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Narrator: You're listening to a Towson University podcast.

[Music]

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Mark Ginsberg: Welcome to On the Mark, where we have candid conversations about meaningful and consequential work happening here at Towson University. I'm Mark Ginsberg. It's my honor to serve as president of Towson University, located, of course, in Towson, Maryland. And on this podcast, we're introducing you to members of our university community who are engaged in high-impact teaching, research, and student success practices. Today's episode focuses on the intersection of sport, business, and culture. We'll dive into topics like the influence of sports on society, the economic and community benefits professional sports teams bring to their cities, the rising cost and competition in youth sports, and of course, changes in college athletics.

Today, I'm joined by three noted experts. First is Dr. Thomas Rhoads, an applied microeconomist and longtime faculty member in our Department of Economics, having been at Towson University since 1999. His research explores how performance, proximity, pricing, and player development shape the financial landscape of professional and collegiate sports. Dr. Rhoads earned his PhD in economics from the University of Wyoming.

I'm also joined by Dr. Jaime DeLuca, a faculty member in TU's Department of Kinesiology. Dr. DeLuca's teaching and research interests include both the management and sociocultural aspects of sport. She herself is a former Division I athlete from her time as an undergraduate at Penn State University, my alma mater, where I received my master's and PhD degrees, and Dr. DeLuca holds a PhD in physical cultural studies from the University of Maryland.

And lastly, I'm joined by my colleague, Dr. Steve Eigenbrot. Dr. Eigenbrot has served as Towson's Vice President of Athletics and Athletic Director since December 2024. As Vice President of Athletics and AD, he serves on the President's Cabinet and oversees TU's 19 Division I sports teams. Dr. Eigenbrot has previously held leadership roles at several prominent universities, including University of South Carolina and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he earned his doctorate in higher education leadership. Tom, Jaime, and Steve, thank you for joining me today. I know it's going to be a really intriguing conversation. So, let me start with a kind of a balancing and leveraging question, if you would. And the question's a simple one, but really there are no simple questions when we talk about these topics. When we talk about the business of sport, what exactly are we talking about? Let's set the stage for the conversation for our listeners.

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Thomas Rhoads: Business, I think, suggests there's money involved, and so we have to think that there's a profit incentive for these teams, for these leagues, and now ultimately for colleges in the NCAA. So, when I teach my sports econ class, we're certainly getting into that. A lot of fans out there...

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Thomas Rhoads: ...would like to think there's no money involved because...

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Mark Ginsberg: That's a little naive today.

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Thomas Rhoads: Right, I know, but they're fans and they want their team to win regardless of the cost.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Right.

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Thomas Rhoads: And so that's where there gets to be a real difficult time within the sports industry, is that the sports owners, the NCAA, the schools themselves, they need to make money or at least cover costs. The fans, to some extent, could care less about that. So, it's a fun discussion we can have in class and even today.

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Mark Ginsberg: And there's really a blending between what's happening at the professional sports level and what we're seeing happening at the NCAA level, particularly the Division I and NCAA level.

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Thomas Rhoads: Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Jaime, you were about ready to say something.

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Jaime DeLuca: Yeah, I was just going to say, obviously, we have the very visible NCAA college sport and professional sport, but when we teach students in our sport management program, one of the things we try to focus on, too, is all the other aspects of the sport industry that you might be employed in that also make money, even though it may not be as obvious or as visible as some of these things that we're seeing on television all the time. So, rec sports is one, privatized youth sports, facilities, multipurpose facilities, even ones that host sports teams, but then also host concerts, right, and things like that.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right.

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Jaime DeLuca: So, it's a very, very broad industry with lots of different parts of it that, yes, [Laughter] are focused on making money.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, you've touched on a number of things I want to talk about – youth sports, the multifaceted nature of the industry, and of course, the privatization of the industry, not just at professional levels, but even at local rec levels, which is really a trend that we're seeing. Steve, how would you define the business of sport?

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Steve Eigenbrot: I think transitioning maybe to the interscholastic and also the higher ed lens, the idea of driving value, not necessarily always in the sense of dollars and cents, forgive the pun there. I think when you talk about college athletics historically serving as the front porch of the university and a great way to engage the community.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Same with high school sports. And I think trying to make sure that that's in capture. I certainly agree with the dollars and cents of it all.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, right.

