Teams as content: An examination of mass media ownership in professional sports

This study examined the recent emergence of mass media corporations owning professional sports franchises in Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. Major media corporations such as News Corp., AOL Time Warner, Disney, Comcast, and Cablevision own and operate multiple professional sports franchises. Within the last ten years, other regional media corporations have become partial investors in professional sports franchises that often goes unnoticed by the general consumer. In order to investigate media ownership's effects on the economic structure of MLB and the NHL, this research conducted a qualitative analysis of player and team salaries. It was concluded that media owned teams employ a disproportionate amount of the league's top players, and on average these franchises have a higher team salary than their competitors. Still, there was a strong relationship between market size and team salary in MLB. It appears that media ownership is the most profound economic variable in the NHL.;Another facet of this research was open-ended interviews with ten team executives in both leagues and twenty journalists who cover MLB and NHL franchises. The results displayed that very few team executives were critical of media ownership in professional sports, while the journalists offered different opinions. Both team executives and critics offered positive and negative aspects of media ownership in sports. Therefore, these mixed qualitative results display that there is not a consensus perception of mass media ownership in professional sports. The expectation that both populations would be highly critical of media ownership in professional sports was not supported.;A second set of open-ended interviews was conducted for this research. Twenty-six journalists who work for a corporation that owns a news outlet and team were interviewed. This group was asked to speak about any corporate interference or specifications they encounter while reporting on the team owned by their employer. Respondents claimed that their only requirement is to report fairly and honestly, and ownership does not affect their coverage. However, there were anecdotal cases of a media corporation restricting the flow of information.