IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v32y2000i12p1495-1507.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Should NFL blackouts be banned?

Author

Listed:
  • William Putsis
  • Subrata Sen

Abstract

In this paper, the authors examine the economic and policy implications of the National Football League (NFL) 'blackout rule,' a league rule that prohibits local television broadcast of games that are not sold out at least 72 hours prior to game time. The foundation for understanding and assessing the impact of the blackout rule is an analysis of attendance using data on games during the 1996-1997 National Football League season. Expanding on previous research, three separate components of attendance (season ticket sales, game day ticket sales, and game day noshows) are examined in detail. Accounting for the endogeneity of key variables, Tobit and Probit analyses are used to estimate and predict individual game attendance. These empirical estimates are then used as a vehicle to assess the implications of game day blackouts and the potential for public policy intervention. More specifically, the authors begin by estimating the impact of the blackout on game day attendance. Using these estimates, they assess the implications of imposing a local blackout for individual team revenues. The gain in on-site stadium revenue due to the blackout (e.g., through additional ticket and concession sales) are then viewed in the broader context of the societal loss due to the game not being broadcast in the local area. The empirical results suggest that the gain in team revenue is small in comparison to the loss of viewership rights. This suggests that public policy intervention may be possible that would result in a Pareto superior market outcome. The paper concludes by exploring possible intervention strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • William Putsis & Subrata Sen, 2000. "Should NFL blackouts be banned?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(12), pages 1495-1507.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:32:y:2000:i:12:p:1495-1507
    DOI: 10.1080/000368400418907
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000368400418907
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/000368400418907?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. Alfred E. Kahn, 1988. "The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262610523, December.
    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. Kevin Alavy & Alison Gaskell & Stephanie Leach & Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "On the Edge of Your Seat: Demand for Football on Television and the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 5(2), pages 75-95, May.
    2. Steven Salaga & Jason A. Winfree, 2015. "Determinants of Secondary Market Sales Prices for National Football League Personal Seat Licenses and Season Ticket Rights," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(3), pages 227-253, April.
    3. Mongeon, Kevin & Winfree, Jason, 2012. "Comparison of television and gate demand in the National Basketball Association," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 72-79.
    4. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2018. "Predicting season ticket holder loyalty using geographical information," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 272-277, February.
    5. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2019. "Football Spectator No-Show Behavior," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(4), pages 580-602, May.
    6. Luke Petach & Dustin Rumbaugh, 2021. "Are You Ready for Some Football? Estimating the Effect of American Football Season on Labor Supply in the United States," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(8), pages 893-920, December.
    7. Pelnar, Gregory, 2007. "Antitrust Analysis of Sports Leagues," MPRA Paper 5382, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Budzinski, Oliver & Feddersen, Arne, 2015. "Grundlagen der Sportnachfrage: Theorie und Empirie der Einflussfaktoren auf die Zuschauernachfrage," Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers 94, Ilmenau University of Technology, Institute of Economics.
    9. Catherine C. Gropper & Benjamin C. Anderson, 2018. "Sellout, Blackout, or Get Out," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(3), pages 332-370, April.
    10. Steven Caudill, 2009. "OSU and LSU: easy to spell but did they belong? Using the method of paired comparisons to evaluate the BCS rankings and the NCAA football championship game 2007-08," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(25), pages 3225-3230.
    11. Mark A. Diehl & Joel G. Maxcy & Joris Drayer, 2015. "Price Elasticity of Demand in the Secondary Market," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(6), pages 557-575, August.
    12. Dominik Schreyer & Daniel Däuper, 2018. "Determinants of spectator no-show behaviour: first empirical evidence from the German Bundesliga," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(21), pages 1475-1480, December.
    13. Dominik Schreyer & Benno Torgler, 2021. "Football spectator no-show behavior in Switzerland: Empirical evidence from season ticket holder behavior," CREMA Working Paper Series 2021-06, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    14. William A. Hamlen Jr., 2007. "Deviations From Equity and Parity in the National Football League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(6), pages 596-615, December.
    15. Scott Tainsky, 2010. "Television Broadcast Demand for National Football League Contests," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(6), pages 629-640, December.
    16. Babatunde Buraimo, 2008. "Stadium attendance and television audience demand in English league football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 513-523.
    17. Jason P. Berkowitz & Craig A. Depken II & Dennis P. Wilson, 2011. "When Going in Circles is Going Backward: Outcome Uncertainty in NASCAR," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(3), pages 253-283, June.