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Steve Eigenbrot: But part of that value trade-off also comes with the eyeballs that we live in a sports-crazed society and how you can leverage that for your community.

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Mark Ginsberg: Let's dive one level deeper. How is the sport industry differentiated from other parts of our economy, other industrial aspects of our economy, manufacturing, or service or other aspects? What makes it unique?

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Thomas Rhoads: So, I'll give one real easy explanation.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Thomas Rhoads: We have a sports page in the newspaper, right? So, we don't have a section that's devoted to different specific industries. We have a business section, but we have a sports page in the newspaper, and I think that speaks volumes about how important...

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Mark Ginsberg: Boy, that's simple but elegant really now.

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Thomas Rhoads: Right? Yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Simple but elegant.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Although half of our listeners, you may talk about what a newspaper is.

[Laughter]

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Thomas Rhoads: Yeah, you're exactly right on that. So that's a different story altogether. But absolutely, that's what I would say is culturally, I think sports is huge in this country because of that, and really around the world.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, certainly. We just saw the World Cup, for example, and we saw the influence of not just soccer, but the influence of the soccer economy, if you will, both here in the States and around the world. One of the debates that I read about is does sport contribute to the local economy, to the regional economy, to the state economy, to the national economy? And how does it do that? And Tom, you've written about this, I think.

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Thomas Rhoads: Yeah. We got to be careful with how we talk about this. Sports is entertainment, I think, ultimately for the fans that pay money to watch. If there's no sports to watch, what are they going to do with their dollars? So, it's a matter of where are those dollars flowing from and where are they flowing to? So, if you're trying to attract outside dollars from your economy, from your region, the World Cup, for example, you're bringing a lot of people in from overseas. That's dollars that weren't coming in before. But when the Ravens play a game, you're just attracting, for the most part, all the dollars are coming from people in Baltimore. So you're just redistributing dollars from one entertainment venue to M&T Bank Stadium. So, yes, it has an impact if it's coming from, and I'll put in air quotes, "the right place," but you've got to be really careful about how you analyze that and how you kind of account for where those dollars are coming from.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. That's a big debate in a lot of communities who are being asked to invest municipal dollars in sports franchises and stadiums and facilities, in practice facilities and all different kinds of things. And is there a return on that investment is the big question that a lot of politicians are asking, and a lot of taxpayers are asking, right? Yeah. Steve, how do you see it?

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Steve Eigenbrot: Well, I think especially, I see what Jaime's talking about here a little bit here, talking about the youth sports and the investment. I operate in a part of the ecosystem that I think has a lot of criticism and rightfully so, but at the same time, we're also seeing, we live in a sports-crazed society, we're having so many more people invest large amounts of dollars to give their kids access to youth sports. So there's something beyond, you know, the World Cup's on one end of the spectrum, little Johnny and Joey and Jill playing youth fill-in-the-blank. I feel like just in my – I was a young person, let's call it 30 years ago – how much that world has evolved in the last 30 years, and how much more people are spending on it, I think is also a really, really fascinating part of the sports economy.

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Mark Ginsberg: The business of youth sports.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Mm-hmm, yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, the business of youth sports. So many now local sports enterprises owned by not just local people, but by venture capitalists, by big dollars coming in to investing in those universal sort of competitive outlets for young people.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Correct.

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Mark Ginsberg: We see that all in our region, certainly.

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Steve Eigenbrot: And with venture capital comes larger barriers to entry, and then there's maybe the negative part about what's happening with youth sports is that they're getting more and more expensive, but also from an economic engine, I feel like what youth sports was when I was little, just go grab a bat and a ball and go in a field, as opposed to now, it's a full-on investment.

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Mark Ginsberg: Some also suggest, by the way, that with youth sports, there's an access issue.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: Which when you were a young person, you can take a bat and a ball, and you go to the local elementary school or the local field and play.

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Thomas Rhoads: Yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: Now to play on an organized youth team could cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to a family.

