- There is no question that Lebron James has had a legendary career. He quickly became one of the most famous and influential athletes of all time, with his name known all around the world. Lebron has left his impact on the game and will go down as arguably the best player of all time.
- His impact on the game is enormously substantial and well known, yet Lebron James leaves a lesser known impact on our culture - and that is one on the economy.
- Hello everyone. Welcome to my podcast. My name is Pedro Vargas-Prada and I am a senior at the Galloway school. This podcast serves as my end of the year project for my English class, also known as capstone. For my project I decided to focus on a topic that has interested me for the past few years. My curiosity for this topic originated from Mr. Curtis’s economics class where we briefly discussed a few examples of how athletes and sports can affect the economy, one of them being Lebron James. From that moment I knew that I wanted to continue down this path and further develop the initial ideas I had.
- In order to fully understand the following information, I need to explain some key aspects of Lebron's career. In 2003, the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted an 18 year old kid straight out of high school. It is so uncommon to witness such a high level of skill in such a young person, so naturally he went as the number one pick.
- Now I just quickly want to explain the timeline of his career. From 2003 to 2010 Lebron played for his home state of Ohio as a cavalier. At the end of the 2010 season he made the decision that it was time for change and he headed down to south beach to play with dwayne wade and chris bosh. In 2014, after 4 seasons and 2 championship rings in Miami, Lebron came back to Cleveland where he would play another 4 seasons- winning his most recent ring. In 2018 Lebron made his final move and landed in L.A.
- Now we can begin transitioning into his economical impacts on the cities that he plays in. The most information available is from cleveland and Los Angeles so that is what ill be focusing on.
- The year before Cleveland drafted Lebron, they were dead last in the NBA in terms of average home attendance. In just 4 years, the Cavaliers rose to top three attendance in the league after gaining an average of 9,000 fans per game.
- Lebron boosted the local employment by about 23.5 percent for establishments such as bars and other small businesses within a mile of the Quicken Loans Arena. Once he left for the first time, there was a resulting loss of $48 million in annual revenue for the businesses. Once he returned to the Cavs, Economist LeRoy Brooks estimated James’ was worth $500 million to the local economy.
- Now for James’ arrival in Los Angeles, the impact on ticket sales was almost immediate. In the season before his arrival, StubHub tickets for the Lakers’ home opener were bought for as low as $60. Now, they start at $545 on StubHub which is roughly an 800 percent increase. Due to Lebron, the city gained about 3,000 jobs and $29 million in state tax revenue.
- Lebron typically stays in the top three for most sold Jersey for many seasons now. Following his announcement to the Lakers, the jersey company Fanatics saw a 600 percent increase in sales during a three-hour period.
- Now I just wanted to give a quick background explanation and retell my experience from my Junior years excursion. The beginning of my interest in sports economics originated from the aptly named “sports economics” excursion which was organized by Mr. Curtis. I absorbed an immense amount of information from our local trip to the Braves stadium as well as our trip down to south Florida.
- The most valuable information we learned from our tour of Truist Park actually came from our walk around the park. The field is surrounded by a newly built community called “The Battery”. It contains dozens of restaurants, bars, shops, and most notably, apartment buildings. The goal of this community is to work in unison with the baseball field to maximize profit. Instead of people only going to a park to watch the game and then leave, now there are incentives to come early and stay late. Fans can sit down at a restaurant before the game and enjoy a nice meal then walk 300 feet to the entrance of the field. Probably more likely though, after the game people can hit the bars on their way out. This new booming area also is capable of housing people who may not even care about baseball, yet still contribute to the revenue of the battery and the braves. All this means is that the braves are benefiting and it is a large boost for the local economy.
- Something that we learned on our tour of the Tampa bay Buccaneers stadium and the Tampa Bay Lightning stadium is the sheer number of people it takes to run a facility like that. Things that people normally don’t think about is that everything that happens in a stadium that big requires teams of people- and that means hundreds of job openings. In the case of the Lightning (which is Tampas hockey team), the biggest task is converting the ice to a stadium every other weekend for concerts. No one sits down and wonders how it happens, when in reality it is extremely difficult. Then you have to think about all of the janitors it takes to clean up and all of the security it takes to keep it safe. All of these positions are filled with locals, which simply puts more money into the flow of Tampas economics.