Sports venue construction in the U.S. tends to happen in waves, roughly every three decades. Sports economists suggest another wave is happening now, with numerous proposed or approved venue construction projects around the country seeking or having secured public dollars, from Tennessee to Wisconsin to Nevada to Florida.  

Professional sports owners often justify asks of hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for new or revamped stadiums with estimates of huge economic returns for communities. It’s important that journalists covering these projects understand how public dollars are raised to pay for them and how to interrogate economic impact claims that teams produce.

Across the four biggest sports leagues in the U.S. — Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League — there have been eight new venues built since 2020 at a total construction cost of roughly $3.3 billion, according to a September 2023 paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. About $750 million in public funds went toward those construction projects, not including bond interest, the paper finds.

Research conducted over decades indicates these investments almost never lead to massive economic gains for host cities. Legislators have since pushed the recent public contribution figure even higher. This includes $500 million to renovate the Milwaukee Brewers ballpark, more than $1 billion in bonds toward a new stadium for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and $380 million for a new ballpark for the A’s, which are poised to move from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2028.

We recently published two pieces on public financing of sports venues: A research-based primer and research roundup and a short tipsheet for covering the topic.

To give journalists an even stronger foundation for their coverage of sports venue financing, The Journalist’s Resource co-hosted an hourlong webinar May 16 with Econofact, a nonpartisan, online publication out of The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

I co-moderated the panel discussion with Michael Klein, the William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at Tufts and founder and executive editor of Econofact. The panelists were:

• Andrew Zimbalist, the Robert A. Woods Professor Emeritus of Economics at Smith College.
• Victor Matheson, a professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross who specializes in sports economics.
• Alan Snel, the publisher of LVSportsBiz.com, a news outlet that covers the convergence of sports, business, stadiums and politics.

One takeaway: There are numerous examples of professional sports franchises that built their venues with little or no public investment.

“We have the Golden State Warriors playing in an entirely privately financed stadium in San Francisco,” Matheson said during the webinar. “We have SoFi stadium in [Los Angeles], almost entirely privately financed there, and that’s about a $5 billion stadium. I think one of the most important things to take from this hour is that public financing is not required.”

Here are 7 key tips from the webinar.

1. Ask these three questions about economic impact estimates. If team officials can’t explain their numbers, don’t report them.

Who commissioned the study?

“If it is a study that is paid for by the league or the team, that is not an economic impact study,” Matheson said. “That is a press release.”

Can I see a copy of the study?

While teams or municipalities may or may not release lengthy economic impact reports, public officials and journalists sometimes cite big number estimates from teams without scrutiny of the underlying analysis.

“You would be amazed by how many people say, ‘There is a study that says [the economic impact] is a billion dollars,” Matheson said. “But you can never get your hands on that study.”

What do economists think?

“Call an economist,” Matheson said. “You can find lots of us. Whatever your local jurisdiction is, there’s a sports economist there who teaches in your state or your local region who understands these issues who has a good local feel. Most of us have a good national feel as well.” 

If team representatives can’t justify estimates of economic growth, or show than an independent analysis exists, don’t report those estimates.

“The big problem with these gigantic economic impact numbers is that the methodology is not explained,” said Snel.

He noted that LVSportsBiz will not publish economic impact estimates unless team officials explain how they did their analysis. 

2. Note that when people spend money at a sports venue and nearby businesses, this often means they don’t spend that money elsewhere.

A new or revamped sports venue tends to shift economic activity, not create new spending, economic research shows.

Interview an economist or two to help explain to audiences how this works. The basic idea is that spending shifts within communities, or from one community to another. The underlying reason has to do with household budgeting.

“Most of the money spent at a sports facility is money that is part of people’s leisure budgets, and they have a certain amount of money that they can spend on various kinds of leisure,” Zimbalist said. “When they spend $200 or $500 taking their family to the ballpark, that’s $200 or $500 they don’t have to spend at the local bowling alley, at a local theater, at a local restaurant. That’s money being displaced, from spending in one part of the city to spending in another, and the net impact can be very close to zero.”

3. Ask hotel owners and rental car firms how they incorporate tax rate changes into their pricing. If public money is raised through hotel and rental car taxes, proponents may claim the tax burden will fall on tourists. But local businesses and franchises may bear some of the burden, too.

Tourists do not necessarily pay hotel and rental car taxes. Why? Because of something called tax incidence, which is how the burden of a tax is divided among consumer and producer — essentially, who pays the tax and at what proportion.

“It’s not always the person who buys the product who pays the tax,” Matheson said. “It can also be the person who sells the product.”

When legislators increase a hotel tax or pass a new one, hotel owners typically respond by adjusting their pricing in one of three ways:

• Raise prices and pass on the entire cost of the tax to consumers. That can hurt their ability to compete for convention and tourism business, Matheson said.
• Hold prices steady and pay the tax burden entirely, reducing profits.
• Some combination, where they pass some of the cost of the tax to consumers and eat the rest.

The same goes for rental car taxes, another sales tax commonly used to help finance stadiums. Local economic conditions will determine how the tax burden shakes out. In extremely competitive markets, businesses may be able to pass on the entire cost to consumers. Point is, it’s important to ask hotel owners and rental car firms how they incorporate tax rate changes into their pricing.

While officials may claim visitor taxes are a way to pass the cost to out-of-towners, the authors of the September 2023 paper note that local people also rent cars. And residents with lower incomes are more likely to use extended stay hotels and potentially have to pay the higher taxes.

4. Don’t forget that team owners stand to benefit most from these projects.

Teams seeking public financing naturally focus public statements on their estimates of community benefits, typically in the form of jobs created and consumer spending.

But team owners, by far, have the most to gain.

“The bottom line is, it’s the pro teams that are garnering the benefits of the revenues from the stadiums,” Snel said. He recommended journalists also report on how new or improved stadiums affect team valuations.

He pointed to the National Football League’s Raiders, which moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. The team was valued at $2.2 billion in 2019. That figure nearly tripled to $6.2 billion by the end of 2023.

There are a variety of reasons for the increase, Snel reports, including TV deals that generate tens of billions of dollars yearly across the NFL, and the sale of the Washington Commanders in 2023 for more than $6 billion, which set the market for premium franchises. But according to Forbes, $1.4 billion of the team’s current value is tied to the stadium itself, which was heavily subsidized with public dollars.

5. Learn about “leakage” and how it can affect economic impact estimates.

When people spend money at local businesses, there is less of what economists call “leakage” than when people spend with mega corporations like sports franchises.

This means every dollar spent at a local café has a better chance of staying within the local economy than money spent at a sporting event, which tends to “leak” out of the economy and into the savings accounts of team owners. The café owner, by contrast, uses revenue to, for example, pay staff, who also live and spend in the community, or for laundry services provided by another local businesses, or any number of other things.

“The proprietor of the local restaurant or bowling alley or theater tends to have a more moderate income and tends to live almost 100% of the year in that town,” Zimbalist said. “When you spend money at the restaurant, it tends to circulate and stay in the town more. When you spend money at a ballpark, it’s going to millionaires and billionaires. They generally don’t live in the town year-round.”

This ties back into those economic impact estimates. They’ll sometimes include a simple multiplier equation, suggesting money spent at sporting events “multiplies,” or circulates within the local economy, just like spending at the local café.

But sporting event spending tends to have less chance of staying in the local economy, compared with other types of entertainment spending.

Zimbalist explained that team owners “generally have much, much higher savings rates, so they take the money and they put it into the world’s money markets and the money doesn’t stay in the town for these and other reasons. So the leakages are much, much greater and, therefore, the multiplier, the sports multiplier, is much lower than a typical entertainment multiplier.”

6. Keep track of lease deals. When they expire, teams may come asking for more public money.

When covering a city that has a major professional sports franchise, or several of them, review lease agreements to figure out when team owners might ask taxpayers for help revamping their venue, or building a new one.

The National Sports Law Institute of Marquette University Law School has obtained dozens of lease agreements for professional baseball and football franchises, most of them from the 1990s and early 2000s.

The institute has summarized these agreements, available here. The summaries detail, among other things, the yearly rent the franchise owes the municipality, which may be set below market rates. They outline how much the public contributed toward sports venue construction and how much came from the team, along with whether the team or municipality is responsible for regular operating expenses and repairs.

“We had this huge wave of stadium construction in 1992,” Matheson said. “Most of those stadiums are associated with a 30-year lease deal. And because of that, these teams are tied to the stadiums for 30 years, which means that they really can’t start asking for a new stadium, start asking for new public subsidies, until those lease deals expire. But as soon as those lease deals expire, all of the bargaining power shifts to the teams and away from the taxpayer.”

7. If you don’t have time to do a deep dive, at least include these two “boilerplate necessities” in your reporting.

Journalists may not have time to do a deep investigation into how public money is being used to finance sports venue construction or renovation — especially broadcast journalists, who might only have a minute or two to cover a lot of ground.

Snel recommends reporters at least include these two “boilerplate necessities” in their coverage.

• Report the principal and interest on debt. If public money is raised through bonds, tell audiences about the interest on the principal that the city, county or state will have to repay. For example, Clark County, Nevada, took on debt of $750 million toward building the Raiders’ stadium. With interest, that number will grow over the next quarter century. The final tally will actually be north of $1.3 billion, Snel recently reported.
• Remind your audience that economic activity related to sporting events by and large goes back to team owners. “The beneficiaries are the teams,” Snel said. “They’re garnering the lion’s share of all the revenues.”

The post Public financing of sports venues: 7 reporting tips from our webinar appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

When sports franchises want a new or revamped stadium, they often turn to taxpayers for help with financing. For example, in June 2023, Nevada legislators approved $380 million in public funding for a 30,000-seat ballpark for the Oakland A’s, who are expected to make the move to Las Vegas in 2028.

Proponents estimate the A’s stadium in Las Vegas will create thousands of jobs and have an annual economic impact of $1.3 billion — more on that in the video below.

But economic research for decades has found that, by and large, the fiscal returns for residents — in the form of increased economic activity and job growth — are far smaller than public expenditures, which have recently approached or exceeded half a billion dollars per stadium.

Learn about the research in our companion explainer and research roundup.

Journalists should look closely at the political context around these major financial commitments, and question estimated fiscal returns. This is not just a topic for sports or business journalists covering major professional teams — even minor league teams have meant financial hardship for towns that took on debt to attract them. Here are 4 tips to help you get started in your reporting.

1. Interrogate economic impact statements or fiscal estimates from franchise owners.

Teams often produce economic impact statements or fiscal estimates claiming that building new stadiums or revamping existing ones will result in a fiscal and jobs boom for a city or region.

What assumptions do these economic impact statements or fiscal estimates make? Do they fully explain how they arrived at their numbers? If not, will the team publicly provide those behind-the-scenes details? Know that franchises may not make their analyses public.

For example, reporter Jon Styf at digital news outlet The Center Square obtained a two-page document showing economic impact estimates from the state of nearly $1 billion per year from a proposed retail and housing development around a new stadium for the National Football League’s Tennessee Titans.

The document also included economic impact estimates of around half a billion dollars from other cities hosting major events, such as the Super Bowl. Styf reached out to economists to find out whether those estimates were reasonable — the economists questioned their credibility.

In short, avoid reporting team-published estimates at face value. Run them by an economist or two who study this topic. Reach out to the North American Association of Sports Economists for help finding experts. FieldofSchemes, a blog run by journalist Neil deMause that covers sports economics, is another place to look for informed perspectives on economic impact estimates.

2. Know that public financing for a sports stadium can happen either through a legislature or through a direct decision by voters.

The Las Vegas funding happened via lawmakers, for example.

While Kansas City voters in April 2024 voted down public funds for a new stadium for MLB’s Royals, 7 in 10 voters in Oklahoma City who cast ballots in December 2023 said yes to $900 million for a new arena for the NBA’s Thunder. (Dozens of local economists had urged Oklahoma Cityans to reject the measure.)

Public votes may go either way, and can be influenced by campaigns from local groups in favor or opposed — but the legislative pathway is almost always successful, says Kennesaw State University economist John Charles Bradbury.

3. Understand how states and localities finance stadium construction.

These may include municipal bonds or taxes, such as sales taxes, sin taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco, and visitor taxes on hotels and rental cars.

Officials may claim visitor taxes are a way to pass the cost to out-of-towners. As Bradbury and co-authors note in a September 2023 paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, local people also rent cars. And residents with lower incomes are more likely to use extended stay hotels and have to pay the higher taxes.

Hotel owners may also draw lower revenues as they reduce pre-tax prices in order to retain customers — or, they may raise prices, passing the tax to customers but deterring future bookings.

4. Scrutinize smaller localities issuing bonds for minor or major league stadiums.

Pearl, Mississippi, issued tens of millions of dollars in bonds to build a new ballpark for an Atlanta Braves minor league affiliate in the early 2000s.

But, due to lack of attendance and lower economic impact than boosters estimated, the city had trouble paying the debt.

Credit agencies reduced the city’s bonds to junk.

(They’ve since rebounded.)

Bonus viewing: Healthy journalistic skepticism of economic impact claims

Alan Snel, publisher of LVSportsBiz.com, expressed healthy journalistic skepticism about economic impact numbers from sports franchises on the Dec. 29, 2023 edition of public affairs show Nevada Week, which is produced by Vegas PBS.

Host Amber Renee Dixon asked Snel about economic impact estimates for a new ballpark for the A’s that representatives from economic advisory firm Applied Analysis had presented to state lawmakers.

“They said they expect a $1.3 billion economic impact per year from the stadium and generating about $17 million in total tax revenue each year,” Renee Dixon said. “Those numbers don’t sit well with you. Why is that?”

Snel explained those estimates were “based on certain expectations” about attendance. He then said he had recently interviewed Michael Crome, Chief Financial Officer of the Las Vegas Raiders, which moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. “And they came out with a press release saying that the stadium and the visitorship, thanks to the Raiders events and also the stadium events, generated $2.29 billion,” Snel said. “That’s nearly $2.3 billion in revenue.”

Snel continued, “And I said to the Raiders, if you want to sit down and explain the math, we will report that. And I think that’s responsible journalism. But just putting these broad, general multibillion dollar figures out there without explaining the math is just — it’s just not an accurate portrait of what’s going on.”

The post Covering sports stadium financing? Read these 4 tips. appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

In June 2023, Nevada legislators approved $380 million in public funding for a 30,000-seat ballpark for the Oakland A’s, who are expected to throw their first pitch in Las Vegas in 2028 after Major League Baseball owners approved the franchise move in November.

It’s the latest public commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars for a professional sports stadium. In the U.S., most franchises in the four major sports leagues — MLB, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League — are valued at over $1 billion.

Across those leagues there have been eight new stadiums or arenas built since 2020, at a total construction cost of roughly $3.3 billion, according to a September 2023 paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. About $750 million in public funds went toward those construction projects, the paper finds.

When government dollars are allocated it’s usually through a legislature passing a law, or by public vote. Voters in Kansas City, for example, in April 2024 widely rejected a sales tax bump to pay for a new downtown stadium for MLB’s Royals.

“I like to say that you can fit a majority of the city council in the owner’s box but you can’t fit a majority of the electorate,” says Kennesaw State University economist John Charles Bradbury.

The approved public funding in Las Vegas represents about one quarter of the total cost of the planned stadium, pegged at $1.5 billion. Proponents estimate the A’s stadium in Las Vegas will create thousands of jobs and have an annual economic impact of $1.3 billion, news outlets have reported.

Economic research for decades has found that, by and large, the fiscal returns for residents — in the form of increased economic activity and job growth — are far smaller than public expenditures, which have recently approached or exceeded half a billion dollars per stadium.

This primer will help journalists understand the history of public financing for stadium construction and empower them to use academic research to interrogate claims that these projects mean big bucks for communities.

The research also finds:

• Journalists often report figures from press releases and economic impact statements without questioning the assumptions of those analyses.
• Of the dozens of stadiums built in the past two decades for the four largest American sports leagues, about 4 in 10 were financed at least in part with municipal bonds exempt from federal taxes — which places part of the financial burden of stadium financing on residents nationwide.
• Football and baseball stadiums may increase foot traffic to nearby businesses, but basketball and hockey arenas do not.
• Overall, stadiums tend to shift economic activity, not create new spending.
• Expansion teams are likely to favor markets that already have strong employment and business growth.

A coming stadium construction boom?

Las Vegas is hardly alone. Economists have found that every 30 years or so there’s a wave of public financing for building stadiums or revamping existing ones.

A construction boom may already be under way in the U.S.

For example, Wisconsin will provide $500 million to renovate the Milwaukee Brewers ballpark, and more than $1 billion in public bonds will go toward a new stadium for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. And the MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays have asked St. Petersburg city councilors to approve more than $400 million for a new ballpark along with nearby infrastructure improvements.

If you’re covering public financing for sports franchises, you’ll want to know what the research says about this topic. This is critical to providing thorough coverage to audiences.

A brief history of public financing for sports stadiums

Modern stadiums were first constructed during the early and mid-1900s, around the two world wars.