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Jaime DeLuca: And that's actually what I was going to say. I mean, one of the things with this big business of youth sports is that it has created kind of a massive access issue, right? So, the families that can spend $10,000 per year per sport on their youth athlete is very different. And while the rec opportunities are still there, the way that the opportunities to really, I think, build a potential NCAA or professional athlete are not necessarily had at the rec level anymore, right?

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Right.

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Jaime DeLuca: And so there's a little bit of an issue going on there about who can afford it, where you go to get it, even how your parents can facilitate it transportation-wise. Youth academies are growing, right?

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Mark Ginsberg: Yes.

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Jaime DeLuca: Where students go and live and take part in those.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yes.

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Jaime DeLuca: Which is a very interesting thought in terms of sport investment and how we're producing athletes in this country and what happens to them afterwards and all those kinds of things. So, I think there's an awful lot of issues going on there that are a little bit deeper.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, we can go back to some of that in a little bit. Let me come back to the professional level for a little bit, but also the college level and talk a little bit more about the value of the investment. We just saw last week a sports franchise in California being sold for a record amount of money. Every time a sports franchise is sold, it seems like it's being sold for another record amount of money, but I want to ask you a compelling question. How important is it for a franchise to recognize a value for the franchise? And how important is winning to the recognition of that value? In other words, a sports franchise that exists has a certain value, but a sports franchise that's a winning franchise seems to me has a very different kind of value. How important is winning?

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Thomas Rhoads: Teams get their value, I think, histor... Teams that have value today that may not be winning today, I'll think Dallas Cowboys, for example. Typically, they're the most valuable franchise in the world.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right.

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Thomas Rhoads: They're not winning the way they used to in the old days, but when they were winning, everybody loved them.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, it's the tradition more than the current winning.

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Thomas Rhoads: So, I think that's a part of it. And you could even get that into the NCAA as well. But sticking with professional sports, I think these teams that sell for or are valued very highly, they're either in locations that are very large – so New York, LA, something like that, Chicago – or they've got a history of doing very well. And so there's some inertia in that valuation process. So, I think it takes either a long time to build up that value or to not have that value come crashing down. Steph Curry, I think, helped build up the Golden State value [Laughter] for the NBA team there quite a bit on his own, I would say. And so now that team is worth quite a bit, whereas before he came in, it wasn't. So, it could be one person that was just spectacular, it could be a history, or it could just be a really large location.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, market is important.

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Thomas Rhoads: Market's absolutely important.

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Mark Ginsberg: To defining value.

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Thomas Rhoads: Yep, absolutely.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, in a small market, and let's take Baltimore, for example, Baltimore is a small market. We've got very valuable professional sports franchises though here in Baltimore who have a history, a tradition, and are part of the fabric of the community. So what you're saying, Tom, is that fabric, that sense of connectivity to the community is important to its valuation.

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Thomas Rhoads: Absolutely.

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Mark Ginsberg: How about collegiate sports? How important is winning, Steve, for collegiate sports?

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Steve Eigenbrot: Yeah, I would say it's kind of the same. I think at the end of the day, success today is less important than marketing and sponsorship opportunities. I think that does so much for driving, whether you look at, fill in the blank, Michigan or it's Manchester United. Ticket sales in a given year may oscillate, or what you're doing to be dynamic in the new revenue share or era of college athletics, you may trip and stumble. Like Alabama hasn't been successful in the last couple of years, since the paradigm has shifted and they have a new head coach in football. Doesn't mean that Alabama's brand has really suffered.

So, I think really at the end of the day, the market piece, I think in the pro space is a lot more important because the market drives some of those sponsorship opportunities and drives the brand differently than the paradigm of past success has for college athletics. I think college athletics, you'll find teams that were successful. The SEC is but the SEC is in large part because we can have a very short conversation about all the pro teams in the state of Alabama, for instance, right? I came from the University of South Carolina. It was kind of the same thing, right? So, the idea that you can kind of own the state and own a lot of the money, the discretionary income that people have, I think, helps a ton with them.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Not just going and buying tickets but also investing dollars and buying the shirts and the hats and so on and so forth.

