Program Item Details
TITLE: Dr. Dan Mason, Associate Professor, Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta and Researcher, Alberta Gaming Research Institute
SUBJECT: #212 Impact of Gaming Revenues on Sports Associations
SYNOPSIS: The next time you toss a baseball or
watch some kids play soccer, ask yourself
where the money comes from to support
these team sports. Dr. Dan Mason is
looking at the impact gaming revenues have
on the survival of sports associations
in Alberta.
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
#212 September 26, 2006
Interview starts at 15:19
Intro: It seems like we’ve barely recovered from the Stanley Cup playoffs of last spring, and already hockey season is underway. From professional sports teams right down to neighbourhood clubs, finding the money to keep these sports group financially viable is an ongoing concern. And certainly for amateur sports associations, they’re dependent on the revenues that come from gaming activities like lotteries, casinos and bingos. With the help of the Alberta Gaming Research Institute, Dr. Dan Mason is investigating the impact of gaming revenues on sporting activities. Dan is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Dan Mason
DM: Well if you look at the sport delivery system, you have your clubs and teams, and then you also have provincial organizations which are the umbrella organizations that try to oversee the interests of the entire province and act as liason between national level associations and the clubs and teams. And so traditionally, you’ve seen a number of different sources of gaming revenues pumped into these clubs and teams and also the associations.
So in the province of Alberta, you have the Alberta Lottery Fund money that actually trickles down into the associations through grants, development grants, but also through the teams and clubs and associations being able to put forward proposals to host things like casinos, and bingos and raffles and that sort of thing. So the teams, the clubs and associations will get money from sponsorships and memberships, and that sort of thing, but some actually get a fair bit of their resources from gaming revenues.
CC: DO YOU HAVE ANY INDICATION OF WHAT THE OVERALL AMOUNT OF MONEY IS THAT GOES FROM GAMING INTO SPORTS?
DM: It would vary immensely. There are some individuals and groups not necessarily interested in using gaming revenues. So you do tend to see certain associations or certain individuals within those associations who are actually trying to look for other ways than gaming revenues to access other resources for their perspective organizations.
So we do have some information from our research, we know how much development grants are going to the provincial sport associations, but those aren’t necessarily numbers that we can divulge. I can say the ASRPWF, the Alberta Sports Recreation Parks and Wildlife Foundation doesn’t like to see any more than 50 percent of the revenues of any given sport association coming from development grants.
CC: BUT WE ARE TALKING IN THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS?
DM: When you look at all the associations, potentially, yes.
CC: NOW THE RESEARCH THAT YOU’VE BEEN WORKING ON, YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING AT THE IMPACT OF GAMING REVENUE ON AMATEUR SPORTS IN ALBERTA. WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN THAT?
DM: Well Ian Reid who is another member of faculty here, several years ago, he and I got to talking about the relationships that people who are members of these sport clubs and teams have with their respective associations with regards to looking at ways in which they’re trying to generate revenue. And so you have people who’ve been asked to work at casinos or do bingos. And there’s a number of people who don’t actually necessarily want to do that because they have issues with the ways in which the money, where the money is coming from basically. And so that sort of was the initial spark for us to look into this. And then as we looked further into the problem, we could see there are a number of different ways in which gaming related revenues are funneled into amateur sport in the province
And so initially that was our drive. So our initial grant application wanted to investigate just that relationship that existed between gaming revenues and funding from gaming revenues and the provincial sport associations that were receiving the funds.
CC: SO WHAT IS IT THAT YOU ENDED UP DOING TO GET THE INFORMATION THAT YOU NEEDED ? HOW DID YOU DO YOUR STUDY?
DM: Well initially we thought we were going to be doing focus groups and we had planned on setting up an internet website where there would be a survey instrument that would be able to capture this information. But Ian Reid was able to establish a relationship with the ASRPWF and access some of the numbers we were looking for with regards to the amounts that were going to the specific associations. So that was a great help to the project.
And so the Master Student who has been working on this project, and his work is the meat and potatoes of the grant, what he did instead was go to a sample of the provincial sport associations and interviewed executive directors and other head to find out their views on the what they felt about the money, the pressures they were experiencing as a result of having to jump through hoops and do certain things in order to gain access to these revenues on an annual basis.
CC: SO WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT?
DM: Basically that the development grants come to the associations. Some of them don’t like to be too reliant on those development grants, so what they’ve done is they’ve tried to find resources from elsewhere, sponsorships and that sort of thing.
Also there is a reporting system that is set up where they have to provide information on the characteristics of their associations that they have to give to the ASRPWF in order to receive their funding. So there were some issues and concerns related to that process itself in what you had to go through in order to gain access to the resources and whether or not that actually influenced the amount of resources they were going to receive.
CC: WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA OF PEOPLE FEELING UNCOMFORTABLE EITHER GETTING GAMING REVENUES FOR THEIR CLUBS OR HAVING TO WORK IN CASINOS AND BINGOS AND THAT SORT OF THING IN ORDER TO GET THE FUNDS THEY NEED FOR THEIR KIDS TO PLAY SOCCER OR PLAY HOCKEY?