“Sports venues were almost exclusively privately financed until the 1930s, when they became largely public ventures,” write the authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, featured in the research roundup below.

More stadiums were built as leagues expanded and teams moved cities throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Another construction boom came in the 1990s, with many new stadiums replacing older ones, along with new venues for expansion franchises.

“The median public share of venue construction costs declined from 70% in the 1990s and 2000s to approximately half of construction costs in the 2010s,” write the authors of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management paper. “Newly opened and planned venues in the 2020s have received roughly 40% of funding from taxpayers.”

While the share of public financing has fallen, the authors find that the amount of public money has risen, from a median of $168 million in public funds per stadium in the 1990s, to $350 million in the 2010s, to $500 million in the 2020s across the four major U.S. sports leagues.  

Even stadiums ostensibly built with private funds can come with public costs.

For example, the New England Patriots built Gillette Stadium in 2002 without direct public dollars, but the franchise benefitted from at least $70 million in state money for nearby road, sewer and other infrastructure improvements, according to the Boston Globe, which the paper authors cite.

Economic activity and stadiums: ‘A transfer of wealth’

While Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field and Soldier Field in Chicago have stood for around 100 years, many stadiums built in the past 50 years have already been replaced for a variety of reasons, despite better construction materials and methods.

For example, the Texas Rangers’ ballparks have been replaced every 27.5 years, on average, while Atlanta Braves’ ballparks have been replaced after 26 years, on average. Among the major sports leagues, 31 stadiums and 31 arenas will be 30 years old or more by 2030, according to Bradbury and co-authors in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management paper.

Journalists covering asks of public money for private sports projects should be aware of the large body of research on these public investments.

Despite perennial claims from team owners that building new stadiums or revamping existing ones will result in a fiscal and jobs boom for a city or region, research consistently shows that the hundreds of millions of public dollars that are often outlaid are not typically a sound investment.

“You might see a little bit of a resurgence in the area right around the stadium, but it comes at a cost to less commerce in the outlying area, which is exactly what we’d expect,” says Bradbury, who is the current president of the North American Association of Sports Economists. “This is just a transfer of wealth within the community.”

This transfer of wealth may indeed be the point for some city officials, as College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson explains in an October 2018 essay, also in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

For example, when the taxpayers of Arlington, Texas, finance local stadiums, such as for the Dallas Cowboys and the Rangers, the games those teams play move consumer dollars from other parts of the state to Arlington.

“While, again, regional economic activity is unchanged, Arlington’s economy benefits at the expense of other cities and towns in the area,” Matheson writes. He also notes that fiscal reports produced by sports franchises “have been shown to suffer from significant theoretical flaws that make their conclusions suspect at best, and simply false at worst.”

But Matheson argues that while the current level of public spending on sports stadiums is out of balance with the returns on those investment, in certain circumstances some level of public funding may be appropriate.

He points to the 2004 Athens Olympics as a catalyst for infrastructure development there, and a minor league baseball stadium in Worcester, Massachusetts, as providing the political impetus for $35 million in transportation funding from the state, including to make a particularly dangerous intersection near the ballpark safer.

“Obviously, it would be better for local taxpayers to get the needed infrastructure improvements without the wasteful expense of hosting the Olympics or building a baseball stadium, but government activities are not always without friction, and using a stadium project to spur other more useful infrastructure projects may be a second-best solution,” Matheson writes.

The cost-per-taxpayer of a stadium partially financed through public funds may be small in some cases, but it can also be relatively large. Oklahoma City Thunder ownership, for example, is contributing $50 million to build their new arena, compared with the public outlay of $900 million, which comes out to thousands of dollars per adult in the city.  

“People often ask me, they’ll say, ‘Well, you’re always against stadiums.’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, yeah, my guess is most pulmonologists are against smoking,’” says Bradbury. “I mean, the evidence is clear. And I think that journalists feel a need to cover all sides of an issue, and I totally understand that. But it’s about accurate coverage, not equal-balance coverage.”

Research roundup

Public Policy Toward Professional Sports Stadiums: A Review
John Charles Bradbury, Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, September 2023.

The study: The authors break down a range of policy considerations for public funding of stadiums. They provide a history of stadium funding since the 1900s, examine research efforts to quantify intangible social benefits of sports teams, describe prominent public funding mechanisms and cast a critical eye toward news reporting.

The findings: With many large U.S. cities facing fiscal crises in the 1980s, government officials began to push the narrative of sports stadiums as economic drivers, “where each dollar spent generates more than one dollar of economic activity as it is recirculated within the community — thereby growing employment income, property values and tax revenues,” the authors write.

Economists began to study the issue around this time. By the turn of the century, “economists were largely in agreement that stadiums were poor public investments,” in terms of tangible benefits, like jobs and spending, “and more recent studies continue to confirm these findings.” Economists then began to explore whether there were intangible benefits to residents of a city with a professional sports franchise — the cultural pride from living in a “big league” city, for example.

One way economists do this is through something called the contingent valuation method, which surveys residents on what they would personally pay for their city to host a sports team. These individual values are then extrapolated to a wider population to put a dollar value on the intangible factors residents enjoy from simply having a professional franchise, whether they go to games or not. Based on results from seven studies conducted in the 2000s and 2010s, “non-use values” amount to “13% of total capital construction costs and 16% of public contributions,” suggesting that “intangible social benefits of hosting professional sports teams are well below levels needed to justify typical subsidies.”

In looking at news coverage of public subsidy proposals for sports franchises, the authors note that “economic impact estimates from advocacy reports may be repeated without external validation of credibility, and press release statements from stadium boosters are quoted in stories without critical assessment.”

The authors write: “As a potential institutional reform, communities should assess all stadium proposals through referendums and initiatives, a once-common practice which has declined over the last few decades. Public votes ensure that subsidies are congruent with voter preferences and allow time for careful consideration of all relevant costs and benefits, so that voters can make informed decisions.”

Growth Effects of Sports Franchises, Stadiums and Arena: 15 Years Later
Dennis Coates. Chapter from The Economic Impact of Sports Facilities, Franchises, and Events, October 2023.

The study: The author, who conducted foundational research with Brad Humphreys starting in the mid-1990s into how sports stadiums affect per capita income, returns to this question with another 17 years of data, from 1969 to 2011. This analysis adds hockey and soccer franchises in addition to MLB, NFL and NBA — along with the American Basketball Association, which merged with the NBA in 1976 — and covers all urban areas in the U.S., including those without a professional team.

The findings: Average personal income grew about 1.4% per year over the period studied, regardless of whether there was a sports stadium in the area. The economic effects of sports franchises account for less than 1.5% of local economic activity, measured by personal income, wages and salaries, and wages per job.

The author writes: “The results of this exercise are largely consistent with the findings of Coates and Humphreys and of numerous other studies that have found that the effect of sports franchises and stadium and arena construction on local economies is weak or nonexistent. Indeed, franchises, stadiums, and arenas may be harmful rather than beneficial to the local community.”

Do Local Businesses Benefit from Sports Facilities? The Case of Major League Sports Stadiums and Arenas
Timur Abbiasov and Dmitry Sedov. Regional Science and Urban Economics, January 2023.

The study: The authors explore a single economic consequence of sports stadiums — foot traffic to nearby retail and food establishments — in a single year, 2018, for MLB NBA, NFL and NHL franchises. Precise foot traffic for 92 sports facilities and surrounding businesses is from SafeGraph, a company that tracks “location data of mobile devices with installed participating applications,” the authors write.

They acknowledge that “the grounds for subsidizing professional sports are weak,” based on past research, but also cite news reports suggesting businesses near sports stadiums suffered curtailed revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings: Every 100 visits to a baseball stadium generates 29 visits to nearby restaurants and similar establishments, and six visits to retail stores. The authors find similar results for football stadiums, but little business sale spillover for basketball and hockey arenas. The authors note that professional football and baseball games typically draw much larger crowds than basketball and hockey games.

Basketball and hockey games have a slight negative effect on foot traffic to health, finance and education-related businesses. The authors note that these sports often have arenas located in central business districts, which may lead people who are not going to a game to avoid those areas during game time.

The authors “find that a median sports facility generates approximately $11.3 million of annual additional spending for food and accommodation and retail businesses, with the aggregate spillovers varying substantially across facilities and sports.”

They do not account for negative effects of sports stadiums — such as increased crime, as explained in the next paper — or the revenue of nearby businesses compared with the public costs of building a stadium or improving an existing one.

The authors write: “Our results indicate that the chances of a community economically benefitting from a sports facility via the spillover channel are higher if the facility hosts a popular team and is visited frequently.”

The Impact of Professional Sports Franchises and Venues on Local Economies: A Comprehensive Survey
John Charles Bradbury, Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys. Journal of Economic Surveys, September 2022.

The study: The authors review the findings of more than 130 studies on economic outcomes of sports stadiums published between 1974 and 2022, the bulk of them published since 2000.

The findings: Local economic activity is by and large unaffected by sports stadiums, “and the level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits,” the authors write. There is “deep agreement in research findings” that “sports venues are not an appropriate channel for local development policy,” they add.

Sports stadiums can lead to positive effects for communities, such as improved amenities, like pedestrian-friendly zones. But they also come with negative effects. For example, research links sports events with crime. The “positive association between crime and sporting events is perhaps the most robust empirical finding in the economic effects of sports literature,” the authors write.

Why do sports stadiums continue to garner public subsidies? Among other reasons, such as team owners threatening to relocate, the authors note that the benefits of sports stadium subsidies are concentrated in a few hands — namely and primarily the owners.

Costs, meanwhile, are spread across taxpayers. The public cost of Camden Yards in Baltimore came to $15 per local household per year, according to research from the Brookings Institution that the authors cite. They suggest this creates a situation in which wealthy beneficiaries have great incentive to lobby politicians and advertise in favor of subsidies, with little incentive to mobilize opposition because each taxpayer’s individual cost may be low.

The authors write: “Though findings have become more nuanced, recent analyses continue to confirm the decades-old consensus of very limited economic impacts of professional sports teams and stadiums. Even with added nonpecuniary social benefits from quality-of-life externalities and civic pride, welfare improvements from hosting teams tend to fall well short of covering public outlays.”

Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds and the Financing of Professional Sports Stadiums
Austin Drukker, Ted Gayer and Alexander Gold. National Tax Journal, March 2020.

The study: Of the 57 stadiums built in the past two decades for the four largest American sports leagues, about 4 in 10 were financed at least in part with municipal bonds exempt from federal taxes. State or local governments issue the bonds, then the interest bond buyers earn is exempt from federal taxes, meaning “tax-exempt municipal bonds confer an indirect federal subsidy to the issuers,” the authors write. Bond buyers accept lower interest rates — saving interest payment dollars for states and localities — because they know they will get a tax break on their investment return.

NFL stadiums are the most expensive, with an average cost of $1 billion. But baseball stadiums are most heavily financed through tax-exempt bonds. On average, $466 million of baseball stadium costs are financed through such bonds. The authors examine the estimated value of those bonds issued since 2000.

The findings: The value of the federal tax exemption is $3.6 billion across the $16.7 billion worth of bonds issued to finance stadium construction, the authors estimate. But the estimated loss in federal tax revenue is considerably higher: $4.3 billion. The authors explain that the reason for the difference is that a portion of bond buyers would still buy those bonds at a lower return rate than the subsidy offers.

The authors write: “Most residents of, say, New York, Massachusetts, or California — unless they are avid fans — gain nothing from the Washington-area football team’s decision to locate in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia. Yet, under current federal law, taxpayers throughout the country ultimately subsidize the stadium, wherever it is located … Ultimately, the problem is one of rent seeking, since professional sports leagues are able to extract local and federal subsidies by exerting concentrated power while the costs of the subsidies are diffuse.”

Economic Development Effects of Major and Minor League Teams and Stadiums
Nola Agha and Daniel Rascher. Journal of Sports Economics, November 2020.

The study: The authors explore whether new stadiums for major and minor league teams affect economic development, measured by employment and business growth. They use Census Bureau data from 2004 to 2012 covering 871 markets. There were 65 new teams, 67 teams that departed a city and 68 new stadiums built during the period studied. The included top-tier professional leagues and their development affiliates are MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Soccer, and the Women’s National Basketball Association. The WNBA saw three teams join and five leave the league but was the only professional league without a new arena during the period studied.

The findings: The authors note that much research has focused on the economic effects of major league venues. Stadiums and arenas built between 2000 and 2018 cost more than $40 billion total. Spending on minor league venues account for a sizeable chunk over that time — $9.6 billion, according to the authors, and many of those developmental team venues are in the same market as major league teams.

On the whole, new major league teams and new stadiums do not affect economic development, and the findings suggest teams tend to enter markets with strong employment and business growth. New minor league sports teams also do not tend to affect employment, but for markets between 100,000 and 499,000 people, the findings suggest that new minor league sports stadiums can lead to a slight uptick in new businesses.

The authors write: “Overall, we find no substantial evidence that entry of a new team or stadium is associated with any net gains related to economic development, other than for minor league team entry in smaller markets and employment effects limited to the period of construction.”

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In the days after NASCAR banned Confederate flags from its events and properties, journalists and political commentators have raised questions about why the auto racing giant took so long to make the change and how its fans, primarily white men, will respond in the coming months and years.

To fully understand NASCAR’s decision and its impact, researcher Joshua I. Newman suggests studying the history of NASCAR, its ties to conservative politics and its role in developing stock car racing as a sport that mostly attracts white drivers and white fans.

Newman, a professor of media, politics and cultural studies at Florida State University, has studied the relationship between NASCAR and U.S. politics for more than a decade. He has co-authored several peer-reviewed research papers on the topic as well as a book, Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism.

His prediction: A backlash from traditional fans against NASCAR’s new stance against the Confederate flag, a symbol of racism often used by white supremacists. Defenders of the flag say it doesn’t represent hate — that it’s a tribute to their Southern heritage and veterans of the Confederate Army.

“These are folks who see the sport — as it has evolved — as a last bastion of Old South conservatism and traditionalism,” Newman told Journalist’s Resource by email. “The removal of the flag effectively signals the end of their ability to use the races to promote not just nostalgia for old times there not forgotten, but for Old South racial and gender politics that have been platformed at NASCAR for decades.”

We asked Newman, who also serves on the editorial board of the Sociology of Sport Journal, for tips to help journalists better understand and report on the link between NASCAR and U.S. politics. Here are five tips, based on his guidance.

1. Read up on NASCAR’s historic alignment with conservative politicians and issues.

Conservative politicians have long associated themselves with stock car racing, Newman pointed out. NASCAR’s founder, Bill France, and other members of the France family with top positions in the business have publicly supported conservative candidates. In 1972, France managed the presidential campaign of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist.

Newman discusses NASCAR’s ties to the Republican Party in a paper that appeared in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport in 2007. He delves deeper in his book.

“What has been consistent throughout the sport’s history is that only conservative politicians have been welcomed to speak, drive a pace car, or make a public appearance at a race weekend,” Newman explained. NASCAR’s target market, he added, “came to overlap with the ‘base’ of the Republican Party in the latter part of the 20th century — and a synergy was formed between a sport brand and a political movement.”

“Think of a NASCAR race as a ready-made political rally 10 times the scale of what was on offer in Oklahoma late last week,” Newman asserted, referring to President Donald Trump’s political rally in Tulsa, held the day after Juneteenth, the annual celebration of Black emancipation from slavery in the U.S.

2. Scrutinize NASCAR’s role in developing stock car racing as a sport that promoted and celebrated the Confederate flag.

Look into the partnerships NASCAR and racetrack owners have had with vendors that sell Confederate memorabilia. Selling such merchandise has been good business for NASCAR and its affiliates, Newman advised.

“Ask NASCAR what role they have historically played in bringing the Confederate flag into the superspeedway spaces,” he suggested. “NASCAR seems to be transposing the burden of how these flags came to be popular symbols at their races onto the fans. But in the early days, track owners and even the league officials often adorned the spaces with these symbols.”

Years ago, a man dressed as a Confederate soldier would ride on the hood of the winning car, waving a Confederate flag, at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. The flag has long been a fixture at racing events, whether worn on fans’ clothing, flown atop recreational vehicles parked on the infield or waved by people watching the race.

Newman noted that NASCAR’s success in building its brand identity is a result of “promoting certain symbols, collaborating with certain brands and vendors, largely excluding certain drivers (drivers of color and women drivers), and aligning with certain politicians over the years.”

3. Note that the sport began to shift culturally before the flag ban.

In recent years, NASCAR officials have been trying to bring more women and racial and ethnic minorities to the sport. In 2004, for example, the auto racing league launched its Drive for Diversity program, which helps women and minorities pursue career opportunities within NASCAR, including as drivers and members of pit crews.

Driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace, who initiated the Confederate flag ban, is a graduate of that program, according to his personal website. Wallace made NASCAR history earlier this month when he drove a car featuring a paint scheme dedicated to the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement in a race at Martinsville Speedway, located in Virginia.

NASCAR recently announced it had named Brandon Thompson to a newly created position — vice president, diversity and inclusion — to lead its “strategy for diversity and inclusion, as well as programs and initiatives designed to champion and enhance diversity across the NASCAR industry.”

