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Economic Inquiry

Volume 39, Issue 4

Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Evidence from Nielsen Ratings

Mark T. Kanazawa

Carleton College, 1 North College St., Northfield, MN 55057. E‐mail mkanazaw@carleton.edu

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Jonas P. Funk

Mediaplex, 177 Steuart St, San Francisco, CA 94109. E‐mail jfunk@mediaplex.com

We wish to thank Bill Boal, Andy Hanssen, seminar participants at Montana State University and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. We are grateful to Nielsen Media Research for providing the Nielsen data, and to Carleton College for funding purchase of the data for this project.

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First published: 26 March 2007
https://doi.org/10.1093/ei/39.4.599
Cited by: 65

Abstract

Using data on Nielsen ratings for locally televised NBA basketball games, we find strong evidence that viewership increases when there is greater participation by white players. This finding controls for a wide variety of other factors that could systematically affect Nielsen ratings, and signifies the presence of customer discrimination in the market for NBA players. We also find that higher Nielsen ratings allow NBA teams to realize greater advertising revenues, meaning that the marginal revenue product of white players exceeds that of comparable black players. This factor explains much of the race‐based salary gap that exists in professional basketball.

Number of times cited according to CrossRef: 65

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