IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v91y2010i1p117-128.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Discrimination and Demand: The Effect of International Players on Attendance in Major League Baseball

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Tainsky
  • Jason A. Winfree

Abstract

Objectives. This article tests the presence of demand‐driven discrimination attributable to foreign‐born players in Major League Baseball (MLB). We quantify the change in demand at MLB games given the number of foreign players on an MLB team. We further measure how matching market population demographics and team demographics affects demand. Methods. We use regression analysis to estimate the effect on attendance of a change in the number of foreign players on a team. We then use these estimates to find the change in revenue for the team. Results. The results show that the effect evolves over time. At the outset of the sample (1985), the net effect of an additional foreign‐born player was a decrease in ticket demand. This effect diminished steadily until 1992, when the net effect became positive, peaking in 2000, and then slightly decreasing until the end of the sample (2005). The matching of team and population demographics was not found to be significant. Conclusions. We discuss the implications of this result on league policy decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Tainsky & Jason A. Winfree, 2010. "Discrimination and Demand: The Effect of International Players on Attendance in Major League Baseball," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(1), pages 117-128, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:91:y:2010:i:1:p:117-128
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00684.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00684.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00684.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Young H. Lee & Trenton G. Smith, 2008. "Why Are Americans Addicted To Baseball? An Empirical Analysis Of Fandom In Korea And The United States," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(1), pages 32-48, January.
    2. Örn B. Bodvarsson & Raymond T. Brastow, 1999. "A Test Of Employer Discrimination In The Nba," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 17(2), pages 243-255, April.
    3. Hong, Sung-Tai & Wyer, Robert S, Jr, 1989. "Effects of Country-of-Origin and Product-Attribute Information on Product Evaluation: An Information Processing Perspective," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(2), pages 175-187, September.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    5. Jason Winfree & Jill McCluskey & Ron Mittelhammer & Rodney Fort, 2004. "Location and attendance in major league baseball," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(19), pages 2117-2124.
    6. Hoang, Ha & Rascher, Dan, 1999. "The NBA, Exit Discrimination, and Career Earnings," MPRA Paper 3542, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. McCormick, Robert E. & Tollison, Robert D., 2001. "Why do black basketball players work more for less money?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 201-219, February.
    8. F. Andrew Hanssen, 2001. "A Test of the Racial Contact Hypothesis from a Natural Experiment: Baseball's All‐Star Voting as a Case," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 82(1), pages 51-66, March.
    9. Richard C. K. Burdekin & Richard T. Hossfeld & Janet Kiholm Smith, 2005. "Are NBA Fans Becoming Indifferent to Race? Evidence From the 1990s," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 6(2), pages 144-159, May.
    10. Gwartney, James & Haworth, Charles, 1974. "Employer Costs and Discrimination: The Case of Baseball," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 873-881, July/Aug..
    11. Roberto Pedace, 2008. "Earnings, Performance, and Nationality Discrimination in a Highly Competitive Labor Market as An Analysis of the English Professional Soccer League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(2), pages 115-140, April.
    12. Evan Osborne, 2006. "Baseball's International Division of Labor," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(2), pages 150-167, May.
    13. Anthony C. Krautmann & David J. Berri, 2007. "Can We Find It at the Concessions? Understanding Price Elasticity in Professional Sports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(2), pages 183-191, May.
    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. Wolfgang Maennig & Steffen Q. Mueller, 2021. "Consumer and employer discrimination in professional sports markets – New evidence from Major League Baseball," Working Papers 069, Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg.
    2. Ira Horowitz & Jim Lackritz, 2012. "Jolting Joe and Charlie Hustle: The Immediate Economic Impact of an Extended Hitting Streak," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 57(1), pages 42-49, May.
    3. Jeff Hamrick & John Rasp, 2015. "The Connection Between Race and Called Strikes and Balls," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(7), pages 714-734, October.
    4. Iuliia Naidenova & Cornel Nesseler & Petr Parshakov & Aleksei Chusovliankin, 2020. "After the Crimea crisis: Employee discrimination in Russia and Ukraine," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-17, October.
    5. Mara Konjer & Henk Erik Meier & Katrin Wedeking, 2017. "Consumer Demand for Telecasts of Tennis Matches in Germany," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(4), pages 351-375, May.
    6. Dirk Semmelroth & Bernd Frick & Robert Simmons & Hojun Sung, 2022. "Where to Go Next? Examining the Effect of Franchise Expansion and Location on Game-Level Attendance in Major League Soccer," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(5), pages 524-547, June.
    7. Andrew W. Nutting, 2012. "Customer Discrimination and Fernandomania," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 13(4), pages 406-430, August.
    8. Iuliia Naidenova & Petr Parshakov & Sofiia Paklina, 2020. "Determinants of Football Fans’ Happiness: Evidence from Facial Emotion Recognition," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 1103-1116, March.
    9. Jye-Shyan Wang & Wen-Jhan Jane & Yu-Hung Cheng & Pei-Hsin Fang, 2021. "Does fan discrimination exist? Mixed-method investigation of customer discrimination in Chinese professional baseball league," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 11(3), pages 477-496, September.
    10. Brian M. Mills & Rodney Fort, 2023. "Performance Quality Preference Heterogeneity in Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(3), pages 352-373, April.