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Mark Ginsberg: Sure. Yeah. One of our home states is Nebraska. On a Saturday afternoon in the fall, Memorial Stadium is the third largest city in the state. I mean, that's a big deal. It's interesting that you say that. You're right. That in most of the SEC cities, you're not competing with a professional franchise. Let's talk about the Major League Baseball, the National Football League. How important is the media? How important are TV contracts? How important is the money that are involved through media, both for the success of those franchises, but also for the success itself of the sport?

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Thomas Rhoads: I think it drives almost everything. And one of the things you can see is that the way the game is designed and played and the structure of the game at those levels is very much driven by television and the need to get commercials on television. So a two-minute warning is in place to get more commercial time on television. That's just the structure of the game when you're broadcasting it like that. So, I think it drives an incredible amount of the way the game is played, designed, and everything like that.

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Mark Ginsberg: And it's adding a lot of dollars into the system.

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Thomas Rhoads: Mm-hmm.

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Mark Ginsberg: Go ahead, Jaime.

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Jaime DeLuca: Yeah, the media revenue is a huge part...

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Mark Ginsberg: Huge part.

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Jaime DeLuca: ...of both college and certainly professional.

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Mark Ginsberg: Big-time college, not necessarily all college.

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Jaime DeLuca: Right. [Laughter]

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Jaime DeLuca: Big-time college. I mean, that's what we have seen, even a lot of our more recent conference realignments and things like that have to do with the media packages...

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Mark Ginsberg: 100%.

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Jaime DeLuca: ...and the distributions that those conferences and individual institutions are getting from those. It's a big part of their revenue stream.

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Mark Ginsberg: How important is streaming? Now, many of the collegiate teams that we're involved with are on national and regional TV to some degree, but almost all their games are being streamed. How important and how vital is that to the success of the programs?

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Jaime DeLuca: I can't necessarily speak to the dollar amount – maybe that's something that Tom can speak to a little bit – but I think it's hugely important. I mean, anywhere I go now on a weekend, you catch somebody on their phone watching the game because they're not sitting in front of a television anymore.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, it's more visible.

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Jaime DeLuca: Yeah. And so having those platforms and the ability for people to check out, especially things that they might not easily be able to get on their television at home by logging into a particular platform or particular service, I think is hugely important. It's also fractured the market in different ways. But I think it's a really important part of that sports consumption aspect, which is driving fandom, it's driving sponsorship dollars, right? It's driving all kind of the other parts of the economy. So, whether it's making money from year to year or how the packages are being put together, I think there's a lot of room for those things to continue to morph and change, but I think it's still kind of a crucial aspect.

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Steve Eigenbrot: I would just say this. I think everything Jaime said. That being said, if you're only on streaming versus also on national or regional linear television, there's still a very large amount of value today – maybe 10 years from now, there won't be – in terms of being on linear television. And so I think if you are quick to say, "Hey, well, all of our games are going to be on ESPN+," for instance, I don't know that that's a better outcome than having access to national television. I think that may change over the next 3, 5, 10 years certainly. But I do think that if you watch viewership numbers, not everyone gives out their viewership numbers, but there's still a premium for being able to turn on the TV and there's enough people out there that are going that route. And then if you're on a national platform like CBS, you're going to obviously be able to stream it on your phone, like Jaime was alluding to.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Yeah.

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Steve Eigenbrot: So, I think that diversity of opportunity. I think one of the challenges is that we have one now, we're on a streaming network where you have to subscribe to just that streaming network, as opposed to if you're part of a larger bundle. You know, people that get access to Amazon Prime because they like to buy everything on Amazon, like my family does. Right? I think that's an extremely large benefit add.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, here at Towson University, just give us a little bit of information. Last year, our basketball program was on national TV, how many times?

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Steve Eigenbrot: Six times during the regular season on CBS through our relationship with CBS Sports, and then I think another five times. So 11, I think the total.

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Mark Ginsberg: So that's a big deal.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Yeah.

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Mark Ginsberg: For the promotion of our university as well as the program. Deloitte in a recent report said in their report, the shift to streaming for live sports coverage is no longer in the future. It's here. That we're going to see more and more and more of the streaming services and pay for pay-for-view services, too. That's affecting sport. We saw what? The Orioles last week. I wanted to watch the Orioles on TV, and I had to get on to Amazon Prime in order to see the game. Right? That's something new.

