Fewer African Americans are playing in Major League Baseball today than 20 years ago.  In 1995, 20 percent of Major League Opening Day rosters were black. But by 2014, that number had declined to eight percent. It’s no secret that inner cities have faced a tough battle promoting the game of baseball to African Americans with fewer African-American baseball heroes to look up to. Major League Baseball continues to work hard to revive baseball in inner cities, but with declining viewership in all demographics, and a game fundamentally opposite of the fast-paced digitally disrupted media landscape, reaching African-American boys in inner cities might be more important than ever.

Let’s put the decline of African-American baseball players in context: If eight percent of Major League baseball players are black, that means about 70 started on Opening Day rosters in 2014. (856 players: 30 teams of 25 active players plus about 100 players who started on the disabled list). Now, take the handful of African-American players who are All-Stars and you’ll better understand how it’s hard for black boys in inner cities to see signs of success in the Major Leagues. Less interest in baseball from African Americans leads to lower television ratings, more empty seats at the ballpark and less advertising revenue.

But Major League Baseball has setup a taskforce to increase interest. This taskforce has three initiatives: expand Major League Baseball’s existing urban leagues and academies; improve and modernize coaching; and market African-American baseball players more aggressively.

“As a social institution, Major League Baseball has an enormous social responsibility to provide equal opportunities for all people, both on and off the field,” said Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

Yet, the problem might be bigger than Major League Baseball and any effort by the league to stem the tide, might be futile. Young athletes from low-income families make a financial decision when choosing which sport to pursue. Since Division I college baseball only offers 11.7 scholarships, which are divided among more than 30 players, it’s an easy and sound economic decision to choose basketball or football, which offers full scholarships.

“Take me, for example,” said New York Yankees’ pitcher C.C. Sabathia. “If I had a choice, I would have to go to college to play football, because my mom couldn’t afford to pay whatever the percent was of my baseball scholarship. So if I hadn’t been a first round pick, I would have gone to college to play football, because I had a full-ride.”

Thus, athletes from low-income families in inner cities aren’t choosing to play baseball for a variety of reasons. Yes, Major League Baseball isn’t doing a good enough job marketing its best African-American baseball players, such as Andrew McCutchen and Matt Kemp. But going to college on a partial scholarship is impossible for many inner city athletes and add to that the growing number of inner city baseball fields that are being bulldozed over and its no wonder the number of African American baseball players has steadily declined over the past 20 years.

But Sabathia brought up another reason beyond the philosophical and practical issues that Major League Baseball will confront when trying to revive the sport in inner cities; an issue that might be beyond their reach.

“Baseball is a sport where you learn how to play catch with your dad,” Sabathia said. “There’s a lot of single-parent homes in the inner city, so it’s hard to get kids to play.”

Sources: NY Times, Business Insider, MLB

On Wednesday, March 27^th, the Chicago district of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Northwestern players, led by former Northwestern Quarterback Kain Colter, qualify as employees of the university and can unionize. The decision, at first glance, might seem like a big win for collegiate athletes and their battle for compensation. But unionizing collegiate athletics is layered with multiple issues ranging from the differences between private and public institutions, tax issues and vast economic implications.

Jay Bilas, an ESPN College Basketball analyst, former Duke basketball player and lawyer argues that the NLRB’s decision won’t affect anything in the short term, as the decision of whether collegiate athletes can unionize will, ultimately, end up in federal courts if it’s able to pass the national NLRB. But scandal has surrounded the NCAA since its formation more than a century ago, and now, more than ever, athletes, administrators and fans sense a momentum of change.

In 2013, the NCAA March Madness Tournament brought in more than $1.1 billion in television advertising revenue, $55 million more than the NFL Playoffs and $223 million more than the NBA Playoffs, according to ESPN. Student-athletes do not recoup any of that revenue, besides an athletic scholarship that ranges between $5,000-$65,000 per year. In 2008, the athletic programs at Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Florida and Tennessee each made more than $100 million in total revenue. Alabama’s Head Football Coach, Nick Saban, is the highest paid public employee in the State of Alabama and makes at least $7 million per year, which is more than the salaries of all the head football coaches in the Mid-American Conference combined.

The NCAA argues that amateurism and money are mutually exclusive. But collegiate athletes, especially in sports that turn a profit, such as football and men’s basketball, continue to challenge that notion. However, the NLRB decision could have unexpected tax implications and throttle the momentum. The motion put forth by Northwestern players and their lawyers argued that athletes received compensation in the form of a scholarship making them employees of the university. If the scholarship were deemed as taxable income in federal courts, an athlete would have to pay at least $15,000 in federal taxes on a $61,000 per year scholarship. In addition, this particular ruling only serves private universities, because the NLRB does not govern labor matters at public institutions. A majority of the top performing Division I collegiate athletic programs are public universities, including all five of the universities that exceeded $100 million in total revenue in 2008.

