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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.

Focusing on player agents in professional ice hockey, this paper utilizes the theoretical construct of agency theory as a means of evaluating attempts by several stakeholder groups to find solutions to opportunistic agent behavior. As proposed by agency theorists, this would include the creation and implementation of monitoring mechanisms by industry stakeholders in order to regulate agent activities. Stakeholder groups involved include state and federal governments, the agents themselves, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and Players' Associations, which, at various times, all have adopted forms of certification programs in attempts to monitor player agents. Documentation on these programs and interviews with industry stakeholders are employed to develop criteria by which such programs can be assessed in terms of their ability to reduce traditional agency problems. In doing so, it is argued that the agency model can be used to provide additional insight into problems associated with these programs and to improve program effectiveness in monitoring hockey agent behavior.

This article discusses agency problems in sport organizations in which the same individuals are involved in both the management and control of decision making. We focus our analysis on the case of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by reviewing the behavior of selected IOC members with regard to the bidding process for the Olympic Games and the resulting reform attempts made by the IOC in an effort to address issues of corruption. After a review of examples of corrupt behavior on the part of IOC members, agency theory is introduced to discuss IOC reforms and provide some suggestions for future reform. We propose incorporating other stakeholders (in addition to the IOC members), such as corporate partners, media conglomerates, and other members of the Olympic movement (e.g., athletes, coaches, officials), into management and control functions. More specifi cally, it is suggested that these stakeholders comprise a board that oversees the operations of the IOC (similar to the IOC’s current executive committee) and be given the ability to remove and/or sanction IOC members who act self-interestedly to the detriment of the Olympic movement. Thus, by delegating the control function of decision making to a board and the management function to internal agents, greater accountability for all organization members can be achieved.