“In the long term, the sport will change,” Newman wrote to JR. “It might still serve as sporting shorthand for the Republican Party, at least for a while, but Bubba Wallace is breaking a number of cultural fixities in the sport loose, bringing in new fans.”

4. Follow the money — from race sponsors to NASCAR to the Republican Party.

Identify the companies and organizations that have sponsored races and drivers over the decades. Find out which political candidates and organizations have received public or financial support from prominent NASCAR drivers, officials and racetrack owners. Look into the different kinds of government assistance NASCAR receives.

“Look at the grants NASCAR gets from state governments,” Newman recommended. “Look at the relaxed tax deals they get for track developments.”

One place to start is the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics and its effect on U.S. elections and policy. The center’s website offers information on how much money and to whom NASCAR affiliates, such as its employees, owners and political action committee, have donated.

5. Pay attention to the way sports are used in politics.

For generations, sports have been an important vehicle for promoting certain political ideologies, Newman explained. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick drew nationwide criticism and praise in 2016 when he declined to stand for the national anthem, a protest against racial injustice and police brutality. That year, professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe made national headlines for emulating Kaepernick by kneeling during the anthem at an international match.

“Many people tend to see the politics in the acts of Colin Kaepernick or Megan Rapinoe but ignore how deeply political an assemblage of 200,000 almost exclusively white stockcar fans saluting a flag, a fighter jet flyover, or a head of state, can be,” Newman wrote to JR.

For additional insights into why the sport remains unattractive to some groups, Newman suggested seeking out people who avoid NASCAR.

“Talk to folks who don’t go to NASCAR events,” he urged. “The best way to understand NASCAR’s politics is to see who is excluded, and why they would avoid or feel unsafe at these events.”

Looking for more information on the Confederate flag? Check out our collection of research, which examines its use as a historical symbol and its role in U.S. politics.

If you need research on sports topics, take a look at our write-ups on high school football concussions, performance-enhancing drugs and the impact of youth sports on leadership skills.

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Money and illegal drugs are inextricable. According to a 2014 RAND Corporation study commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, each year drug users buy about $100 billion combined worth of marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. The economic cost of opioid abuse, overdose and treatment alone reached $78.5 billion in the U.S. in 2013, according to one of the most recent and comprehensive studies from the National Institutes of Health.

The Internet adds a modern wrinkle to the image of the drug pusher on the street corner. Many buyers and sellers now transact anonymously on the darknet, a blanket term for hidden online networks where illegal marketplaces operate. But drug markets, whether virtual or real, also bear very real human costs. There were more than 70,000 drug-overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2017, the most recent year of data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — nearly double the number of road fatalities.

From exploding cryptocurrency markets financing the darknet, to OxyContin fueling the heroin epidemic, to hedonistic lifestyles and steroid-tinged baseball sluggers, this is our roundup of recent research exploring the wide-ranging relationship between economics and drugs.

Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies?

Foley, Sean; Karlsen, Jonathan R.; Putniņš, Tālis J. The Review of Financial Studies. May 2019.

Each year, $76 billion worth of illegal transactions are made with the cryptocurrency bitcoin — not far off from the size of traditional illegal drug markets in the U.S. and Europe, according to the authors.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are entirely digital and operate independently of official currencies, like the U.S. dollar. Each bitcoin has a unique identifier, in the same way each dollar bill has a unique serial number. Cryptocurrencies allow users to engage in secure financial transactions without having to go through a third party like a bank. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market value.

But cryptocurrencies are not legal tender in the U.S. and the federal government does not insure them. Legal tender just means a currency is backed by law and can be used “for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.” A buyer and seller can still agree to transact using non-legal tender. Someone might be willing to exchange an antique table for one bitcoin, or a box of lightbulbs, or car washes for a month, or anything else.

The authors begin with a database of all bitcoin transactions from January 2009 to April 2017 — 815 million distinct transactions. They remove several million transactions from the total, such as transactions of less than $1 and transactions that represent a seller providing change for a sale. They’re left with 606 million transactions worth $1.9 trillion.

To identify a sample of illegal users, the authors start by matching bitcoin identifiers taken from law enforcement bitcoin auctions with bitcoin identifiers in their database — this method identified 1,016 illegal users. Law enforcement agencies often auction seized assets, like cars and houses, and bitcoins are no different.

The authors then use central accounts where darknet marketplaces deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies and identify six million darknet users, who the authors assume are engaging in illegal activity by virtue of being on the darknet. Finally, the authors identify users from darknet forums, where users often post bitcoin identifiers, to capture users not caught by law enforcement or not otherwise identified through darknet transactions. In all, the authors build a sample of 6,223,359 illegal bitcoin users, accounting for nearly one-third of the 606 million transactions and 6% of all users.

Here’s some of what they found:

• Each year there are $76 billion worth of illegal drug and other transactions that use bitcoin.
• People who use bitcoin illegally often transact with the same parties many times. Their transactions tend to be smaller and they engage in more transactions than bitcoin investors.
• As mainstream interest in bitcoin increases and other cryptocurrencies emerge, illegal bitcoin transactions decline.
• Online illegal drug marketplaces promote drug use but there may be benefits compared to drug transactions that happen on the street, including reduced violence and safer drugs because online vendors rely on positive user feedback.

“Our paper suggests that a significant component of the intrinsic value of bitcoin as a payment system derives from its use in facilitating illegal trade,” the authors find. “This has ethical implications for those that view bitcoin as an investment, as well as valuation implications.”

Instantly Hooked? Freebies and Samples of Opioids, Cannabis, MDMA, and Other Drugs in an Illicit E-Commerce Market

Ladegaard, Isak. Journal of Drug Issues. December 2017.

Stories of drug dealers offering samples to lure new customers dot the news media. It’s a narrative that has existed for at least a century. But it’s a narrative that academia doesn’t back, according to Ladegaard. In fact, research shows the opposite: street drug dealers rarely provide samples except occasionally to established customers.

Online, however, the freebie is much more common than in conventional drug markets, Ladegaard finds. He collected data from an online illegal drug marketplace over 305 days in 2014 and 2015 and analyzed 2,218 posts about free samples in the market’s forum to explore the modern approach to this old story.

Sellers in the marketplace offered hundreds of almost-free samples or promos of nearly all major drugs — cannabis, stimulants, prescription drugs, ecstasy and psychedelics. These samples weren’t entirely free because customers were often asked to pay nominal fees, such as for shipping. Ladegaard also identified 89 almost-free samples of opioids. Thousands more samples were available across drug categories at low-but-not-free prices. Ladegaard capped low-cost samples at about $50.

Many drug sellers, in fact, do not provide samples in order to get users hooked and do not want to provide samples to people already addicted, Ladegaard finds. Sellers largely want reputable reviewers to try their product and leave feedback.

“Many vendors preferred to distribute samples to established reviewers, who make up a role that is not found in other drug markets: the drug critic,” Ladegaard writes. “Through critics, dealers can demonstrate product quality, adequate packing methods, shipping speed, and customer service, all of which are markers of a good dealer.”

Life in the Fast Lane: Drugs, Hedonistic Lifestyles, and Economic Crime

Felson, Richard B.; et. al. Crime & Delinquency. September 2018.

Does a drug-fueled lifestyle lead to economic crime — crime committed for financial gain — or is it the other way around? The authors examine data from 715 male offenders locked up in Nebraska and find that hedonism and economic crime often exist in a cycle where it is difficult to suss out the chicken from the egg.

They distinguished offenders who use marijuana — “because it is less addictive and less likely to pose a financial burden” — from those who use hard drugs, like crack and heroin. They also identified offenders as heavy or less-than-heavy alcohol drinkers. This is some of what the authors found:

• Offenders who used hard drugs every day were more likely to commit property crime in the following month. Those who used hard drugs less frequently were no more likely to commit property crime than those who abstained.
• Likewise, those who committed property crimes were more likely to use hard drugs, marijuana, and alcohol in the following month. “We suggested that the money offenders earn from economic crimes increases their consumption of both legal and illegal goods and services,” the authors write.
• Offenders who sold drugs were more likely to use drugs than those who committed property crime, but they were no more likely to use alcohol.
• They do not find explanations for how motives and opportunity drive the cycle. “We think it is reasonable to assume that some offenders are motivated to commit economic crime for drugs and other hedonistic activities and then use their proceeds for that purpose,” they write. “We think it is also reasonable to assume that some offenders may have committed the economic crime without any idea of how they were going to spend the proceeds.”
• These results are not generalizable to the general population. The data describe serious offenders, and most people in the U.S. are not serious criminals.

“Note that the reciprocal relationship between economic crimes and drug use has policy implications,” the authors write. “The results suggest that reducing economic crime would reduce drug use and reducing drug use would affect the frequency of economic crime.”

Capitalizing on Criminal Accomplices: Considering the Relationship between Co-offending and Illegal Earnings

Rowan, Zachary R.; McGloin, Jean Marie; Nguyen, Holly. Justice Quarterly. April 2017.

The authors explore the economic benefits of having an accomplice to commit crime, including illegal drug sales, and the relationship between young people who abuse drugs and their likelihood to commit economic crime. The authors use data from a longitudinal study of 1,354 14-to-17-year-olds who committed a serious offense in Maricopa County, Ariz., or Philadelphia County, Penn. They focus on 892 young people who committed a crime with someone else.

Two things they find are positively associated with earning money through crime: being around peers who are criminally active, and drug dependency. They cite previous research showing that offenders who are drug dependent tend to earn more from illegal markets than legal work.

“Individuals who are dependent on drugs may also be more enmeshed in criminal networks, including suppliers and fellow users, and therefore may have access to a larger pool of potential accomplices for co-offending,” the authors write.

Supply-Side Drug Policy in the Presence of Substitutes: Evidence from the Introduction of Abuse-Deterrent Opioids

Alpert, Abby; Powell, David; Pacula, Rosalie Liccardo. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. November 2018.

A shock hit the illegal opioid market when Purdue Pharma reformulated OxyContin in 2010. The reformulation made it harder to crush the pills. Previously, recreational users would crush OxyContin to get a 12-hour dose of oxycodone — the main active ingredient — all at once. In this research, the authors explore the supply-side disruptions that followed after the new OxyContin hit the market. JR covered this research when it came out, but it’s worth repeating the topline findings:

• OxyContin misuse declined by about 40% over the 4 years following the reformulation.
• With less supply of crushable OxyContin, users turned to other drugs, including heroin.
• States with high rates of OxyContin misuse before the reformulation saw a statistically significant increase in heroin deaths. Each percentage point higher initial rate of OxyContin misuse led to 2.2 more deaths from heroin per 100,000 people in 2013.
• Across states, each percentage point reduction in OxyContin misuse led to an additional 3.1 heroin deaths per 100,000 people.
• Nationally, as much of 80 percent of the threefold increase in heroin deaths from 2010 to 2013 may be due to OxyContin reformulation.

“This combination of results demonstrates that the reformulation simply shifted deaths from one drug to another without reducing total mortality — suggesting that consumer-side substitution completely unraveled the benefits of the reformulation,” the authors write.

The Competitive Effects of Performance-Enhancing Drugs: MLB in the Posttesting Era

Brave, Scott A.; Roberts, Kevin A. Journal of Sports Economics. December 2018.

Steroid abuse in Major League Baseball was arguably the biggest sports story in the U.S. during the late-1990s and early 2000s. Sluggers like Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro testified before Congress in 2005, facing lawmakers who grilled them on their alleged use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. “We’re long past the point where we can count on Major League Baseball to fix its own problems,” then-Representative Henry Waxman said during the hearings.

But MLB did eventually build a robust drug-testing program, “one of the strongest of its kind in professional sports,” the authors write. The performance-enhancing drug testing program MLB enacted in 2005 has restored integrity to America’s pastime, but there has also been a bottom-dollar impact.

The authors take financial data for each major league club as reported in Forbes to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of performance-enhancing drug testing. Based on past research, they assume that a major league suspension negatively impacts attendance and gate revenues. A team saves some money because it does not have to pay a suspended player, but that player won’t be contributing to wins, and fewer wins typically means less gate revenue. Suspended minor league players don’t directly impact the major league club’s current profits, but they can impact future profit potential, according to the authors.

Here’s a bit of what they found:

• From 2005 to 2016, about 500 players were suspended — 86% were minor leaguers.
• The suspension of a minor league player means the franchise will lose 1.3% of its value. A major league player being suspended leads a franchise to lose 2.2% of its value.
• In 2005 dollars, the average major league franchise loses $10 million in value per season due to performance-enhancing drug testing.
• The franchise value loss varies widely by team, from a high of $35 million per year for the New York Yankees to a low of $4 million per season for the Toronto Blue Jays. The Yankees had more suspensions than average from 2005 to 2016, while the Blue Jays had fewer.

Elsewhere on JR we cover another prescription drug problem — benzodiazepines — as well as research highlighting the recent and troubling rise in cocaine use and how drug withdrawal in newborns is linked to high unemployment.

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SciLine, a free service hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, aims to strengthen the quality of news coverage by giving reporters easy access to experts and the latest, research-based scientific evidence. They have compiled a helpful list of sources for sports and health reporters who find themselves covering the issue of concussions.

Concussions are a common but enigmatic brain injury. They can happen to anyone, affect individuals vastly differently, and leave no visible mark on the brain. The symptoms of a concussion can be easily mistaken for other conditions and, in some cases, are difficult or even impossible to detect. Concussions have been in the medical lexicon for thousands of years, but their mechanisms of action and long-term health effects are still poorly understood. There is currently no evidence-based treatment for concussions other than rest and their medical management is largely guided by individual expert opinion, which varies considerably. But an emerging body of systematic research, bolstered by increasingly vocal testimony from athletes and other groups at high risk for concussions, is starting to paint a clearer picture of how these injuries work and their potentially serious, lasting consequences.

Here’s some of the scholarship on concussions:

1. A 2014 paper, The First Concussion Crisis: Head Injury and Evidence in Early American Football, published in the American Journal of Public Health, provides an historical review of scientific and societal milestones related to concussions and describes the evolution of the sport and medical communities’ approach to this injury over the last century.
2. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides comprehensive statistics and trends in TBI incidence in its 2017 report, Traumatic Brain Injury-Related Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths – United States 2007 and 2013. One of the report’s key findings is that more attention should be paid to older-adult falls as a major cause of TBI in the U.S.
3. The largest body of concussion research relates to sports- and recreation-related TBI. Several studies of high-school and collegiate athletes point to the elevated risks associated with repeat concussive episodes. A 2015 paper, Epidemiology of sports-related concussion in seven US high school and collegiate sports, published in Injury Epidemiology provides an overview of concussion incidence across different types of sports. A 2010 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Cumulative Effects Associated with Recurrent Concussions in Collegiate Football Players, describes the impact of previous concussion history on risk for future episodes.
4. In 2017, a major study of the brains of deceased American football players published in the JAMA found that 110 out of 111 brains examined had clear signs of significant CTE. This study is one of the largest and most significant direct studies of CTE in the human brain, but importantly, its samples were “self-selected” – including only specimens from athletes who participated in high-contact sports during their adult lives. Another 2017 post-mortem study of deceased soccer players who had exhibited signs of dementia before death found similar physical evidence of extreme CTE.
5. Other recent studies are beginning to shed light on the cumulative contributions of repeat sub-concussive episodes to CTE-related cognitive decline (NeuroImage: Clinical, 2017), as well as how CTE propagates and the specific proteins involved in its destruction of healthy brain cells (PLOS One, 2017).
6. Several studies, including a 2017 epidemiological assessment in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine and a 2018 study of concussion incidence among young athletes in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology show that, contrary to historical assumptions, in many settings, female athletes are at higher concussion risk than their male counterparts, particularly female soccer players. Other studies on neck strength (Journal of Athletic Training, 2017), symptom reporting (Journal of Adolescence, 2017), and hormonal factors (Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2017) are beginning to explore the potential drivers for these gender differences, but more research is needed.
7. A 2016 study, Sports- and Recreation-Related Concussions in U.S. Youth, in the journal Pediatrics, offers one of the most detailed estimates of pediatric sports- and recreation-related concussions in the United States. It finds that American children experience between 1.1 – 1.9 million sports- and recreation-related concussions annually. Other studies in Health Education and Behavior (2017) and Child: Care, Health, and Development (2017) describe the risks and social challenges related to underreporting of concussions among young children and youth athletes. These and other studies emphasize the role of educating parents about ways to reduce concussion risks.
8. Two 2012 papers in Current Translational Geriatrics and Experimental Gerontology Reports—Mild Traumatic Brain Injury among the Geriatric Population and Traumatic Brain Injury in the Elderly: Is it as Bad as we Think?—describe the landscape of risks related to mild traumatic brain injury for elderly adults.
9. A 2018 report, Protecting Warfighters from Blast Injury, published by the Center for a New American Security (an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit think tank) summarizes several studies by the Department of Defense about the incidence and impact of explosive-blast exposures on the brain health of servicemembers. A 2013 report by the CDC to Congress, Understanding the Public Health Problem among Current and Former Military Personnel, found that from 2000 to 2011, 4.2 percent of servicemembers across all components of the U.S. military were diagnosed with TBI, mostly in the “mild” category. The report also outlines the challenges associated with data gathering on TBI among active duty servicemembers and estimates the economic cost of TBI in the military.
10. A 2018 consortium study of patients in the Veteran’s Health Administration published in Neurology suggests that history of mTBI (even a single episode) may be associated with a 56 percent increased risk for developing Parkinson’s disease. The large sample size is a strength of the study, but it may not fully account for other Parkinson’s disease risk factors in this population, such as alcohol use and post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, overall risk for developing this disease remains very low, even among TBI patients. A 2015 study in Neuropathologica Acta suggests links between repetitive mTBI-induced CTE and elevated risk of Alzehimer’s disease, but more research is needed.
11. A 2015 clinical-literature review in the journal Brain Injury, summarizes the evidence base for existing concussion management strategies and concludes that while promising work is being done, there is a lack of systematic research on standardized treatment protocols for patients following a concussion. A 2016 study of mice with repeat TBI in the American Journal of Pathology offered some of the first direct evidence (albeit in animal models) to support rest as a critical window for restoration of damaged neural networks following brain injury. A 2017 evaluation in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looks specifically at rest as a treatment strategy and finds that while there is evidence to support a brief period of cognitive and physical rest for most concussed patients, more research is needed to define rest-duration, monitoring, and activity-reintroduction protocols.
12. Real-world efficacy of a new TBI blood test approved in 2018 by the FDA remains to be observed and emerging research on the possibility of in-vivo diagnosis of CTE and medications to prevent or reverse CTE symptoms is nascent.

