SPORTS:

Racism was rampant in United States professional sports in the first half of the twentieth century, a situation that has improved considerably if not entirely ameliorated. When social scientists investigate the extent to which racism continues among its consumers, analysis of stadium proceeds and fan attendance at games may be inconclusive.

In the case of the National Basketball Association (NBA), games are often sold out, and consequently measurements of fan attendance and stadium proceeds underestimate consumer demand. An alternative is to study the basketball collector market, an imperfect indicator of the consumers as a whole.

Philip Broyles and Bradley Keen (Shippensburg University, United States) have found that race has no effect on the price of NBA basketball cards. Although these results demonstrate a lack of overpowering racism among one segment of NBA consumers, they by no means conclusively demonstrate that racism has been eliminated altogether among consumers as a whole.

Why scour player card price for evidence of racism?

Why did the scientists choose to study playing card price in their investigation of racism among NBA consumers? At first glance, this appraoch may seem amateurish; surely something more along the lines of player contracts would be more professional and instructive?

Actually, as you might imagine, player contracts are very complicated, and challenging to interpret across a large number of players. Furthermore, this data may be confidential, and certainly would be far more difficult to obtain.

In contrast, reliable and accurate price guides for NBA basketball card prices are readily available, and extensive, unambiguous measurements of performance are available. As it stands currently, basketball card price is a reasonable (yet imprefect) proxy for illuminating possible racism among NBA consumers.

Evaluating player card prices.

The scientists focused their study on mint condition Fleer (the company with the longest production record) NBA cards from 1992. Choosing a single company over a single year eliminated the possible bias of card scarcity.

They then eliminated speciality cards, such as coaches. This left them with a study set of nearly 300 cards (all of these players are now retired).

Eighty percent of these players are black. The job performance of all players can be measured precisely, e.g. the number of rebounds and completed shots are recorded for each player.

The scientists obtained a comprehensive data set of player performance from Total Basketball 2002. Card price was obtained from Beckett's price guide from 2003.

No racism was elucidated.

The scientists found only three statistically significant performance differences between white and black players. Black players had more total steals (699 vs 517) and more points per game (11 vs 9), but also had more total turnovers (1268 vs 1012), than white players.

Points, rebounds, assists, and (obviously) being a rookie card all clearly have a positive effect on card value. Interestingly, field goal percentage had a strongly negative effect on card value (I'm curious why this may be).

On the other hand, race has a small and statistically insignificant effect on card value. The scientists note some possible reasons for this observation, including highly successful marketing of exceptional black players (e.g. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant).

Limitations and evaluation.

There are several limitations of these scientists' study of racism among NBA consumers. One, the desire for profit among collectors may mask racist attitudes that would otherwise surface.

Two, NBA card collectors are more likely to be middle-aged white men, who aren't necessarily representative of consumers as a whole. Three, and most importantly, this study does not show that racism is not present within the NBA.

In this respect, data is somewhat conflicted and has proven challenging to interpret. Nevertheless, among NBA card collectors (a particularly devoted consumer group), it's fair to say that any racism which may or may not exist doesn't go as far as to drive down the price of basketball cards.

for more information:
Broyles, P., & Keen, B. (2010). Consumer discrimination in the NBA: An examination of the effect of race on the value of basketball trading cards The Social Science Journal, 47 (1), 162-171 DOI: 10.1016/j.soscij.2009.07.003