By now most of you probably heard of the 23-cent-pizza promotion that Papa John's put up after one of its franchisees in DC printed "Crybaby 23" t-shirts for a Wizards-Cavaliers playoff game after Lebron James (#23 of the Cavs) was accused of whining too much about rough play and not getting foul calls. The lines stretched on for about three hours, leading some to wonder why people wait in line. If the pizza costs $12 normally and you wait three hours standing in line to pay $.23 for it, what's your implied wage? Matt Ryan argues that standing in line is not a cost of the pizza but part of the experience.

...sure, I had to wait in line for 3 hours to get a cheap pizza, but how can I possibly value being able to tell my friends for the indefinite future? I don't believe it's entirely separate from betting longshots at the racetrack-- the story has value, and maybe because it's indeterminate exactly how valuable it is, you end up with individuals massively mis-pricing it.

I don't know how it is we know it's mispriced, though. Any good that I purchase with unknown benefits has some ex post accounting of benefits and costs, but I don't usually call that some mistake in price. For example, I'm forced by my convalescence to listen to a lot more of my purchases on iTunes. (Embarrassingly, in the eight months since I bought my iPod, I have purchased over 150 songs. In this way, I've never grown up.) Some of them are fills for playlists I write, and often I've pulled them out as bad ideas after sinking my $.99 into the song. But this was true when I bought albums, 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs. And some I get a great deal on; I've ended up playing the absolute hell out of Neverending White Lights, which I kind of stumbled on one night and bought two CDs worth after hearing three songs. Are all of these misprices ex ante? I think not.

OB LeBron, who's playing against my C's right now: It's natural in most superstars' careers that they begin to expect some respect from the refs. I obviously didn't get much time to see the Wiz-Cav series, but roughing up the one superstar when the rest of the team looks suspect isn't unusual, and it challenges the league office to see if they'll blatantly cover for the superstar they wish to promote by suspending the other teams' hackers. (They did in this case.) The problem for LeBron against the C's is twofold. First, he is playing against a much better defensive team that uses its own semi-superstar (Pierce) to guard him. Second, he's encouraged to do this by his coach's constant whining about calls, and that coach's insistence on running a 1-4 set for LeBron at the top of the key, basically saying "here, drive by Pierce and then meet Mr. Garnett." LeBron can't expect calls there, and he knows it. It's nice to see there's one coach in the league worse than Doc Rivers. When the Cavs lose this series, Mike Brown should go.

And LeBron isn't even the worst whiner. I think someone vintner needs to market $.21 Timfandel.

Labels: Celtics, economics, sports

As sure as it is warming up outside (or getting to the busy season of an academic schedule, which is the period between the end of 'spring' break and commencement), it's time for baseball again. I keep reading how it's harmful for Boston and Oakland to be required to play meaningful games in Japan and then travel back to the States. I have two answers for this. First, it's silly to have them stay in the country this long for two nights' work. If I go overseas for three or four days, my answer is simply to keep myself on US time as much as I can. Even if I time-shift, it doesn't take me a week to shift back when I get home. There are other adjustments you can make, such as using a scrub player for your Japan game and then send him to the minors, or play your next exhibition games in L.A. to take off three hours from the shift.

But I'm sorry, there's no reason for bellyaching about the Red Sox being penalized by the schedule. If the Sox don't win the pennant, nobody is going to go back and say they lost it somewhere over the Pacific. Besides, ownership has to be happy selling all that swag.

We went on the road, we're 1-1. If they get back to Boston a game over .500, it's all good.

Labels: baseball, Red Sox, sports

Frank Stephenson questions a comment by Allen Sanderson on why NFL teams don't invest more in their player personnel. Regarding Mitch's Bears' choice of quarterback,

...what if a better quarterback (which means almost anyone since the imcumbent is Rex Grossman) allowed the Bears to charge higher ticket prices while selling out Soldier Field? This source indicates that stadium "gate" revenue is spilt 60-40 between the home and visiting teams, respectively. Thus, even a team could reap a large, though not complete, share of revenue generated by a QB upgrade.

I had thought about playoff revenue as a motivator. The players only get $18,000 per game in the playoffs, and thought team revenues would help with that. True, the teams only get $500k-$600k from the league for playoff games (less than a million for the conference championship, and about $3.5 million for the conference winner), but I am wondering who gets the concession revenue? Concession and parking prices can be adjusted upwards for playoff games. If it's the home team (or, possibly, its subsidiary that runs the stadium) that, along with player cost control, might provide some serious incentives.

What we know from baseball -- where the home team bags a much bigger share of the revenue both during the season and post-season -- is that a player has the highest value to a team that is in a big market and to a team that is on the edge between making and not making the playoffs. The steep price increase for players of above average major league talent is an indicator of that. If Stephenson is right, a Lorenz curve of player values versus salaries should show much more evenness for football than for baseball.

Labels: baseball, economics, football, sports

Gary emailed me something very funny this morning, from Saturday's Vikings press conference announcing the signing of WR Bernard Berrian.

Then a few words about Bernard Berrian; i, a, n, you know there is a large Armenian population in Fresno, some of you may or may not know. Bernard is not Armenian however with the i, a, n at the end of his name. We talked about heritage last night, right? We had a great visit here and had to keep him busy all day long with video games, etc., a lot of different things going through his head.

Childress must have been watching the news from Armenia, where it goes from bad to worse. A few bloggers are getting word out:

• Raffi at Cilicia;
• The Armenia Blog is down but the Google cache has some interesting footage of what's happened in the last couple of weeks;
• Blogrel is posting up a storm;
• The Armenian Observer is reporting internet censorship;
• and Oneworld has its usual excellent photojournalistic reporting.

Labels: Armenia, sports

Do you remember this game? If you're under 35, probably not, as it's been banned by the government since 1988. But for many people it was a good alternative to horseshoes, as it didn't gouge up your lawn. Bob Lawson notes that the game was great fun (for me too!):

I've used this example in class to highlight the trade-off between safety and other values (i.e., fun!). Somewhat shockingly I ask my students, "Ok, we have a game that provides millions of hours of fun and enjoyment for hundreds of thousands of people. Unfortunately, a few kids get maimed and maybe even killed. That's a price I'm willing to pay!" If they recoil in horror at my inhumanity, as they often do, I remind them that this isn't that different from saying, "Ok, we have this device that provides us with the incredible ability to get from place to place quickly. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of us will get killed and many more injured each year using it. I'm talking about cars. How many of you want to ban cars?" The issue is that we have to make trade-offs.

I also had a BB gun as a kid, and luckily my name is not Ralphie. In his case, his parents got to make the trade-off. We also had a dart board. But not for the lawn dart any more do we trust parents to make that decision.

My friends play bocce, which has some similarities to both jarts and horseshoes, but for some reason I find it unsatisfying. Ever been hit with one of those balls? Ouch! Call the CPSC!

(I'm sure John will now bring up curling.)

