When I first started working on today’s commentary, I was planning on talking about torpedo shaped baseball bats, which is this relatively new phenomenon of moving the sweet spot of the bat a few inches inward that this year is taking the historically unchanging world of baseball bats by relative storm. And as I was just getting set to start writing, I read something that changed my focus. It’s that while one of the largest bat manufactures produces their wooden bats fully in the US, they manufacture their metal ones overseas. And since pretty much everyone but the pros uses metal bats so that’s where the majority of revenue comes from, and as we’re now facing the prospect of tariffs on things like metal baseball bats made overseas for American companies, it means that bringing the torpedo bat craze from the pros to the kids may now come at a considerably higher cost. Which made me think, perhaps the most interesting things about this whole torpedo bat thing isn’t how the Yankees hit a barrage of home runs, but rather, what it portends about the impact of a looming American tariff policy on the economics of American sports.
Some of this is personal. For example, my younger plays high school tennis, and the prices of racquets have already gone up. And yes, I know that sounds like a very first world problem. But the vast majority of shoes, balls, strings, and everything else that goes into youth sport is produced overseas, in many cases in China, and there’s no way to avoid a quick escalator ride up for pricing. And that impact will likely be felt the most by those with the least, folks for whom an extra $20 for yet another paid of soccer cleats is going to hurt – and perhaps be another strike against making sport accessible.
Of course, it doesn’t end with clothing. A tariff war may give pause to the global companies attached to sports in the America. For example, Audi owns naming rights for the professional soccer stadium in DC. Meanwhile, Audi just announced a freeze over car imports to the US. You can see how this is unsustainable. There’s also Mercedes, Nissan, and Toyota with names on buildings, none of which will make a lot of sense if they can’t do business here. We also host annual sporting events that rely on global capital, like the US Open Tennis Tournament, where global brands reign supreme. And perhaps that’s the least of our worries, with a series of global sporting events coming to the US – starting with the Club World Cup this summer, but followed more prominently by the Men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 28. These mega events can’t exist without significant global corporate sponsorship, so barring a significant about face, host committees could easily be left holding the bag. This is just the predictable impact of tariff policies. I’m certain there’s a whole lot more I’m not thinking about, especially for the professional and college sports in the US whose workforce is global.
Perhaps that’s the reality here in sport, as it is for a whole lot of the rest of the American economy. Believe it or not, sport is a fully global industry, and that’s not something that can be unwoven. There’s some easy examples – take soccer for example, which has a full import/export economy with players, broadcasts, products, and so on. And no matter what the current administration says, there’s no turning back on soccer in the US, anymore than we’re going to give up TikTok. But that’s true even in sports that are fairly American, say basketball. Right now, some of the biggest stars in the NBA are European, as is a significant percentage of every NBA draft. And the only way the League’s economy prospers is through easy exchange abroad, including perhaps most prominently China. And not for nothing, there is still a team in Canada. You could make similar claims about other American past times. So while the thought of an all-American sports ecosphere where every athlete is home grown and they all wear sneakers made in American factories in the Midwest may be quaint to some, that’s just not how the world works anymore. And not for nothing, some of those athletes used to have to work an off-season job at a car dealership to pay the bills. In other words, if you’re looking for the glory days of American sport, it’s not the past. It’s actually right now. That is, if we can still afford it.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.