Run to Glory and Profits

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Run to Glory and Profits

The Economic Rise of the NFL during the 1950s

David George Surdam

448 pages
41 tables

Hardcover

October 2013

978-0-8032-4696-6

$55.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2020

978-1-4962-0970-2

$55.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

October 2013

978-0-8032-4853-3

$55.00 Add to Cart
"A terrific addition to the sports economics literature."
—F. H. Smith, CHOICE

About the Book

The National Football League has long reigned as America’s favorite professional sports league. In its early days, however, it was anything but a dominant sports industry, barely surviving World War II. Its rise began after the war, and the 1950s was a pivotal decade for the league. Run to Glory and Profits tells the economic story of how in one decade the NFL transformed from having a modest following in the Northeast to surpassing baseball as this country’s most popular sport.

To break from the margins of the sports landscape, pro football brought innovation, action, skill, and episodic suspense on “any given Sunday.” These factors in turn drove attendance and rising revenues. Team owners were quick to embrace television as a new medium to put the league in front of a national audience. Based on primary documents, David George Surdam provides an economic analysis in telling the business story behind the NFL’s rise to popularity. Did the league’s vaunted competitive balance in the decade result from its more generous revenue sharing and its reverse-order draft? How did the league combat rival leagues, such as the All-America Football Conference and the American Football League? Although strife between owners and players developed quickly, pro-football fans stayed loyal because the product itself remained so good.

Author Bio

David George Surdam is an associate professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of Wins, Losses, and Empty Seats: How Baseball Outlasted the Great Depression and The Postwar Yankees: Baseball’s Golden Age Revisited, both available from the University of Nebraska Press.

Praise

"A terrific addition to the sports economics literature."—F. H. Smith, CHOICE

Table of Contents

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Usurpers: The AAFC Challenge

2. Prosperity and Its Drawbacks

3. Measures of the NFL's Popularity

4. Profits and Losses

5. The Perils and Triumphs of NFL Ownership

6. Antitrust Adventures

7. Competitive Balance and Its Sources

8. The Player Draft

9. Gate Sharing

10. Gilded Peonage

11. Television

12. Innovation

13. Integration

Conclusion: The NFL's Rise to Prominence

Appendix of Tables

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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