The sports sector, apart from being of economic significance in itself, is clearly one that many citizens share a great interest in. It is not mere results, but aspects such as history, statistics, interest in labour markets and finances that often spark people’s interest. Historical Perspectives on Sports Economics explores a variety of topics including mega-event analysis, sports governance, anthropometrics, gambling, industrial organisation, infrastructure development and racial issues.

During the last century, we have witnessed the birth and evolution of sport as an economic activity, which has created jobs on the one hand, but also problems of management on the other. This process has not been immune from the parti- lar characteristics associated with sport, typically united here more than in other activities: technique, physical effort, entertainment and passion. And all this within a framework of ever-increasing consumption of ?nancial resources. It is not s- prising, therefore, that commonly-used economic models, based on mechanistic approaches, do not provide a viable solution to increasingly complex and incre- ingly frequent problems. Any attempt to apply such an approach in this technical, economic and ?nancial context can only result in failure. The high degree of subj- tivity inherent in sporting activity requires new tools, in which remodeled conc- tual, theoretical and technical elements should play an important role. Complexity, uncertainty and subjectivity are therefore basic to understand, and deal with, the phenomenon of sport. The necessity of resorting to these elements was identi?ed over a quarter of a century ago by a small group of professors and researchers at the University of Barcelona. Together we started the ?rst postgraduate courses and organized se- nars to alert sports centre managers, as well as to make private and public organi- tions aware of the increasing importance of a proper, speci?c management for sports organizations.

The Routledge Handbook of Sport History is a new and innovative survey of the discipline of sport history. Global in scope, it examines the key contemporary issues in sports historiography, sheds light on previously ignored topics, and sets an intellectual agenda for the future development of the discipline. The book explores both traditional and non-traditional methodologies in sport history, and traces the interface between sport history and other fields of research, such as literature, material culture and the digital humanities. It considers the importance of key issues such as gender, race, sexuality and politics to our understanding of sport history, and focuses on innovative ways that the scholarship around these issues is challenging accepted discourses. This is the first handbook to include a full section on Indigenous sport history, a topic that has often been ignored in sport history surveys despite its powerful upstream influence on contemporary sport. The book also reflects carefully on the central importance of sport history journals in shaping the development of the discipline. This book is an essential reference for any student, researcher or scholar with an interest in sport history or the relationship between sport and society. It will also be fascinating reading for any historians looking for fresh perspectives on contemporary historiography or social and cultural history.

The sports industry provides a seemingly endless set of examples from every area of microeconomics, giving students the opportunity to study economics in a context that holds their interest. Thoroughly updated to reflect the current landscape, The Economics of Sports introduces core economic concepts and theories and applies them to US and international sports. Divided into five parts, the book focuses on three major areas of the economics of sports: industrial organization, public economics, and labor economics. Updates for this seventh edition include: • An entirely new chapter on sports gambling and a fully revised section on intercollegiate sports; • Updated material on social justice in sports and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the industry; • More coverage of international sports, e-sports, and new biographical sketches. This well-presented and accessible text is supported by easy-to-follow pedagogical features, such as end-of-chapter summaries and questions, and a companion website, which offers useful resources for students and instructors. It is the perfect textbook for intermediate and advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in sports economics.

Exploring why professional team sport clubs are almost always able to survive despite financial mismanagement, inflated player salaries and persistent deficits, this book provides new evidence on how to explain this phenomenon. It looks at the context in which many clubs operate – the soft budget constraint – and how the clubs in this respect resemble state-owned enterprises in socialist countries or big banks in financial crises.

The active economy incorporates several disciplines that include sport performance, sport business, recreation, tourism, physical activity, urban planning, leisure, and health and wellness, among others. From an academic and policy perspective, these disciplines are typically viewed as distinct, with only limited spillover, and consequently, limited research explores the interaction between them. However, each individual sector can be studied as interdependent rather than autonomous. By viewing the various sectors as part of a complex active ecosystem, policymakers and practitioners are better positioned to shape broad opportunities while maximizing the community value of sports, recreation, and wellness. Understanding the Active Economy and Emerging Research on the Value of Sports, Recreation, and Wellness provides a new view on the fields of sport, recreation, and health and wellness by exploring the interaction between these traditional separate disciplines. It includes sub-groups of the active economy such as health and wellness, active apparel and accessories, active equipment and sports betting but also ties in sub-groups from the ancillary sector such as tourism, design and infrastructure, media and content, and professional services. This book is intended for professionals, educators, and researchers working in the fields of sports, recreation, and health and wellness, as well as economists, executives, managers, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how sports, recreation, and wellness operate in the active economy.

This book examines competitive balance and outcome uncertainty from multiple perspectives. Chapters address the topic in different sports in a range of countries, to help to understand its significance. It provides readers with important new insights into previously unexplored dimensions as well as a rich context for better understanding why fans, teams, and leagues value competitive balance. The book challenges readers to think about the topic in a broad and rigorous way, and in some cases to question widely held beliefs about how outcome uncertainty motivates competitive balance, and how sports fans actually view competitive balance.

Rich and his contributing authors provide a political and economic analysis of sports stadium construction in the United States—the impact it has on the sports industry itself and on the host communities in which stadiums and arenas are built. The book brings together the research of leading academic analysts of sports in American society and gives a candid assessment of the claims and benefits the sports industry makes, in its continuing promotion of new stadium construction. Focusing on Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, New Orleans, Toledo and Phoenix, the authors examine the topic from the perspectives of history, politics, and economics—and in doing so they raise several questions about taxpayer and community protection issues. Specifically, what do communities really get out of these facilities? They point out that even as new and more expensive facilities are being built, Congress has not provided taxpayers and cities any real protection from the risks involved in stadium investment. Rich and his contributors examine how the pro-stadium coalitions mobilize and explain why stadium supporters manage to win most of their construction initiatives. In doing so, the contributors challenge the conventional wisdom that stadiums stimulate economic development and provide good jobs. On the contrary, they have not lived up to the promises owners made to their host communities. Neither have they generated high paying jobs nor have they met their operating costs. The book concludes with ways in which sports franchise owners can be held more accountable to their communities. The result is a powerful, well reasoned, skeptical but fair assessment of a growing phenomenon, and an important resource for professionals and academics in all fields of public policy administration and urban development and management.

This volume contains an Open Access chapter. Establishing a scholarly platform to inform interventions in research and policymaking, this book demonstrates the importance of sociology in understanding sports gambling in a global age.