IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revind/v52y2018i2d10.1007_s11151-017-9603-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The NCAA Cartel and Antitrust Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Roger D. Blair

    (University of Florida)

  • Wenche Wang

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was originally founded to protect student athletes from the brutality of college football. The NCAA has established a number of prominent athletic programs and achieved huge commercial success. In spite of this success, the NCAA has limited the compensation of student-athletes through collusive monopsonistic restraints. Ordinarily, these restraints would be vulnerable to antitrust attack, but the NCAA has enjoyed benign neglect by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The root of this is the Board of Regents [National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984)] decision, which requires rule-of-reason treatment of the NCAA’s restraints. The essential role of amateurism of student athletes is used to justify the NCAA’s cartel behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate that amateurism is a myth. We suggest that the NCAA will be unable to provide an evidentiary foundation for its claim that amateurism is crucial to the success of college athletic programs. In addition, we reject the possibility of an efficiency defense for the NCAA’s cartel behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger D. Blair & Wenche Wang, 2018. "The NCAA Cartel and Antitrust Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 351-368, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:52:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11151-017-9603-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-017-9603-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11151-017-9603-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11151-017-9603-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blair,Roger D. & Harrison,Jeffrey L., 2010. "Monopsony in Law and Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521746083, September.
    2. Vivek Ghosal & D. Daniel Sokol, 2016. "Policy Innovations, Political Preferences, and Cartel Prosecutions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 405-432, June.
    3. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521762304 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Roger D. Blair & Andrew Zimbalist, 2017. "Reforming College Sports and a Constrained, Conditional Antitrust Exemption," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 634-643, July.
    5. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226253268 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jun Zhou, 2016. "The Rise and Fall of Cartels with Multi-market Colluders," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 381-403, June.
    7. Robert Brown, 2012. "Do NFL Player Earnings Compensate for Monopsony Exploitation in College?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 13(4), pages 393-405, August.
    8. Peter K. Hunsberger & Seth R. Gitter, 2015. "What is a Blue Chip Recruit Worth? Estimating the Marginal Revenue Product of College Football Quarterbacks," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(6), pages 664-690, August.
    9. Herbert Hovenkamp, 2018. "The NCAA and the Rule of Reason," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 323-335, March.
    10. Margaret C. Levenstein & Valerie Y. Suslow, 2016. "Price Fixing Hits Home: An Empirical Study of US Price-Fixing Conspiracies," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 361-379, June.
    11. Robert M. Feinberg & Hyunchul Kim & Minsoo Park, 2016. "The Determinants of Cartel Duration in Korea," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 433-448, June.
    12. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2018. "The National Collegiate Athletic Association Cartel: Why it Exists, How it Works, and What it Does," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 185-209, March.
    13. Andrew Zimbalist, 2018. "Whither the NCAA: Reforming the System," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 337-350, March.
    14. Robert Brown, 2011. "Research Note: Estimates of College Football Player Rents," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 200-212, April.
    15. George J. Stigler, 1968. "Price and Non-Price Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(1), pages 149-149.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. E. Woodrow Eckard, 2020. "The NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate: How Successful Is It?," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(6), pages 780-793, September.
    2. Annelies Knoppers & Donna de Haan & Leanne Norman & Nicole LaVoi, 2022. "Elite women coaches negotiating and resisting power in football," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 880-896, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brian Mills & Jason Winfree, 2018. "Athlete Pay and Competitive Balance in College Athletics," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 211-229, March.
    2. Watanabe, Nicholas M. & Yan, Grace & Soebbing, Brian P., 2019. "Market disruption as a regime for athlete activism: An economic analysis of college football player protests," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 600-612.
    3. Peter K. Hunsberger & Seth R. Gitter, 2015. "What is a Blue Chip Recruit Worth? Estimating the Marginal Revenue Product of College Football Quarterbacks," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(6), pages 664-690, August.
    4. Matthew Philip Makofske, 2018. "Are you hiring Johnny Football or Johnny Doe? Uncertain labour quality and the measurement of monopsony in college football," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(22), pages 2415-2430, May.
    5. David VanHoose, 2013. "Implications of Shifting Retail Market Shares for Loan Monitoring in a Dominant-Bank Model," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 60(3), pages 291-316, July.
    6. Scherer, F.M., 2010. "Pharmaceutical Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 539-574, Elsevier.
    7. Tanja Artiga González & Markus Schmid & David Yermack, 2019. "Does Price Fixing Benefit Corporate Managers?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4813-4840, October.
    8. Stacey L. Brook, 2021. "A Comparison of NCAA FBS Head Coaches Salary Determination From New and Modified Contracts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(5), pages 491-513, June.
    9. Scherer, F. M., 2007. "Pharmaceutical Innovation," Working Paper Series rwp07-004, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    10. Lee, Sunghee & Yoo, Shijin & Kim, Daeki, 2016. "When is servitization a profitable competitive strategy?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 43-53.
    11. Michael C. Keeley, 1985. "The regulation of bank entry," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Sum, pages 5-13.
    12. Simon Roberts & Witness Simbanegavi & Thando Vilakazi, 2023. "Cementing regional integration or building walls? Competition, cartels and regional integration in the cement industry in Africa," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 437-452, February.
    13. Carmen García & Joan Ramon Borrell & José Manuel Ordóñez-de-Haro & Juan Luis Jiménez, 2022. "Managers’ expectations, business cycles and cartels’ life cycle," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 451-484, June.
    14. Ngeleza Guyslain K. & Robinson Elizabeth J.Z., 2013. "Cartels and Rent Sharing at the Farmer–Trader Interface: Evidence from Ghana’s Tomato Sector," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 15-30, January.
    15. Frédéric Marty, 2020. "Is the Consumer Welfare Obsolete? A European Union Competition Law Perspective," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-13, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    16. Edman, Jan & Ståhl, Ingolf, 2002. "The anatomy of a business game," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Business Administration 2002:8, Stockholm School of Economics.
    17. Fazel M. Farimani & Seyed Reza Mirnezami & Ali Maleki, 2019. "A Gas Cartel in the Global Market? Hype or Reality," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 9(6), pages 296-304.
    18. Katsoulacos, Yannis & Motchenkova, Evgenia & Ulph, David, 2015. "Penalizing cartels: The case for basing penalties on price overcharge," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 70-80.
    19. Mats A. Bergman & Johan Lundberg & Sofia Lundberg & Johan Y. Stake, 2020. "Interactions Across Firms and Bid Rigging," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 56(1), pages 107-130, February.
    20. Geloso, Vincent & Kufenko, Vadim & Arsenault-Morin, Alex P., 2023. "The lesser shades of labor coercion: The impact of seigneurial tenure in nineteenth-century Quebec," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sports economics; Antitrust;

    JEL classification:

    • Z2 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:52:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11151-017-9603-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.