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New research suggests even mild head injuries pose a risk for the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease.

Millions of Americans tune into the Super Bowl each year for a few hours of good, old fashioned entertainment. But as evidence mounts as to the health effects of the sport on its players, America’s favorite pastime starts to look increasingly problematic.

Clashing helmets and high-impact tackles can result in concussions, which, occurring repeatedly over time, can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE has been linked to a host of cognitive and mental health concerns, including memory loss and mood disorders. The disease is a threat not only to professional football players, but to players of contact sports at all levels, as well as military service members exposed to blasts, survivors of abuse and others.

Research presents clear associations between concussions and CTE, but less is known about the effects of milder head injury on the brain.

New research, however, suggests that less serious injuries not linked to concussions still can lead to traumatic brain injury and development of the early signs of CTE. In other words, injuries that are perceived as less risky — par for the course, even — in sports might have grave consequences for players.

The researchers — an international group led by scholars from Boston University’s School of Medicine — drew these conclusions after a number of experiments. Comparing sections of brains from deceased teenage athletes who experienced mild head injuries to demographically similar samples without head injuries, they found in the former group signs indicative of CTE. One such indicator was the presence of tau protein. The accretion of this protein in the brain leads to the degeneration of neurons.

The scholars developed a means of delivering a head-impact injury to mice without inducing concussion to further examine the brain pathologies present after such injuries. When they examined the mice brains, they found similar pathologies indicative of CTE as in the brains of the teenage athletes. The scholars conclude that these findings suggest milder impact injuries not associated with concussions might still pose a significant risk.

The National Football League, along with other institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, funded this research.

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For many Americans, football is quintessential to the high school experience. But researchers have begun to worry about long-term risks from the violent blows and concussions players receive on the field. Many questions remain unanswered, but the findings are so serious that some former players are calling for a ban on the sport.

Football players are not the only athletes who face risks, of course. Hockey, lacrosse and other sports can also lead to head injuries. But tackle football is the most popular high school sport in America, with over 1 million participants a year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, an intramural rules-making body.

And football players suffer more concussions than any other high school athletes, according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Athletic Training. During a game, football players are 16 times more likely to suffer a concussion than baseball players and four times more than male basketball players. (For girls, the study found soccer to be the most dangerous high school sport, followed by lacrosse.) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2.4 high school football players die per year due to traumatic head injuries.

A concussion is a type of brain injury that often results in a temporary loss of consciousness. According to the National Institutes of Health, a concussion “happens when a hit to the head or body causes your head and brain to move rapidly back and forth. This sudden movement can cause the brain to bounce around or twist in the skull, creating chemical changes in your brain. Sometimes it can also stretch and damage your brain cells.” A 2017 paper in the Annals of Neurology finds that a concussion in adolescence is associated with a higher risk of developing multiple sclerosis later.

Repeated concussions may cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that can only be diagnosed during an autopsy, and which has been associated with memory loss and depression in former football players. Post-concussion syndrome and traumatic brain injury (a severe concussion) are related conditions. Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, who killed himself in 2017 at age 27 while serving time for murder, was found after his death to have had a severe case of CTE. A 2017 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found evidence of CTE in 110 of 111 deceased National Football League players. (That study has been criticized because the brains were donated by family members concerned about their deceased loved one’s health; the findings may not be representative of all football players.)

Yet a longitudinal 2017 study of almost 4,000 high school football players finds no relationship between playing football and cognition or mental health later in life, when the men were 65. This study, likewise published in JAMA, also stressed the trade offs — that sportiness has health benefits: Men who had played football in high school were more physically active at age 35 than non-players.

Many questions remain. Could the risks of football be growing? Players these days are bigger and stronger than they were in the 1950s and ‘60s, according to a 2017 study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. But protective gear today is more sophisticated (though a poorly fitting helmet can increase the severity of concussions).

Then again, some researchers have suggested that better gear could be changing how the game is played, causing players to “lead with their heads,” increasing their chances of a concussion. The CDC has also raised that concern.

More research is needed. With a million young men actively engaged on the field, football’s risks are bound to attract attention. The peer-reviewed research cited below includes some of the latest findings.

Citations:

• Collins, Christy L.; et al. “Concussion Characteristics in High School Football by Helmet Age/Recondition Status, Manufacturer, and Model.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016. DOI: 10.1177/0363546516629626.
• Deshpande, Sameer; et al. “Association of Playing High School Football With Cognition and Mental Health Later in Life.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2017. DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2017.1317.
• Greenhill, Dustin; et al. “Inadequate Helmet Fit Increases Concussion Severity in American High School Football Players.” Sports Health, 2016. DOI: 10.1177/1941738116639027.
• Janssen, Pieter; et al. “High School Football and Late-Life Risk of Neurodegenerative Syndromes, 1956-1970.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2016.09.004.
• Kucera, Kristen L.; et al. “Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord Fatalities Among High School and College Football Players — United States, 2005-2014.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2017. DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6552a2.
• Mez, Jesse; et al. “Clinicopathological Evaluation of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Players of American Football.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2017. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.8334.
• Montgomery, Scott; et al. “Concussion in Adolescence and Risk of Multiple Sclerosis.” Annals of Neurology, 2017. DOI: 10.1002/ana.25036.
• O’Connor, Kathryn L.; et al. “Epidemiology of Sport-Related Concussions in High School Athletes: National Athletic Treatment, Injury and Outcomes Network (NATION), 2011–2012 Through 2013–2014.” Journal of Athletic Training, 2017. DOI: 10.4085/1062-6050-52.1.15.
• Weihong, Yuan; et al. “Neck Collar with Mild Jugular Vein Compression Ameliorates Brain Activation Changes During a Working Memory Task After a Season of High School Football.” Journal of Neurotrauma, 2017. DOI: 10.1089/neu.2016.4834.

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People are unlikely to bet against their own preferences in sports or politics, new research suggests, even when such “emotional hedging” may be in their interest.

The issue: Imagine you are offered to bet against your ideal political candidate or favorite team — to bet the Yankees will beat the Red Sox when you are an incorrigible Sox fan, for example, or your favorite politician for president. What’s more, the bet is free. No need to lay out any cash; there’s no risk to you.

Would you take the bet? Most Americans would not.

Such a wager is sometimes called “emotional hedging.” If the Red Sox lose, at least you’ll collect some cash, which should reduce your disappointment.

Betting only on your favorite may maximize your gains – if the Red Sox win, you enjoy cash as well as the satisfaction of seeing your team win. But it also risks maximizing your losses – if the Red Sox lose, you get no cash and a heap of disappointment.

Anyone who closely identified with a candidate in the recent presidential election may recognize the quandary. Many supporters of one candidate could not fathom their contender losing, and may even have exaggerated the threat of the other winning, a new paper suggests.

An academic study worth reading: “Betting Your Favorite to Win: Costly Reluctance to Hedge Desired Outcomes,” published in Management Science, 2016.

Study summary: Researchers at Boston University and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business design six tests to see if people seek emotional hedges to “offset the potential disappointment of an undesirable future outcome.” The tests hinge on presidential elections, baseball, American football and several college sports. The researchers control for wishful thinking, the rewards offered, superstitions and moral aversion.

They believe people will not bet against something that is central to their identity, that the way their identity is associated with a team or candidate “introduces a disincentive to hedge,” a “motivational conflict.”

Findings:

• “A majority of participants preferred to increase potential gains and losses by betting on their candidate or team to win rather than reduce potential losses and gains by betting on their candidate or team to lose.”

• A reluctance to hedge is not based on fear of reprisals, but rather something more like hesitation to accept winnings earned through disloyalty.

• “A reluctance to hedge is not due to the act of violating a social norm by placing a monetary value on a relationship.”

• There is no evidence this reluctance is based on superstitions or a “moral aversion to profiting from suffering,” though it is possible that betting against one’s team feels like a moral transgression.

• Fans had no reluctance to gamble on the suffering of the opposing team’s supporters.

• Likening such hedges to insurance did not undo fans’ reluctance. Insurance – though it is an example of hedging against an undesirable outcome – is different. You “lose” the cash you pay for fire insurance premiums, but acknowledge those payments are better than losing your whole house to conflagration. This kind of hedging does not impact your emotional identity. A house on fire is bad. Period.

• This reluctance leads to riskier behavior – people put “all of their eggs in one basket.” People may forego “substantial economic incentives,” for example by failing to diversify their stock portfolio.

Other research:

Journalist’s Resource has reviewed papers on how young gamblers are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior and on who plays the lottery, and why.

Powerful people are more likely to act on their decisions than those who are ambivalent, but people who are both powerful and ambivalent are less likely to act than those who feel powerless, suggests a 2016 paper in Psychological Science.

This classic paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives explains risk aversion.

Keywords: Hedging, decision making, elections, voting, betting, gambling, behavior

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The Olympics are about competition and heroics and national pride. But they are also about big business. Host cities invest deeply in the games — the Sochi Winter Olympics, for example, cost over $50 billion — with the hope of reaping sizable gains for the local and national economy through tourism, marketing and other means. So what have we learned about hosting the Olympics and the proverbial “bottom line”?

Of course, it’s often hard to discern what the hard facts are amid all the hoopla around such global sporting mega-events. Long after the crowds vanish, it turns out that some host cities and countries ended up taking large net losses on their investments. Others have seen better outcomes; the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics are sometimes cited as a model of reasonable success. The consequences of the 2012 London Olympics continue to be analyzed; early U.K. government estimates suggest there was substantial benefit, though independent analyses urge caution, as conclusions are likely premature. Sochi was supposed to cost a mere $12 billion.

Scholars have long worked on models to estimate the benefits in advance (“ex ante” models) and how to properly capture all of the true returns over time after the events. It’s not an easy area of inquiry. There are “intangibles,” as some researchers point out, that need to be taken into consideration. As Vancouver found out when it hosted the 2010 winter games — and as Munich, Montreal and Moscow and others did before — estimates can be just that: a best guess, subject to the rough edges of reality. Even Beijing’s astonishing new building and infrastructure for the 2008 summer games hasn’t worn well; and that’s a familiar fate in other host cities of bygone days. In any case, there are some good online resources that put such issues in broader research context; and some good analytical journalism — see The Economist‘s reporting here, here and here, as well as this NPR piece and this Atlantic blog — can help inform coverage.

We’ve gathered studies that relate to economics and cost-benefit analysis. We’ve tried to include at least one on most modern games.

“Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics”
Baade, Robert A.; Matheson, Victor A. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2016. doi: 10.1257/jep.30.2.201.

Abstract: “In this paper, we explore the costs and benefits of hosting the Olympic Games. On the cost side, there are three major categories: general infrastructure such as transportation and housing to accommodate athletes and fans; specific sports infrastructure required for competition venues; and operational costs, including general administration as well as the opening and closing ceremony and security. Three major categories of benefits also exist: the short-run benefits of tourist spending during the Games; the long-run benefits or the “Olympic legacy” which might include improvements in infrastructure and increased trade, foreign investment, or tourism after the Games; and intangible benefits such as the “feel-good effect” or civic pride. Each of these costs and benefits will be addressed in turn, but the overwhelming conclusion is that in most cases the Olympics are a money-losing proposition for host cities; they result in positive net benefits only under very specific and unusual circumstances. Furthermore, the cost–benefit proposition is worse for cities in developing countries than for those in the industrialized world. In closing, we discuss why what looks like an increasingly poor investment decision on the part of cities still receives significant bidding interest and whether changes in the bidding process of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will improve outcomes for potential hosts.”

“After Sochi 2014: costs and impacts of Russia’s Olympic Games”
Müller, Martin. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2015. doi: 10.1080/15387216.2015.1040432.

Abstract: “This paper assesses the outcomes of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, examining the costs and economic impacts of the event, the prospects for the long-term use of venues and infrastructure, and the attitudes of the global and the Russian population. Total costs were $55 billion, having increased 4.5 times from $12 billion at the time of the bid. Of this total, about $16 billion were sports-related costs. After accounting for inflation, this makes Sochi the second-most expensive Olympics ever in terms of sports-related costs and the most expensive Olympics in terms of cost per event. With a public share of 96.5 percent of funding, the Sochi Games had the highest proportion of public money for any Olympic Games on record. The benefit from this high cost, however, is limited. Extensive construction led to hotel overcapacities, investors defaulted on state-backed loans, and there is no coherent plan for the after use of venues and some of the largest infrastructure projects. As a consequence, the Sochi Olympics will continue to be a burden for the Russian state, with expenses for operation, maintenance, and foregone interest and tax revenue in the order of $1.2 billion per year. The event also did not manage to improve the image of Russia in the world. Among the domestic population, support dropped over the seven years of its implementation, most notably among the local population.”

“The Illusory Economic Gains from Hosting the Olympics World Cup”
Zimbalist, Andrew. World Economics, 2015. ISSN: 1468-1838

Key Points: “Scholarly evidence suggests that hosting either the IOC’s Olympic Games or FIFA’s World Cup event is no economic bargain for the host city or country. 
According to official reports, in London 2012, the city brought in around US$3.5 billion in revenues, and spent in excess US$18 billion – a negative balance of $14 billion plus. 
Political systems in both democratic and authoritarian countries have shown themselves increasingly unwilling or unable to engage in effective long-term event planning. 
Gains will be uneven as long as the monopoly structure of the auction of hosting rights to competing cities and countries from around the world remains in place. ”

“About Winning: The Political Economy of Awarding the World Cup and the Olympic Games”
Szymanski, Stefan. SAIS Review, Winter-Spring 2011, Vol. 31, No. 1, 87-97, doi: 10.1353/sais.2011.0003.

Abstract/findings: “The hosting of major sporting events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup has become the subject of intense competition among nations. Governments seem willing to make large financial commitments in order to win the bidding competition but evidence suggests that the economic impact of this spending is limited. While this outcome is easily understood in terms of rent seeking behavior, it is suggested that organizations such as the IOC and FIFA could better serve their constituents by diverting competition away from lavish provision of facilities towards goals that would raise participation in sports…. The members of the IOC and the FIFA Executive Committees do little to discourage extravagant spending. The memberships of these organizations have frequently been accused of outright corruption in the past, but corruption is only one part of the problem. It is perfectly reasonable for the IOC and FIFA to extract a surplus from the sale of TV and sponsorship rights to fund the global development of sport. However, the unjustified claim that these events produce substantial economic benefits can (a) mislead people into believing that their taxes are being productively spent on social regeneration rather than just funding mass entertainment, and (b) lead some private individuals to invest their own wealth in the expectation that an event will generate returns when it is unlikely to do so.”

“Economic Aspects and the Summer Olympics: A Review of Related Research”
Kasimati, Evangelia. International Journal of Tourism Research, 2003, Vol. 5, 433-444, doi: 10.1002/jtr.449.

Findings: “Covering the period of 1984 through to [estimates of] 2012, all the ex ante [anticipating the event] economic studies indicate the significant role of the Summer Olympic Games in the promotion of the host economy. They highlighted the extension of the Games economic impact well beyond the actual period of the event occurrence itself. Economic growth, increased tourism and additional employment were some of their major findings. However, the high expectations released by most of them could be considered to be potentially biased, because the ambition of those commissioning the studies is to favour the hosting of the Games. This issue has received a great deal of attention from scholars investigating the Games and other mega-events (Mills, 1993; Crompton, 1995; Howard and Crompton, 1995; Kesenne, 1999; Porter, 1999; Preuss, 2000; Baade and Matheson, 2002). Nevertheless, it is our opinion that if the estimation process is made transparent, then the findings are reliable. Taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of all the methods and techniques used, the discussion here shows that ex ante models and forecasts were not confirmed by ex-post analyses and this therefore prompts the need for improved theory.”

