The curious case for media monopoly in technology driven sports

This paper examines how technological innovation affects a sport through two pathways: sports equipment, and sports media. A simple economic model predicts that technology- enhanced sports will dominate the sports ecology, but a more realistic model predicts that technological overshooting can catastrophically harm the sport (Thomas and Potts, 2014). A case study on windsurfing is used to illustrate this model, along with the role of sports media. A surprising media policy implication is that this argues for monopoly licensing of sports media in newly emerging sports, or sports with rapidly changing equipment technologies.