Labels: economics, sports

My Patriot producer (sometimes known as Antoine) thinks Rocket came out the better of the hearings, though he says criminal charges might still proceed.

Overall, it was a terrible day for McNamee, a bad day for the Mitchell Report and an OK day for Clemens. McNamee looked like a villain, The Mitchell Report an unknowing accomplice and Clemens came off looking like he was the most trustworthy of the shady bunch.

Prediction

1 The Rocket will end up in the Hall of Fame, mostly likely on the second ballot, and he'll probably go as a Yankee. ...

2 McNamee and Clemens will both be charged with perjury. McNamee on the steroid lies and Clemens for his comments about the Mitchell Report not trying very hard to contact him.

I'm still confounded by the faith people seem to have in the Pettitte statement, included in this complete set of affadavits, depositions and testimony. The man has admitted to cheating, and then in his affadavit says only at one point had Clemens said anything about using HGH, only that he had heard the stuff worked. But at least we are left to think everyone believes Pettitte's statement is truthful. It just doesn't help me decide anything about which of these men are lying. And meanwhile Mike Mussina's right: Pettitte is in for a difficult spring, and not just because he's behind in his training.

Still, there's something more than a bit grating about Clemens' repeated use of the word "misremembered", a word that just doesn't sound like something a good ol' boy uses. It sounds like a lawyer word, acted out by a guy used to bright cameras and pressure. That McNamee looked bad in comparison to Roger should come as no surprise to anyone: There are about 500 pitchers who have suffered that same fate on a mound pitching against him. I didn't watch, and am glad I didn't; those who did I suspect are victims of a oral version of a curveball.

Labels: baseball, sports

My friend Brad Humphreys is scratching his head over people who would pay more than $.50 for a contract that pays you $1 if the coin toss at the Super Bowl comes up heads. But when I looked at this bet on an offshore book rather than on a TradeSports exchange, I had to pay $1.15 to win $1, implying $.5209 for the cost of the bet offshore. So I'll add one possibility to the list of explanations Brad has: It's cheaper to pay for a coin toss on Tradesports than on Sportsbook.

BTW, for those interested, I had no money riding on last night's game except for $3 on a board among friends. None of my numbers came up. I cannot bet for or against my own team; I'm enough of a nervous wreck as it is.

Labels: economics, sports

An email from NFLShop.com advertises that one can "Pre-Order Your Conference Championship Gear Today". How can I tell you how wrong this is? Perhaps this way: If I was in Fenway for an ALCS game and I saw anyone wearing a "Red Sox American League Champions" hat or shirt, I would want to scream at that person ... but it would be pointless because other fans would have already killed that person, and it's no fun screaming at a corpse.

So, fellow Giants fan, do NOT let me see you in that gear. Let Packer Fan front-run Sunday's game and imitate NFL Films overuse of the words "frozen tundra". They have to do this; they get all verklempt about Favre after all. Wear your blue and be quiet, lest we scare away the succubus of Y.A. Tittle inside the guy that currently wears #10.

Labels: sports

In a 2006 NCAA survey of 21,000 athletes who were then playing in a variety of men's and women's sports, football players reported spending 44.8 hours a week practicing, playing, or training for their sport. That's on top of the time players spend in the classroom.

The findings shocked campus leaders and athletics officials at the gathering here.

"That's out of control," said Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford. "I'm hoping the [NCAA] bodies that oversee football will do something about this, and that the board of directors pays attention to it."

Bob Chichester, until recently athletics director at the University of California at Irvine, wondered whether players were being pressured to train that many hours or were choosing to do so on their own.

"If we're requiring student-athletes who might not otherwise want to spend that much time on their sport to practice and train that many hours, then we really have a problem," he said.

The NCAA limit is 20 hours of mandatory time. From the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning. I suspect in many cases it is voluntary. One should wonder, though, whether there's a "tournament pay" story going on here. To win playing time, you must put forth more effort. As evidence, consider that the survey showed Division I golfers reported 40.8 hours; women softball players, 37.1. Now that's a lot of time for what is likely a dubious return, if all they were investing in is the possibility of pro career.

Labels: economics, sports

We're on the road, the rare environment when I see television. It started in the Salt Lake City Airport on Saturday. The televisions were tuned to NFL playoffs, the Green Bay-Seattle Game was on the air. Timing is everything. The game was near the end of the first half. Favre has always been a delight to watch but how he managed to evade the defenders on the play where he just flicked that football while trying to keep his knees off the ground was truly amazing. This will go down as one of the most unusual plays in football history.

It would be great if our Vikings did better but if not the Vikings, ok, Green Bay, go for it. That play will be showed again and again. Even if you are not a football fan, this is one to see!

Labels: sports

While in New Orleans I saw a local sports anchor bemoan the lack of attendance to NBA Hornets games. The team is 23-12 after last night's loss to the Lakers, and has a very exciting star in Chris Paul. But much like the rest of the city, the Hornets are struggling at the gate, dead last in attendance in the league through the first 15 of 41 home games, averaging 11,871. There have therefore been discussions that the team might move, despite concessions including the NBA All-Star game next month coming to New Orleans. (As was the BCS Championship. How many more, some wonder?)

Yesterday the Hornets' ownership signed a lease extension with the state of Louisiana that says, in short, "we'll stay only if there are more fannies in the seats."

"The extension essentially makes up for the time the team spent when it relocated to Oklahoma City following Hurricane Katrina in 2005," a joint news release from Gov. Kathleen Blanco's office, the arena's managers and the team said Wednesday.

It also allows the Hornets to opt out after next season, albeit with penalties ranging from $50 million to $100 million. The precise cost would depend on inducement reimbursements by the team to the state and a relocation fee imposed by the NBA.

The lease says the Hornets may leave only if average attendance is worse than 14,735 for the final five months of this season and next season. The benchmark is close to the team's average attendance for the three seasons before Hurricane Katrina. Such an average still would leave the Hornets in the bottom third of NBA attendance, league officials said.

Oklahoma City wants a team, and to hear friends from Oklahoma tell it (Angus, you got something here?) the area is crazy for basketball. They are trying to lure the Seattle Sonics to the city as well. But this lease seems designed to set a price for the Hornets to exit New Orleans. It's worth remembering that the Hornets were last in the league for attendance before Katrina. True, that's pre-Paul, but it's hard to see how New Orleans ever has been a basketball city. The lease isn't saving basketball in New Orleans. It's terms of surrender.

Labels: economics, sports

I am a Red Sox fan as anyone who knows me knows, and despite becoming a Blue Jay and a Yankee I follow Roger Clemens with a great deal of interest; if he isn't pitching against the Red Sox I still root for him. So the 60 Minutes interview last night was more interesting to me than anything else on TV (yes, even the Giants game.) Clemens followed this up by going on the offensive today, filing a lawsuit against Brian McNamee. The Smoking Gun has a copy of the petition online. In it Clemens claims McNamee only named Clemens as a user of steroids under threat of federal investigators claiming they had enough to prosecute McNamee. McNamee's lawyers, Earl Ward and Richard Emery, in an interview in the New York Daily News over the weekend, say that he was not a target of the investigation but felt compelled to tell the truth to investigators, who then invited him to speak to the Mitchell Commission.