“Bidding for the Olympics: Fool’s Gold?”
Baade, R.A.; Matheson, V. Paper in Barros C; Ibrahimo M.; Szymanski , S. (Eds.), Transatlantic Sport: the Comparative Economics of North America and European Sports, 2002, 127-151.

Findings: “The purpose of this paper was to assess the economic impact of the Summer Olympic Games on Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996. In so doing, it was our hope that we could provide some useful information to cities bidding for the Games. It is conceivable that an after-the-fact sober appraisal of the economic contribution of the Games could help temper some of the excesses that have been brought to light by the well-publicized ‘overzealous’ behavior of those who succeeded in bringing the Olympics to Salt Lake City and Atlanta. Los Angeles and Atlanta represent an interesting contrast in terms of their approaches to the bidding process. This difference reflects to a substantial extent past financial experiences. In the wake of the financially troubled Montreal and Moscow Olympic Games in 1976 and 1980, only Los Angeles bid for the 1984 Games. This fact explains the absence of significant public sector financial support in Los Angeles, and, perhaps, the private financial success the 1984 Games are thought to have enjoyed. The increase in economic activity attributable to the 1984 Games, as represented by job growth, an estimated 5,043 full-time and part-time jobs using our model, appears to have been entirely transitory, however. There is no economic residue that can be identified once the Games left town. Los Angeles was not visibly affected by the experience; certainly it was not transformed by it. Atlanta represented a return to the extraordinary levels of public spending associated with the Olympic Games in 1976 and 1980, a phenomenon not coincidentally associated with several cities bidding for the right to host the Games… It is not surprising that the best-case scenario for the Atlanta Games of 1996 is consistent with what we could reasonably expect to find for public investments in general. More specifically if beginning in 1994 all the economic growth beyond Atlanta’s normal experience could be attributable to public expenditures in conjunction with the Olympics, Atlanta spent approximately $63,000 to create a permanent full- or part-time job. To create a permanent full-time job equivalent, past public works programs have spent approximately the same amount of money.”

“Resident Perceptions of Mega-Sporting Events: A Non-Host City Perspective of the 2012 London Olympic Games”
Ritchie, Brent W.; Shipway, Richard; Cleeve, Bethany. Journal of Sport and Tourism, 2009, Vol. 14, Issue 2-3, 143-167, doi: 10.1080/14775080902965108.

Abstract: “Despite the growing importance of a ‘triple bottom line’ approach to mega sport event research, limited longitudinal research has been carried out to understand and explain resident perceptions of the impact of such events. The aim of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the social dimension of Olympic tourism development, by exploring resident perceptions of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games within the two respective communities of Weymouth and Portland in England. This paper reports the first stage of a repeated cross-sectional longitudinal study conducted in 2007. It highlights that generally residents were supportive of hosting the event in the local area but were concerned over perceived traffic congestion, parking issues and potential increases in the cost of living. A factor analysis identified five factors that explained 60.5% of the variance in resident perceptions, with the largest factor comprising ‘positive social impacts,’ followed by ‘negative impacts,’ ‘transport issues,’ ‘positive economic impacts’ and ‘price rises.’ Differences were found between these factors and socio-demographic characteristics. Implications for mega event managers and future research are outlined.”

“Mega-events and Housing Costs: Raising the Rent while Raising the Roof?”
Coates, Dennis; Matheson, Victor A. The Annals of Regional Science, 2011, Vol. 46, No. 1, 119-137, doi: 10.1007/s00168-009-0340-5.

Abstract: “This paper examines the relationship between hosting mega-events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, and World Cup and rental housing prices in host cities. If mega-events are amenities for local residents, then rental housing prices can serve as a proxy for estimating residents’ willingness to pay for these amenities. An analysis of rental prices in a panel of American cities from 1993 to 2005 fails to find a consistent impact of mega-events on rental prices. When controls are placed on the regression models to account for nationwide annual fluctuations in rental prices, mega-events generally exhibit little impact on rental prices in cities as a whole and are as likely to reduce rental prices as increase them…. Somewhat stronger evidence exists, however, that mega-events tend to affect rental prices outside of the center city in a fundamentally different manner than in the city core. Atlanta experienced lower rental prices in the central city compared the suburbs both before and after the 1996 Summer Olympics while Salt Lake City witnessed an increase in rental prices in its central city compared to its suburbs before and after the 2002 Winter Olympics.”

“The Impact of the London Olympics on Property Prices”
Kavestos, Georgios. Urban Studies, May 2012, Vol. 49, No. 7, 1453-1470, doi: 10.1177/0042098011415436.

Abstract: “This study estimates the impact of the London 2012 Olympics announcement on property prices. Using a self-constructed dataset of a sample of property transactions, it is estimated that properties in host boroughs are sold between 2.1% and 3.3% higher, depending on the definition of the impact area. A similar investigation based on radius rings suggests that properties up to three miles away from the main Olympic stadium sell for 5% higher. It is estimated that the overall impact on the price of properties in host boroughs amounts to £1.4 billion, having substantial social and financial implications for existing residents.”

“The Olympic Effect”
Rose, Andrew K.; Spiegel, Mark M. The Economic Journal, June 2011, 652-677, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02407.x.

Abstract: “Why should countries offer to host costly ‘mega-events’ such as the Olympic Games? We show that hosting a mega-event increases exports. This effect is statistically robust, permanent and large; trade is over 20% higher for host countries. Interestingly, unsuccessful bids to host the Olympics have a similar impact on exports. We conclude that the Olympic effect on trade is attributable to the signal a country sends when bidding to host the games, rather than the act of actually holding a mega-event. We develop an appropriate formal model and derive conditions under which liberalizing countries will signal through a mega-event bid.”

“The Labor Market Effects of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics”
Baumann, Robert; Engelhardt, Bryan; Matheson, Victor. Working paper series, International Association of Sports Economists, September 2010.

Abstract: “The local, state, and federal governments, along with the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, spent roughly $1.9 billion in direct costs related to planning and hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In this paper, we investigate whether these expenditures increased employment. At the state level, we find strong evidence it increased leisure related industries in the short run and potentially in the long run. However, the results indicate it had no long term impact on trade or total employment.”

“City Branding and the Olympic Effect: A Case Study of Beijing”
Zhang, Li; Zhao, Simon Xiaobin. Cities, October 2009, Vol. 26, Issue 5, Pages 245-254, doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2009.05.002.

Abstract: “City branding is a common practice adopted by many cities in the context of intensified urban competition for mobile resources, markets, opportunities and attention. This paper examines the effectiveness of efforts to brand Beijing, the capital city of China. Based on an analysis of official branding strategies through the Olympics, and an attitudinal survey of peoples’ understanding of Beijing, the paper investigates to what extent the current campaign has caught the city’s good attributes. The paper finds a mismatch between the identity and core values as branded by the city government, and the realities as experienced by visitors and residents. The paper argues that the Beijing Olympics could only have limited impacts on the city’s brand.”

“Assessing the Impact of the 2004 Olympic Games on the Greek Economy: A Small Macroeconometric Model”
Kasimati, Evangelia; Dawson, Peter. Economic Modelling, January 2009, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 139-146, doi: 10.1016/j.econmod.2008.06.006.

Abstract: “This paper examines the impact of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games on the Greek economy. Using a small aggregate macroeconometric model we find evidence to support the view that the Olympics is an event that could successfully boost the economy of the host city by generating benefits that outweigh the preparation cost. Consistent with recent literature in this area, whilst the impact effects are quite strong during the preparation phase and the year the Games took place, the long-term economic legacy effects appear to be quite modest.”

“The Seoul Olympics: Economic Miracle Meets the World”
Bridges, Brian. The International Journal of the History of Sport, December 2008, Vol. 25, No. 14, 1939-1952, doi: 10.1080/09523360802438983.

Abstract: “The 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul were a coming out party for South Korea — a culmination of its efforts to be recognized as an accomplished economic power and a serious international actor. The South Korean leadership undoubtedly looked for accelerated economic growth as well as heightened national consciousness (including awareness of sporting cultures). Yet, the run-up to and the actual hosting of the games also had a dramatic impact on both South Korea’s domestic politics, as it became a factor in the struggle for democratization, and its external relations, most specifically with North Korea and its erstwhile allies. While there were economic benefits and a more subtle impact on South Korean society, national pride, collective memory and sporting culture, it is these political legacies that have been the most profound.”

“The Economic Consequences of the Sydney Olympics”
Madden, John R. Current Issues in Tourism, 2002, Vol. 5, Issue 1, 7-21, doi: 10.1080/13683500208667904.

Abstract: “This paper assesses the economic impact of the 2000 Olympics. It draws on economic modeling I undertook for Arthur Andersen (financial adviser to the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games).The analysis is undertaken with a large-scale multiregional computable general equilibrium model, so as to take into account both the positive and negative flow-on effects of Sydney staging the Games. The effects of Olympics construction and operating expenditure, and of spending by Games visitors and additional tourists are modelled over a 12-year period, under specific assumptions regarding the Australian labour market, capital supply constraints and Australian government policy on foreign debt. Olympics expenditure not funded by Games revenues is modelled as being met by an increase in New South Wales state tax revenues (via a larger revenue base and slightly higher tax rates than would otherwise be the case) and a substantial diversion of government expenditure from non-Olympic to Olympic items. Simulation results indicate that NSW activity is 0.3% higher over the 12-year period due to the Games, but there is little effect on the other states. However, the final outcome is sensitive to the degree the Olympics promotes tourism from overseas and the labour market reaction.”

“National Well-being and International Sports Events”
Kavestos, Georgios; Szymanski, Stefan. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2010, Vol. 31, Issue 2, 158-171, doi:10.1016/j.joep.2009.11.005.

Abstract: “The widely proclaimed economic benefits of hosting major sporting events have received substantial criticism by academic economists and have been shown to be negligible, at best. The aim of this paper is to formally examine the existence of another potential impact: national well-being or the so-called ‘‘feelgood” factor. Using data on self-reported life satisfaction for twelve European countries we test for the impact of hosting and of national athletic success on happiness. Our data covers three different major events: the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship. We find that the ‘‘feelgood” factor associated with hosting football events is large and significant, but that the impact of national athletic success on happiness, while correctly signed, is statistically insignificant.

“Olympic Bidding, Multicultural Nationalism, Terror, and the Epistemological Violence of ‘Making Britain Proud'”
Falcous, Mark; Silk, Michael L. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, October 2010, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 167-186, doi: 10.1111/j.1754-9469.2010.01073.x.

Abstract: “This paper excavates the entanglement of British nationalist identity politics with sport, terrorism, place re-imagining, mega-event bidding, and corporate neoliberalism. We focus on London’s 2012 Olympic bidding and the coalescence of corporate, state, civic, and sporting interests surrounding the national (re)imaginings that characterised the bid. We open with a critical reading of the bid narratives explicating how selective assertions of Britishness were envisioned through the motifs of harmonious multicultural unity, ‘youth,’ and passion for sport. We focus on how these narratives offered up ‘idealised’ multicultural citizens and harmonious diversity as a reactionary form of nationalist ‘pride politics’ (Fortier 2005). We subsequently juxtapose these narratives with a critical reading of English press and political discourse in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 bombings — the day after London was awarded the Olympic games. This juxtaposition reveals the tensions and ambiguities between assertions of inclusive civic nationalism — that apparently transcends ethnic difference — and the geo-politics of the ‘war on terror’ within Britain’s post-imperial self imaginings. Specifically, we tease out the place — and ambiguities — of the 2012 olympics within these imaginings reading the London games as an exemplar of a soft-core ideological spectacle informing selective nationalist narratives within the the context of unfolding neoliberal politics.”

Tags: entertainment, research roundup, sports

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Athletics are a key feature of the high-school experience for most American youth, whether they are athletes or spectators. As of 2009, 38% of high-school seniors were involved in team sports, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The National Federation of State High School Associations announced in late 2014 that sports participation reached a record high of 7.8 million high-school students for the 2013-14 academic year.

While high-school athletics continue to be one of the most popular extracurricular activities for today’s teens, public school districts sometimes struggle to fund such programs. In School Board meetings and government gathering spaces across the country, educators, community leaders and others have debated the benefits and consequences of school-sponsored sports, which often must compete against academic programs for at least a portion of their funding. In recent years, some school districts wrestling with budget constraints have cut back on their sports programs or considered eliminating them completely. Meanwhile, numerous academic studies have explored the issue of student physical activity more broadly, including its effect on children’s mental health and academic outcomes. A 2012 report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics offers a review of 14 studies related to student physical activity and concludes that there is a positive relationship between physical activity and academic performance.

A 2015 report published in the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, “Sports at Work: Anticipated and Persistent Correlates of Participation in High School Athletics,” adds new insights into this issue. Authors Kevin M. Kniffin and Brian Wansink of Cornell University and Mitsuru Shimizu of Southern Illinois University completed two complementary studies to try to gauge whether former student-athletes make better employees. For the first study, 66 adults were asked questions about how they perceive people who participated in different extracurricular activities while in high school. The second study used data from the 2000 University of Illinois Veterans Survey, which collected a variety of information from 931 World War II veterans, to determine how participation in youth sports may have influenced these veterans’ career paths, leadership skills and the likelihood that they volunteer and donate to charity.

Key findings of the first study include:

• People tend to expect former student-athletes to display higher levels of leadership, self-confidence and self-respect than former students who participated in the school band or school yearbook club during high school.
• People tend to expect former student-athletes to be less generous in terms of doing volunteer work and donating to charity when compared to former students who had been involved with the school band or the school yearbook.
• There were no significant differences in how study participants perceived the time management skills of former students who had been involved in sports, the school band or school yearbook.

Key findings of the second study include:

• Of the veterans who were surveyed, those who played at least one varsity sport in high school tended to rate higher scores in categories related to leadership, self-confidence and self-respect than those who did not.
• Former student-athletes were more likely to report that they do volunteer work and donate money to various organizations more than 55 years after graduating high school.
• A larger proportion of former student-athletes reported having had careers in “upper management.”

This report builds on prior research and suggests that participating in youth sports might influence the development of certain desirable skills and values. The authors recommend that questions about participation in youth sports be included in job interviews — even for candidates who are relatively far removed from high school — as such participation might have important implications for a person’s leadership capacity and other personality traits. The authors caution, however, that former athletes might be preferred for these reasons even though such qualities might not be necessary for the job in question. The study highlights the need for closer attention to the relevance of sports in the workplace and the activities of older populations. “Our studies address a surprising dearth of systematic study on the relevance of participation in youth sports for early-career selection preferences as well as late-in-life leadership, personality, and behavior,” the authors state. “Given the popular importance of sports in many people’s lives, closer attention is overdue for understanding sports’ roles in the workplace and beyond — including late-in-life charitable giving and voluntarism.”

Related research: A July 2015 report in the Journal of Adolescent Health, “High School Sports Involvement Diminishes the Association Between Childhood Conduct Disorder and Adult Antisocial Behavior,” indicates that participating in high school sports may help disrupt antisocial behavior that begins in childhood and adolescence. An April 2015 report in Global Pediatric Health, “Reported Sports Participation, Race, Sex, Ethnicity, and Obesity in U.S. Adolescents From NHANES Physical Activity,” explores the relationship between participation in different types of athletic activities and adolescent obesity. A 2013 report in the Journal of Pediatrics, “Incidence of Sports-Related Concussion among Youth Football Players Aged 8-12 Years,” looks at the prevalence and causes of medically-diagnosed concussions among male football players in western Pennsylvania during the 2011 youth football season.

Keywords: sports, athletics, education, achievement, sports and academics, youth sports, youth athletics, student athletes, obesity, competitive sports, football

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From the Scholars Strategy Network, written by Jules Boykoff, Pacific University in Oregon

In May 1970, the International Olympic Committee selected Denver, Colorado to host the 1976 Winter Olympics. But political activists in Colorado organized a campaign against the Games, emphasizing the ecological degradation the Olympics could cause. Protesters deluged the International Olympic Committee with letters imploring officials to relocate the Games, and they combined forces with fiscal-minded allies to put a state bond referendum up for popular vote in which voters rejected funding for the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee had no choice but to change course, ultimately moving the Games to Innsbruck, Austria. Denver became the first city to spurn its selection to host the Olympics.

Ironically, this prominent instance of anti-Olympics dissent came at the tail end of the long reign of Avery Brundage, who headed the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972 and firmly maintained that politics and Olympics shouldn’t mix. As he explained in 1969, “we actively combat the introduction of politics into the Olympic movement and are adamant against the use of the Olympic Games as a tool or as a weapon by any organization.” But, in fact, sports and sporting events reflect larger social and political trends. In recent times, activism challenging the Olympic Games  — and using them as a political stage — has only intensified.

