Fans of the World, Unite!: A (Capitalist) Manifesto for Sports Consumers [Hardcover]

Stephen Ross (Author), Stefan Szymanski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2008

Fans of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey have long been exploited and oppressed by the monopolistic practices of team owners. The time has come for a revolution in the organization of major U.S. sports!

Fans of the World, Unite! is a clarion call to sports fans. Appealing to anyone who is in despair due to the greed and incompetence of team owners, this book proposes a significant restructuring of sports leagues. It sets out a rational program for a revolution that will serve the best interests of the fans and of the sport itself. But Stephen F. Ross and Stefan Szymanski are no Marxists: they show how a revolution in the organization of sports might even benefit the owners. By harnessing the power of markets, sports leagues can be made both more responsive to the needs of the fans, and more efficient.

Ross and Szymanski have spent many years evaluating the ways in which leagues work across the globe. Drawing on their extensive study of leagues, the authors boil down their plan to two major reforms. Borrowing from NASCAR, they propose that team owners should not own sports leagues as well. Rather, league ownership should be separate. Their second proposal is drawn from soccer: introduce competition through a promotion and relegation system. In this type of system, the worst teams in the league are kicked out at the end of the season and replaced by the best performing teams in the next division down. This gives poor performing teams incentive to step up their game, and allows fresh blood to enter the leagues if the poor performers fail to do so.

The main goal of these reforms is to align the financial interest of those who own the league with the best interests of the fans and the sport. Having laid out the problem and the solution, the authors skillfully address practical implications of introducing their scheme, suggesting how leagues might at least make some changes, if not all of those suggested.

The time for change has come! Armed with this book, and with fairness on their side, fans can set forth to begin a revolution.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ross, a law professor at Penn State, and Szymanski, an economics professor at Cass Business School in London, believe American sports fans are in an abusive relationship. Since the four major leagues (baseball, football, basketball and hockey) are essentially run by the owners, they can wallow in greed and laziness while fans idly suffer: Clubs who are guaranteed perpetual membership in a monopoly league and who then get to set the rules for themselves have every incentive to act in their own self-interest and contrary to the interest of fans and taxpayers. The authors outline a plan to end that, stressing league control via an independent entity (as is the case in NASCAR) and employing soccer's promotion and relegation system, which demotes underperforming teams and encourages competition. With real-life examples and solid research, the authors support their version of a sports utopia. In the end, however, the authors' stodgy, academic writing (they use stadia as the plural for stadium) becomes tedious and stifling. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Fans of the World, Unite! serves as an outstanding work, which shows American sports fans what they can learn from organizations beyond MLB, NBA, NFL, and the NHL. This work has a unique and accessible style that will appeal to scholars, students, and professionals with an interest in sports economics and sports law." —David J. Berri, author of The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport

"Fans of the World, Unite! puts forth a novel set of recommendations that reflect the theoretical work on sports leagues that has been published over the past few years. The book also benefits from blending the insights of a sports economist and a sports-law professor." —Daniel R. Marburger, Editor of Stee-rike Four! What's Wrong With the Business of Baseball?

"Ross and Szymanski are two of the most experienced and creative minds working on sports law and business issues today. Fans of the World Unite challenges much of the conventional wisdom and suggests a more fan-friendly and efficient way to organize sporting leagues. This is a lively, controversial account that is sure to provoke fun and probing debate." —Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College, best-selling author and sports industry consultant

"Fans of the World Unite! is fascinating reading that breaks new ground. Based on economic and historical research, this book provides an incisive analysis of the existing structure and governance of U.S. professional sport leagues, and the authors offer thoughtful, creative remedies to the perceived problems they identify. It is an original, thought-provoking contribution to the sports literature." Professor Matt Mitten, Director, National Sports Law Institute, Marquette University Law School

"Ross and Szymanski have written an enjoyable and thoughtful book, using a clear, easy style to explain intricate issues and propose important reforms. Economists and sports fans alike will learn a lot—I did." —Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Stanford Economics and Finance (August 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804756686
• ISBN-13: 978-0804756686
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,719,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A lofty and much needed call to action to reform professional sports, November 10, 2008

By 

Patrick Lagreid "BaseballBookReview.com" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fans of the World, Unite!: A (Capitalist) Manifesto for Sports Consumers (Hardcover)

Now while this isn't a baseball book per se, I thought I'd take a look at it for two reasons -- it's the off-season and I have a bit more time on my hands, and it does provide a pretty engaging critique of the setup of Major League Baseball and how fans are adversely affected by its structure and policies, which are ultimately intended to protect and profit the owners.

