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The most authoritative and comprehensive textbook on sport finance has been updated and revised to include in its examination the distinct changes in the economic climate of the sport industry in recent decades, as well as the impacts and challenges the contemporary economic climate presents for the sport industry.

Divided into five sections – finance trends and challenges, economic rationale for public investment, primary sources of funding, revenue from enterprise sources, and fundraising – Financing Sport, 4th Edition also contains a thorough updated examination of venue and sport property revenues, including ticket and merchandise sales, the rise of luxurious and extravagant fan experiences, as well as commercial media rights that stretch across traditional broadcast, satellite, and innovative new web-based outlets for consuming sport content. Also newly updated and expanded are fundraising areas that discuss traditional and emerging trends in sport sponsorship and donation.

Thorough in both its depth and scope, Financing Sport, 4th Edition is an engaging, edifying textbook for sport-related graduate and undergraduate students, teachers, and industry professionals.

For 49 years St. Louis was home to two NFL football franchises comprising many colorful and even great players, but ever since the Rams moved back to Los Angeles in 2016, the Gateway City has secured a solid reputation as an NFL ghost town. In Football Town:The Rough and Tumble Gridiron History of St. Louis, the first scholarly treatment of the history of all professional football in St. Louis, Mark Pierce challenges the standard narrative, chronicling the city’s rich yet largely forgotten history of pro football, celebrating its more successful moments on the gridiron, and proving that St. Louis has long been and still is far more than a “Baseball Town.”

Pierce begins with St. Louis’s efforts to compete in the burgeoning NFL in 1923 and 1934-1936, yet the city’s pro football history begins in earnest with the arrival of the Cardinals from Chicago in 1960. The author chronicles the team’s entire 28-season stay in St. Louis, including its most successful period under head coach Don Coryell, from 1973 to 1977, and the inconsistency that prevailed after his tenure. Eventually, revenue concerns, failed stadium negotiations, and other issues culminated in the owner of the franchise’s decision to move the team to Phoenix after the 1987 season, despite offers of better terms at Busch Stadium and the promise of the construction of a new downtown stadium by city and state government leaders. 

Even after the loss of the Cardinals, a craving for pro football persisted in St. Louis, and the search for a new team commenced almost immediately thereafter. Pierce documents the tumultuous process of securing the Rams’ 1995 move from their native Los Angeles to St. Louis, a deal concluded through high-stakes negotiations despite efforts by NFL insiders to prevent the move entirely. Nevertheless, by April that year, St. Louis fans could once again emotionally invest in the NFL—and they did so in earnest. In addition to detailing the ups and downs of the Ram’s subsequent twenty years in the city, Pierce closely examines the “poison pill” made in its original lease agreement with the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, which would ultimately lead to disaster.

Football Town is built on a foundation of 25 interviews the author personally conducted with former players, coaches, and broadcasters, including Pro Football Hall of Famers Dick Vermeil and Jackie Smith; Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Buck; Cardinals greats Jim Hart, Mel Gray, O.J. Anderson, and Roy Green; and Rams’ Super Bowl champions Mike Martz, Trent Green, Adam Timmerman, Keith Lyle, and Adam Timmerman. 

Accompanied by dozens of photos not seen in decades, Football Town allows those who played the game in St. Louis to tell their stories and share their thoughts on the city’s rich and colorful football history.

Foundations of Sport Management, 4th edition, features content from a comprehensive collection of leading sport management scholars and industry professionals who bring a fresh perspective to the introductory study of sport management. The text provides the fundamental theories and principles of the discipline in a practical and user-friendly format, as well as an abundance of real-world examples in the sport industry. The fifteen chapters thoroughly examine strategies for sport leadership, sport facility management, event management and tourism, sponsorship, analytics, law, governance, ethics, globalization, and other vital topics in the field of sport management. Foundations of Sport Management is essential reading for entry-level sport management students pursuing this field of study and a career in the sport industry.

With an updated and expanded look at the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the sport industry, the third edition of Foundations of Sport Management will maintain its previous editions stance as one of the most widely adopted sport management foundational texts on the market. Editors Andy Gillentine and R. Brian Crow, along with a team of leading authors, aim to provide readers with a dynamic and comprehensive overview of the core concepts and current trends of the industry. Their years of experience as elite academicians and practitioners make this volume a cutting-edge resource for undergraduates considering or pursuing careers in sport management. Topics covered in this edition include economics and finance, marketing, sponsorship and sales, facility and event management, media relations, governance, and ethics.

Moving from Moneyball and Football Manager to coverage of analytics gurus like Daryl Morey, Buehler shows how a fixation on managerial moves has taken hold across the entire sports media landscape. Buehler’s chapter-by-chapter look at specific media forms illustrates different facets of the managerial craze while analyzing the related effects on what fans see, hear, and play. Throughout, Buehler explores the unsettling implications of exalting the management class and its logics, in the process arguing that sports media’s managerial lionization serves as one of the clearest reflections of major material and ideological changes taking place across culture and society.

Insightful and timely, Front Office Fantasies reveals how sports media moved the action from the field to the executive suite.

The sport business industry is vast and diverse. Today’s students are tomorrow’s professionals, and it is immensely important for these students to attain the contemporary knowledge necessary to operate successfully in an ever-growing industry. Like no other textbook in the field, Fundamentals of Sport Business Marketing 5th Edition covers the practical and theoretical framework necessary for students to understand, and professionals to market any sport-related business in a global economy. Updates to this new edition begin with a title that acknowledges the trillion dollar contribution of the sport business to the global economy. As the most comprehensive sport business marketing textbook to date, this 5th edition encompasses the diversity of spectators and participants, sports and sport businesses that span the industry, well beyond the scope of professional and college sports to include sport marketing research, sporting goods retail and manufacturing, sports broadcast, internet sport business, sport tourism, and parasports (sports and sport businesses for people with disabilities)—in short, the full spectrum of companies in which students of sports programs around the world will seek careers. 

An award-winning teacher and researcher, author of over 250 academic papers published in numerous journals, and the author or editor of 26 books on the subject of sport business marketing, Dr. Brenda Pitts offers in this textbook a wealth of knowledge that is rarely compiled in a single place. Dr. Pitts has taught thousands of students, worked with dozens of professionals in the industry, and brings diverse experience and wisdom to the field and this textbook.

The 5th edition updates and details the sound foundational sport business marketing knowledge that can be applied in any type of sport business setting. This textbook builds the students’ understanding of the theoretical framework of business practices for sport business marketing operations, and serves as an excellent on the job handbook, guide, and reference for professionals in the field.