Abstract
From the “landmark” Alston v. NCAA antitrust decision, we examine whether the legally hypothesized fan wage-repugnance effect implies procompetitive benefits in NCAA sports output markets via increased output demand from student-athlete wage restriction. In Alston v. NCAA, the Courts took this benefit as given but failed to recognize the empirically-verified relationship between league talent and fan demand. We assume a legally-hypothesized wage-repugnance line exists and present a theoretical output-demand model functionally dependent upon allocations in a wage-constrained labor-input market. Even given fan repugnance, wage restrictions do not necessarily generate procompetitive benefits. For families of model parameterizations, wage restrictions impose anticompetitive harm.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 169-185 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Sports Economics |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2024 |
Keywords
- Alston v. NCAA
- NCAA student-athlete pay
- amateur sports demand
- antitrust laws
- sport antitrust case
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)