In sum, public economic policy towards professional spectator sports in
Australia has two main components. With respect to monopoly power and
operation of labour markets, as well as occupational health and safety and
other worker protection legislation, public policy has consisted of de facto
exemption from ordinary law for professional sports leagues. This laissez-faire
environment has been reinforced by the weakness of labour unions or other
organizations to protect the interests of the players employed in the leagues.
Furthermore, professional sports leagues are exempted from large parts of
Australian corporations and tax law. Second, governments at all levels have
spent large amounts of public money on facilities for professional sports
teams. Other public spending on sports includes bidding for and hosting
mega-events, from the Olympic Games down, and training elite athletes.
None of these policies enjoys much support among sports economists, and
the clear pattern in other democratic countries is of governments pulling back
from treating the sports industry as a special case and from providing large
subsidies for stadia or mega-events.
11.5 Conclusions
What is distinctive about the organization of the professional sports industry
in Australia, and to what extent is it typical of Australian Exceptionalism?
A long-standing trait dating back to the industry’s nineteenth-century ori-
gins is the idea of a‘fair go’. There has been no overt discrimination by class,
and in the major domestic competitions no amateur/professional divide such
as characterized English cricket or rugby for a century after these became
popular spectator sports, although during that century there was serious
discrimination against Aboriginals. (Australia did, of course, comply with
international norms when competing in the Olympic Games, the Grand
Slam tennis tournaments and rugby union, which were restricted to amateurs
for much of the twentieth century.)
In professional team sports, many aspects of American professional sports
industries were adopted (e.g. the closed cartel structure rather than the open
access promotion/relegation system). However, private ownership was not
embraced, and the teams remained members’clubs, although the ownership
structure and accounting are often opaque.^18 There was also distrust of unregu-
lated markets and, importantly, the impact of radio and TV on potential
(^18) The AFL and its clubs have hundreds of thousands of members. However, for the purpose of
the Corporations Act, the AFL’s‘members’are no more than the 239 guarantors who each
guarantee the league’s debts to a maximum of ten cents! Individual clubs‘are likewise controlled
by a small inner cabal’(Forbes 2014).
Australia’s Economic Mores