CONTENTS

Sports are global, and their influence goes beyond the playing field and sports arena. Around the globe, sports teams perform before enthusiastic fans at modern venues, and even larger audiences watch on TV or stream online. An increasing number of interested viewers now wager considerable sums on sports outcomes. 

Millions of people of every race, ethnicity, and nationality also spend considerable money on sports products, including sportswear, equipment, and health products and service. While many play sports professionally, many spend countless hours participating in their favorite sports and recreation activities, generating billions in sports business revenues through fees, memberships, and licenses. The business of sports is more than the sports we follow in person, in the media, and with sports entertainment. Sports Business includes the numerous companies manufacturing and selling sports products such as sportswear, golf clubs and RV vehicles and the vast network of sports businesses providing sports and recreation participation experiences from health clubs and yoga studios to ski resorts to RV campgrounds. The assorted user fees collected from memberships, greens fees, fishing/hunting licenses, ski lift tickets, travel and lodging, etc. in the U.S. alone amounted to over $300 billion in 2023.

The purpose of Chapter 1 is to examine a broad-scope definition of sports business and develop a structure that allows us to (1) better understand the breadth and depth of the sports business, and (2) build a model that captures all of the essential segments of the sports industry and use that structure to accurately measure the economic magnitude of sports business worldwide.