arbiter
JournalsAccount

Government purchase of surplus inventory without price constraints: The San Diego Chargers ticket guarantee

Geoffrey Propheter & Stefan Szymanski

Contemporary Economic Policy2026https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.70030article
AJG 2ABDC B
Weight
0.50

Abstract

In the 1990s, the city of San Diego agreed to purchase unsold tickets to Chargers' games at the team's price. This was a short‐term contract affording the team owner ample room for opportunistic rent extraction. Research and discourse tends to frame owners' constraints on subsidy rent extraction magnitude as determined heavily by lawmaker political calculus. A multi‐year, uncapped, and legally binding ticket guarantee frees the owner from these constraints. Despite this, we estimate ticket prices rose 20%–30%, less than intuition might suggest. Our results suggest owners' ticket pricing behavior faces constraints exogenous to the subsidy policy process.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.70030

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{geoffrey2026,
  title        = {{Government purchase of surplus inventory without price constraints: The San Diego Chargers ticket guarantee}},
  author       = {Geoffrey Propheter & Stefan Szymanski},
  journal      = {Contemporary Economic Policy},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.70030},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Government purchase of surplus inventory without price constraints: The San Diego Chargers ticket guarantee

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.