DN: Are you comfortable with the arrangement between the government and baseball and the fact that the government came after McNamee in the first place?
WARD: No, we're not comfortable with it. But we were in a position where we were asked to provide truthful information and we provided that information to the government. The government then requested that we speak with Sen. Mitchell. Although the investigation was a private investigation, we felt compelled to provide the same information to Sen. Mitchell.
EMERY: If the government asks, you listen....
DN: How did that play out? Did the government say, "We'll come after you and prosecute you, if you don't talk?"
WARD: No. McNamee was obligated to cooperate with the federal government because they called him in. They indicated he was not a target of the investigation, but that he had to provide truthful information to them, or he could be charged with lying to federal investigators. So he provided truthful information to them. During the course of his cooperation with them, they requested that he speak to Sen. Mitchell, and he had no problems.
DN: The government came first, then Mitchell?
WARD: Right...They had information that he was involved, because they had checks from Brian to Radomski.
EMERY: They had leverage on him.

So if they had leverage on him, isn't he compelled? Rocket believes so based on the quote he has on point 27 of the petition (starts here).

McNamee's lawyers say they will counter-sue, and what they are hoping for is for Clemens to get himself in hot water with the Congressional testimony he is now obliged to provide. Taking the Fifth, or alternatively lying after being granted immunity by Congress, is what they are angling for. I have no idea why Harry Waxman would do this (Gary Huckabay thinks even less of the move than I do), but so far Clemens is saying the right thing -- will testify, needs no immunity, will not take the Fifth. For all our sakes, I hope he carries through with this. But on an ESPN SportsNation poll, Roger is down to McNamee on believability by a 2-1 margin. Perhaps because Clemens seems spoiled -- Rob Neyer points out (in a blog post for ESPN Insider, subscriber link)

...it sure would help if he'd learned at some point to come across as something other than a spoiled, petulant millionaire who thinks he did something for baseball. Rather than the other way around.

Pat Jordan, whose book A False Spring is one of the most poignant baseball stories I've read, sounds off on Clemens. Until he can make a convincing case, it appears this is how it will go for Clemens from here on.

Sigh.

UPDATE (9pm): ESPN has posted the audio of the tape recording, which Clemens played for the media.

Does McNamee refer to himself in the third person? And does he know he's being recorded? Hearing that, the story Jordan tells about the relationship between Clemens and McNamee sounds more credible.

Labels: sports

Skip Sauer notes the large increase in Yankee ticket prices, by as much as 50%.

You can see the Red Sox for less. Your field box seat at Fenway is $125, half what you pay at Yankee Stadium to watch the best team syringes can buy.

But you'll pay more on Stub Hub to watch the Red Sox get their championship rings. I can only hope one of those is under my Christmas tree tomorrow.

Labels: sports

I mentioned this briefly on Monday, but Phil Miller and Skip Sauer get to the meat of it. Phil's conclusion:

So, should Marvin Miller be in the Hall of Fame? That depends on how you view MLB. If you view it as a profit-maximizing cooperative, probably not. If you view MLB as something higher and you think the Hall of Fame should include people who made MLB substantially better off by their contributions, then the answer is yes. How did he make MLB better? By fighting for players' rights to contract with teams of their choosing.

Will he get there? Sadly, probably not with the voting rules as they are right now, at least not for a long time.

The rules have a committee of 12, largely of former baseball executives, the very people who Skip says responded to the breaking of the reserve clause "with a twenty year long, Sisyphus-like ordeal of lockouts and strong-arm tactics in an attempt to turn back the clock in the labor market."

Having former baseball executives decide Marvin Miller's entry into the Hall of Fame is like asking Democrats to pick the next Republican presidential nominee, or vice versa. The players should get to vote on Miller.

Labels: economics, sports

...when the Veterans Committee votes Bowie Kuhn into the Baseball Hall of Fame and leaves Marvin Miller out. Sure, Kuhn was commissioner for fifteen years, but anyone wanting to tell me that baseball was better off after he left than when he arrived may post this in comments after they explain how baseball went from America's sport to no better than third during his tenure. Add to that the Kuhn rule on selling players, and the disastrous handling of the collective bargaining agreement, and you begin to wonder if the kind of fame Kuhn earned belongs enshrined anywhere besides Madame Tussaud's? Of course, Kuhn's death earlier this year contributes to the vote.

The best you can say is that he gave us night baseball in the World Series. So those of us who were tired all of October following the Red Sox have yet one more reason to think Mr. Kuhn was not someone to be honored.

Late 2005 interview with Kuhn here.

Labels: sports

Attention to my friends at Fraters Libertas, whose feature on NARN: The Opening Act "This Week in Gatekeeping" is always a hit: I think I have a winner. A conversation between a blogger writing about baseball in Philadelphia (and Phillies fan) and longtime sportswriter Bill Conlin devolved into this quote from Mr. Conlin:

The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called “Pamphleteers.” They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO. Shakespeare accidentally summed up the genre best with these words from a MacBeth soliloquy: “...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...”

The blogger points out several errors in Mr. Conlin's defense of the blogger's disagreement with Conlin over the National League MVP (Conlin supported the winner, Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, while the blogger was persuaded by some statistics that Rollins was not the most deserving.) Conlin went on to suggest that his one mistake in his column was his editor's fault.

My columns are read by a minimum of three editors for fact, style, fairness and balance. Despite that scrutiny,errors still filter by the goalies. In my Rollins column that has upset so many of you, the only thing I would remotely take back was having Holliday performing his Game 163 heroics against the Diamondbacks when, of course, it was the Padres. D’Backs were on my mind as the soon-to-be-vanquished division champions when I wrote the line. Any editor worth his salt should have caught the error. However, most of them are so intent at catching the bad stuff they let the obvious error slip by. Who checks your facts and deletes a line that is over the edge of good taste or might demean or defame an athlete or subject? Did you take a course in the libel and slander laws? Or do you merely throw it against the wall and see what sticks? That’s what most of you do. I can’t pin that on you specifically because I have never read your blog.

So there you have it. His opinion is read by three gatekeepers, and even if they missed his factual error, it is still better than the opinion of a blogger who he never read.

Labels: Media, NARN, sports

I have to wonder, after reading this article on how the share of baseball revenues going to player salaries has dropped to 41% from 58% six years ago (h/t: Felix Salmon) whether the luxury tax and increased revenue sharing in baseball has held down salaries. The luxury tax was imagined not to do too much, and revenue sharing may be a drag only because it transfers money to small-market teams that do not compete for free agents. If it transfers 17% of revenue from players to owners, I suspect your next collective bargaining agreement will have that as a sticking point. Lucky for us, that's not until 2011.

