Abstract
U.S. professional sports teams are integrally linked with the identity of the cities they play in. Because of this prominence, they are some of the most valuable privately owned assets on earth. Their leagues are monopolies, insulated by entry costs that make competition from smaller competitors almost impossible. Owners rent seek using this leverage by demanding states and cities subsidize teams’ operating costs or risk the franchise departing for more generous taxpayer funding elsewhere, creating a race to the bottom. The most gratuitous of these subsidies, to build and renovate stadiums, will cost state and local taxpayers at least $20 billion between 2020 and 2030. Congress can protect states and cities from this rent seeking by amending the Sports Broadcasting Act (“SBA”), a statute that exempts professional leagues and their joint agreements from antitrust scrutiny. An amended SBA would require teams and leagues fulfill certain conditions and refrain from extorting the states and cities they operate in.
Citation
Omar S. Mattar,
Winning at Any Cost: Overcoming Professional Sports Team Rent Seeking Through the Sports Broadcasting Act,
74 Duke Law Journal
1661-1702
(2025)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol74/iss7/4
