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Previous research in sports economics has looked for the presence of consumer discrimination among sports fans of professional teams and it has produced mixed results. Scully (1974a, b) found evidence to suggest that fans of Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs did engage in consumer discrimination in the 1970s, but more recent work by Sommers and Quinton (1982) found no such evidence. In this article, we present evidence that suggests that consumer discrimination persisted in MLB into the early 1990s. Specifically, our empirical work suggests that consumers in Boston, Cleveland, Houston, San Diego and Saint Louis chose to attend fewer baseball games-ceteris paribus-when the home team in these cities added Hispanic players to the roster.
Source: “Consumer discrimination in professional sports: new evidence from major league baseball” from Applied Economics Letters, Volume 14, Issue 13 October 2007 , pages 951 – 955
If you’re looking for some good books about sports check out Moneyball and Game of Shadows. Here’s a great book about a sports junkie. For great sports gambling stories, I recommend this book.
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