners indeed try to maximize profits was discussed in Chapter 2.

This chapter examines the possibility that in sports, despite being over-represented relative to their population share, members of minority groups may still be discriminated against. The chapter defines what is meant by discrimination and considers how it may be measured, noting that it is easier to measure player productivity in sport than is generally the case for workers in other industries. Further, it is necessary to consider which sources of discrimination are likely to be of significance in sports — employer, co-worker or customer — and what forms it may take (hiring, salaries, or position in the team). The role of antidiscrimination legislation is considered in relation to college sports where gender participation rates have been a matter of particular concern in the USA.

Many community leaders believe that sports events such as the Olympics, the World Cup tournament, or a season of games played by a home team generate substantial economic development. Sometimes the benefits are thought to extend to a region and sometimes to a smaller area such as a downtown (town centre). Community leaders often claim that sports activities can turn around run-down areas as well as transform a city’s image. These claims have a common sense appeal given the spending that takes place when millions of fans attend matches. As a result, numerous cities and countries have used taxes to build facilities for teams or to attract events such as the Olympics and the World Cup.

Abstract Current efforts to create coastal management systems have emphasized the need to preserve rural and less developed areas. Because of this, too little attention has been given to problems of coastal resource management in large metropolitan regions. This study examines the coastal policies of local governments in the Los Angeles area before and after the passage of the California Coastal Conservation Act of 1972. The Act transferred control over coastal development from the city and county to the regional and state levels. It is argued that the very large socioeconomic and political scale of a metropolitan region requires that local governments have a more direct role in planning and permit‐granting processes than was possible under the 1972 Act. Nevertheless, it is concluded that the elimination of regional agencies and their dual function of focusing discussion and acting on certain aspects of coastal policy—as was done in the California Coastal Act of 1976—may produce yet another set of problem...

Abstract A consensus appears to exist in the nation that greater public control over coastal development is desirable. One result of this has been the development of a need for data and knowledge which will assist in designing coastal management systems. This article attempts to respond to this need in two ways. One is informational, to provide an empirical record of the initial experience of a regional coastal commission in California. The other is to consider the deliberate strategy of building an evaluative capacity into coastal management agencies. An experimental data system proposed as the basis of this evaluative capacity is studied to demonstrate its ability to measure the performance of a commission's organizational structures, decision‐making rules, and administrative procedures.

In response to decreases in federal funding affecting a number of urban services and substantial reductions in other fiscal resources, municipal governments have developed several new methods to deal with their new financial constraints. One such strategy, labeled "coproduction" by researchers, has been the transfer of part or all of the costs of producing some municipal services to individuals. When citizens engage in coproduction activities, equity questions can be raised with respect to citizens' access to services. This article explores the equity issues related to one service, personal and property safety. Using data from surveys in two cities describing citizens' security-related activities, the implications of citizens' action for the equitable distribution of productions costs for personal security are considered. The article concludes by focusing on the policy issues raised as a result of coproduction activities.

INTRODUCTION In November 2005, the National Basketball Association (NBA) Bobcats began play in a new downtown Charlotte arena. Earlier in 2005 Newark and team officials broke ground for an arena for the National Hockey League's (NHL) New Jersey Devils and Indianapolis initiated work for a stadium for the National Football League's (NFL) Colts. Arlington, Texas' voters passed a tax increase to pay a substantial portion of the costs of a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. Even New York City, with its economic vitality and well-defined image, has been pursuing public-private partnerships for new facilities for a basketball team in Brooklyn (Nets) and ballparks in the Bronx (Yankees) and Queens (Mets). New York will likely invest more than $1 billion in the three facilities. With seven new facilities scheduled to open between 2006 and 2010, and with 10 other communities currently in negotiations with teams for new facilities, the interest in hosting professional sports teams remains part of the public agendas in world cities and dominant cities in large metropolitan areas (Turner and Rosentraub 2002). Negotiating with teams for the building, use, and maintenance of sports facilities is not an annual activity for cities, but represents a relatively rare event that requires specialized knowledge. As a result, most communities engage outside consultants to work with their staff and leaders. Although this strategy is often helpful, it does not relieve community leaders of the burden of establishing the city's goals for the negotiations and the level of investments appropriate for the anticipated goals. In terms of specialized knowledge, city leaders need to understand the constraints facing the team and the commitment an owner is willing to make to assist in achieving the city's goals. These elements are particularly complex because professional sports leagues in the United States receive special protection from market forces through court decisions and legislative actions. Hosting teams requires a level of a public investment that has ranged from the public sector supplying only the needed infrastructure (roads and sewers) to the investments made by some cities to support the full cost of a facility and its maintenance. With the scale of these investments often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, community leaders must understand the range of public benefits possible and the available strategies to insure that committed tax dollars have the potential to achieve the desired goals. This paper addresses the strategies available to public officials against a background of why cities pursue sports team for their communities and the unique dimensions of the sports business that make these negotiations for cities unlike most others. That discussion precedes the presentation of a model for developing public-private partnerships that can help cities secure their goals. WHY DO CITIES PAY FOR SPORTS? Critics of public investments to attract or retain professional sports teams often ask why local governments care about the presence of professional sports in their communities? Frameworks for deciding what governments should or should not provide underpin the field of public administration, and at first blush would suggest that professional sports is not a public good. Buchanan (1968), Musgrave and Musgrave (1989), Ostrom, Bish, and Ostrom, (1989), and Savas (1999), have provided the theoretical background that has educated generations of public administrators with regard to the scope of joint consumption goods and services the public sector should provide. Goods and services characterized as involving individual consumption and for which it is possible to exclude non-payers are those best left to market transactions. Those goods that fall between joint consumption and private goods and that are deemed worthy of government action to insure their existence in a community are called merit goods and are provided and produced by numerous local governments (Musgrave and Musgrave 1989). …