I had wondered whether Torii Hunter might take $55 million for four years, but the article argues he would get $75MM for five -- not likely a price the Twins would go, no matter how you project the revenues, because that sets the bar for the M&M boys.

So A-Rod returns to the Yankees for the Yankee premium. If Torii goes there, the premium probably gets him an extra $3MM/yr.

Labels: economics, sports

I am working in my Jason Varitek road jersey today. (If you don't know, he's that guy with the finger in the air. He wears the 'C' on his jersey.) Tired, but almost as happy as these guys.

Here's something a little weird. I am watching the game last night. We are ahead 4-1 in the bottom of the eighth, and our best middle relief pitcher, who's a little gassed from his workload the last three games, is on the mound. A single, an out, and a Garrett Atkins home run later, and it's 4-3. In the years past -- say, any time between 1918 and 2004, for instance -- my reaction would be "we're dead. We're so dead. We are Tom Tancredo Campaign dead. How do we die this time?" And you'd sit and watch with that Eyes of the Dead look like that guy with the word "Risk" tattooed on his fingers in that commercial.

This time? I say to Littlest, "hey, it's 4-3 and Paps is coming in the game. Pitched a lot this series, but he's a horse. I like our chances."

That's when I realize the curse is dead and gone forever. We could have even lost that game last night and it would still be dead. So Mitch is right; give the 86 years a rest, send it to the same history books where we discuss the Hundred Years War. Now it's our turn, and even if some gloryhounds can't even wait for the end of the series:

...we don't have to say Bambino or Yankees suck any more.

We are Red Sox Nation. Our team is World Champions for the second time in four years. We belong here.

Don't like it? Come beat us.

Labels: Red Sox, sports

Don Vaccaro, chief executive of TicketNetwork.com, a Connecticut company that markets the tickets of brokers across the country, said bleacher seats for games at Fenway Park this week are selling on his website for $700 to $750, ten times face value but well below the 2004 level of $1,200 to $1,400.

Compared with the 2004 World Series, Vaccaro said, many more tickets are being resold this year but prices are significantly lower because the stakes for both buyers and sellers were so much higher in 2004.

Source via KPC where Mungowitz notes the difference in prices should be a measure of the value of novelty. I notice that I'm back to the usual watch-ticker-until-overwhelmed-by-curiosity mode versus the honey-nobody-bother-me mode. This could be conditioned by my subscription to mlb.tv for three years now. I got cable for sports, but baseball is the one sport I don't use it for.

Labels: economics, sports

I was reading Mitch's post that the University of Minnesota still wants to play the University of North Dakota in hockey (just not anything else) and wondered how much money this is they are trying to hang onto.

StubHub shows those tickets cost about $70-$250 each on the secondary market. Certainly some go for less from the box office (face value is $30), but losing UND from the hockey schedule would cost not just the revenue but the benefit of giving those cherished UND tickets away to alums in return for donations. Mariucci has 10,000 seats, so you assume the total ticket revenue and implied revenues (to include the concessions and parking, etc.) are about $1 million per game.

So then you wonder, given UND is a Division II program for every other sport, what is this costing them? UND does not play the Gophers in football or basketball (it already plays North Dakota State and South Dakota State as those two schools jump up to D-I. One is left to conclude that the University has engaged in the ultimate of cheap signaling.

Labels: economics, sports

The leaves are falling.
The chilly winds blow.
I grab my sweater.
In Bemidji, snow?

Outside, my paper,
Overhead, a duck...
Ah, the sports section!
The Yankees still suck.

Labels: Red Sox, sports

A very good friend of mine talked to me about the use of software to buy up scads of tickets on TicketMaster and then resell them at higher prices. I'm fascinated, by the way, that Hannah Montana tickets on StubHub are averaging $5 more than Springsteen tix. It seems we are willing to pay more to impress our children (or nieces) than to treat ourselves to a rock concert and trip down nostalgia lane. There's a principal-agent story in there I think, but that's not my point here.

My friend wondered if this would lead acts (or their promoters) to raise their prices to capture back some of the profits that these sophisticated market-makers were earning. Via Mark Perry, StubHub is sharing its earnings with Major League Baseball. Now in sports the incentives may be different. One baseball executive notes that StubHub as a legal market will increase the demand for season tickets, as excess tickets from an 81-game package are more common but also more easily moved. But more to the point:

StubHub ... reports the average price of a ticket being sold on its site for games at Chase Field in Phoenix was $105. Some tickets sold for as little as $22.

But back at on the Northside of Chicago at the friendly, but pricey confines of Wrigley Field, a larger fan base and more limited supply of tickets had driven the average resale price up to $334, with some tickets selling for as much as $2,177, and standing room tickets going for $100.

The difference made it worth it for Cubs fans to catch a plane rather than the Chicago L to a game, especially if they could cash in frequent flyer miles. So about 11.3 percent of the Arizona tickets being purchased on StubHub were going to Illinois buyers, while only 0.5 percent of the Wrigley tickets were being sold to fans from Arizona.

...The fact that there are services like StubHub only increases the supply of tickets that can be sold on the secondary market, thus lowering the price.

The tickets are thus delivered more efficiently. One may whistle to himself as someone bags the $6000 per ticket for another potential Red Sox-Yankee cataclysm next week (that's not a prediction, and not even a desire from this Boston fan), but the market moves resources from those who value them less to those who value them more. The Sox-Angels game yesterday had perhaps 20% of its attendees as Red Sox fans, because the tickets were cheaper and Sox fans are more intense as a one-team city. (Even Red Sox-Yankee tickets, though, sometimes go for decent prices.)

My friend's question is a good one, though: What differs between the sports and music industries that might make scalping good for one and bad for another? If I'm missing something here, put it in comments please.

Worth a listen: Russ Roberts' podcast on ticket scalping.

Labels: economics, sports

The last time I paid attention to stock car racing, Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty were names and I'd never heard of the acronym NASCAR. New England wasn't a place you watched that kind of racing (there were drag races nearby, but no ovals.)

Now, of course, NASCAR has taken off to become the fourth sport of America -- taking out hockey as well as golf and tennis for attention in America. Unlike most sports industry models, as Ross and Szymanski point out, NASCAR is organized more like McDonalds: the participants or the owners of the vehicles or tracks do not control NASCAR; NASCAR is its own separate entity.

In The 200-MPH Billboard: The Inside Story of how Big Money Changed NASCAR, Mark Yost has written a description both of that transformation of NASCAR into a unique business model, and its ability to sell the sport to other businesses. The early chapters tell the story of the Bill France family and its building of the sport's economic model. While it seemed natural that these teams would be sponsored by the makers of automobiles or the parts inside them, it took the vision of France and a few others to see the possibility of using the cars themselves as a means to market other products.