Anti-Olympics activism in the current era

Over time, the Games have become bigger and bigger. The fact that the Games have become a social and economic juggernaut means they provoke activists concerned about their impact. In addition, as exemplified by the bribery scandal that wracked the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, the credibility of the International Olympic Committee has eroded, inviting increased public criticism. Activists focus on typical problems the Olympics can bring — rising debt, displacement of residents, environmental despoliation, and the militarization of public space.

• Sydney Summer Olympics of 2000: In the 1990s the International Olympic Committee started stressing environmental sustainability in public statements. The Sydney Olympics were supposed to be the coming out party for the green Games. But environmentalists noted that the clean-up of the Homebush area industrial zone was done at public expense (rather than instituting a “polluter pays” principle) and the beach volleyball competition was staged at Bondi Beach, an ecologically sensitive spot along the Pacific Ocean. Protesters engaged in direct action to thwart bulldozing there, but were met with force from the police.

• Beijing 2008 Summer Games: The Chinese government spent billions on advance security measures, and Beijing Olympic officials created three “special zones” where people could gather to demonstrate, but activists had to apply for a permit from the Public Security Bureau, supplying personal information along the way — an opening for surveillance. Ahead of the Games more than 1.5 million people were displaced. All this generated dissent from human-rights groups and housing advocates, but street protests were hard to mount and rare.

• Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics: In Vancouver, activists forged an effective alliance. Direct-action oriented protesters teamed up with nongovernmental organizations, civil libertarians, and poets. Indigenous dissidents organized along with anti-poverty boosters, environmentalists, and anarchists. Anti-Olympics activists argued that the Games were taking place on unceded indigenous land, that taxpayer money was being squandered on sports rather than indispensable social services, and that civil liberties were being violated by security forces. In response, activists achieved remarkable, cross-cutting solidarity, carrying out numerous actions before, during, and after the Games.

• London 2012 Summer Olympics: Protesters in London tended to go with the celebratory grain, relying on spoof and wit rather than aggressive protest mobilizations. This was a direct response to heavy-handed police actions before and in the early days of the Games. Many protests focused on corporate sponsors like Dow, McDonalds, and British Petroleum. In one success story, the group 38 Degrees organized an online campaign designed to pressure companies to forgo their tax breaks. In the end, 14 prominent Olympic sponsors agreed to waive their tax-free status.

• Sochi 2014 Winter Games: An anti-gay law passed by the Russian Duma before the Games generated dissent, with groups like Athlete Ally and All Out pressuring the International Olympic Committee to live up to the anti-discrimination principles enshrined in its own Charter. Numerous athletes spoke out against the anti-gay law. During the Games the art and activism collective Pussy Riot staged demonstrations, which were met by forceful police responses. Meanwhile, Circassian activists around the world protested the fact that the Games were taking place on the same land where their ancestors experienced genocide.

What does the future hold?

In 2016, Rio de Janeiro will host the Summer Olympics. This follows the Men’s soccer World Cup, which the country staged in 2014. The summer prior to World Cup saw massive countrywide protests during the Confederations Cup. This spirit of dissent may transfer to 2016 where activists in Rio are challenging the Games’ high sticker price (around $14 billion) as well as displacement to make way for the Games and the destruction of the environment to create an Olympic golf course.

The Olympic Movement is experiencing a slow-motion crisis, and the current President Thomas Bach is well aware of it. He has orchestrated a series of reforms known as Olympic Agenda 2020, which was unanimously approved by the full membership of the International Olympic Committee in December 2014. But this plan is largely aspirational and much must be done to implement its lofty goals. The International Olympic Committee needs to do more to make sure the Olympics fit into the long-term development plans of host cities, rather than appear as an expensive distraction. In addition, there must be improved transparency, starting with ensuring public votes on proposals to host the Olympics, allowing everyone to see the evidence on which votes are based.

Related research: A 2011 study by Stefan Szymanski, “About Winning: The Political Economy of Awarding the World Cup and the Olympic Games” raises questions about the economic benefits of governments making large financial commitments in order to win the bidding competition to host major events such as the Olympic Games.  A 2015 paper that appeared in International Law, “From the 2014 World Cup to the 2016 Summer Olympics: Brazil’s Role in the Global Anti-Corruption Movement,” explores allegations of corruption in international sports and the Olympics and Brazil’s anti-corruption reforms.

The author is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, where this post originally appeared. This piece was edited for Journalist’s Resource.

Key words: Olympic Games, gay rights, indigenous land, activism, anti-discrimination, environmentalists, Boston, host cities, International Olympic Committee

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Joseph “Sepp” Blatter first became president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) in 1998. In 2015, seventeen years later, he was elected for a fifth term, only to suddenly resign just four days later. While FIFA and its partners were no strangers to accusations of corruption — indeed, Blatter’s first election involved charges of bribery — his sudden decision came on the heels of a far-reaching criminal indictment, filed May 20 in the Eastern District of New York. While Blatter himself wasn’t named, 14 federation officials and associates were. On May 27, many were arrested in a dawn raid while staying at five-star Swiss hotel.

The complex investigation was coordinated among the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the FBI and the IRS. In a press conference, Lynch described FIFA’s corruption as “rampant, systemic and deep-rooted.” The charges in the indictment included “solicitation, offer, acceptance, payment, and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments, bribes, and kickbacks” as well as “the active concealment of foreign bank accounts; the structuring of financial transactions to avoid currency reporting requirements; bulk cash smuggling; the purchase of real property and other physical assets; the use of safe deposit boxes; income tax evasion; and obstruction of justice.” Blatter attempted to distance himself from the accusations, to no avail.

In particular, the suspects are accused of benefitting certain countries and regions to host soccer events. The process that led to FIFA’s simultaneously awarding the 2018 cup to Russia and the 2022 contest to Qatar was steeped in controversy, and FIFA officials have said that the countries may lose their host status if proof of bribery emerges.

Mass sporting events are popular in every sense of the word, from the public at large to elected officials and business interests, and immense amounts of money, power and influence can be at stake. Previous research has studied the economic impact of the Olympics and found mixed results at best. Huge infrastructure projects can be immensely profitable, however, and the Associated Press revealed evidence of widespread corruption in Brazil in the buildup to the 2014 World Cup. A 2014 study in Public Administration Review found that, similarly, the most-corrupt U.S. states tend to spend more on construction projects because they present a wealth of opportunities for bribery, kickbacks and more. Host countries often hope to boost their international stature through such high-profile events, but many — including Russia and Azerbaijan — are not known for their commitment to transparency.

Below is a selection of recent research and analyses relating to corruption in sports, with a focus on soccer, that can help inform reporting on the system and its challenges.

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“Corruption in Sport: From the Playing Field to the Field of Policy”
Masters, Adam. Policy and Society, 2015, Vol. 34, Issue 2. doi: 10.1016/j.polsoc.2015.04.002.

Abstract: “How is corruption in sport evolving into a global public policy issue? In the past century, four trends have affected sport according to Paoli and Donati (2013): de-amateurization at the turn of the 20th century, medicalization since the 1960s, politicization and commercialization to the point where sport is now a business worth more than US$141 billion annually. Each of these trends had a corrupting effect on what is generally perceived as a past ‘golden age’ of sport. In the 21st century more public funding is being directed into sport in the developed and developing world. As a result this paper will argue organized sport has entered a fifth evolutionary trend – criminalization. In this latest phase, public policy needs to grapple with what constitutes corruption in what has historically been a private market.”

“Investigating Corruption in Corporate Sport: The IOC and FIFA”
Jennings, Andrew. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, December 2011, Vol. 46, No. 4 387-398

Abstract: “Global sport governing bodies proclaim lofty ideals and espouse generic principles that set high moral standards for themselves and others. None more so than two of the world’s largest, most influential, and most high profile sporting organizations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Behind the façades of principled rhetoric is often something quite different. Focusing on some of the most powerful figures who have walked the corridors of power in the IOC and FIFA, using the methods of investigative journalism, this article investigates the gap between principle and practice in corporate sport. It concludes by arguing that a lack of transparency and accountability in these global sport governing bodies goes hand in glove with a propensity for corruption. It further urges sports academics to take a much more critical approach to the task of researching and investigating power relations in world sport.”

“Deceptive Development and Democratization: Stadium Construction and Securitization in the FIFA World Cup Host Countries of South Africa and Brazil”
Peet-Martel, Jasper. Journal of Politics and Society, Columbia University’s Academic Commons, 2014. doi: 10.7916/D8QF8RJB.

Abstract: “The past few decades has seen increasing attention given toward mega sporting events in the context of development. As countries, especially in developing regions of the world, strive to enhance their political, economic, and social standing, hosting mega events is viewed as an opportune path to growth. However, this view often does not take into consideration how fall-out, particularly for local communities, affects a country’s overall experience with the event it hosts. The question I pose to test these two competing views of mega event hosting is the following: are mega-sporting events, specifically the FIFA World Cup, a viable avenue for furthering development and democratization? I examine the dual processes of stadium development and securitization for the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups to answer this question, and argue that the neoliberal governance that drives FIFA World Cup securitization and stadium construction results in significant consequences for local development and compromises democratization for developing host countries.”

“From the 2014 World Cup to the 2016 Summer Olympics: Brazil’s Role in the Global Anti-Corruption Movement”
Spalding, Andrew Brady; Barr, Patrick; Flores, Albert; Freiman, Shaun; Gavin, Kat; Klink, Tyler; Nichols, Carter; Reid, Ann; Van Orden, Rina. International Law, 2015

Abstract: “Brazil has the rare fortune of hosting the world’s two highest-profile sporting events back-to-back: the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. So too does it find itself in the midst of an historic anti-corruption movement. As recent Olympics have reminded us, mega sporting events can gauge the host-country’s effectiveness in combating corruption. This paper, co-authored by a professor and eight students, uses the window between the World Cup and Olympics to reflect on Brazil’s successes to date and its remaining challenges. It briefly surveys recent allegations of corruption in international sports generally and the Olympics specifically, and discusses Brazil’s recent anti-corruption reforms. It concludes with a series of research questions that the authors will continue exploring in the months prior to the 2016 Games.”

“Does FIFA’s Corruption Hurt the Beautiful Game?”
Davis, Noah; Cappello, Juan C. Americas Quarterly, Summer 2013, 7.3, 22-25.

Excerpt: “[C]orruption at the highest levels of FIFA reduces the incentive to deal with problems on the field that affect fan experience, namely racism on the pitch and match-fixing. The organization does an excellent job in the eyes of fans, players and advertisers, with its range of tournaments and competitions, international friendlies, and massive events like the 2013 Confederation Cup and 2014 World Cup in Brazil…. FIFA’s immense geographical reach has given it the financial resources and clout to withstand any outside efforts to impose reforms — and to argue it is capable of policing itself.”

“World Cup 2026 Now Accepting Bribes: A Fundamental Transformation of FIFA’s World Cup Bid Process”
Becker, Ryan. International Sports Law Journal, April 2013, Vol. 13, Issue 1-2, 132-147.

Abstract: “The perception that football is corrupt became a reality after the allegations of bribery and vote trading that surrounded the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process. This article argues that to restore the public confidence in FIFA, specifically in the World Cup bid process, FIFA must aggressively punish individuals, nations and confederations guilty of accepting or offering kickbacks, bribes or vote trading, as well as protecting those guilty, or reasonably believed to be guilty, of such crimes. To assure that such a fundamental shift will occur, FIFA must work with other sports governing bodies to establish a World Anti-Corruption Agency. Additionally, FIFA must internally change its World Cup vote procedures to ensure fairness and transparency…. This article outlines the current rules and regulations that govern the selection of the host nation for World Cup, addresses the controversy centered on the selection process for 2018 and 2022 World Cup, and recommends a three-part solution detailing the necessary steps both FIFA and FIFA members must take to ensure the integrity of the FIFA World Cup bid process.”

“Corruption Does Not Pay: An Analysis of Consumer Response to Italy’s Calciopoli Scandal”
Babatunde Buraimo, Giuseppe Migali, Rob Simmons. Conference proceedings, “The Informal Economy, Tax Evasion and Corruption,” September 2012.

Abstract: “The literature on economics of corruption is lacking in evidence on consumer responses to identifiable scandals. The Calciopoli episode affecting Italian football in the 2005/06 season serves as an opportunity for an empirical investigation into consumer (fan) behavior following punishments imposed by the Italian league on clubs whose officials were found guilty of corrupt practices. Using a difference-in-difference estimation method, where the convicted teams are the treatment group, we find that home attendances for treatment teams fell relative to control group teams defined as those clubs not subject to league-imposed punishment. We show further that the fall in attendances identified with Calciopoli punishment resulted in non-trivial gate revenue reductions. Our results suggest that a sizable number of fans of the punished clubs were subsequently deterred from supporting their teams inside the stadium.”

“Using Forecasting to Detect Corruption in International Football”
Reade, J. James; Akie, Sachiko. Research Program on Forecasting, George Washington University.

Abstract: “This paper further develops methods to detect corrupt activity using data from 63 bookmakers covering over 9,000 international football matches since 2004, in particular assessing a claim made in early 2013 by Europol that the outcomes of almost 300 international matches since 2009 were fixed. We explore the divergence between two kinds of forecasts of match outcomes: those by bookmakers, and those constructed by econometric models. We argue that in the absence of corrupt activity to fix outcomes, these two forecasts should be indistinguishable as they are based on the same information sets, and hence any divergence between the two may be indicative of corrupt activity to fix matches. In the absence of corroborating evidence we cannot declare any evidence procured in our manner as conclusive regarding the existence or otherwise of corruption, but nonetheless we argue that is it indicative. We conclude that there is mild evidence regarding potentially corrupt outcomes, and we also point towards yet more advanced strategies for its detection.”

Keywords: sports, corruption, infrastructure, Olympics, world cup, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Qatar, Sochi, Baku.

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Performance-enhancing drugs have a long history in sports, of course, but pharmacological research has led to a surge in the number of substances available, each with its own potential for misuse.

Given the potential financial rewards of athletic success, it’s no surprise that we’ve been witness to a seemingly endless procession of allegations and scandals. Sluggers Barry Bonds (steroids) and Alex Rodriguez (human growth hormone); cyclists Lance Armstrong (EPO), Floyd Landis (testosterone) and Alberto Contador (clenbuterol); runners Tyson Gay (steroids) and Justin Gatlin (testosterone); and golfer Vijay Singh (IGF-1) are only some of the more prominent professionals implicated in such behavior. The complicity of medical professionals and shadowy labs is often involved, and a 2015 report from the International Cycling Union (UCI) found the sport’s own governing body bore significant responsibility.

Not surprisingly, hard numbers on rates of usage are difficult to come by, but anecdotal evidence isn’t lacking and anonymous surveys have provided some insight. Questionable use of medications and supplements have also been reported in the U.S. armed forces, fire and police departments, amateur athletics, and even high schools.

Below is a selection of studies on a range of issues related to performance-enhancing drugs. It has sections on their potential economic impacts, prevalence, health effects and athletes’ attitudes. For additional studies on these topics, you can search PubMed, which is the federal clearinghouse for all medical research. At bottom, we have also included some studies relating to cognitive-enhancing drugs and the related academic dimensions of this issue.

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Economics

“The Economics of Corruption in Sports: The Special Case of Doping”
Dimant, Eugen; Deutscher, Christian. Edmond J. Safra Working Papers, No. 55, January 2015.

Abstract: “Corruption in general and doping in particular are ubiquitous in both amateur and professional sports and have taken the character of a systemic threat. In creating unfair advantages, doping distorts the level playing field in sporting competition. With higher stakes involved, such distortions create negative externalities not only on the individual level (lasting health damages, for example) but also frictions on the aggregate level (such as loss of media interest) and erode the principle of sports. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature overview of the individual’s incentive to dope, the concomitant detrimental effects and respective countermeasures. In explaining the athlete’s motivation to use performance enhancing drugs, we enrich the discussion by adapting insights from behavioral economics. These insights help to understand such an athlete’s decision beyond a clear-cut rationale but rather as a product of the interaction with the underlying environment. We stress that in order to ensure clean sports and fair competition, more sophisticated measurement methods have to be formulated, and the respective data made publicly available in order to facilitate more extensive studies in the future. So far, the lack of data is alarming, especially in the area of elite sports where the stakes are high and doping has a substantial influence.”

Prevalence

“The Frequency of Doping in Elite Sport: Results of a Replication Study”
Pitsch, Werner; Emrich, Eike. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, October 2012, Vol. 47, No. 5, 559-580. doi: 10.1177/1012690211413969.

Abstract: “The difficulty of measuring the prevalence of doping in elite sport is a recurring topic in the scientific literature on doping. The Randomized Response Technique is a method for asking such embarrassing or even threatening questions while allowing the respondents to answer honestly. It was used to measure the prevalence of doping among German squad athletes by Pitsch et al. (2005, 2007). In a replication study with better sampling control, it was possible to replicate the general trend of the data from the 2005 study…. The paper-based survey resulted in a rate of 10.2% ‘honest dopers,’ irrespective of the disciplines, obtained with the question: ‘Have you ever knowingly used illicit drugs or methods in order to enhance your performance?’ By adding the rate of cheaters (24.7%), whose behaviour the researchers know nothing about, one can calculate the interval (10.2%, 34.9%), which should include the true rate of dopers throughout their career among German elite athletes. In contrast, this means that the larger proportion of athletes, namely, 65.2%, represents ‘honest non-dopers.’ In the 2008 season, this figure was 65%.”