The premise of the book is fairly simple - the major professional sports (MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL) are setup in such a way that encourages and rewards monopolistic behavior while ultimately hanging fans out to dry by limiting their choice while exploiting the relationship that fans have with their favorite sports teams.

To remedy this problem, Ross and Szymanski propose a two-pronged approach that would more or less turn the current American leagues upside down.

Using NASCAR and the international soccer leagues as examples, the authors propose that the leagues be reworked with a clear separation between league orgazniers and ownership while instilling a promotion and relegation system that rewards accomplishment and punishes failure.

The first piece would require each league to have a governing body that is completely separate from the teams and owners, similar to how NASCAR is structured. It would be their responsibility to maintain the health of the league, through marketing, broadcasting, competitive balance and opportunity, scheduling and playoff management, and so forth. There would be a person ultimately accountable for the well-being of the organization who would have both ultimate responsibility and ultimate jurisdiction.

The second piece would bring merit based participation into the fold - in other words, if you want to be a Major League team, you had better play like it, otherwise you'll be demoted to a minor league. This system is already in place in international soccer leagues, and the authors argue that it would work well in the United States as well, by providing the ultimate motivation for a team to succeed and invest in their players and coaches.

Certainly approaches to sport that, while not new in practice, would represent a major change in the way the major sports operate in the United States.

The authors argue that such a change would result would in a reduction in the power that owners have when it comes to corporate welfare. With an increase in teams and a reduction in the exclusivity of having a team that could compete at the Major League level, owners would be forced to shoulder more of the load themselves. No longer would be cries of "I'm moving this team to (fill in the blank) unless I get a new stadium paid for with tax dollars!" be tolerated because odds are that city would already have a team.

Ross and Szymanski reveal and highlight the leverage that professional sports teams have been allowed to have under the current setup, and that is where they find fans over the proverbial barrel. If you want to be a sports fan you have to play by their rules - and that means watching the teams the league has decided to put on TV, accepting blackouts of your favorite team's games unless certain conditions are met, tolerating and even encouraging teams not to get better by rewarding poor performance, and so on.

Before I started reading Fans of the World, Unite!, I was sincerely thinking this was going to be a rallying cry along the lines of "no new taxes!" or "bring the troops home!" -- something that would be able to be distilled down so much that it would fit on a button, or a 3'x5' picket sign and would be something that would be marched in front of stadia and arenas around the country.

Would it be a chronicle on injustices brought on fans by professional sports teams? Price-gouging, baiting and switching, hoodwinking? Would I be fired up after reading it and march down to my local teams' offices and demand change?

No.

Rather, the authors bring a much more academic approach; Ross is a Professor of Law at Penn State and Szymanski is the MBA Dean and Professor of Economics at London's City University. Both readily admit to writing the book from the ivory tower of academia - and while it's not written at a level unreadable to most folks, you will definitely be invited to think and analyze the problem at hand as the authors see it. Processing the book left me feeling like I had been involved in a trial, listening to the prosecution make its case. Given that it's Election Day and I've been listening to countless ads and reading propositions and ballot measures, this does fall in line with that in a certain way.

And while those ballot measures are interesting in their own way and I care about them on behalf of my civic duties, this was something that appealed to my recreational side.

At 184 pages of text, the authors keep their argument succinct, which keeps the book moving along and the reader engaged in the work. An interested reader could easily finish this in a day, while a more casual pace should allow this to be completed in a week or so.

The question that remains though, is: what now?

Assuming you read the book and agree with the changes the authors are calling for, how do we make that happen? Ross and Szymanski provide several scenarios in the final chapter, including one for fan revolt. While I could see them happening under the right conditions, I just don't see those right conditions among us. The NFL continues to basically print money and MLB is on an upward trend, even though attendance was flat from 2007 to 2008.

The old saying of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" certainly comes to mind when thinking about the situation. It doesn't mean it wouldn't or couldn't happen...I'm just thinking something will have to fall apart before it can be put back together in the way that the authors suggest. While we do live in a fast-paced society where things can happen fairly quickly, there are a lot of things that are too firmly rooted in place to make these changes feasible.

But that doesn't mean their ideas are bad. If anything, their ideas are very good and should be read by more and more fans across all sports. The authors readily admit that the fan-driven scenario is the most hopeful, with fans demanding a political course of action and involving their elected officials. So how do we make that happen?

Maybe the authors need to launch this campaign with the tools of change - buttons, bumper stickers, signs you can put in your window, t-shirts, and celebrity endorsements. Put someone in the spotlight - develop a website and make it easy to take fans from indecision to action. They've already explained the why, I wonder if Ross and Szymanski will follow up with the how?

Fans of the World, Unite might just be slightly ahead of its time, but it's a book that merits reading and consideration, and as I'm sure the authors would hope, action on the part of the reader.