Sports Revenues from Property Rights and Cities

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how profits from sports markets are based on branding or intellectual property rights (IPRs) and urbanisation processes. The extraction of monopoly rents through IPRs requires constructing notions of “uniqueness” and “authenticity”. However, the mass marketing of sports simultaneously homogenise sports cultures. The sports consumer culture depends on encouraging urban entrepreneurialism and interurban competition, increasingly influenced by finance capital. The promotion of financial risk-taking impacts not only community sports cultures but also expands sports gambling. Meanwhile, the urbanisation process fostering urban sports consumer markets is embedded in car cultures reinforcing global fossil fuel economies that contribute to the ecological crisis as well as “resource wars” in the Global South.