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Steve Eigenbrot: Yeah, we're here.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. I've got time, on a related topic…

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Thomas Rhoads: Sure. No, I was going to say to add on to what Steve was saying with linear versus streaming television, in the linear TV world, I think it's the marginal sports fan that you're able to attract. That may be generally interested in a sport, but not generally or not specifically interested in a particular team or league. Whereas with streaming, when it's directly streaming, you are a fan of either that league, that sport, or that team. So you're going to do what it takes to watch that game.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right. Sure.

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Thomas Rhoads: And so that's a different model than just broadcasting it out there for everybody, and you're hoping to pick up the marginal sports fan. And so when your brand gets big enough, you can pick up those marginal sports fans, and of course, that's what advertisers are all about.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right.

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Thomas Rhoads: They're trying to get their product in front of eyeballs, as many eyeballs as possible. So, again, we get back to that first question you asked about the business of sport.

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Mark Ginsberg: Right. Right.

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Thomas Rhoads: We got to have money there somewhere, and so that's what it's all about. But the streaming gives more schools and teams and leagues access to eyeballs than they ever had before. So that's got to open up more revenue streams for those particular teams.

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Mark Ginsberg: So, it's really an affinity issue. I got into FloSports to watch Towson. I didn't get into FloSports to watch basketball, as you're saying, right? Let me switch gears for a second and talk about another related thing , and it's related to what you talked about earlier, Jaime, that media has brought extra dollars, lots of extra dollars into athletics. But what we've seen also is an explosion in in payroll. What we've seen is an explosion in payroll, not just of professional athletes, but now of college athletes through revenue share and NIL. We've seen an explosion in coaches' salaries. Where's the end game? Where's this going? All we do is we hear about the dilemmas with it, but where's it headed?

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Steve Eigenbrot: Jaime picked on you. You want me to...

[Laughter]

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Steve Eigenbrot: In the college space, I think it's heading toward federal intervention. I think in the pro baseball space, it's headed toward a lockout. And we've got lots of different ways to look at that. And so it's exploded. I would say we haven't done the best job and hired in the higher education space of not chasing every last dollar and maybe thinking a little bit more about the principles of higher education.

At this point, I think the dollars are far too crazy for us to undo what we've done. I think one of the very interesting things to watch, and the federal government's kind of opined on this, Olympic sports in America are kind of built around this idea that colleges are going to support them, and we've done so in a way that doesn't really generate a ton of dollars. And I'm very proud of the swimming and diving program we have at Towson and a number of other Olympic sports that do great things, but if you look at the high major level, we just saw an SEC team decide, "Hey, we're going to cut women's tennis," then they decided to bring it back. But if they're going to keep chasing dollars, dollars come through TV decisions, but there hasn't been a whole lot of belt tightening, and there's a lot of opportunity there relative to things that don't drive revenue.

So, I mean, I'm already a little bit worried about the future Olympic success of the United States just because of the access thing we talked about earlier, the idea that the richest kids are the ones that are playing at the most elite levels. The richest kids aren't always the most talented, and so there's a problem there. But I think that problem gets exacerbated if we decide that moving forward, our elite colleges and universities aren't going to be the ones that really step up. And we're kind of currently footing the bill. I'm not saying that USA Swimming or any other organization isn't very supportive of the initiative, but college is a really important part of that machine.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Jaime DeLuca: I was going to say, I totally agree with that and particularly going to hit on the federal legislation that you mentioned. So, I assume you're referring to the Protect College Sports Act. [Laughter]

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Mark Ginsberg: Something. Yes, yeah.

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Jaime DeLuca: And I think we'll hear a little bit more about that in September when the Senate is back.

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Mark Ginsberg: Probably. Yeah, probably.

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Jaime DeLuca: But I think one of the issues with something like that is I am actually all for federal legislation to help regulate some of this because I think it's sorely needed, but that act in particular, I think, takes into consideration too many different variables and it can't do everything. And I think once Congress steps in, the only thing that can change something is Congress stepping in again.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

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Jaime DeLuca: And so I think we're in this kind of odd space right now where we're beholden to what's maybe going to happen there, but it's not going to answer all the questions. It's probably not going to solve this Olympic sports issue, right? It's not going to provide us with, I think, the information and guidance we need related to Title IX and how that's impacting things.