First came Junior Johnson and RJ Reynolds. Still reeling from the decision in the late 1960s that cigarettes could no longer be advertised on television, RJR had an advertising budget with no place to spend it. At the same time, NASCAR was struggling to replace support from the automakers. Yost describes the decision as "the most momentous business decision in the history of NASCAR." Not only did the Winston Cup come into existence in 1971 and RJR funded a $150,000 purse for the Talladega 500 that same year, but RJR was able to convince other corporate entities to join in advertising. Each looked up into the grandstands, says one historian in Yost's book, and saw their customers. And the advertisers saw it in their own interest to help NASCAR create a more uniform feel for their racing venues and their cars. In short, the days of lugging your vehicle to the track and hoping you won enough money to afford gasoline for the drive home were over.

Yost details the expansion of the sponsorship base through the middle of the book. Much like baseball's expansion of advertising from beer and tobacco to credit cards and shaving products, NASCAR's success required them to grow from tobacco, beer and automotive products. By the mid-1980s such brands as Folgers, Tide and Crisco were being advertised by NASCAR vehicles and drivers. Such sponsorships reinforced the need for a uniform, well-regulated competition in NASCAR, which the industry's corporate structure permitted.

The latter half of the book focuses then focuses on case studies of this business model. I found the story of Texas Instruments' use of NASCAR to push its DLP technology for wide-screen television the most interesting of these. Not only did TI create demand from fans and viewers of NASCAR events on television -- the people most likely to buy HDTV -- but they also created events with Circuit City that could help get the latter to push their version of HD in a very crowded market. There are several such B2B stories in the book, which is an aspect of NASCAR sponsorship that has few parallels in the major team sports.

Yost concludes by looking at the challenges NASCAR faces and whether the sport has peaked in popularity and profitability. It's a fair question, though Yost speculates greatly in the last few pages in ways that lead one to think he sees growth still. As NASCAR has 70 Fortune 500 companies as sponsors, it would be hard to bet against it.

Cross-posted at The Sports Economist.

Labels: sports

Gerald Prante writes about one priority Minnesota government spending has had recently: sports stadia.

Minnesota's public officials have "touched 'em all":

1995:
• Minneapolis forgives $74 million loan it made to the Timberwolves basketball team for the Target Center. Franchise asking for more aid.

2000:
• Xcel Energy Center built for the Wild hockey team with $65 million in city bonds and a $48 million interest-free state loan, plus a $17 million payment for state high school hockey tournaments to be held there. Franchise now asking that loan be forgiven, citing Timberwolves example.

2006:
• Legislature approves $392 million of taxpayer money for new Twins baseball stadium next to the Target Center, funded by sales tax hike in Hennepin County.

• State approves $136 million for new Univ. of Minnesota football stadium.

• After failed move to Anoka County, Vikings pro football team proposes a $1 billion stadium in downtown Minneapolis. Then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue lobbies for public funding. Team could threaten to move to Los Angeles.

This waste hasn't gotten much press since the bridge collapse. Instead, the hounds are sniffing Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who vetoed a gas tax increase. The governor should stand up and defend his veto as Minnesota already spends more than most states on roads. But instead he's backtracking fast, possibly because the most recent sports boondoggles have occurred on his watch.

The sad truth is that when it comes to spending priorities we have very few politicians who can withstand scrutiny, so expecting a public debate about it is foolish. Sports stadia, at least, both left and right can agree is corporate welfare. Getting rid of it is good. But the question comes to what is the proper scope of government. Arguing for a smaller government in the context of a flood and a bridge collapse is agreeing to play as the visiting team. You're on lousy terrain. Find another hill to fight from.

One bright spot: You can forget that Vikings stadium any time soon.

(Cross-posted at True North.)

Labels: Minnesota, politics, sports

The NCAA has decided there should be a four-year moratorium on schools moving into Division I athletics.

The NCAA’s Division I, with 331 institutional members, is getting too big, its Board of Directors decided today. At the athletic association’s summer presidential committee meetings, the board imposed a four-year moratorium, effective immediately, on new applications to the NCAA’s most competitive division. The 20 institutions with pending applications will be allowed to continue that process as the division reviews its standards for membership. Also during the four-year period, colleges will not be able to move subdivisions within Division I.

There has been much discussion at SCSU about moving potentially to Division I; this moratorium will close the window for the foreseeable future. The move is largely directed towards basketball, since D-IA football has already been putting in restrictions. What it does, in short, is assure the cartel of D-I basketball programs greater profit, and reduces some of the pressure on teams trying to maintain the chimera of student-athletes from the temptation to bring marginal students to campus to compete with new schools. See also Inside Higher Ed.

Labels: economics, higher education, sports

Stephen Karlson notes that a community college in Illinois is using a creative means of financing a new athletic facility. Richard Vedder thinks this is a terrible idea:

First, community colleges should concentrate on low cost education, not speculative investments with funds borrowed via tax-exempt bonds. Second, in this case, another group of totally private persons in the same county has been trying to do the same thing (respecting minor league baseball), so this is an attempt by a government entity (a college) to preempt a private effort financed without any public subsidies. Third, for higher ed officials to want to devote their major new effort to promoting professional sports rather than improving existing programs or offering new ones shows a shocking disdain for the basic purposes of higher education. Fourth, and actually almost irrelevant, it is a dumb idea on economic grounds, since even if a team came in the stadium would likely be a money loser unless subsidized by taxpayers.

The crowding-out of private investors by the community college is a loss. Government is able to take advantage of its tax-preferred status to deny private investors an opportunity to make money. While the school says it will make up the difference between what the baseball team will pay and the cost of the facilities on rental of the other facilities to traveling teams, the taxpayer is still the residual claimant and bears the risk if the plan fails. Stephen notes that the move is perhaps spurred by gridlock over higher education funding in the Illinois legislature and the executive office. If so, they'll like this risk-shift even less.

As to the use of higher-education funding for sports stadia, one might wish to think about the University of Phoenix Stadium. But that's a private, for-profit concern, and it uses the stadium as advertising (on any given Sunday during football season.) I'm less worried about the mixing of higher education with commercial enterprises than I am the use of a state higher educational institution to crowd out private investment.

Labels: higher education, sports

Tom Powers sits on page one of the PiPress today with the headline "K.G.'s gone. So what?" For the answer, from Bill Simmons' column on the trade.

Celtics radio guy Sean Grande announced Minny games during KG's initial ascent and argued KG's merits as an underrated superduperstar ever since. I asked him for a one-sentence description of KG and here's what he e-mailed back: "All out, every night, heart and soul -- Game 13 in Atlanta, Game 61 on a Monday night against Charlotte, Game 6 of the Conference finals, doesn't matter."

I'm wearing these all winter. The NBA is back in my life. Thank you Kevin McHale.

Labels: Minnesota, sports

For one of the few times you'll read here, Phyllis Kahn and I agree on something.

Minnesota's decades old ticket scalping law has gone the way of 25 cent ballgame beers. As of August 1st concert and sporting event tickets can be resold for whatever the market will bear.