Two perspectives define the debate over a general theory of urban political economy: Location theorists suggest needed social institutions develop around the nexus of cost efficiencies; proponents of regime theory and growth coalitions look to elite coordination to explain growth and the distribution of resources. The authors contend that coalitions do develop but occur in response to favorable cost factors and other geographically and technologically defined networks. Further, an evolutionary process is involved. Growth coalitions strive to and become regimes only to de-evolve into loosely coupled coalitions that respond to crises and opportunities but do not direct economic development.

ABSTRACT The use of surveys by cities for planning or evaluation requires attention to several problems identified by users. An assessment of the impact of these issues was made using three surveys by the city of Dallas. It was determined that surveys may be particularly valuable in evaluating service delivery patterns for services which offer delivery agents a high level of discretion. For these services, non-whites reported higher levels of dissatisfaction than whites, a pattern not evident when low discretion services are evaluated. The study also allowed development of specific suggestions regarding the structure of survey questions and the evaluation of services by non-users.

Students of fiscal policy have long noted the impact political culture has on spending levels. This relationship has not only been statistically dem onstrated but is incorporated in the stereotypical views held of certain areas. Some states are frequently identified as "low spenders," while others have a reputation for supporting services. When the federal government elected to reduce its support for many human services, an opportunity arose to understand whether political cultures had changed in some areas with regard to state and local support of human services. In states where the tradition was for low spendingfor services, did they respond by curtail ing programs, or did the public or private sectors increase their spending? In Texas, a state with a history of low spending levels for human services, neither the state legislature nor local governments increased their fiscal responsibilities for human services. However, there was a large increase in private sector contri...

... In addition, with the changing revenue needs and economics of professional sports, team owners must attract as much of this ancillary spending as possible ... First we had the Age of Pyramids in which I would include such edi-fices as the ziggurat in Babylon, Borobudur in Java ...

ABSTRACT The impact and value of a bureaucracy's workforce that is racially representative of the clients served has been a volatile and debated subject. Looking at one policy output in a large urban school district, the administration of punishment and suspensions, this article examines the impact of racially balanced faculties on the discipline assigned to minority students.The policy importance of school discipline has been underscored by numerous studies and school desegregation programs. School discipline not only influences the political I social attitudes of students, but can influence access to the service of education itself through the selective use of suspensions and expulsions. In addition, despite inconclusive studies and extensive debates, many judicial decisions involving schools frequently identify the need for modified or reformed discipline systems.The evidence from this 50 school study provides inconclusive support for the idea that a representative bureaucracy will improve service equity. However, the presence of increased numbers of black faculty members is shown to influence the discipline given to black students. As a consequence, the conclusions discuss the policy importance of programs designed to make the racial characteristics of school bureaucracies more similar to the racial characteristics of the students in that school.