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Mark Ginsberg: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

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Jaime DeLuca: It's not weighing in on whether or not college athletes are employees and what their labor status is. It just may be giving kind of an antitrust exemption that may make things a little bit muddier, honestly. So, I think that becomes very confusing and it is going to be very, very difficult to regulate all of the spending that has to happen in order to keep up and then also preserve some of the wonderful things about college athletics, like pushing forward Olympic sports.

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Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, there are some parallels certainly between professional sports and collegiate sports. One of the parallels that doesn't exist, I think, but correct me if I'm wrong, is that most professional teams are making money. Most are in the green. For college athletics, let me give you some of the data. There are 352 Division I institutions in the country. And of those, there are 21 that are revenue positive for collegiate athletics. Twenty-one out of 352. At the Power IV level, that exists. There are very few institutions really having to do with stadium size and size of media contracts. At the FCS level, there are 120, I think, FCS institutions in the country, of which we're one. You know how many of those institutions are FCS level or revenue positive? One. One of 120. So, we're seeing the parallels between professional sports and collegiate sports are certainly in place, but there are some differences around whether or not they're revenue neutral or revenue positive. How is that going to change things? Where are we going with that?

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Thomas Rhoads: Yeah, I think the incentives are structured to show them not making money, I think, is one way to think about that. Again, prior to NIL and the house settlement and the revenue sharing, I think to some extent the universities had the athletics departments at these, especially Power IV conference schools, had lots of revenue flowing in, and where was the revenue going? And so in order to get a good outcome, whether it's a national championship, a conference championship, you've got to put together a good team. How do you get a good team? Good coaching, good players. So, you got to pay the money to get the coaches, and it's a national market for that, and you've got to get the best kids recruiting wise, and how do you do that? Before all of this stuff that we're in right now, you could get that by having really good facilities. That costs a lot of money.

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Mark Ginsberg: It does.

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Thomas Rhoads: It costs a lot of money.

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Mark Ginsberg: It does.

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Thomas Rhoads: So now, so I'm wondering if the facility thing is maybe now in the back, kind of in the rear view window, and now the focus will be almost exclusively on paying these players, and that's where the revenue is going to go. So, I don't know if this is going to make it easier to show that athletics departments are either making or not making money, or if it's not going to be desirable. There's an element of how valuable are things without putting a dollar sign on it, and so there's all kinds of value that we get that we really either have a tough time measuring, or just there's no market for it. I think sports in particular is very much in that realm, and that's what makes this a really interesting discussion.

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Mark Ginsberg: Well, let me raise a different issue for a moment, one that I'm particularly very interested in personally, and I wanted to get your take on it. Jim, you mentioned Title IX earlier. I want to extend the Title IX conversation to the rise and the ascent of women's sports in this country, both at the professional and at the collegiate level. I think you are the experts in this space, but as a fan, as somebody who watches, to watch the rise of women's sports and the popularity of women's sports has truly been inspiring. What's happening in that space, and how do you see it? The rise not just of the NFL and Major League Baseball, but of sports at the professional, WNBA, very popular these days, and other sports. Rise of women's volleyball at the collegiate level, the University of Nebraska having 95,000 people in a stadium for a women's volleyball game. Unheard of five years ago. Big, important trend, I would think.

[00:27:04]

Jaime DeLuca: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:05]

Thomas Rhoads: Yeah. Well, I could comment real quick on this.

[00:27:06]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:27:06]

Thomas Rhoads: Is that I think what's fascinating is that a lot of the revenue now that the athletes can get is now no longer just at the professional level. So now they can make money at the college level. At the professional level for women, there were very limited opportunities for them to make decent money doing that. Now there's pretty good opportunities. The numbers I've heard for some of the women, especially like South Carolina, they're making some good money, women's basketball players. That's awesome, right? And that's what the market suggests they should get. So, I have a sense then that there might be a renewed interest at the lower level, like the rec level, like the kids getting developed, the youth sports for women and girls in particular because there is now a new revenue stream that they can access that they never had before. And so to me, I look at this as it's not the Title IX. Title IX's in place. We've already had the growth of women's sports. But now I think it's going to get amped up to a new level because of that now new revenue that can flow towards the women from Title IX.

