America. If there are positive externalities then some public support may be
justified, but the extent to which the state covers the cost (usually close to 100
per cent) is extreme.^14
11.4 Australia in the Global Sporting Economy
Globalization of sport impacts on Australia’s ability to persist with sporting
Exceptionalism. Global individual sports in which Australians excel (e.g. golf,
tennis, surfing, motor racing) cannot be subject to the restrictive practices
described in Sections 11.3 and 11.2. In cricket, commercialization was driven
by global TV coverage, reflected in the World Series episode described in
Section 11.1,^15 and, more recently, in the rise of the Indian Premier League,
where teams competefinancially to hire the best players. In athletics, tennis,
and rugby union, greater commercialization dates from the abandonment of
‘amateur’status, which was also driven by increased revenues from TV cover-
age and globalization.
Australia has had periods of dominance in cricket, rugby union, and rugby
league on the world stage. However, Australia has had no sports player among
the world’s top hundred earners in recent years. This can be explained by the
current absence of very top players in golf and tennis, where international
prizes are large but have a steep gradient (i.e. winners take much more than
second place and so forth), and by the limited payrolls in Australian domestic
team sport competitions, by North American or European standards. The
impact of globalization is apparent in the distribution of the top earners in
Table 11.1. In 2014 Australia’s top earners played basketball or baseball in the
USA or soccer overseas, or were on the international circuit for individual
sports such as golf, surfing, tennis, cycling, or car racing. Australian cricketers
were well paid for playing for the national team, but those on the rich list all
had lucrative contracts with the Indian Premier League.
The four football codes offer an interesting comparison. The most popular,
AFL, is essentially domestic and has the most regulated labour market, while
soccer is totally global and has a relatively free labour market. The two rugby
(^14) When the Adelaide Oval was rebuilt in 2014 at a cost of at least $565 million, the AFL’s
contribution was $5 million. 15
World Series Cricket has influenced the rules, establishing the six-ball over as the global
standard, rather than the eight-ball over that had been the Australian norm since the early
twentieth century. The commercial angle to this decision was that six-ball overs offered more
frequent breaks for advertising.
Australia’s Economic Mores