1. Financial and Economic Principles Applied to Sport Management
Chapter 4
Financial and Economic Principles Applied to Sport Management

2. Introduction
Financial aspects of sport world shown in the media can seem staggering to the average person.
Sport industry is definitely a major force in North American business, though it is difficult to get an accurate, reliable measure of its magnitude.
There is a difference between an industry’s sales and its value-added.
Financial boom has created a great need for people with training in finance.

3. Key Concepts: What Is Finance?
No single, universally agreed upon definition
Generally refers to two primary activities of an organization:
How an organization generates the funds that flow into that organization
How these funds are allocated and spent once they are in the organization

4. Key Concepts: Financial Flows in Sport Organizations
Profits/Income
Difference between financial inflows (Revenues) and outflows (Expenses)
Assets: Anything an organization owns that can be used to generate future revenues
Teams can fund or “finance” assets in many ways:
Owners’ Equity: The amount of their own money owners have invested in the firm; stocks
Debt: Amount of money an organization borrows; bonds
College sports are nonprofit. Use budgetary transfers from the university and other innovative methods

5. Key Concepts: Some Typical Financial Decisions
Many financial decisions ultimately revolve around management of assets
Return on Investment (ROI): Expected dollar-value return on each alternative investment
Risk
Future benefits of investment cannot be known at time of investment
Owners must decide how much they will finance with their own money and how much with borrowed money
Debt carries more risk than equity does

6. Key Concepts: The Economics of Sports
Spectator sport industry is organized much differently from nonspectator industry and from rest of American business.
The existence of one franchise benefits the others.
© David Lee/ShutterStock, Inc.

7. Key Concepts: The Economics of Sports (cont.)
Sport leagues considered monopolies
They face no direct competition from rival leagues
Gives them greater bargaining power when dealing with stakeholders (e.g., players, broadcasters, corporate sponsors, and local governments) and allows them to potentially charge higher prices
Allows them to earn much higher profits than would otherwise be the case, as well as enact financial policies (e.g., salary caps, revenue sharing) that would not be possible with direct competition
Only legal monopolies in United States

8. Key Skills
No matter what type of sport organization involved, the finance function is crucial
Those interested in a career in sports should have solid grounding in:
Corporate finance
Managerial and financial accounting
Advanced use of spreadsheet software
For those interested in working in spectator sports, familiarity with sport economics is beneficial

9. Current Issues: Can Growth Continue?
There has been an explosion of spending on recreational and fitness activities.
The U.S. population has aged, overall affluence has increased, and societal concerns about health-related issues have grown.
For individual segments of nonspectator sport industry, predicting trends is a factor. Capital investments are made now, but payoff does not occur until later.
Spectator sport industry has had tremendous revenue growth in past 15 years as the result of increased popularity, premium ticketing, broadcast contracts, sponsorship sales, stadium naming rights, and so on.

10. Current Issues: Challenges
Increasingly large capital investments are needed to be able to continue to generate revenues.
College athletics, taken as a whole, continues to be unprofitable.
The revenue-generating abilities of football and men’s basketball are insufficient to compensate for deficits of other sports.
© Frank Boellmann/ShutterStock, Inc.

11. Current Issues: Challenges (cont.)
Competitive balance
Entertainment value connected to “uncertainty of outcome”
Differences in market sizes cause differences in revenue potential, which cause differences in ability to pay players, which cause differences in on-field performance
Salary cap, revenue sharing, luxury tax