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Tuesday, May 12, 2015
More catalyzed fans
Sports fans are certainly being catalyzed to spend money in crowdfunding efforts. But the focus of fan spending seems to be less on player recruitment and retention, the focus of our discussion, and more on one-shot efforts to handle team crises. The latest example: New England Patriots fans started a GoFundMe campaign to pay the $ 1 million fine the NFL levied against the team over the use of under-inflated balls during last year's conference championship game. In the first 22 hours, 500 people donated just over $ 7200.
Dan, Mike McCann, and I nodded toward this form of fan funding, although we recognized the obvious moral hazard problems. Still, these efforts are increasingly common, at least on a small scale.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 12, 2015 at 04:53 PM in Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink
Comments
They're patriots, after all, best not to waste the money on aid relief for victims of the earthquake in Nepal (among other things).
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | May 13, 2015 12:12:40 AM
This is why the sports blog described this as "the worst possible way to spend your money." The classy thing would be for the team to pay the fine itself, then take whatever the fans raise and donate it to some charity.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | May 12, 2015 7:33:03 PM
So glad Patriots fans are helping Robert Kraft out of a jam. $4.3 billion of net worth doesn't go as far these days as it used to.
Posted by: Kevin Jon Heller | May 12, 2015 6:33:04 PM
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