Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Via University of Texas Press. By Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. She is the author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape and has written extensively on the intersection of sports and violence off the field.
Kavitha A. Davidson is a sportswriter and host of The Lead, an in-depth daily sports news podcast produced by The Athletic. Close to the Lithub Daily Thank you for subscribing! Just Because You're Paranoid Danielle Evans on Mrs. November 12, by Caitlin Flynn. Like us on Facebook. Read More. Realistically, any legitimate solution that shrinks the power disparity between municipalities and leagues must come from the federal government, as cities without teams will always sacrifice more to get in the game.
One answer would involve regulating the leagues like the natural monopolies they are. There are no competing definitions out there, despite the efforts of Vince McMahon. When competition pops up, it quickly and inevitably dies, because we want to see one champion crowned. No competition means no market forces, which leads to a sort of natural monopoly. That monopoly helps drive the big business of sport. These monopolies allow leagues to self-determine how many teams can exist, and thus how many cities can participate.
Predictably, they keep the number low. The leagues, players , and sports commentators contend that fewer teams keep the level of play from being watered down, but more likely, the shortage allows teams to pit cities against one another.
The curious case of Los Angeles exemplifies this phenomenon. Between and , one of the greatest conspiracy theories in football held that the NFL kept the colossal L. Purposeful or not, it worked: During that period, 22 new NFL stadiums were built using billions in public money.
Other natural monopolies have been resolved through regulation, either by the government enforcing price caps—in sports, this would trim how much money owners, players, and leagues could drain from a community—or by deciding on the quantity of the product being produced.
The latter option the government forcing expansion is the most interesting. While having something like a hundred MLB teams is clearly infeasible, an elegant solution already exists abroad. On and on it goes, teams moving up and down divisions every season. Read: Why American sports are socialist. Viewing pro-sports leagues as the public good and natural monopolies they are, and then responding to that by forcing them to expand closer to what the market can bear, would take away the incentive municipalities have to throw gobs of public money at these private businesses.
If more cities have teams, there will be no need to wield tax breaks or publicly funded private stadiums in the cutthroat war against other cities.
And more public money in the coffers means more funding for roads, schools, and other social services. Of course, cities could also elect leadership that will defend them against bad deals. Oaklanders certainly do, and Schaaf does too. I got them presents because I love them and want them to be happy. They offer entertainment and encourage communal bonding. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. Another strategy is to insert provisions in a facility lease that deter team relocation.
Many cities have tried this approach, but most leases have escape clauses that allow the team to move if attendance falls too low or if the facility is not in state-of-the-art condition.
Other teams have provisions requiring them to pay tens of millions of dollars if they vacate a facility prior to lease expiration, but these provisions also come with qualifying covenants. Of course, all clubs legally must carry out the terms of their lease, but with or without these safeguard provisions, teams generally have not viewed their lease terms as binding.
Rather, teams claim that breach of contract by the city or stadium authority releases them from their obligations. Almost always these provisions do not prevent a team from moving. Some leases grant the city a right of first refusal to buy the team or to designate who will buy it before the team is relocated. The big problem here is the price.
Owners usually want to move a team because it is worth more elsewhere, either because another city is building a new facility with strong revenue potential or because another city is a better sports market. If the price is the value of the franchise in its present home, the old owner is deprived of his property rights if he cannot sell to the highest bidder. In practice, these provisions typically specify a right of first refusal at market price, which does not protect against losing a team.
Cities trying to hold on to a franchise can also invoke eminent domain, as did Oakland when the Raiders moved to Los Angeles in and Baltimore when the Colts moved to Indianapolis in In the Oakland case, the California Court of Appeals ruled that condemning a football franchise violates the commerce clause of the U. District Court ruled that Maryland lacked jurisdiction because the team had left the state by the time the condemnation was declared.
Eminent domain, even if constitutionally feasible, is not a promising vehicle for cities to retain sports teams.
Whatever the costs and benefits to a city of attracting a professional sports team, there is no rationale whatsoever for the federal government to subsidize the financial tug-of-war among the cities to host teams. In , Congress apparently became convinced of the irrationality of granting tax exemptions for interest on municipal bonds that financed projects primarily benefiting private interests.
The Tax Reform Act denies federal subsidies for sports facilities if more than 10 percent of the debt service is covered by revenues from the stadium. If Congress intended that this would reduce sports subsidies, it was sadly mistaken. If anything, the law increased local subsidies by cutting rents below 10 percent of debt service.
Although cities might respond this way, they would still compete among each other for scarce franchises, so to some extent the likely effect of the bill is to pass higher interest charges on to cities, not teams. Congress has considered several proposals to regulate team movement and league expansion. The first came in the early s, when the Washington Senators left for Texas. Unhappy baseball fans on Capitol Hill commissioned an inquiry into professional sports. Another round of ineffectual inquiry came in , following the relocations of the Oakland Raiders and Baltimore Colts.
As before, nothing came of the congressional interest. This bill, too, never came to a vote. The relevance of antitrust to the problem of stadium subsidies is indirect but important. Private antitrust actions have significantly limited the ability of leagues to prevent teams from relocating. Teams relocate to improve their financial performance, which in turn improves their ability to compete with other teams for players and coaches.
Hence, a team has an incentive to prevent competitors from relocating. Baseball, because it enjoys an antitrust exemption, is freer to limit team movements than the other sports.
Relocation rules can affect competition for teams because, by making relocation more difficult, they can limit the number of teams usually to one that a city is allowed to bid for. In addition, competition among cities for teams is further intensified because leagues create scarcity in the number of teams.
Legal and legislative actions that change relocation rules affect which cities get existing teams and how much they pay for them, but do not directly affect the disparity between the number of cities that are viable locations for a team and the number of teams.
Thus, expansion policy raises a different but important antitrust issue. As witnessed by the nearly simultaneous consideration of creating an antitrust exemption for football but denying one for baseball on precisely the same issue of franchise relocation, congressional initiatives have been plagued by geographical chauvinism and myopia. Except for representatives of the region affected, members of Congress have proven reluctant to risk the ire of sports leagues. Even legislation that is not hampered by blatant regional self-interest, such as the Tax Reform Act, typically is sufficiently riddled with loopholes to make effective implementation improbable.
While arguably net global welfare is higher when a team relocates to a better market, public policy should focus on balancing the supply and demand for sports franchises so that all economically viable cities can have a team. Congress could mandate league expansion, but that is probably impossible politically. Even if such legislation were passed, deciding which city deserves a team is an administrative nightmare.
A better approach would be to use antitrust to break up existing leagues into competing business entities. The entities could collaborate on playing rules and interleague and postseason play, but they would not be able to divvy up metropolitan areas, establish common drafts or player market restrictions, or collude on broadcasting and licensing policy. Under these circumstances no league would be likely to vacate an economically viable city, and, if one did, a competing league would probably jump in.
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