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Abstract
Sports economics is a young, growing field in the discipline of economics. An examination of course catalogs at 169 national liberal arts colleges and 254 national universities uncovered undergraduate sports economics classes offered at 17% of the liberal arts colleges and 29.5% of the universities. The characteristics of colleges and universities offering sports economics courses are analyzed. The state of the undergraduate curriculum in economics and barriers to the creation of new elective course offerings are also discussed.
Keywords: sports economics, undergraduate education, elective course offerings
Introduction
Sports economics is an emerging field in economics. This area has established the trappings of a full-blown field in the last 15 years (Santos & García, 2011). The Journal of Sports Economics, the first field journal in the area, was founded in 2000; a second field journal, the International Journal of Sport Finance, began publication in 2006. In 1999 the first organization of sports economists, the International Association of Sports Economists (IASE) was formed; in 2007 the North American Association of Sports Economists (NAASE) was established, and the European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) followed in 2009. Fifteen years after the Journal of Sports Economics began publication, sports economics resembles a field, much like health economics and envi-ronmental economics.
Interest in sports economics, and sports economics research, has grown rapidly over the past 15 years. In part, this can be attributed to the existence of field journals as an outlet for sports economics research. Also, sports economics is primarily an empirical field, and the last 15 years have seen an explosion in availability of data from profes- sional sports, and an increased emphasis on the empirical analysis of performance data from sport.1 The last 30 years have also seen a significant increase in broadcasts of sporting events, as well as an increase in revenues from these broadcasts. These changes have made many athletes celebrities and multi-millionaires, and have substantially increased the visibility of sport in the United States and internationally (Ratten, 2011).
Along with this increase in economic aspects of sport-and the overall visibility of sport-has come an increase in student interest in sport as an academic topic of study, especially at the undergraduate level. This may reflect students' perceptions that an increasing number of jobs will...