Millions of Americans watch and listen to daily broadcasts of baseball games and their results, as well as the minutiae involved in the sport. Millions of other fans enjoy their weekly games at ballparks located in cities, towns, and suburbs across North America (Guthrie & Jozsa 1999)
Based on the above, it is little wonder that there is such a prevailing spirit of "build it and they will come" dominating the American landscape today. "If new stadiums and arenas have economic value -- and I believe they do -- the market will see that they are built" (Keating 1997:55)
The multipliers are usually developed through statistical estimates based on annual state and regional employment changes; the multipliers used in the past to calculate indirect economic benefit have ranged widely from approximately 1.5 to 3.2 (Kelly & Shropshire 1995)
Certainly, beyond the added prestige that a winning professional (or amateur) baseball team brings to a community, there are also some sound business reasons for a municipality to want a baseball team and their associated facilities located in their neighborhoods. The willingness of some cities to subsidize sports facilities was clearly reflected in the campaign slogan for a new stadium for the San Francisco 49 ers: "Build the Stadium -- Create the Jobs!" (Noll & Zimbalist 1997:35)
Sports Team Facility Financing: Is it Worth the Taxpayers' Money? The manner in which the sports facilities have been financed in the United States has been highly varied, but of the thirty National Football League (NFL) teams, for example, twenty-seven play in publicly owned stadiums. "This paradox of a privately owned enterprise that is subsidized by taxpayers will most likely continue" (Rich 2000:1)
"But 'private' stadia," he says, "such as those housing the San Francisco Giants and Washington Redskins, also have public costs. Stadia accessories -- including government funded highways, off-ramps, rail connections, and parking lots -- are financed by taxpayers" (Rouse 2001:630)
5% African-Americans, down from a quarter in the 1970s, which explains in part why African-Americans greatly prefer football -- recall as well that in the 1970s African-Americans were not playing quarterback, the most important position. A major demographic group has swung massively in favor of football in the past forty years, not just in terms of being fans, but in terms of playing the game (Baxter 2011)
Granted, baseball might be a more apt metaphor, but that is simply not how Americans see their country. There is no significant appetite for individual sports, even if there is for individual stars (Benoit 2012)
854 million tickets per year. Baseball is naturally more oriented towards selling game-day tickets (Eckert 2014)
Football is a television-friendly game, and the Super Bowl an incredible spectacle. The changes in the game that were made at the behest of Theodore Roosevelt had improved the flow of the game, making it not only safer but also more entertaining (Greene 2012)
Slavery lasted longer than in other places, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives to end -- in other countries they simply wrote a law and ended it. Ultimately, America started out as a relatively violent society and this trend has become stronger in recent years (Kozy 2013)
It has further been noted that Americans have a specific preference for football in terms of betting. When the NFL season starts, bettors substitute football for the baseball betting they had engaged in all summer (Paul & Weinbach 2013)
By far. Figures from Nevada show that the NFL captures 40% of all sports betting, and is worth $1 billion in that state alone (Sung 2011)
A predilection for violence in sport is something that has been noted as correlating to America's violent society. Violence is popular in all forms of entertainment -- action movies, most video games but especially first person shooters (Thompson 2012)
The maleness of the fanbase also cannot be ignored. Football is a uniquely ale institution, noted for its hypermasculinity and status as a "gladiator" sport (Welch 1997)
Just as there are big hits in every hockey game and crashes at every NASCAR race, there is a baseline appeal that violence brings to football that is attractive to fans. The attraction of consistently entertaining product has made the NFL so appealing that meaningless regular season games get a better television audience than a playoff game in baseball (Wells 2010)
This synthesis took place in the camps where officers from both sides permitted and even encouraged baseball playing and also in the prisons of the North and the South, notably those in Salisbury, North Carolina, and Johnson's Island, near Sandusky, Ohio, where a few lucky inmates were able to enjoy for a moment a respite from their harsh reality. After the war these men took the game with them back to their respective hometowns (Kirsch)
More people are enjoying the sport in more ways than ever before, and counting the viewers of all 30 teams and national broadcasts more people are watching the sport on television than ever before as well. (Rosenthal)
At its beginnings, cooking was nothing more than a survival element. It appeared as humans discovered fire (Wrangham 2) and was used in order to transition from raw food to cooked meals; thus, Homo sapiens became "the cooking animal" (Symons 46)
At its beginnings, cooking was nothing more than a survival element. It appeared as humans discovered fire (Wrangham 2) and was used in order to transition from raw food to cooked meals; thus, Homo sapiens became "the cooking animal" (Symons 46)