DM: Right. Well at this stage, we’re looking at it a little further up the food chain. So we’re looking at the provincial sport associations that then oversee the individual clubs. But I think one of the things that we did find is that there is a fairly, regardless of the actual percentage of money that comes from these development grants, from the ASRPWF, there’s a situation that the associations feel themselves in, wherein they regardless of whether they ethically think it’s the appropriate thing to do, they’re in a position where they have to rely on these grants in order to continue to operate. So that’s put them in a difficult position.
So if things were a little bit more munificent in the sense that that there were more money to acquire for these organizations from other sources, then you would probably see them being able to make more of a stand, ethically, if they felt it was not appropriate to get that money. But right now, they need this money in order to continue to operate. So that’s what they’re doing right now.
CC: NOW THAT YOU’VE FINISHED UP THIS PROJECT, WHAT FURTHER RESEARCH IS THAT LEADING TO?
DM: Well I’m currently working on a research project with Gordon Walker and two individuals from the United States,, John Whitehead and Bruce Johnson. And really what we’re interested in doing is finding out whether or not the public even knows this is where that money is coming from. So for example, we’re not even sure whether people know outside of these provincial sport associations or the clubs where this money is coming from and whether or not they feel that this is appropriate. So this is a project trying to figure out their awareness, and their willingness to continue to use gaming revenues to support amateur sports. Culture, recreation and professional sports teams in the province.
CC: WHAT IS YOUR SENSE AT THIS POINT OF WHAT THE FEELING IS?
DM: I’m a little bit relunctant to talk about that because we’re in the data analysis phase. But I think that there’s a tendency for people to not see it as being appropriate. Another element that’s ben introduced into things I think because of the circumstances of the province right now, is that everyone feels as though we’re rolling in money, because of the resources that are available within the province. And so because of that, there’s a reluctance on part of taxpayers to see more of their own money going into anything, whether it be arts or culture or sport or recreation. We’re probably going to see a bit of a reluctance to use any of those resources because they would probably say, well, just take out of my rebate cheque or take it out of the heritage fund. So I think that’s probably what we’re going to see. A little bit of an influence on the findings that we have.
CC: IF YOU LOOK AHEAD TO THE BIG PICTURE, HOW WOULD THIS RESEARCH BE USEFUL IN TERMS OF CHANGING THE SITUATION OF FUNDING?
DM: Well, the methodology we’re using is called “contingent evaluation method” which is an economics method that’s used to try and put a value on public goods or on things with no market value. So it’s been used to look at things like environmental change. So for example, you can’t put a value on cleaning up a swamp or a wetland, but people willing to pay that in order to see some type of improvement or change.
So it’s the same logic that’s being used for sport here. So the logic would be, how much would you be willing to pay out of your tax dollars to see more recreational opportunities for people or an improvement in peoples general health or or more access to resources that will allow them to engage in physical activity. So that’s really where this is going. So the policy implications would be that we could actually potentially put a dollar value on how much taxpayers in the province of Alberta are willing to pay to see money go towards these sources.
So we may find that people don’t want to see any money into these things, which in itself has a policy implication. We may find that they want to see more money goint to it. This hasn’t been done in this province before, so I think it’s very important to get a feel for where people are at with regards to the use of public money to go towards these types of activities
CC: WHAT ELSE DO YOU THINK THIS RESEARCH WILL LEAD TO?
DM: Well the final phase of the current grant that we’re working on is going to be looking at the public’s willingness to use gaming revenues to support the professional teams in the province, specifically the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers.
One of the significant problems that we’ve seen in North America is this so-called “stadium game” where cities are forced to pay money to publicly finance facilities or find other money to help to support teams. And in the province of Alberta, obviously specifically in Edmonton, we’ve seen concern over the last 10 years or so about the departure of team and what are some of the things that can be done. And so we have seen a scratch-off lottery being introduced to fund the sports teams to help give some additional revenues to the club. We’ve seen the province of Alberta enact a special NHL players tax to tax the players playing in the province of Alberta and that money was being turned over to the teams themselves.
What hasn’t happened is we really don’t have a feel for what the public thinks of this and whether they’re actually willing to see this happen. So the co-investigators who are working on the project with me, they’ve actually looked at this situation in the United States in certain settings. One of the settings was Pittsburg. In 1999, the Pittsburg Penguins were going bankrupt. So what they di is a survey to find out what the average taxpayer was willing to pay to keep the Penguins in Pittsburg. And it turns out that the amount the citizens of Pittsburge were willing to pay was far less than what the Penguins were valued.
But in theory, if the value to the taxpayer was greater than the cost of the team or the cost of an arena, for example, then in theory it would make sense from a public plicy perspective for province or city to step in and to pay for the team.
So what I’m interested in and what we’re interested in in this second phase of the project is to actually find out what that willingness to pay is on the part of rural Albertans, Edmontonians, and Calgarians,. So it’s going to be very very interesting because it will actually give us a number that you can work off of saying, well, this is how much the team is worth to the citizens of Edmonton. So for example, if the team needs a new arena, how much should the public be willing to put in and what’s the acceptable level of that.
So it’s going to be very, very interesting and there are some fairly significant policy implications I think coming out of that.
CC: WELL YOU’VE CERTAINLY GOT YOUR WORK CUT OUT FOR YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, DAN .
DM: Thanks.
Dr. Dan Mason is an Associate Professor in the Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta. His research is supported by the Alberta Gaming Research Institute.
FEATURED LINK: Alberta Gaming Research Institute