Nov 3, 2026 · 58 min · 12 segments
What can econ teach us about the business of sports? Host Paul Mueller is joined by Dr. Jared Pincin of Cedarville University and Dr. Adam Hoffer of the Tax Foundation to explore the economics behind…
So maybe to start off, So I guess the question for either of you, you know, maybe Adam, starting with you, you walk into a classroom, you have all these students.
How do you kind of frame sports economics when you talk to the first day of class? Like, what is what are you guys going to be doing? What's the big picture? What's the approach to sports economics versus, you know, history or some other kind of approach to the topic?
Yeah, I divide sports economics into three real big categories that we're going to talk about.
That is, how do sports operate as a business? Sports are rather unique, right? We have these leagues.
The NCAA is its own entity, and that's what Jared and I studied on several occasions.
So you get this idea of how sports work as a business, and that itself is fascinating.
We say that you get better data on worker productivity and manager results in sports than anywhere else in the world, right?
You know, I used to joke that you turn it on and they'd have the most outrageous statistics, you know, these batting figures.
And then we would also transition that to sports are a rather unique labor market.
You have both labor unions and then you have this odd monopsony, these unique buyers because of drafts.
And then finally with that comes the public policy side of things related to sports.
And so you get legal rulings on labor markets, right? The NCAA has been in transition from a labor market perspective for really the past 20, 30 years compared to how it was before.
So you have antitrust rules and then lawsuits, but then also two other big areas of public policy, stadium financing and subsidies.
So maybe to start off, So I guess the question for either of you, you know, maybe Adam, starting with you, you walk into a classroom, you have all these students.
How do you kind of frame sports economics when you talk to the first day of class? Like, what is what are you guys going to be doing? What's the big picture? What's the approach to sports economics versus, you know, history or some other kind of approach to the topic?
Yeah, I divide sports economics into three real big categories that we're going to talk about.
That is, how do sports operate as a business? Sports are rather unique, right? We have these leagues.
The NCAA is its own entity, and that's what Jared and I studied on several occasions.
So you get this idea of how sports work as a business, and that itself is fascinating.
We say that you get better data on worker productivity and manager results in sports than anywhere else in the world, right?
You know, I used to joke that you turn it on and they'd have the most outrageous statistics, you know, these batting figures.
And then we would also transition that to sports are a rather unique labor market.
You have both labor unions and then you have this odd monopsony, these unique buyers because of drafts.
And then finally with that comes the public policy side of things related to sports.
And so you get legal rulings on labor markets, right? The NCAA has been in transition from a labor market perspective for really the past 20, 30 years compared to how it was before.
So you have antitrust rules and then lawsuits, but then also two other big areas of public policy, stadium financing and subsidies.
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