    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. Cherry, Barbara A., 2014. "Historical mutilation: How misuse of 'public utility and 'natural monopoly' misdirects US telecommunications policy development," 20th ITS Biennial Conference, Rio de Janeiro 2014: The Net and the Internet - Emerging Markets and Policies 106881, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    2. Brett M. Frischmann & Christiaan Hogendorn, 2015. "Retrospectives: The Marginal Cost Controversy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    3. Niklas S. Dürr & Kai Hüschelrath, 2017. "Deregulation and the determinants of network access: evidence from the German interurban bus industry," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(13), pages 950-955, July.
    4. Nancy L. Rose, 2014. "Learning from the Past: Insights for the Regulation of Economic Activity," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Regulation and Its Reform: What Have We Learned?, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Button, Kenneth & McDougall, Glen, 2006. "Institutional and structure changes in air navigation service-providing organizations," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 236-252.
    6. Peeter Peda & Giuseppe Grossi & Margo Liik, 2013. "Do ownership and size affect the performance of water utilities? Evidence from Estonian municipalities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 17(2), pages 237-259, May.
    7. Blayac, Thierry & Bougette, Patrice, 2017. "Should I go by bus? The liberalization of the long-distance bus industry in France," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 50-62.
    8. Angel Arcos-Vargas & Fernando Núñez & Juan Antonio Ballesteros, 2017. "Quality, remuneration and regulatory framework: some evidence on the European electricity distribution," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 98-118, February.
    9. Hill, Alice & Abdala, Manuel Angel & DEC, 1993. "Regulation, institutions, and commitment : privatization and regulation in the Argentine telecommunications sector," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1216, The World Bank.
    10. Estache, Antonio & Martimort, David, 1999. "Politics, transaction costs, and the design of regulatory institutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2073, The World Bank.
    11. Mark L. Burton & David L. Kaserman & John W. Mayo, 2009. "Common Costs And Cross‐Subsidies: Misestimation Versus Misallocation," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 27(2), pages 193-199, April.
    12. Jordan, Jeffrey L., 1993. "Melding Private And Public Interests In Water Rights Markets: Discussion," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(01), pages 1-5, July.
    13. Szablewski, Andrzej T., 2011. "The need for revaluation of the model structure for electricity liberalization," MPRA Paper 34898, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Winseck, Dwayne & Pooley, Jefferson, 2017. "A Curious Tale of Economics and Common Carriage (Net Neutrality) at the FCC: A Reply to Faulhaber, Singer, and Urschel," MediArXiv ymkx4, Center for Open Science.
    15. Raffaele Fiocco & Mario Gilli, 2016. "Bargaining and collusion in a regulatory relationship," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 117(2), pages 93-116, March.
    16. S. J. Liebowitz & Stephen E. Margolis, 1994. "Network Externality: An Uncommon Tragedy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 133-150, Spring.
    17. Joseph Doucet, 2012. "Unclogging the Pipes: Pipeline Reviews and Energy Policy," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 342, February.
    18. Sichelschmidt, Henning, 1984. "Wettbewerb statt staatlicher Regulierung - Wege zu einem besseren Luftverkehrssystem in Europa," Kiel Discussion Papers 100, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Breuer, Matthias & Le, Anthony & Vetter, Felix, 2023. "Audit mandates, audit firms, and auditors," Working Papers 333, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    20. Russell Pittman, 2012. "The Proposed Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile: Are There Unexhausted Scale Economies in U.S. Mobile Telephony?," EAG Discussions Papers 201202, Department of Justice, Antitrust Division.

    More about this item

    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:taf:applec:v:32:y:2000:i:12:p:1495-1507. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.