Playbooks and Checkbooks

"I really enjoyed this book. It’s a compelling account of the unusual economics that have grown up in the last century around the extraordinarily profitable arena of sports. It’s interesting because, in order to make sports work as an industry – in order to make the money – you have to indulge in all sorts of practices that defy conventional economics. For instance, a sport league needs to be competitive to be enjoyable, so, unlike in a business arena, crushing your opponents by too much damages everyone’s ability to make money. So leagues are highly redistributive in terms of the money; for instance, the value of the premiership is not dependent on how good its best two clubs are. It’s dependent on how good the competition is. Theoretically, the top few clubs could claim almost all the money because they have the clout in terms of their following, players and bank balances. Instead, though, it’s realised tacitly there has to be a good level of competition, there have to be good matches. However, the great story of making money out of sport is how staggeringly popular vicarious play is as an activity. The last football World Cup was the single most viewed activity in human history, and in terms of vicarious participation it dwarfs any religion. I am very interested in what happens when what has been a vicarious activity is made a mass participatory activity, because people, who have an intense curiosity about watching play, can now participate in it on a vast scale. If we look at the special economics, rules and circumstances that have grown up around sports, this is a very useful index of the play economics of the future."