"It kind of felt like it would never happen, but we're sure glad it did," says Brian Obert a co-owner of Ticket King, a Wisconsin based ticket broker with a new store on Chicago Avenue between the Metrodome and the Guthrie Theater. Ticket King has already leased Space in St. Paul near the Xcel Energy Center to open a second location. Ticket King's Hudson, Wisconsin office will eventually be closed.

State Representative Phyllis Kahn, (DFL) Minneapolis, pushed for nearly 20 years to have the ticket scalping law repealed as a waste of police resources. "It's just a total violation of the free market system," says Kahn.

I hope this represents an awakening in Rep. Kahn's understanding of economics, though I'll wait for more evidence.

The story goes on to show some illiteracy among the public.

Twins fan Diane Peterson of Butternut still needs some convincing. "To get more than it's worth, that's not honest," she said. "We're from Minnesota and Minnesota nice doesn't do that."

To paraphrase a Paul Heyne line, worth is always worth to someone. Things don't have a worth. People give things worth. That is, the worth something has is reflected by how much people are willing to give up to get it. If I'm willing to pay more than the face value for a ticket, that's because it's worth more to me. If I force sellers to sell for no more than face value, that ticket may go to someone who values it less than I do. Is that Minnesota nice?

UPDATE: Your economics review courtesy of Phil Miller, who separately notes the possibilities for downtown redevelopment.

Labels: economics, sports

I highly recommend reading David Berri's post on whether the referee scandal in the NBA is going to bring down the league. After reviewing the effects of the Black Sox scandal on league attendance and the fact that the NBA has had very high attendance, he doesn't think the Donaghy Debacle going to matter that much.

That the NBA is setting attendance records should be surprising to the “doomsday” voices in the media. Long before the referee scandal broke academic research had already questioned the integrity of the NBA’s contests. Beck Taylor and Justin Trogdon published research in the Journal of Labor Economics in
2002 detailing how NBA teams were systematically losing to enhance the team’s draft position. The research of Joe Price and Justin Wolfers suggested that the calls NBA referees made were influenced by the race of the player.

The research of Taylor and Trogdon –to the best of my knowledge – has never been addressed by the NBA. The NBA did commission a study to contradict the Price-Wolfers story. Initially it was reported that the NBA’s study refuted the Price-Wolfers research. Later on, though, it was revealed that the NBA’s results could be interpreted as being consistent with the Price-Wolfers study.

What has been the impact of all this research questioning the integrity of the NBA? My sense is nothing has happened. The NBA either ignores it or dismisses its claims.

And why does the NBA take this action? The NBA is not in the “truth” business. The NBA is in the “entertainment” business. Because providing entertainment is the actual game the NBA is playing, these stories – which clearly question the integrity of the game – are swept under the rug.

And these efforts are largely successful. Again, the NBA set an attendance record in 2004-05. This was followed by another record in 2005-06 and 2006-07. Taylor and Trogdon have found evidence that the NBA’s losers were not doing their best to win games since the 1980s. But like the Black Sox scandal, the NBA’s integrity problems have had no apparent impact on consumer demand.

Bill Simmons disagrees.

If you're a diehard NBA fan, you're horrified but strangely hopeful, because we needed a tipping point to change a stagnant league that was headed in the wrong direction ... and maybe this was it.

Look, we already knew the officiating needed to be improved. We knew the NBA needed to solve the problem of nonplayoff teams tanking down the stretch and shelving stars who could have played (and yet continuing to charge fans full price for these games). We knew the NBA needed to solve a lottery system that hasn't quite worked for 20 years. We knew the NBA needed to solve a screwed-up playoff system that only works when the conferences are perfectly balanced, and more importantly, we knew the league needed to start taking some chances. This is a league that hasn't swung for the fences with a major change since 1979, when it brought in the 3-point line from the old ABA. For nearly three decades, it has been making cosmetic changes here and there -- the draft lottery, zone defenses, hand-checks, the charging semicircle, improved rating systems for officials, flagrant fouls, the leaving-the-bench rule, the dress code -- while continually ignoring the bigger picture.

What's the big picture? Well, the regular season is effectively meaningless. Contenders can only improve to a point because of the luxury tax, so everyone searches for that same half-assed "we want to contend for a title, but we don't want to lose $20 million this season" competitive zone that leads to deals like Kurt Thomas and two first-round picks for a second-round pick and a 2006 trade deadline in which the biggest move involved Anthony Johnson. Fan interest peaks at three points -- at the start of the season, at the start of the first round of the playoffs, and right before the draft -- and dips at every other point. For seven of the past 10 seasons, the best two teams in the league played before the Finals -- which seems so incredibly shortsighted, I can't even begin to fathom how it's allowed to continue. And worst of all, when an NBA official was accused of fixing games, the prevailing reaction was "Which one?"

So yeah, they could make a movie about Tim Donaghy's story. And they probably will. Let's just hope we're not watching a documentary about the death of the NBA some day, because we're headed that way. Wake up, fellas. Rome is burning.

He calls this the Zapruder film of the Tim Donaghy Debacle.


Will any of this matter? There's more to learn. A Q&A with gambler Brandon Lang (from Two for the Money fame) suggests how Donaghy could do it, and wonders why it hasn't happened in refereeing before. Worth noting: Yes, a referee could shave the line, but better might be to shave on the total points. Lang suggests getting a team to the penalty (for free throws) would be better if you were trying to shave a game to the over. Steve Levitt suggests that statistical investigation is already happening.

According to latest reports, Donaghy might not make it to tell his tale.

Labels: economics, sports

From a new report issued by Moody's, entitled "Intercollegiate Athletics Programs: A Winning or Losing Game?" According to a Chronicle of Higher Ed report (subscriber's link),

The report ... says the biggest and most successful athletics programs can have a positive effect on the creditworthiness of their institutions. But a majority of intercollegiate athletics programs require substantial institutional subsidies to balance their operational budgets, and do not have significant revenue from ticket sales and donations. Those programs could hurt their institutions' credit rating, the report says.

"A well-run athletics program or a particular team's sustained success might contribute to long-lasting, stronger student demand, national name recognition, and philanthropic support, thereby creating positive credit momentum," the report says.

But success in athletics requires heavy spending on facilities and coaches' salaries, costs that can create negative publicity, the report says. And such big spending typically does not lead to other benefits, such as attracting faculty members or research grants.

Isn't that shocking? Of course not. There are more losers than winners in college sports; Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg points out that the winners cannot compensate the losers (h/t: Phil Miller.)

It is also important to understand that even with equal revenue sharing in television, the increase for the teams receiving the least amount under the present structure would likely be less than $1 million. While not insubstantial, that amount of money is only about two percent of a $40 million budget. A case can also be made that a team appearing in a televised game should receive some financial upside since many times television requires changing start times and other inconveniences for the participating teams. There are also a number of areas in the Big 12 where money is shared equally, like revenues from the football championship game. So the current package of revenue sharing represents a negotiated balance. It is an area that the conference needs to continue to focus on and to discuss.