[00:28:13]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, I don't want to marginalize Title IX. I think it's had an enormously important impact on women's involvement in sport, on equity in sport, on things that are good for not just women, but good for the society at large. Yeah.

[00:28:26]

Thomas Rhoads: Absolutely.

[00:28:28]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Well, I certainly can attest on a personal level. One of my granddaughters is a gymnast and she's young, but she's, her grandfather would tell you, very, very talented. But what that means is now that she's in a club and she's going twice a week, she has access that we were talking about earlier. But to be developed, not just as an athlete, but in a sport where it does take resources to develop the skills. I do worry that even in women's sports and some of the sports that involve – gymnastics is a good example – it really does take resources. And will it become more of, in the name of equity and Title IX, will things become actually less equal? [Laughter]

[Crosstalk 00:29:07]

[00:29:07]

Steve Eigenbrot: Yeah. Well, I wonder.

[00:29:09]

Mark Ginsberg: That worries me a little bit.

[00:29:10]

Steve Eigenbrot: I think that's a great point. In this day and age, if we're riding the wave of women's sports, sometimes government comes in, intervenes in the free market, and changes the marketplace, right? And so I think that may be, to some extent, what happened through Title IX influencing college athletics and opportunities, and now we have revenue share, but we also have an era of great uncertainty relative to courts are making decisions, Department of Education. I don't know how they feel about those decisions. It feels a little bit different than the way that I was born into this industry 20-some years ago, right? So, women's athletics is riding an amazing wave. What the next chapter, in economics, lots of times it takes 10 years to feel the next ebb and flow, and so while the dollars on the revenue share side that are available to women certainly weren't available three years ago, I think the interesting thing relative to the court decision, as opposed to Title IX as we've all known and lived it, there's still another card to be played there. It'll be interesting to see how that kind of shakes itself out.

[00:30:07]

Jaime DeLuca: Yeah, I agree. I think that [Laughter] we've come so far with gender equity, thanks in large part to Title IX, but how we'll see some of the revenues distributed and things like that is interesting to see. I think it has, I mean, obviously there's these spillover effects then of Title IX and how that has transitioned to women's professional sports, right?

[00:30:25]

Mark Ginsberg: Right, sure.

[00:30:25]

Jaime DeLuca: Once they leave college or even at the Olympic level or something like that. But I think, for example, the thing that keeps coming to my mind is the fact that the WNBA minimum salary, right? And how low that is...

[00:30:38]

Mark Ginsberg: Compared to the men's.

[00:30:38]

Jaime DeLuca: ...compared to the men's salary, right? But also how much of a force Kaitlin Clark has been in reshaping that.

[00:30:43]

Mark Ginsberg: Yes.

[00:30:44]

Jaime DeLuca: So, it's interesting to see. Like right now, what is the real catalyst that's driving some of that equity in women's sports? And it's different certainly at the collegiate level and at the professional level. So, I think, yeah, time will tell.

[00:30:57]

Mark Ginsberg: Let me ask each of you to answer one question. Take a moment to reflect as I ask it. If you were to think about one trend, one thing that you believe is likely to shape the future of sport, professional or collegiate, youth or professional, whatever level you want to think about, one trend that'll result in one specific outcome over the next five years, what would you identify? Be a futurist for a second, not just an economist of sport, not expert in sport management or an athletic director at a collegiate sport program. Think broadly. What trend is going to have the biggest impact on sport and society over the next five years?

[00:31:37]

Thomas Rhoads: I'll start, and what I would probably think is sports gambling.

[00:31:42]

Mark Ginsberg: Ah. We haven't even talked about that.

[00:31:43]

Thomas Rhoads: We haven't even talked about sports gambling.

[00:31:44]

Mark Ginsberg: Boy, that's a huge issue, isn't it, Tom?

[00:31:46]

Thomas Rhoads: It's huge.