    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. Kahn, Lawrence M., 2009. "The Economics of Discrimination: Evidence from Basketball," IZA Discussion Papers 3987, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Christopher Coyne & Justin Isaacs & Jeremy Schwartz, 2010. "Entrepreneurship and the taste for discrimination," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 609-627, August.
    3. Johnny Ducking & Peter Groothuis & James Hill, 2015. "Exit Discrimination in the NFL: A Duration Analysis of Career Length," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 285-299, September.
    4. Kevin Mongeon & Jason Winfree, 2012. "Comparison of television and gate demand in the National Basketball Association," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 72-79, January.
    5. Wen-Jhan Jane, 2021. "The impact of cultural distance on salary: the case of Samurai Japan," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 11(1), pages 85-123, March.
    6. Scott Tainsky & Brian M. Mills & Jason A. Winfree, 2015. "Further Examination of Potential Discrimination Among MLB Umpires," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(4), pages 353-374, May.
    7. David J. Berri & Rob Simmons, 2009. "Race and the Evaluation of Signal Callers in the National Football League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(1), pages 23-43, February.
    8. Barry Reilly, 2014. "Labour market discrimination," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 15, pages 238-258, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Roberto Pedace, 2008. "Earnings, Performance, and Nationality Discrimination in a Highly Competitive Labor Market as An Analysis of the English Professional Soccer League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(2), pages 115-140, April.
    10. Johnny Ducking & Peter Groothuis & James Hill, 2015. "Exit Discrimination in the NFL: A Duration Analysis of Career Length," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 285-299, September.
    11. John Goddard & John O. S. Wilson, 2009. "Racial discrimination in English professional football: evidence from an empirical analysis of players' career progression," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 33(2), pages 295-316, March.
    12. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    13. Richard C. K. Burdekin & Richard T. Hossfeld & Janet Kiholm Smith, 2005. "Are NBA Fans Becoming Indifferent to Race? Evidence From the 1990s," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 6(2), pages 144-159, May.
    14. Stefan Szymanski, 2021. "On the Incidence of an Ad Valorem Tax: The Adoption of VAT in the UK and Cost Pass Through by English Football Clubs," De Economist, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 37-61, February.
    15. repec:lan:wpaper:3964 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. B. Jay Coleman & J. Michael DuMond & Allen K. Lynch, 2008. "An Examination of NBA MVP Voting Behavior," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(6), pages 606-627, December.
    17. Olugbenga Ajilore, 2014. "Do white NBA players suffer from reverse discrimination?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(1), pages 558-566.
    18. Rosen, Sherwin & Sanderson, Allen, 2001. "Labour Markets in Professional Sports," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(469), pages 47-68, February.
    19. Jeffrey Chu & Saralees Nadarajah & Emmanuel Afuecheta & Stephen Chan & Ying Xu, 2014. "A statistical study of racism in English football," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(5), pages 2915-2937, September.
    20. Qi Ge & Brad R. Humphreys & Kun Zhou, 2020. "Are Fair Weather Fans Affected by Weather? Rainfall, Habit Formation, and Live Game Attendance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(3), pages 304-322, April.
    21. Young Hoon Lee, 2013. "Estimation of temporal variations in fan loyalty: application of multi-factor models," Chapters, in: Plácido Rodríguez & Stefan Késenne & Jaume García (ed.), The Econometrics of Sport, chapter 8, pages 135-153, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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:bla:socsci:v:91:y:2010:i:1:p:117-128. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    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.