"Continue to focus on and to discuss" is the commissioner's nice way of saying "no way, pal." And I wouldn't expect this to improve with the possibility of the "plus one" playoff in college football.

Labels: economics, sports

Well, Anoka County, there goes your last shot at developing that land with the Northern Lights project.

The Minnesota Vikings have tentatively agreed to buy four city blocks for $45 million from Avista Capital Partners, owners of the Star Tribune, as part of a broader plan to build a football stadium and develop surrounding land in downtown Minneapolis, sources close to the sale confirmed Thursday.

The Vikings, as part of the transaction, would also have a right of first refusal to later buy the newspaper's longtime main office building, though that block is not included in the sale. Sources close to the negotiations said the sale could be finalized within days but cautioned it could still unravel.

It cannot be a good sign for the StarTribune's remaining employees when the parent company is cashing out the neighboring land and selling an option on the building they own. As I've noted before, the Anoka deal was sold to Zygi by Red McCombs because Zygi figured he was the better real estate developer. He now has a prime downtown property to develop what one person calls "another Wrigleyville." But he'll want state dollars to help him out. We'll see.

Labels: economics, sports

I was once offered a job as a sports economist. This was around 1990 -- I didn't take the job partly because I didn't want the label as one, because at the time it wasn't terribly popular, and I was trained in the dark arts of macroeconomics anyway, not really a good fit for my skills. I consider myself really still a dabbler in the area, which has exploded into a subfield of economics in the last fifteen years.

One fellow who went a long way to making it a respectable profession was Prof. Larry Hadley of the University of Dayton, whose death at 62 years old on Monday will be mourned by the great number of sports economists who have come after. When he and Elizabeth Gustafson decided to start running regular sessons on sports economics at the Western Economics Association meetings, I thought they'd run out of material pretty fast. Instead, as Dan Marburger points out in this obit from Dayton,

There were only a small handful of us presenting papers at the time (1996). Since then, the sports econ sessions at the (meetings) have ballooned to a dozen or so sessions. We have a sports economics journal, two textbooks and an international scholarly association. I question if any of those would have come to fruition without Larry's efforts to promote the economics of sports. He will be greatly missed.

I was one of those papers in 1996. He had one of those great, dry wits that economists favor. On top of that, he also helped organize an annual ritual at the WEAs of attending a baseball game at the local stadium of whatever city we were at. A rather tall fellow, he was always walking around the event looking for new economists in sports, seeking papers for next year's conference. It was the game in San Francisco a couple years ago where I last saw Larry.

My prayers are with his wife and children, and with my colleagues and friends at Dayton and the sports economist world.

UPDATE: Further testimonials and observations at the Wages of Wins.

Labels: economics, sports

The NCAA tossed out a reporter who was blogging the Louisville-Oklahoma State super-regional. The NCAA claims it has the right to restrict "live representations" of its games. The NCAA went so far as to revoke the media credential of Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett. But if Bennett or anyone else were to watch the game on ESPN or CSTV and blog from the easy chair, there would be nothing to be done. I also note that CBS Sportsline has a live blogger (called a game logger or a glogger) describe action in-game for most of the major sports; I have MLB.TV to watch the Red Sox when they're not on ESPN and usually pull up the Sportsline feed and the Sons of Sam Horn game thread to enhance my viewing.

I notice Sportsline does get to blog the NCAA tournament, but then they paid for the rights to do so. I do not believe they do so for NCAA football, as best I can tell. I suspect the NCAA official who did this was just a little overzealous, but who knows?

Labels: higher education, sports

While the Minnesota Legislature seemed willing to spend money like Michael Jordan, one thing it didn't buy was the new plan for a Vikings stadium. Perhaps it's due to a lousy plan, but remember this is the last team to get a deal in a town that has handed them around freely of late. This leads Mark Yost (subscribers link) to wonder aloud if the Vikings are the newest temptation of the City of the Angels.

So as you look around the NFL for the franchise that’s most unhappy with its stadium deal, the Vikings quickly jump to the top of the list. Their lease at the Metrodome runs through 2011, but as any contract lawyer will tell you, everything’s negotiable. So get used to the sound of “the Los Angeles Vikings.” It only makes sense.

But does it? Yost casts some uncertainty whether adding a franchise in LA adds or subtracts from TV revenue (since now everyone there can watch six games, you have a lot of Angeleno eyeballs to sell with that contract.) Maybe they're a major-league city or maybe they're not ... or maybe they just prefer college football.

Yet every team uses Los Angeles for football like Tampa was used in baseball in the past. The bigger reason for there being no LA professional football is probably more strategic.

Pro football is dead in L.A. because the owners have put it on the back burner for years, more interested in using the threat of it to extorttaxpayer money from cities and playing potential stadium owners and sites against each other. A rise in TV ratings this year, and the fact that NFL games get a decent share in L.A. even without a local team, have also reduced the urgency level.

Likewise, Aaron Schatz:

Despite the fact that a team in Los Angeles would help the NFL in broadcast negotiations, the city also has some value to the league without a team. Every time a football team is unhappy in its current city, it gets to threaten to move to Los Angeles in an effort to get a better stadium deal and more tax breaks. (The fact that Mayor Hahn appears uninterested in such sweetheart deals doesn't seem to have diminished the effectiveness of a general threat to decamp to L.A.) San Diego, Indianapolis, Minnesota, and New Orleans have all pulled this stunt recently. So letting Los Angeles go without football has allowed the NFL to extort more money from taxpayers across the country.

This latter article is from 2004, and note that the three other cities mentioned have gotten their tax booty from their cities (though for New Orleans, Katrina and Reggie Bush played a role, as Yost points out), and that now-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa seems warmer to giving away a sweetheart deal.

I expect the result is that there will be a stadium deal in 2008, not that the Vikings will move, unless Governor Tim Pawlenty has gotten religion on this, too.

Cross-posted at The Sports Economist.

Labels: economics, sports

You know, sometimes being an ally is hard. Take this, for example, from Saint Paul.

Comments: Nobody deserves a stroke of lottery fortune less than Glen Taylor and Kevin McHale, the NBA's version of Bush/Rumsfield for 8-10 years. Of course, nobody deserves a stroke of lottery fortune more than KG, one of the few superstars with too much pride to ever bail on a sinking ship. Either that, or they're blackmailing him with a sex tape so he'll stay. But wouldn't it be nice to see KG play the David Robinson to Oden's Tim Duncan for the next 5-6 years? Hence, 10 points for "overdue good karma."

A media guy from Boston, I should have guessed as much. But if I want to get lame second guessing on complex issues of war and foreign policy, I'll read the Star Tribune editorial page. Bad Karma Simmons, may all the Celtics ping pong balls get stuck in the hopper tonight and they end up drafting Spencer Tollackson.