[00:31:46]

Mark Ginsberg: Huge issue.

[00:31:46]

Thomas Rhoads: And what I get very – fearful's probably the wrong word – but I'm a little suspicious when I see ESPN and their television program having a sponsor of DraftKings, or Major League Baseball and DraftKings.

[00:32:03]

Mark Ginsberg: And we're seeing that increase of late.

[00:32:04]

Thomas Rhoads: And it's increasing.

[00:32:05]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

[00:32:05]

Thomas Rhoads: And for decades or even a century or more, we saw this split. Like it was as much as we could don't even have any gambling and sports together.

[00:32:16]

Mark Ginsberg: Right.

[00:32:16]

Thomas Rhoads: Now they're mashing them together.

[00:32:18]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. I'm thinking about Pete Rose.

[00:32:19]

Thomas Rhoads: Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:19]

Mark Ginsberg: Right, yeah.

[00:32:20]

Thomas Rhoads: So, to me, that's wrong in so many ways because of the entertainment value that we put on sports, but also if you want to say the integrity value of it.

[00:32:30]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah.

[00:32:30]

Thomas Rhoads: And so if I'm to predict anything in the next 5 or 10 years, something's going to happen in potentially not a good way, but it'll get rectified, I would imagine.

[00:32:39]

Mark Ginsberg: That bubble'll burst.

[00:32:39]

Thomas Rhoads: Something's going to happen there with sports gambling. Yeah.

[00:32:43]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah. Good one. Who's next? Go ahead, Jaime. Go ahead.

[00:32:46]

Jaime DeLuca: [Laughter] I guess I would say, and I don't know if I could classify it as a trend, but for me, particularly looking in the college sports space, I would say the answer to whether or not we're going to consider NCAA athletes that are getting revenue from their participation in sports, whether or not they're going to be considered employees under the law and how that...

[00:33:08]

Mark Ginsberg: Huge issue. Huge issue.

[00:33:09]

Jaime DeLuca: How that's going to change things, I think. Whatever the decision is will absolutely change the game.

[00:33:16]

Mark Ginsberg: Yeah, that's a game changer for sure, sitting at a college, what that'll mean. Steve?

[00:33:21]

Steve Eigenbrot: Kind of similar, but different. The associated entities' trend in higher education and the Division I athletics, you're seeing these LLCs pop up so that institutions can be more dynamic and align revenue-generating opportunities to meet the challenges of the current landscape of intercollegiate athletics. And I think the mantra that I've always said is we are an important part of not apart from the rest of higher education. And there are obviously a number of ways that I think this works that are more comfortable for the enterprise in which they are further and further away from being college students. That worries me, honestly, but I think in some ways, it's the path that this makes the most sense from a sustainability standpoint, especially related to the question that Jaime's talking about. And so I think that will be an interesting trend to watch.

[00:34:15]

Mark Ginsberg: Well, thank you all. What a fascinating conversation. And what I'd like to do actually is invite you back because I think we've only scratched the surface on some topics that are not only very complicated, but very important to those who are listening and very important for our communities, very important for our universities, and frankly, very important for our society. Sport is an important part of our society and how it evolves. Maybe we'll be somewhat related, if not very much related to how our society itself evolves. So thank you very much to Dr. Thomas Rhoads of the Department of Economics at Towson University, Dr. Jaime DeLuca of the Kinesiology Department, and Dr. Steve Eigenbrot, Director of Athletics of Towson University.

Thank you for listening to On the Mark. If you like what you've heard, please give us a follow or leave a review. It helps to ensure that we can keep bringing you more candid conversations about the consequential work of higher education. If you have feedback about our podcast, I'd welcome hearing from you. Please feel free to send me a message at onthemark@towson.edu.

[Music]

[00:35:19]

Narrator: Founded in 1866, Towson University is a top-ranked comprehensive public research university recognized as Maryland's number one public institution by the Wall Street Journal. As Greater Baltimore's largest university, TU proudly serves as an engine of opportunity for nearly 20,000 students, the state of Maryland and beyond. Explore more than 190 top-ranked undergraduate and graduate degree programs and make our momentum yours at towson.edu.