“Growth Hormone Doping in Sports: A Critical Review of Use and Detection Strategies”
Baumann, Gerhard P. Endocrine Reviews, April 2012, Vol. 33, No. 2 155-186. doi: 10.1210/er.2011-1035.

Abstract: “[Growth hormone] is believed to be widely employed in sports as a performance-enhancing substance. Its use in athletic competition is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and athletes are required to submit to testing for GH exposure…. The scientific evidence for the [performance-enhancing characteristics] of GH is weak, a fact that is not widely appreciated in athletic circles or by the general public. Also insufficiently appreciated is the risk of serious health consequences associated with high-dose, prolonged GH use. This review discusses the GH biology relevant to GH doping; the virtues and limitations of detection tests in blood, urine, and saliva; secretagogue efficacy; IGF-I doping; and information about the effectiveness of GH as a performance-enhancing agent.”

“Supplements in Top-Level Track and Field Athletes”
Tscholl, Philippe; Alonso, Juan M.; Dollé, Gabriel; Junge, Astrid; Dvorak, Jiri. American Journal of Sports Medicine, January 2010, Vol. 38, No. 1, 133-140. doi: 10.1177/0363546509344071.

Abstract: “Analysis of 3,887 doping control forms undertaken during 12 International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships and one out-of-competitions season in track and field. Results: There were 6,523 nutritional supplements (1.7 per athlete) and 3,237 medications (0.8 per athlete) reported. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs; 0.27 per athlete, n = 884), respiratory drugs (0.21 per athlete, n = 682), and alternative analgesics (0.13, n = 423) were used most frequently. Medication use increased with age (0.33 to 0.87 per athlete) and decreased with increasing duration of the event (from sprints to endurance events; 1.0 to 0.63 per athlete). African and Asian track and field athletes reported using significantly fewer supplements (0.85 vs. 1.93 per athlete) and medications (0.41 vs. 0.96 per athlete) than athletes from other continents. The final ranking in the championships was unrelated to the quantity of reported medications or supplements taken. Compared with middle-distance and long-distance runners, athletes in power and sprint disciplines reported using more NSAIDs, creatine, and amino acids, and fewer antimicrobial agents. Conclusion: The use of NSAIDs in track and field is less than that reported for team-sport events. However, nutritional supplements are used more than twice as often as they are in soccer and other multisport events; this inadvertently increases the risk of positive results of doping tests.”

“Alcohol, Tobacco, Illicit Drugs and Performance Enhancers: A Comparison of Use by College Student Athletes and Nonathletes”
Yusko, David A.; et al. American Journal of Sports Medicine, August 2010. doi: 10.3200/JACH.57.3.281-290.

Abstract: Compares the prevalence and pattern of substance use in undergraduate student athletes and nonathletes from 2005-2006. Data was collected using questionnaires from male (n = 418) and female (n = 475) student athletes and nonathletes from 2005-2006 to assess prevalence, quantity, and frequency of alcohol and drug use, and to determine patterns of student athletes’ alcohol and drug use during their athletic season versus out of season. Male student athletes were found to be at high risk for heavy drinking and performance-enhancing drug use. Considerable in-season versus out-of-season substance use fluctuations were identified in male and female student athletes. Additional, and possibly alternative, factors are involved in a student athlete’s decision-making process regarding drug and alcohol use, which suggests that the development of prevention programs that are specifically designed to meet the unique needs of the college student athlete may be beneficial.”

Health effects

“Performance Enhancing Drug Abuse and Cardiovascular Risk in Athletes”
Angell, Peter J.; Chester, Neil; Sculthorpe, Nick; Whyte, Greg; George, Keith; Somauroo, John. British Journal of Sports Medicine, July 2012. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2012-091186.

Abstract: “Despite continuing methodological developments to detect drug use and associated punishments for positive dope tests, there are still many athletes who choose to use performance- and image-enhancing drugs. Of primary concern to this review are the health consequences of drug use by athletes…. We will address current knowledge, controversies and emerging evidence in relation to cardiovascular (CV) health of athletes taking drugs. Further, we delimit our discussion to the CV consequences of anabolic steroids and stimulant (including amphetamines and cocaine) use. These drugs are reported in the majority of adverse findings in athlete drug screenings and thus are more likely to be relevant to the healthcare professionals responsible for the well-being of athletes.”

“Illicit Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use”
Kanayama, Gen; Hudson, James I.; Pope Jr., Harrison G. Hormones and Behavior, Volume 58, Issue 1, June 2010, Pages 111-121. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2009.09.006.

Abstract: “The anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are a family of hormones that includes testosterone and its derivatives. These substances have been used by elite athletes since the 1950s, but they did not become widespread drugs of abuse in the general population until the 1980s. Thus, knowledge of the medical and behavioral effects of illicit AAS use is still evolving. Surveys suggest that many millions of boys and men, primarily in Western countries, have abused AAS to enhance athletic performance or personal appearance. AAS use among girls and women is much less common. Taken in supraphysiologic doses, AAS show various long-term adverse medical effects, especially cardiovascular toxicity. Behavioral effects of AAS include hypomanic or manic symptoms, sometimes accompanied by aggression or violence, which usually occur while taking AAS, and depressive symptoms occurring during AAS withdrawal. However, these symptoms are idiosyncratic and afflict only a minority of illicit users; the mechanism of these idiosyncratic responses remains unclear. AAS users may also ingest a range of other illicit drugs, including both “body image” drugs to enhance physical appearance or performance, and classical drugs of abuse. In particular, AAS users appear particularly prone to opioid use. There may well be a biological basis for this association, since both human and animal data suggest that AAS and opioids may share similar brain mechanisms. Finally, AAS may cause a dependence syndrome in a substantial minority of users. AAS dependence may pose a growing public health problem in future years but remains little studied.”

“Adverse Health Effects of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids”
Van Amsterdama, Jan; Opperhuizena, Antoon; Hartgensb, Fred. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Volume 57, Issue 1, June 2010, Pages 117-123. doi: 10.1016/j.yrtph.2010.02.001.

Abstract: “Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are synthetic drugs derived from testosterone. Illegally, these drugs are regularly self-administered by body builders and power lifters to enhance their sportive performance. Adverse side effects of AAS include sexual dysfunction, alterations of the cardiovascular system, psyche and behavior, and liver toxicity. However, severe side effects appear only following prolonged use of AAS at high dose and their occurrence is limited…. The overwhelming stereotype about AAS is that these compounds cause aggressive behavior in males. However, the underlying personality traits of a specific subgroup of the AAS abusers, who show aggression and hostility, may be relevant, as well. Use of AAS in combination with alcohol largely increases the risk of violence and aggression. The dependence liability of AAS is very low, and withdrawal effects are relatively mild. Based on the scores for acute and chronic adverse health effects, the prevalence of use, social harm and criminality, AAS were ranked among 19 illicit drugs as a group of drugs with a relatively low harm.”

“Effects of Growth Hormone Therapy on Exercise Performance in Men”
Triay, Jessica M.; Ahmad, Bushra N. Trends in Urology & Men’s Health, July/August 2012, Vol. 3, Issue 4, 23-26. doi: 10.1002/tre.274.

Conclusions: “In the athletic arena, [growth hormone] doping is considered to be widespread and used in combination with other agents, and regimens vary depending on individual preferences and cost implications…. It must be recognised that the effects of GH administration in adults with a normal GH/IGF-1 axis are not comparable to those in GH deficiency and that the complexity of processes influencing GH release and peripheral actions means that overall performance should be considered as opposed to isolated effects. Although studies to date have been small in both subject numbers and treatment times, they have demonstrated measurable changes in GH and IGF-1 levels, as well as possible deleterious effects on exercise performance that should be taken seriously.”

“Performance-Enhancing Drugs on the Web: A Growing Public-Health Issue”
Brennan, Brian P.; Kanayama, Gen; Pope Jr., Harrison G. American Journal on Addictions, March-April 2013, Vol. 22, Issue 2, 158-161. doi: 10.1111/j.1521-0391.2013.00311.x.

Abstract: “Today’s Internet provides extensive “underground” guidelines for obtaining and using illicit substances, including especially anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) and other appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs (APEDs). We attempted to qualitatively characterize APED-related Internet sites. We used relevant Internet search terms [and] found thousands of sites involving AAS and other APEDs. Most sites presented an unabashedly pro-drug position, often openly questioning the qualifications and motivations of mainstream medical practitioners. Offers of AAS and other APEDs for sale, together with medical advice of varying legitimacy, was widespread across sites. Importantly, many sites provided detailed guidelines for exotic forms of APED use, some likely associated with serious health risks, which are probably unknown to most practicing clinicians.”

Attitudes

“Doping in Sport: A Review of Elite Athletes’ Attitudes, Beliefs and Knowledge”
Morente-Sánchez, Jaime; Zabala, Mikel. Sports Medicine, March 2013. doi: 10.1007/s40279-013-0037-x.

Abstract: “Although most athletes acknowledge that doping is cheating, unhealthy and risky because of sanctions, its effectiveness is also widely recognized. There is a general belief about the inefficacy of anti-doping programmes, and athletes criticise the way tests are carried out. Most athletes consider the severity of punishment is appropriate or not severe enough. There are some differences between sports, as team-based sports and sports requiring motor skills could be less influenced by doping practices than individual self-paced sports. However, anti-doping controls are less exhaustive in team sports. The use of banned substance also differs according to the demand of the specific sport. Coaches appear to be the main influence and source of information for athletes, whereas doctors and other specialists do not seem to act as principal advisors. Athletes are becoming increasingly familiar with anti-doping rules, but there is still a lack of knowledge that should be remedied using appropriate educational programmes. There is also a lack of information on dietary supplements and the side effects of [performance-enhancing substances].”

“Age and Gender Specific Variations in Attitudes to Performance Enhancing Drugs and Methods”
Singhammer, John. Sport Science Review, December 2012. doi: 10.2478/v10237-012-0017-3.

Abstract: “Using a population-based cross-sectional sample of 1,703 Danish men and women aged 15-60 years, the present study examined age and gender variation in attitudes to performance enhancing drugs and methods…. Overall, participants held negative attitudes to drugs and methods enhancing predominantly cognitive-abilities-enhancing performance drugs and to appearance-modifying methods, but were positive to drugs for restoring physical functioning conditions. However, attitudes varied nonlinearly across age. Lenient attitudes peaked at around age 25 and subsequently decreased. Lenient attitudes to use of drugs against common disorders decreased in a linear fashion. No gender differences were observed and attitude did not vary with level of education, self-reported health or weekly hours of physical activity.”

“Drugs, Sweat and Gears: An Organizational Analysis of Performance Enhancing Drug Use in the 2010 Tour De France”
Palmer, Donald; Yenkey, Christopher. University of California, Davis; University of Chicago. March 2013.

Abstract: “This paper seeks a more comprehensive explanation of wrongdoing in organizations by theorizing two under-explored causes: the criticality of a person’s role in their organization’s strategy-based structure, and social ties to known deviants within their organization and industry. We investigate how these factors might have influenced wrongdoing in the context of professional cyclists’ use of banned performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in advance of the 2010 Tour de France….. We find substantial support for our prediction that actors who are more critical to the organization’s strategy-based structure are more likely to engage in wrongdoing. Further, we find that while undifferentiated social ties to known wrongdoers did not increase the likelihood of wrongdoing, ties to unpunished offenders increased the probability of wrongdoing and ties to severely punished offenders decreased it. These effects were robust to consideration of other known causes of wrongdoing: weak governance regimes and permissive cultural contexts, performance strain, and individual propensities to engage in wrongdoing.”

“Elite Athletes’ Estimates of the Prevalence of Illicit Drug Use: Evidence for the False Consensus Effect”
Dunn, Matthew; Thomas, Johanna O.; Swift, Wendy; Burns, Lucinda. Drug and Alcohol Review, January 2012, Vol. 31, Issue 1, 27-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2011.00307.x.

Abstract: “The false consensus effect (FCE) is the tendency for people to assume that others share their attitudes and behaviours to a greater extent than they actually do…. The FCE was investigated among 974 elite Australian athletes who were classified according to their drug use history. Participants tended to report that there was a higher prevalence of drug use among athletes in general compared with athletes in their sport, and these estimates appeared to be influenced by participants’ drug-use history. While overestimation of drug use by participants was not common, this overestimation also appeared to be influenced by athletes’ drug use history.”

“The Role of Sports Physicians in Doping: A Note on Incentives”
Korn, Evelyn; Robeck, Volker. Philipps-Universitat, Marburg, March 2013.

Abstract: “How to ban the fraudulent use of performance-enhancing drugs is an issue in all professional — and increasingly in amateur — sports. The main effort in enforcing a ‘clean sport’ has concentrated on proving an abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and on imposing sanctions on teams and athletes. An investigation started by Freiburg university hospital against two of its employees who had been working as physicians for a professional cycling team has drawn attention to another group of actors: physicians. It reveals a multi-layered contractual relations between sports teams, physicians, hospitals, and sports associations that provided string incentives for the two doctors to support the use performance-enhancing drugs. This paper argues that these misled incentives are not singular but a structural part of modern sports caused by cross effects between the labor market for sports medicine specialists (especially if they are researchers) and for professional athletes.”

“Socio-economic Determinants of Adolescent Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs”
Humphreys, Brad R.; Ruseski, Jane E. Journal of Socio-Economics, April 2011, Vol. 40, Issue 2, 208-216. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2011.01.008.

Abstract: “Evidence indicates that adolescents (athletes and non-athletes use performance enhancing drugs. We posit that adolescent athletes have different socio-economic incentives to use steroids than non-athletes. We examine adolescent steroid use using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. Multi-sport upperclassmen and black males have a higher probability of steroid use. Steroid use is associated with motivations to change physical appearance and experimentation with illicit substances. These results suggest there are different socio-economic motivations for adolescent steroid use and that steroid use is an important component of overall adolescent drug use.”

Cognitive-enhancing drugs

“Randomized Response Estimates for the 12-Month Prevalence of Cognitive-Enhancing Drug Use in University Students”
Dietz, Pavel; et al. Pharmacotherapy, January 2013, Vol. 33, Issue 1, 44-50. doi: 10.1002/phar.1166.

Results: “An anonymous, specialized questionnaire that used the randomized response technique was distributed to students at the beginning of classes and was collected afterward. From the responses, we calculated the prevalence of students taking drugs only to improve their cognitive performance and not to treat underlying mental disorders such as attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, depression, and sleep disorders. The estimated 12-month prevalence of using cognitive-enhancing drugs was 20%. Prevalence varied by sex (male 23.7%, female 17.0%), field of study (highest in students studying sports-related fields, 25.4%), and semester (first semester 24.3%, beyond first semester 16.7%).”

“The Diversion and Misuse of Pharmaceutical Stimulants: What Do We Know and Why Should We Care?”
Kaye, Sharlene; Darke, Shane. Addiction, February 2012, Vol. 107, Issue 3, 467-477. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03720.x.

Results: “The evidence to date suggests that the prevalence of diversion and misuse of pharmaceutical stimulants varies across adolescent and young adult student populations, but is higher than that among the general population, with the highest prevalence found among adults with attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and users of other illicit drugs. Concerns that these practices have become more prevalent as a result of increased prescribing are not supported by large-scale population surveys…. Despite recognition of the abuse liability of these medications, there is a paucity of data on the prevalence, patterns and harms of diversion and misuse among populations where problematic use and abuse may be most likely to occur (e.g. adolescents, young adults, illicit drug users). Comprehensive investigations of diversion and misuse among these populations should be a major research priority, as should the assessment of abuse and dependence criteria among those identified as regular users.”

“Adderall Abuse on College Campuses: A Comprehensive Literature Review”
Varga, Matthew D. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 2012, Vol. 9, Issue 3. doi: 10.1080/15433714.2010.525402.

Abstract: “Prescription stimulant abuse has dramatically increased over the past 10 years, but the amount of research regarding college students and illicit prescription stimulant use is still very limited. This has important implications for college mental health professionals and higher education administrators. In this comprehensive literature review the author explores factors contributing to illicit use, self-medication, and recreational use of controlled prescription stimulants; discusses the potential consequences for those students abusing stimulants; and provides recommendations for educating, combating, and assisting students who illicitly use prescription stimulants on college campuses.”

“A Comparison of Attitudes Toward Cognitive Enhancement and Legalized Doping in Sport in a Community Sample of Australian Adults”
Partridge, Brad; Lucke, Jayne; Hall, Wayne. AJOB Primary Research, November 2012. doi: 10.1080/21507716.2012.720639.

