Twenty Millions Spent on Sport in America Last Year

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 903, 21 February 1930, Page 9

Twenty Millions Spent on Sport in America Last Year

With returns in from all quarters it would appear that the American public spent more than £20,000,000 on sports during 1929. This amount covers sums paid in at the turnstiles for boxing, baseball, football, horse racing and various other athletic pastimes in which the patron is the onlooker, as well as an enormous amount expended upon such sports as golf, lawn tennis, billiards and the like, wherein personal athletic equipment is required, says the "Police Gazette.” More than twenty million pounds on sports is a truly prodigious outlay. It speaks volumes for the general prosperity of the. nation, a prosperity that will scarcely feel a ripple as a result of the recent deflation of paper values in the stock 4 market. It is certain indication that Americans are sport-minded and willing to dig into their pockets to support their favourite forms of recreational activity.

Notwithstanding that early last Spring the calamity howlers were predicting a poor year for baseball, just ! the reverse was the case in the two j major leagues. American League figures were not given out, but John A. Heydler. president of the National circuit, said that the parent league ii« 1929 experienced the second best year it ever enjoyed, playing to 4.925,71.1 cash customers. This was only a trifle short of the record year. 3 927. Football also was generously patronised. as was boxing, although no one i particular bout broke the record in , attendance figures, established at the i Tunney-Dempsey fight in Chicago in 1927.