ABSTRACT Policy scientists have long recognized that economic institutions located far from cities can manipulate resources to affect local policies and politics. Too often, however, these same students have failed to consider the implications of these same actors' control over the production and manipulation of information used to affect economic and political issues.This article assesses the current balance of control over information between cities and the economic and political institutions city officials must deal with to plan for the future of their communities. After detailing the declining ability of cities to control their own information environment and the factors leading to this state of affairs, a series of recommendations is proposed to help local decision makers regain control over their local economic space.

Governments still labor to form public/private partnerships to develop sports facilities that will retain teams while also creating benefits for communities. This work is undertaken as advocates point to a stream of possible benefits from a new sports facility, while detractors ...

Revitalization efforts often require some commitment of tax dollars for the costs of the related-development projects. Elected and appointed officials often need to gauge support for these investments if electoral approval is required. Contingent valuation surveys can be a precise tool to understand support and concern among different groups of residents. This study illustrates a refined methodology and method for looking at the value placed on a new town center and the required public investment. The results illustrate that there is a considerable base of support for the plan and its financing, but officials would also need to implement an identified strategy to insure electoral support from a majority of residents.

ABSTRACT Decentralization and economic restructuring challenged local governments before the recession. Warned that property tax receipts would also recede as real estate markets collapsed and unemployment levels soared, many wondered if new levels of fiscal stress would result. With declining state aid, central cities were advised to prepare for cutbacks. Our research illustrates jobs are where they were before the financial crisis. Fears that central cities were about to experience regional job shifts with adverse effects on property taxes can subside. There is however other alarming issues that need attention, given reduced intergovernmental transfers.

The expected economic development from sports facilities and teams encourages community leaders to argue for public investments in professional sports facilities. Understanding if sports facilities and teams add to a city's economy and taxpayers' sense of economic value has become more critical as public investments in such facilities involve several hundred million dollars. This paper uses recent data from Indiana in monetizing the intangible values citizens derive from sports, highlighting the role of including such measures in cost-benefit analyses useful to public officials when determining whether to invest public dollars in a sports facility. For the Indianapolis Colts, the value of the intangibles helped convince the state and local governments to build a new home for the team. The paper also suggests how to integrate such analyses of intangibles into traditional models of economic impact for future economic development opportunities that confront decision makers when...

... In an effort to untangle some of these apparent contradictions, a separate factor analysis was performed for the activities in Factor 1. Only one factor in this ... Involving citizens in the production of municipal services offers the potential of political and economic benefits (Sharp, 1980 ...

Preface Acknowledgments The Author Urban Change, a Loss of Centrality, and New Destinies for Downtowns Introduction Sports, Entertainment, and Culture for Image, Attracting Human Capital, and Economic Development The Beginning of an End to the Need for Central Cities Why Should Cities Care about Sports, Entertainment, and Culture? Sports, Entertainment, and Culture: The Trinity for Redevelopment Misplaced Revenues, Misplaced Values Goal and Organization of This Book Endnotes Teams, Cities, Elites, and the Real Value of "Big-Ticket" Amenities A General Framework for Investments in Big-Ticket Items The Value and Appropriateness of Big-Ticket Items Amenities, Human Capital, and Economic Development Organic Urban Change versus Planned Redevelopment Business Leaders and Urban Redevelopment The Unbalanced Playing Field between Teams and Cities Challenging the Leagues in Court, at the Statehouse, or in Congress Revitalization and Development as an Alternative to Subsidies Summary Endnotes Indianapolis as the Broker City The Indianapolis Plan: Goals, Objectives, and History Indianapolis, Sports, and Redevelopment: What Was Built, How Much Was Invested, and Whose Dollars Were Spent? Has Indianapolis Been Changed by the Sports and Downtown Redevelopment Strategy Challenges on the Horizon: Subsidies and Revenues Indianapolis: The Broker City to Be a Major League Winner Endnotes Shared Risk, Shared Returns: San Diego's Unique Partnership for a Ballpark, Convention Center Hotel, and a New Downtown Neighborhood Introduction The Padres and the "Need" for a New Ballpark Politics of San Diego's Sports World Task Force II and the Generation of Substantial Public Benefits Public Benefits and the Stigma of Subsidies Scorecard on the Ballpark District: What Was Built The Scorecard: Taxes Generated The Ballpark District: Development, Land Use, and the Best Use of Urban Land The Ballpark District and San Diego: Mutual Risk in a New Model for Public/Private Partnerships Endnotes A White Elephant, an Arena, and Revitalization: Using Location and the Glitz of L.A. LIVE to Rebuild a Downtown Area Introduction Thinking Outside the Box: Bringing the Lakers and Kings Downtown Downtown Los Angeles: Liabilities and Assets Sealing and Selling the Deal Los Angeles' Investment and Returns Rebuilding Downtown Los Angeles: L.A. LIVE Rebuilding Downtown: Other Iconic Projects Conclusions Endnotes Columbus, Major League Sports, and a New Downtown Neighborhood: A Failed Initiative and a Privately Built Arena Introduction Fighting for a Toe Hold in Professional Sports A. The Arena District Plan Columbus' Arena District: An Early Assessment Columbus' Arena District: What Was Built Conclusions Endnotes Can a City Win When Losing? Cleveland and the Building of Sports, Cultural, and Entertainment Facilities in the Midst of Population Declines and Job Losses Introduction The Crisis of Confidence Cleveland's "Hail Mary" Pass: Downtown Revitalization as Symbols of Confidence Results of Cleveland's "Hail Mary" Pass Extra Benefits from Building Amenities: Regional Cooperation Amending Cleveland's Major League Loser Status: New Leases Business Leaders and Downtown and Community Development Conclusions Endnotes Stagnation, Crime, and Population Change: Reading's Volunteer Leadership Group and a Focus on Sports, Entertainment, the Arts, and Culture to Revitalize a Small City Introduction: Economic Change in a Small City Changes in a Small City: Economic and Racial Separation Into the Breach: A Volunteer Leadership Group and Its Focus on Entertainment Reimaging Reading: From the Outlet Capital to a Mid-Atlantic Arts Center Reading's Leadership Group and Community Development Measures of Success Conclusions Endnotes Sports, Culture, Entertainment and Revitalization: Turning Subsidies into Strategic Investments Introduction Subsidies to Investments in the Aftermath of the Credit Crisis Lessons Learned: Similarities within Differences Lessons Learned: Advice for Other Cities Looking to Sports, Entertainment, and Cultural Amenities for Revitalization Recommendation 9: Level the Negotiating Table Conclusion Endnotes References Index

