Television and Minor League Baseball

David G. Surdam
Additional contact information
David G. Surdam: University of Chicago

Journal of Sports Economics, 2005, vol. 6, issue 1, 61-77

Abstract: Minor league baseball flourished in the aftermath of World War II. However, a new technology, television, threatened to broadcast major league games across America. The minor leagues contracted by over a third between 1949 and 1953. Was television the culprit as baseball historians suggest? The diffusion of television does not perfectly match the contraction of the minor leagues. Statistical analysis of television’s effects on minor league teams’ survivability and on surviving teams’ attendance provides mixed support for the historians’ thesis. Instead, the minor leagues over expanded into small towns incapable of sustaining professional baseball when the boom ended.

Keywords: television; minor league baseball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002503262640 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:6:y:2005:i:1:p:61-77

DOI: 10.1177/1527002503262640

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().