That's no ordinary media guy from Boston -- and God knows we've got lots of those. He refers to Bill Simmons, known originally as the Boston Sports Guy, who blogged sports before people had heard of blogs. Sports writers don't write for Jimmy Kimmel.

And then to curse the Celtics? It's not like we've had much for leadership there; we'll see your Kevin McHale and raise you M.L. Carr. We'll see your Malik Sealy and raise you Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. And you're Irish, for good measure? Isn't it bad enough Notre Dame sucks?

Fine, my friend. Keep rooting for the team that surrounds the most gifted player in the game with just enough talent to lose in the first round. Sam Cassell says hi.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to learn how to pronounce Yi Jianlian. I can get you a great deal on a Celtics jersey, with #35 on the back.

UPDATE (5/23): Yi, the Chinese Brad Lohaus.

Labels: Celtics, NARN, sports

The discussion of the NBA referee piece continues. The NBA players and league officials are actively downplaying the study. The response of one of the co-authors, Justin Wolfers, is that one is misunderstanding the study:

"This is not a view that one set of people hates another set of people. This is implicit, unconscious biases," said Wolfers, who conducted the study with Joseph Price, a graduate student in economics at Cornell.

"You see two players [collide] on the floor and you have to call a block or a charge. Does the skin color of the players somehow shape how you interpret the signals your brain gives you?"

Some economists on the private sports economics list dismiss the study as not being real economics. And true, there is no model in the paper that explains how it is referees would hold these unconscious biases. As I argued yesterday, it could be a style-of-play preference, something that can be influenced by how one calls fouls.

Referees have an interest in not being seen to be biased. There are clear calls that you cannot miss or else you will not keep your job as a referee. I researched many years ago the voting of sportswriters in the baseball Hall of Fame, and the behavior of arbitrators in deciding salaries for baseball players. In most cases there was no evidence of discrimination. However we did see some evidence in the HoF voting back in the 1970s and 1980s for discrimination against Latino players, and it appeared to be mostly for Latino middle infielders. Why? One explanation could have been that it was difficult for sportswriters to communicate with Latin ballplayers, and this changed their behavior only for the marginal cases. The marginal case is for the player whose batting stats are quite clearly below those of the big-time sluggers or base stealers, but are being considered because of fielding skills. Because the latter are more perception, subjective judgments could be made and not have them confront data. Likewise, the (secretly held) data on who calls fouls on whom in the NBA are not confronting the perception of no bias.

Steven Levitt raises another point that the size of these effects are not very large. He points to John Hollinger's calculation (subscribers link for ESPN Insider members) that the effect on Lebron James' total fouls if all his games were called by all-white officiating crews versus all-black crews would be 11 additional fouls over a season. His scoring average would be 0.3 points per game lower. Levitt doesn't mention another style of play factor that Hollinger picks up:

While we're talking about this study, one other item in it drew my attention: the finding that during the 13-year study period, teams with the greater share of playing time by black players won 48.6 percent of games. The authors seemed to imply some kind of mild institutional racism against black players by this result.

In fact, there's a much more obvious explanation -- the league imported a bunch of talent from Europe during the study period, almost all of it white, and the poorly run teams were the last ones to figure out there were good players on other continents. Thus, by default they ended up with more black players on their rosters.

And the poorer teams may commit more fouls as they play from behind; does this change the results? The study corrects for game effects which include the score, but I don't think I saw that it held constant the relative position of teams contesting for playoff spots, etc.

That doesn't make the Wolfers and Price paper incorrect. But I still would argue for additional tests to see if the age of the referee group matters (perhaps easily told, as far as I've been told, since each referee gets the next highest number on their jersey as they enter the league.) Rather than say this is evidence of bias, I'd look at their results and say "that is odd, doesn't really fit theory, what do you suppose explains that?" In statistical terms, the null hypothesis ALWAYS has to be "no discrimination" and rejecting the null doesn't mean you can accept the alternative.

UPDATE: Brian Goff makes some similar points.

UPDATE2: Phil Miller was inspiration for some of my comments, and he's greatly expanded on them here.

Labels: economics, sports

An economist made news today in the NY Times by showing bias in the calling of fouls in NBA games. (I know, I must have NBA on the brain today.) Here's a link on the fellow's home page to his paper. The bias worked in both directions, but was "more pronounced" from white officials to black players. Some of us on a sports economics mailing list have been discussing this today. Here are some comments motivated by that and the article:

1. Since when does the Times get independent experts to referee a working paper? (I know two of the three, and I'd respect their opinions.) Would that they were this careful with some of their political coverage!
2. The mailing list participants were trying to figure out the size of the effect, and it appears to be between 3-4 games a year. It thus might help a team marginally in the playoffs to add a white player in place of a black player. That's a serious charge, and part of the reason for the NBA's very heated denial.
3. The denial includes an in-house study by an accounting firm that had, unlike the academic paper, access to information on which referee called which foul. (There are three referees on the floor.) But tellingly the Times reports, "The league’s study was less formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007), and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran status and the like." The academic study shows that which controls are used to hold constant various player and game characteristics changes a good bit of the results (though their base conclusion seems quite robust.) When the NBA president of operations Joel Litvin says the NBA "concluded unequivocally that there was no racial bias in officiating," that's spinning. No study can say that unequivocally.
4. It's worth noting that black players typically get called for fewer fouls than white players anyway, because most white players are, in the study's words, "generally taller, heavier, and more likely to play center (all factors that make them more likely to commit fouls). The more striking fact is that the gap in the number of fouls called against black and white players changes as the number of white referees increases (dropping from -0.827 to -0.574)." It's not so much that black players get called for more fouls, but that white referees call fewer fouls in general and specifically fewer against white players.
5. And I think that's important because they find a number of game characteristics that differ depending on the number of white refs. The paper alludes to the fact that not only are white and black players in the NBA different physically but also in style of play. Black referees might like the style of black players and white referees the style of white players. That doesn't make one group right and the other wrong. I grew up in the 1970s watching different styles of play; we talked about East Coast ball being rougher than West Coast play.
   

My guess is that if they could go back and collect data on the age of referees, they'd find something. Older referees are probably more often white. Older referees may have preferred that rougher, Celtics-Bullets style of play, or otherwise let them play. Younger referees may prefer the creative one-on-one game. Suppose it's old/young rather than white/black? I don't know, but I know not to use the word "unequivocally" loosely.

Labels: sports

Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy was chosen as the NBA's Rookie of the Year on Wednesday after leading all rookies with averages of 16.8 points, 4.0 assists and 35.4 minutes in 57 games.

...Roy was the Pacific-10 Conference's Player of the Year his senior season at Washington. He was drafted with the sixth overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves, then traded to Portland for the draft rights to Randy Foye.

Source. More painful is that Boston could have had Roy by not trading the seventh pick to the T'Wolves in the first place ... for