David Berri

Department Chair and Professor of Economics Southern Utah University

  • Cedar City UT

Specializing in evaluations of players and coaches in sports, gender issues in sports, and competitive balance in sports

Contact

Biography

Dr. David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. He has spent the last two decades researching sports and economics, while publishing works on a variety of topics including the evaluation of players and coaches, competitive balance, the drafting of players, labor disputes, the NCAA, and gender issues in sports.

Dr. Berri was the lead author of "The Wages of Wins and Stumbling on Wins" and recently published "Sports Economics", a textbook from Macmillan Publishers. In the past, he has written on the subject of sports economics for a number of popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic.com, Time.com, and Vice Sports. Currently, Dr. Berri is writing for Forbes.com.

Dr. Berri graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a bachelor of arts in economics and earned both his master of arts and Ph.D. in economics from Colorado State University.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Sport - Amateur
Sport - Professional
Writing and Editing
Business Services

Areas of Expertise

Distrubution of Wealth and Power
Unpaid Athletes in the NCAA
NBA Salary Caps
Sports Economics
NCAA
Gender Wage Gap in Sports
Gender Issues in Sports
Evaluation of Players and Coaches in Sports
Economics
Competitive Balance in Sports
Pay Equality in Sports
Gender Wage Gap in Professional Basketball

Education

Colorado State University

Ph.D.

Economics

Colorado State University

M.A.

Economics

Nebraska Wesleyan University

B.A.

Economics

Accomplishments

Outstanding Scholar

Southern Utah University Board of Trustees, 2013

Scholar of the Year, Department of Economics & Finance

Southern Utah University, 2009

Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor

Colorado State University, 1996

Media Appearances

Economic Discrepancies within America’s Favorite Sports -- A Conversation with David Berri

Macmillan Learning  online

2022-11-07

With the end of the World Series, we spoke to David Berri, Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University and
author of Sports Economics to better understand how market forces may impact America’s favorite pastime. So… is there a link between payroll and performance? Why are some sports more popular than others? As it turns out, not all sports are created equal. Here’s what Professor Berri has to say.

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'Not a risk at all': Why college football coaches are guaranteed more money than ever

USA Today  online

2022-10-10

Michigan State athletics booster Mat Ishbia didn’t really consider the financial risk last year when he decided to help fund a fully guaranteed 10-year, $95 million contract for football coach Mel Tucker.

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The monetization of college sports

NPR  radio

2022-07-19

For student athletes, long gone are the days of shady, under-the-cover deals. After the NCAA changed its stance on NIL – that's name, image, and likeness for short – college sports stars are now able to pursue brand deals with different sponsors from the local taco shop to Lamborghini.

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Articles

Gender information and perceived quality: An experiment with professional soccer performance

Taylor & Francis

Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez, Helmut Dietl, David Berri & Cornel Nesseler

2023-07-11

Whether one looks at revenue, investment or coverage, men’s sports do better than women’s. Many assume that absolute differences in quality of athletic performance are the driving force. However, the existence of stereotypes should alert us to another possibility: gender information might influence perceived quality.

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The Gender Wage Gap in Basketball is Bigger than Ever

Winsidr

David Berri

2023-05-01

Three years ago, I wrote about the gender wage gap in basketball. At the time, we knew average salaries in the WNBA were about $80,000, and the league’s total payroll was about $12.5 million. We didn’t know, though, WNBA revenue. Looking at the league’s television deal with ESPN and ABC, as well as minimum ticket prices, I estimated at the time that league revenue was potentially about $60 million. Given this revenue estimate, it appeared WNBA players were paid about 20 percent of league revenue.

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Sports Economics Must Improve by Including Women in the Data Set

Sportico

2022-04-27

For much of the past 25 years I have been researching and teaching sports economics, investigating labor strikes, competitive balance, labor productivity, decision-making, coaching impact and labor market discrimination. The topics are quite different, but they often had one thing in common: The participants in the sports discussed were almost always men.

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Courses

ECON 1740 US Economic History

Satisfies American government requirement of general education. History from colonial times to present. Coverage of U.S. Constitution; national economy; pluralism; ethnicity, race, gender; distribution of wealth and power; social conflict and reform; entrepreneurs, workers, workplace; cultural encounters; popular culture; U.S. and global affairs.

ECON 2010 Principles of Microeconomics

Introduction to basic microeconomic principles: price theory, theory of the firm, trade and comparative advantage, public goods, taxation, welfare economics, and industrial organization. Public policy with regard to the environment, consumer protection, and other problems is also examined.

ECON 2020 Principles of Macroeconomics

Introduces measurements of national economic performances: GDP, and interest, inflation and unemployment rates. Develops a model to describe the economic situation, and to present the options available to policy makers. Discusses the institutions and constraints that frame policy. International economic issues and the relation of the U.S. economy to the global economy are then examined.

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