If collegiate athletes were ever able to unionize, the NCAA would deem them ineligible for receiving compensation for play. And the NCAA has always been happy with taking the easy way out and promoting inertia. But the answer to paying collegiate athletes is simple and not as convoluted as the NCAA makes it seem. To pay athletes, universities could utilize a free-market approach, as it’s worked well for the rest of us. Like any other contract, the player and university could negotiate terms, require a player to stay for three or four years, introduce non-compete and behavioral clauses and detail a performance clause that highlights performance goals on the football field or basketball court and in the classroom. Smart minds can dictate how change can be effective and efficient and satisfy the needs of all parties involved, but asking fat cats to stop eating and make room at the dinner table, might be a little harder.

Sources: ESPN, NPR, SBNATION, ESPN

According to Diane Coyle, an economist and author of GDP: A Brief Affectionate History, we tend to think about GDP as a natural object, like a mountain, river or lake. But GDP isn’t a thing; it’s an idea – an idea that made the U.S. economy $500 billion bigger in 2013.

Why does the world revolve around an idea that hardly anyone understands? GDP can impact elections, influence major political decisions and determine whether countries can continue borrowing or be put into a recession. In addition, though utilizing the GDP might’ve been a good statistical measure of the economy during the twentieth century, it’s become increasingly inappropriate for an economy driven by innovation, services and intangible goods, argues Coyle.

The GDP was created because of the Great Depression and people first referred to it as national income. In the decades that followed the Great Depression, national income transitioned into gross national product and eventually Gross Domestic Product.

But around the 1950s and 1960s, the GDP began to have too much power. If a country needed help from the World Bank or the United Nations, it needed to know its GDP.  When the Cold War began, GDP began to reflect the success of a country and distinguished winners and losers.

When the GDP, a statistical measure of the economy, begins to have an inflated importance that defines whether your country is doing well or not, politicians begin to look at is a measure of their success as well. But what the GDP doesn’t do, as Robert F. Kennedy famously spoke about, it doesn’t measure the “health of children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It doesn’t include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.”

Not only is GDP out of touch with our current economy, but economists also warn that GDP is a tool only to be used to measure market activity and not a country’s prosperity. GDP needs to be redefined, restructured and/or replaced in order to enact progressive change. Case in point, GDP tends to rise when crime or pollution increases or when households accrue more debt. When the United States pays to fix the damage from a hurricane or tornado, the GDP actually goes up.

That raises the question, what does a post-GDP world look like and how can we promote a measure of economy that defines real progress in the United States?  Justin Zorn, a public service fellow at Harvard University, argues that we need comprehensive indicators that are empathetic to core elements of national wellbeing in the 21^st century, including economic mobility, strong families and communities, entrepreneurship, health, education, environmental quality and public safety.

We shouldn’t leave GDP behind, but our ability to collect data and analyze it in new ways opens up the window for innovation in national accounting. With the capacity to tell stories with data in new and more complex ways, we can find an objective truth – a truth that can do better in measuring the prosperity of a nation.

Sources: Huffington Post, Princeton, NPR

When’s the last time you watched a film in a movie theatre? This past weekend or has it been awhile? Well, if you’ve watched a movie in a theatre within the last month, you’re in the minority.

Sixty-one percent of adults said that they rarely or never go to the movies, according to a Harris Interactive poll conducted in early 2012. More importantly, the moviegoers indicated that the recession had impacted how often they go to the theatre. Fifty-five percent of the people who watch movies in the theatre said that they see fewer films now.

However, in 2009, ticket sales grew by 17.5 percent, to $1.7 billion, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking company. Attendance also grew by 16 percent.

The disconnect between those surveyed in the Harris Interactive poll and 2009 box office numbers might seem perplexing, but a quick analysis of the yearly total gross numbers helps us better understand what’s going on. In 2009, total gross grew by 10 percent. But in 2010 and 2011, — years which those surveyed in the Harris Interactive poll would be recollecting — total gross declined by 0.3 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, according to Box Office Mojo, a box-office reporting service.

The idea that people who want to forget their troubles often do it in movie theatres might be a misconception. In 1989, the employment rate was at a relatively low (and happy) 5.4 percent, but theatre audiences grew by 16.4 percent. In 2011, when the unemployment rate was hovering around nine percent, ticket sales declined by 4.2 percent from the previous year.

The reason for the incongruent relationship between ticket sales and unemployment rate is due, in large part, to the quality of movies made. Though Martin Kaplan, the director of the Norman Lear Center for the study of entertainment and society at the University of Southern California, argues that it’s common sense that people want to hide in a dark place and forget about their problems, they might not want to if they’re not intrigued by any of the movies being shown in theatres.

Moreover, as theatres continue to make technological advances (and pay for these technological advances) and movie studios continue to lose money on eight out of ten films made (according to my movie business professor, Peter Exline) ticket prices will continue to increase.

Ticket prices have grown by 41 percent since 2001, according to The New York Times. In 2001, the average price for a ticket was $8, but in 2011, the price had increased to $11.75. Children’s tickets rose 67 percent in the same period and senior tickets increased by 95 percent.

The other factors that influence yearly box office sales — quality of movies and ticket prices — often mask our ability to understand whether there is an inverse relationship between box office totals and unemployment or overall health of the economy. Though consumers might spend more on affordable splurges during times of distress, perhaps a night out at the movies isn’t so affordable anymore.