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This study examines the determinants of regular season National Football League (NFL) ticket prices on the secondary, or resale, market. Prices in the secondary market are dynamic and thus particularly useful for evaluating the demand for live NFL contests. A rich dataset is employed that contains information about all transactions conducted by a prominent ticketing site during a full NFL season and allows for a comprehensive investigation of the components of demand in this market. Included in the analysis is a first look at the demand for different seating locations within the stadium. The revealed determinants of demand for resale tickets were largely consistent with studies of the primary market; however, there are notable differences in spectators’ preferences for contest characteristics and uncertainty of outcome across the seating categories. The evidence also suggests that while hometown fans are the primary participants, visiting teams are likely active in the resale market.

In 1974 the National Football League Rules Committee changed the way the ball was turned over after a missed field goal attempted beyond the defending team’s 20-yard line. As a result of this change, it is postulated that more accurate placekickers would become relatively more valuable to a team and receive higher earnings. The available evidence suggests that no measurable increase has occurred since the rule change in the relative earnings of more accurate long distance placekickers. Possible reasons for this result are discussed.

Open letters offer a unique focus for rhetorical analysis in sport communication, forming a message that is both interpersonal (the attempt to reflect dialogue through a letter writer and its recipients) and public (the “open” part of the open letter). The National Football League (NFL) attempted image repair when it used open letters to respond to accusations that it was not doing enough to protect athletes against devastating effects of concussions. Through the use of Benoit’s theory of image repair, the authors found that Commissioner Goodell’s open letters relied on 2 main image-repair strategies: reducing offensiveness and corrective action. They consider the implications of these rhetorical choices for the complicated merging areas of sport, communication, and health in the NFL’s open letters.

The business of fantasy football is a multibillion dollar-per-year industry. However, academic inquiry into the distinct attitudes and intentions of fantasy football participants is underdeveloped. Therefore, following Fazio, Powell, and Herr’s proposed attitude–behavior framework, this study examined the relationship between sport fans’ attitudes, fantasy football involvement level, and intentions to watch the televised broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games. The results suggest that fantasy football is a noteworthy connection point for NFL fans. Specifically, fantasy participation appears to duplicate the positive and negative attitudes of traditional team fandom, and this replication ultimately increases television viewership throughout the league. Thus, instead of competing with traditional team-focused professional-football viewership, fantasy football appears to be a complementary or value-adding activity. Discussed are theoretical outcomes, as well as the practical implications for sport marketers and media providers looking to capitalize on this highly popular and lucrative online activity.

Using the contingent valuation method, this article estimates the value of public goods the National Football League’s Jaguars produce for Jacksonville, Florida, including the value of elevating Jacksonville to “major league” status and the value of improving racial relations. It also estimates the incremental value of public goods potentially produced by a National Basketball Association team in Jacksonville. The present value of public goods created by the Jaguars is $36.5 million or less, far below subsidies provided to attract the Jaguars. For a basketball team, the figure is less than $22.8 million. The results add to the growing body of CVM literature indicating that sport public goods probably cannot justify the large public expenditures on stadiums and arenas.

Although initially developed as cartels of independently owned and operated clubs joining to produce a sports product for spectator consumption, professional sports leagues have emerged as monopolies wielding significant economic power. By increasing revenue-sharing practices, and thus attempting to align owner interests, leagues have become single-business entities that maximize wealth for the league as a whole. Over the past four decades, the National Football League has implemented such practices to become the most popular team sport in North America. Using agency theory, this paper examines how the NFL's former commissioner, Pete Rozelle, and the League Executive Committee used these practices in order to increase League revenues and decrease opportunistic behavior by team owners. However, certain owners continue to act entrepreneurially, to the detriment of the League as a whole. This behavior is congruent with the tenets of agency theory, which contend that interests will diverge within a principal-agent relationship (e.g., the NFL— NFL teams). Until such time that team owners realize that the welfare of the other League clubs, along with their competitive equality, is paramount in retaining interest in and producing the League product, professional sports leagues will continue to be plagued with problems such as unnecessary franchise relocations and other acts of maverick owners.