How Media Technology Affects the Team's Market and the Competitive Balance of Sports League

ABSTRACT Better broadcasting and sports globalization allow sports fans to watch televised matches from the comfort of home, which means that local geography becomes less of a deciding factor in constraining the professional sports market. In our model, utility‐maximizing fans’ decision to watch a game dictates a team's broadcast revenue and allows teams to monetize from non‐home fans. When fans watch a series of televised matches, teams’ markets overlap as they are not solely reliant on their home fan base, meaning that the actual difference in market size between teams is smaller, allowing teams with smaller home fan bases to narrow their performance gap against stronger teams.