Abstract: “This article compares public attitudes toward the use of prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement with the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. We explore attitudes toward the acceptability of both practices; the extent to which familiarity with cognitive enhancement is related to its perceived acceptability; and relationships between the acceptability of cognitive enhancement and legalized doping in sport. Of 1,265 [survey] participants, 7% agreed that cognitive enhancement is acceptable; 2.4% of the total sample said they had taken prescription drugs to enhance their concentration or alertness in the absence of a diagnosed disorder, and a further 8% said they knew someone who had done so. These participants were twice as likely to think cognitive enhancement was acceptable. Only 3.6% of participants agreed that people who play professional sport should be allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs if they wanted to. Participants who found cognitive enhancement acceptable were 9.5 times more likely to agree with legalized doping.”

Keywords: drugs, youth, sports, cheating, higher education, corruption, ADHD, research roundup

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The issue of concussions in sports has attracted considerable media coverage in recent years. Understandably, the early focus was on professional football, a game built around high-speed, full contact between heavy, powerful players, but the scope of reporting and research has expanded widely to include sports at every level.

A pioneer of reporting in this field was Alan Schwarz of the New York Times; his work highlighted the history of concussions and their consequences in the NFL. The league has responded by banning some high-risk hits, and also aggressively investigated a “bounty pools” scandal that involved a team paying bonuses to players who injured opponents. (Similar behavior has even turned up in a Pop Warner youth league.) Retired players continue to pursue legal action and raise awareness of the issue, particularly with cases of former players suffering from early-onset dementia that can result from repeated brain trauma. In January 2013, the National Institutes of Health concluded that the former NFL linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide in May 2012, had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease.

Ice hockey is another rough, physical sport that takes a high toll. NHL all-star player Sidney Crosby was out for the better part of a year, beginning in 2010, because of a severe concussion. The long-term consequences of such injuries can be dire: A post-mortem of NHL “enforcer” Derek Boogaard, who died in May 2011, determined that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative disease directly linked to repeated brain injuries.

Even professional sports that aren’t designed around physical contact between players can result in concussions. During the National Basketball Association 2012 Finals, Oklahoma City star James Harden suffered one just before the beginning of the playoffs. In Major League Baseball, concussions are known to have helped end the careers of Mike Matheny (now the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals) and Corey Koskie; they also cost Minnesota Twins star Justin Morneau the better part of a season of play. The league instituted a disabled list for players with concussions in 2011 and continues to work on the issue.

Concussion risk starts at the youth level, in football and ice hockey as well as baseball, soccer, boxing, gymnastics, horseback riding, skiing and cycling — any sport with potential for hard contact. The best available evidence continues to raise questions about whether schools and teams are doing enough. Two 2014 studies in The American Journal of Sports Medicine suggest as much: One study, which was based on a survey of 1066 collegiate institutions, concludes that “although a large majority of respondents indicated that their school has a concussion management plan, improvement is needed.” Another paper about protective equipment at the high school level found that among 2081 players enrolled during the 2012-13 football seasons, some 206 (9%) sustained a total of 211 concussions. That study notes that, regardless of the type and brand of protective equipment, incidence of concussion remains the same — suggesting that it is the nature of on-field play that remains at issue. Still, because of specific concerns over youth football, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest have started a ratings system for helmets.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. emergency departments annually treat an average of 173,285 sports- and recreation-related traumatic brain injuries among children and adolescents. Such emergency visits have increased 60% over the past decade; in 2009 alone, there were 248,418 such cases.

New research from Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown and Virginia Tech has called into question whether current diagnostic techniques are adequate. In addition, the long-term effects of head injury are only partially understood. The Boston University Center for Traumatic Encephalopathy, which received a $1 million donation from the NFL in 2010, continues to examine the brains of deceased athletes to research and compile case studies on the long-term effects of concussions; the center also conducts other inquiries and publishes academic studies in this evolving field.

Finally, a 2014 study published in the journal of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise provides new evidence that high school athletes may be returning to the field too early after suffering a concussion.

Below are further studies and articles that bring a research perspective to questions around concussions in sports:

_____

“The Spectrum of Disease in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”
McKee, Ann C, et al. Brain, November 2012, 135 (11).

Excerpts: “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy [CTE] is a progressive tauopathy that occurs as a consequence of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury. We analysed post-mortem brains obtained from a cohort of 85 subjects with histories of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury and found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in 68 subjects: all males, ranging in age from 17 to 98 years (mean 59.5 years), including 64 athletes, 21 military veterans (86% of whom were also athletes) and one individual who engaged in self-injurious head banging behaviour…. CTE is a unique neurodegenerative condition that is associated with repetitive mild traumatic brain injury. Although there are many issues that require more thorough investigation, such as how much head trauma is causative, what type, and how frequent, the age when players are most susceptible and whether some individuals are genetically more prone than others, this study clearly shows that for some athletes and war fighters, there may be severe and devastating long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma that has traditionally been considered only mild.”

“Spectrum of Acute Clinical Characteristics of Diagnosed Concussions in College Athletes Wearing Instrumented Helmets”
Duhaime, Anne-Christine, et al. Journal of Neurosurgery, October 2012.

Excerpt: “Data were collected from 450 athletes with 486,594 recorded head impacts. Forty-eight separate concussions were diagnosed in 44 individual players. Mental clouding, headache, and dizziness were the most common presenting symptoms. Thirty-one diagnosed cases were associated with an identified impact event; in 17 cases no specific impact event was identified. Onset of symptoms was immediate in 24 players, delayed in 11, and unspecified in 13. In 8 cases the diagnosis was made immediately after a head impact, but in most cases the diagnosis was delayed (median 17 hours). One diagnosed concussion involved a 30-second loss of consciousness; all other players retained alertness. Most diagnoses were based on self-reported symptoms…. Approximately two-thirds of diagnosed concussions were associated with a specific contact event. Half of all players diagnosed with concussions had delayed or unclear timing of onset of symptoms. Most had no externally observed findings. Diagnosis was usually based on a range of self-reported symptoms after a variable delay. Accelerations clustered in the higher percentiles for all impact events, but encompassed a wide range. These data highlight the heterogeneity of criteria for concussion diagnosis, and in this sports context, its heavy reliance on self-reported symptoms. More specific and standardized definitions of clinical and objective correlates of a ‘concussion spectrum’ may be needed in future research efforts, as well as in the clinical diagnostic arena.”

“Incidence of Sports-Related Concussion among Youth Football Players Aged 8-12 Years”
Kontos, Anthony P. Journal of Pediatrics, 2013.

Abstract: “Participants included 468 male youth football players in western Pennsylvania during the 2011 youth football season. Incidence rates (IRs) and incidence density ratios (IDRs) of concussion were calculated for games and practices and for age groups. There was a total of 11 338 (8415 practice and 2923 game) athletic exposures (AEs) in the study period, during which 20 medically diagnosed concussions occurred. A majority of concussions were the result of head-to-head (45%) contact. The combined concussion IR for practices and games was 1.76 per 1000 AEs (95% CI 0.99-2.54). The concussion IR was 0.24 per 1000 AEs (95% CI 0.04-0.79) in practices and 6.16 per 1000 AEs (95% CI 3.76-9.54) in games. The IDR for concussions in games to practices was 25.91 (95% CI 6.01-111.70). The IDR of concussions for youth aged 11-12 years compared with youth aged 8-10 years was 2.72 (95% CI 0.66-4.78).  The overall IR for concussion in youth football players aged 8-12 years was comparable with that reported previously for high school and collegiate samples. However, participation in games was associated with an increase in risk of concussion compared with practices, which was higher than rates previously reported for high school and collegiate athletes. Younger players were slightly less likely to incur a concussion than were older players.”

“Epidemiology of Concussions among United States High School Athletes in 20 Sports”
Marar, M., et al. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2012.

Excerpt: “During the study period, 1,936 concussions were reported during 7,780,064 athlete-exposures (AEs) for an overall injury rate of 2.5 per 10,000 AEs. The injury rate was higher in competition (6.4) than practice (1.1) … The majority of concussions resulted from participation in football (47.1%, n = 912), followed by girls’ soccer (8.2%, n = 159), boys’ wrestling (5.8%, n = 112), and girls’ basketball (5.5%, n = 107). Football had the highest concussion rate (6.4), followed by boys’ ice hockey (5.4) and boys’ lacrosse (4.0)…. In gender-comparable sports, girls had a higher concussion rate (1.7) than boys (1.0)…. The most common mechanisms of injury were player-player contact (70.3%) and player-playing surface contact (17.2%). In more than 40% of athletes in sports other than girls’ swimming and girls’ track, concussion symptoms resolved in 3 days or less. Athletes most commonly returned to play in 1 to 3 weeks (55.3%), with 22.8% returning in less than 1 week and 2.0% returning in less than 1 day…. Although interest in sports-related concussions is usually focused on full-contact sports like football and ice hockey, concussions occur across a wide variety of high school sports. Concussion rates vary by sport, gender, and type of exposure. An understanding of concussion rates, patterns of injury, and risk factors can drive targeted preventive measures and help reduce the risk for concussion among high school athletes in all sports.”

“Response to Acute Concussive Injury in Soccer Players: Is Gender a Modifying Factor?”
Zuckerman, S.L., et al. Journal of Neurosurgery Pediatrics, October 2012.

Abstract: “Several studies have suggested a gender difference in response to sports-related concussion (SRC). The Concussion in Sport group did not include gender as a modifying factor in SRC, concluding that the evidence at that point was equivocal. In the present study the authors endeavored to assess acute neurocognitive and symptom responses to an SRC in equivalent cohorts of male and female soccer players. The authors hypothesized that female athletes would experience greater levels of acute symptoms and neurocognitive impairment than males…. The results failed to replicate prior findings of gender specific baseline neurocognitive differences in verbal and visual memory. The findings also indicated no differential gender based acute response to concussion (symptoms or neurocognitive scores) among high school soccer players. The implications of these findings for the inclusion of gender as a modifying factor in this tightly matched cohort are addressed.”

“Management of the Athlete with Concussion”
Su, John K., etc. Permanente Journal, 2012.

Excerpt: “The approach to and management of the athlete with concussion can be a challenging endeavor to physicians who care for athletes who have suffered a head injury—this group includes family physicians, pediatricians, internists, emergency medicine physicians, primary sports medicine physicians, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, and neurosurgeons. Sometimes questions regarding the need for neurologic, psychological, or radiographic imaging can make the decision for return to play unclear. New legislation will undoubtedly increase physician visits for these athletes to return to play. Thus, the goal of this article is to review the latest guidelines regarding concussion management to help all physicians who care for athletes do so appropriately.”

“Head Impact Exposure in Youth Football”
Daniel, Ray W., et al. Annals of Biomedical Engineering, February 2012.

Abstract: “The head impact exposure for athletes involved in football at the college and high school levels has been well documented; however, the head impact exposure of the youth population involved with football has yet to be investigated, despite its dramatically larger population. The objective of this study was to investigate the head impact exposure in youth football. Impacts were monitored using a custom 12 accelerometer array equipped inside the helmets of seven players aged 7 to 8 years old during each game and practice for an entire season. A total of 748 impacts were collected from the 7 participating players during the season, with an average of 107 impacts per player. Linear accelerations ranged from 10 to 100 g, and the rotational accelerations ranged from 52 to 7694 rad/s2. The majority of the high level impacts occurred during practices, with 29 of the 38 impacts above 40 g occurring in practices. Although less frequent, youth football can produce high head accelerations in the range of concussion causing impacts measured in adults. In order to minimize these most severe head impacts, youth football practices should be modified to eliminate high impact drills that do not replicate the game situations.”

“Sports-Related Head Injury”
American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Patient Information Report, December 2011.

Excerpt: “A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is defined as a blow or jolt to the head, or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Symptoms of a TBI can be mild, moderate or severe, depending on the extent of damage to the brain. Mild cases may result in a brief change in mental state or consciousness, while severe cases may result in extended periods of unconsciousness, coma or even death.”

“Functionally-Detected Cognitive Impairment in High School Football Players Without Clinically Diagnosed Concussion”
Talavage, T.M., et al. Journal of Neurotrama, 2011.

Findings: Overall, the data suggest “the presence of a previously unknown, but suspected … group of athletes exhibiting neurocognitive deficits that persist over time, but which does not present observable symptoms.” The study’s authors say the findings indicate current on-field tests for concussions may not be sufficient in determining full risks to the brain.”

“Nonfatal Traumatic Brain Injuries Related to Sports and Recreation Activities Among Persons Aged ≤ 19 Years: United States, 2001-2009“
Gilchrist, Julie, et al. CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2011.

Excerpt: “From 2001 to 2009, the number of annual [Traumatic Brain Injury-related Emergency Department visits] increased significantly, from 153,375 to 248,418, with the highest rates among males aged 10-19 years. By increasing awareness of TBI risks from sports and recreation, employing proper technique and protective equipment, and quickly responding to injuries, the incidence, severity, and long-term negative health effects of TBIs among children and adolescents can be reduced.”

“Assessment and Management of Sport-Related Concussions in United States High Schools”
Meehan, William P., et al. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2011.

Excerpt: “Concussions account for nearly 15% of all sport-related injuries in high school athletes. The timing of return to play after a sport-related concussion is similar regardless of whether the decision to return the athlete to play is made by a physician or an AT. When a medical doctor is involved, most concussions are assessed by primary care physicians as opposed to subspecialists. Computed tomography is obtained during the assessment of 1 of every 5 concussions occurring in high school athletes.”

“Clinical Report: Sport-Related Concussion in Children and Adolescents”
Halstead, Mark E., etc. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010.

Excerpt: “Sport-related concussion is a ‘hot topic’ in the media and in medicine. It is a common injury that is likely underreported by pediatric and adolescent athletes. Football has the highest incidence of concussion, but girls have higher concussion rates than boys do in similar sports. A clear understanding of the definition, signs, and symptoms of concussion is necessary to recognize it and rule out more severe intracranial injury… This report serves as a basis for understanding the diagnosis and management of concussion in children and adolescent athletes.”

“Trends in Concussion Incidence in High School Sports: A Prospective 11-Year Study”
Lincoln, Andrew E., et al. American Journal of Sports Medicine, May 2011.

Abstract: “Data were prospectively gathered for 25 schools in a large public high school system. All schools used an electronic medical record-keeping program…. 2651 concussions were observed in 10,926, 892 athlete-exposures, with an incidence rate of 0.24 per 1000. Boys’ sports accounted for 53% of athlete-exposures and 75% of all concussions. Football accounted for more than half of all concussions, and it had the highest incidence rate (0.60). Girls’ soccer had the most concussions among the girls’ sports and the second-highest incidence rate of all 12 sports (0.35). Concussion rate increased 4.2-fold (95% confidence interval, 3.4-5.2) over the 11 years (15.5% annual increase). In similar boys’ and girls’ sports (baseball/softball, basketball, and soccer), girls had roughly twice the concussion risk of boys. Concussion rate increased over time in all 12 sports…. Although the collision sports of football and boys’ lacrosse had the highest number of concussions and football the highest concussion rate, concussion occurred in all other sports and was observed in girls’ sports at rates similar to or higher than those of boys’ sports. The increase over time in all sports may reflect actual increased occurrence or greater coding sensitivity with widely disseminated guidance on concussion detection and treatment.”

“Catastrophic Sports Injury Research Twenty-Ninth Annual Report Fall 1982-Spring 2011”
Mueller, Frederick O., et al. Department of Exercise and Sport Science, University of North Carolina, 2011.

Description: “The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research collects and disseminates death and permanent disability sports injury data that involve brain and/or spinal cord injuries. The research is funded by a grant from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the American Football Coaches Association, and the National Federation of State High School Associations. This research has been conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1965. Each year three annual reports are compiled.”

“Hockey Concussion: Is It Child Abuse?”
Hemond, Chris. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2012.

Excerpt: “If not a stampede, it appears there is at least a slow shuffle of Canadian youngsters out of contact hockey as a result of widespread publicity about the parade of National Hockey League (NHL) superstars onto injured reserve lists. Meanwhile, one critic says Hockey Canada’s failure to implement even more stringent anti-concussion measures constitutes nothing short of ‘child abuse.’”

“Effect of Bodychecking on Rate of Injuries Among Minor Hockey Players”
Cusimano, Michael D., et al. Open Medicine, 2011.

Excerpt: “Bodychecking is a leading cause of injury among minor hockey players. Its value has been the subject of heated debate since Hockey Canada introduced bodychecking for competitive players as young as 9 years in the 1998/1999 season…. In this study, the odds of injury increased with decreasing age of exposure to bodychecking. These findings add to the growing evidence that bodychecking holds greater risk than benefit for youth and support widespread calls to ban this practice.”

“Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport”
McCrory, P., et al. Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, 2009.

Excerpt: “This document is developed for use by physicians, therapists, certified athletic trainers, health professionals, coaches and other people involved in the care of injured athletes, whether at the recreational, elite or professional level. While agreement exists pertaining to principal messages conveyed within this document, the authors acknowledge that the science of concussion is evolving and therefore management and return to play (RTP) decisions remain in the realm of clinical judgment on an individualized basis.”

Tags: sports, children, youth, safety, research roundup

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