The association between municipal fragmentation and suburban sprawl is examined, based on a cross-sectional analysis of all U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents in the 1990s. Results reveal that this association is rather weak but significant and is sustained even when the less fragmented and more compact Canadian metropolitan areas are excluded from the analysis. The impact of residential sprawl on fragmentation is significant, but fragmentation does not predict sprawl. Low levels of fragmentation do not guarantee compact development, but lack of excessive fragmentation might be a precondition for compact development in North America.

Voluntary and nonprofit organizations, private firms, and public agencies provide and produce many of the same goods and services at the local level. Consequently, the adequacy, equity, and efficiency of the local public sector and the aggregate performance of the three sectors cannot be fully assessed without accounting for the effects of all sectors. A multisectoral framework or "community services budget" is proposed in this article to facilitate comparative research and achieve a better empirical and normative understanding of how the three sectors contribute to the total provision and distribution of urban goods and services in a community.

... In addition, placing facilities in downtown locations to influence overall development patterns eems to have no signifi-cant impact. ... sports vis-a-vis other cultural amenities, metropolitan respondents were asked how important the various sports teams, sports events, other events ...

ABSTRACT A nonprofit sector that is quite active in the financing or production of public and human services could reduce the financial burdens on local governments to provide services. These governments could be considered more fiscally healthy than governments in communities with less active nonprofit sectors. Although an active nonprofit sector would seem to significantly affect a city's fiscal health, little statistical evidence exists to support this impression. Research reported here indicates that a measure of nonprofit sector service activity, along with accepted measures of fiscal health, effectively describes the distribution of bond ratings for the population of large U.S. city governments. Evidence is provided that (a) municipal bond ratings as of 1990 were an effective measure of fiscal health for large cities, and (b) nonprofit sector service activity was one of the most important determinants.

... a development strategy that focused on amateur and professional sports was the best route available to redefine Indianapolis's image, it was determined through interviews and a review of documents that no detailed analysis of Indianapolis's competitive advantage was used to ...

Independent, scholarly research continues to question the logic of using public subsidies to finance sports facilities for sports franchises in North America (cf. Coates & Humphreys, 1999; 2003; Rosentraub, 1999). As a result, research has also sought to examine the issue from different perspectives, including the manner through which the stadium issue has been addressed by local politicians (Friedman & Mason, 2005), the public goods value of teams and facilities in communities (Johnson, Groothius, & Whitehead, 2001; Johnson & ...