November 24
Done
The Ownership of Sport

The Ownership of Sport

January 2, 2022
 
Tomas Nonnenmacher and David Gerard have an interesting new paper which applies Henry Hansmann's ownership framework to the NBA.
That's great news, since Hansmann's framework is criminally underutilized.
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Their abstract:
Like many professional sports leagues worldwide, the National Basketball Association is organized as a cooperative of team owners. We argue that league ownership structures must balance two types of transaction costs: the costs to league owners of collective decision-making and the costs of contracting with stakeholders of the league, importantly players, owners, and potential investors. We compare the transaction costs of the current team owned league with the alternatives of investor and player owned leagues, finding that each ownership structure reduces some transaction costs while raising others.”
I'd like to see Hansmann's framework deployed to illuminate ownership patterns in churches, government agencies, and organized crime, among others. This paper is a great step in that direction.
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