ABSTRACT
Financial Statements is chapter examines the ‰nancial statements and sources of revenues and costs for di¦erent types of sports teams and businesses. As Chapter 2 made clear, because of the various ownership structures, sports teams often indirectly a¦ect various revenue streams of a larger entertainment company. is implies that the full value of a team may not be found on a team’s ‰nancial statements. Nonetheless, this chapter focuses more on direct revenues and costs of sports teams. Financial statements provide the raw data that is vital to understanding the ‰nancial health and growth of a ‰rm. Sometimes ‰nancial data in sports can be di¨cult to obtain. Publicly traded companies, like those on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, are required to periodically ‰le with public agencies four di¦erent ‰nancial statements: balance sheets, income statements, a statement of cash °ows, and a statement of retained earnings. Although most professional sports teams do give those ‰nancial statements to their league, these documents do not have to be ‰led with any regulatory agencies by privately held sports teams. While academicians do not have access to the ‰nancial statements for most professional sports teams, these documents are available for many sports-related businesses, such as Nike or Callaway Golf. Also, some ‰nancial documents of professional sports teams are occasionally made available to the public. In addition, since the Green Bay Packers franchise is owned by a community institution, much of their ‰nancial data are disclosed. Furthermore,
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many college athletic departments are part of state universities and data from their operations are therefore available to the public.
