The first decade of the 21st century has been something of a `golden age' in global sport. The Olympic Games staged in Beijing in 2008 and the World Cup slated for South Africa in 2010 herald the increasing globalization of the sports industry. Sport has become a major economic sector not just in affluent North America and in Europe but in almost every corner of the world. Soccer and basketball have boomed. International stars dot the rosters of the globe's premier professional soccer leagues as well as the US-based National Basketball Association. The center of cricket gravity has moved from Great Britain, Australia, and the West Indies to the Indian subcontinent. All manner of sports events, from golf and tennis tournaments to `ultimate fighting' and auto racing championships, are staged not only in the old markets of Europe and North America but also in the rising economies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The sports industry represents one of the most dynamic and most widespread elements of the contemporary global economy, generating billions of dollars and garnering more attention from the world's diverse peoples than any other social activity. And now comes the crash of 2008, threatening gloom and doom to this huge, emerging industry. From points around the globe comes the news of eroding sponsorships, cancelled events. The fear that consumers will lose their robust appetites for sport stalks the planet. Dire warnings of plummeting attendance and collapsing advertising revenues fill the financial news about sports and breed a crisis of confidence among athletic entrepreneurs. Athletes and agents ponder diminishing salaries. Owners wonder about the viability of their enterprises. Cities and nations wonder whether they should continue to build sporting venues. Should South Africa expend its treasure on staging the 2010 World Cup? Should Canada reach deep into public coffers to shore up the 2010 Winter Olympics? Should Great Britain continue to invest in the 2012 Olympics? Or, should these and other nations with grand sporting dreams jettison their athletic visions and focus their resources on more fundamental economic initiatives?
In the US, the Arena Football League has suspended operations, while NASCAR reels, as corporate sponsors abandon a sport based on the products built by the three major US automakers. Minor sports leagues struggle, while even the glorious National Football League, the most lucrative cartel in the American sports economy, ponders budget cuts and fears declines in attendance and revenues.
While current events reveal that just as any other economic endeavor, sport is hardly recession-proof, policy makers, athletic impresarios, industry experts, athletes, and fans might find a small measure of solace in a historical parallel. Nearly a century ago, during the 1920s, the US enjoyed its own national `golden age' of sport. The last year of the decade witnessed the beginning of the most calamitous economic collapse in modern history—a global `Great Depression' swept over capitalism. At the outset of that earlier financial crisis, a very similar sense of doom to the current climate of opinion settled over the American sporting infrastructure. Predictions of the collapse and fall of the entire sports landscape filled the press. Glum assessments of fans abandoning their passionate consumption habits filled the front offices of franchises and leagues. Sponsors cut back on their underwriting campaigns. Cities wondered whether they should continue their stadium-building projects. In Los Angeles, which had won the right to host the 1932 Olympics and was in the process of expanding its municipal Coliseum to seat 105,000 for the spectacle, sentiment mounted to scrap the entire endeavor.
The Great Depression certainly had an impact on the American sports industry, but not the chilling impact that many assume. In many ways, the sports sector weathered the Depression of the 1930s far better than most other segments of the economy. By many measures, it expanded rather than contracted during the Great Depression, developing new markets and adopting innovations that strengthened the industry for years to come. While not recession-proof, it was recession-resilient. Consumer demand remained strong throughout the collapse. Relatively low prices, compared with some other consumer goods, combined with abundant desire for escapism in the midst of the social misery spawned by the economic calamity, made sport, along with other sectors of the popular culture production industries, such as cinema growth markets, interesting exceptions to the general patterns of the Great Depression.
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