The Economics Behind the Voice: How Play-by-Play Announcers Drive Revenue

[Shirin Mollah] (0:11 - 0:35)
Welcome to the Sports Economist, the podcast where we dive deep into sports economics. I'm your host, Dr. Shirin Mollah, and today we're diving deep into the fascinating concept of play-by-play roles on economics of sports. Today we're here with college professor and radio play-by-play producer, Dr. Kevin Curran. Hello. Hello, Shereen. How did you start your career in sports?

[Kevin Curran] (0:35 - 1:28)
I'd been working in radio since I was in high school, and I was working for a group of stations in Phoenix. My chief engineer came up to me one day, said, I got a call from a friend in Philadelphia who needs somebody to put some Villanova basketball games on the air when they're at Arizona State later this month. Do you think you can do it?

And I said, show me what I need to know, and I'll see if I can handle it. And I really enjoyed that work. We were the rights holder for what was at that time the Oakland Athletics.

They happened to have an opening for a spring training producer engineer, and I got that role, and I've now been in that role for 32 seasons.

[Shirin Mollah] (1:29 - 1:36)
And what do you currently do? What kind of teams do you work with, and what teams have you worked with in the past?

[Kevin Curran] (1:37 - 2:15)
I've been, as I say, in the Cactus League with the Athletics since 1994. I'm about to go into my fourth season with the University of Arizona, where I do football and men's basketball. In the past, I was the home radio engineer for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Kings.

I also work with the Arizona Rattlers in arena football. And then through contract work, I have worked with a lot of other MLB, NHL, NBA, and college teams as they come to areas where I happen to be and put them on the air.

[Shirin Mollah] (2:16 - 2:30)
And we met as colleagues. You're also a college professor, so you taught courses in communication, journalism. Could you talk about that?

I teach courses in journalism, communications, and business.

[Kevin Curran] (2:30 - 3:05)
I was at Loyola Marymount, Arizona State, Grand Canyon University, Park University, University of Texas, Dallas, some of the Arizona community colleges. The nice thing about the way my career developed and the way my educational career set forward is I was able to teach a lot of the things that I've worked at through my time. Because away from academia and away from sports, I was a news person in radio and television in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Phoenix for many years.

[Shirin Mollah] (3:06 - 3:24)
I've seen a lot of your work with students and you've made a great impact. What were some of the projects that you've done on campus? I believe that you guys have something with the radio that you've done a few years ago.

[Kevin Curran] (3:24 - 5:13)
Two things that I thought were really important during my time at Loyola Marymount. First of all, from a practical standpoint, we had students that were very much interested in sports journalism, sports broadcasting, sports communications. LMU is a D1 school and the men's basketball games are carried on the campus's FM radio station.

Years ago, they had a studio pre- and post-game show that had gone away. I talked to the station and the athletics department, got approval to bring it back. And so when people were listening to the game on the radio or on the station's online presence, about 15 minutes before tip-off, we'd open from the studio.

We go back to the studio during halftime. And then after the game, they go back to the studio, highlights, score recaps, looks at what other sports LMU was playing that week. You know, a good comprehensive way of backing what the announcers were doing on the games.

The other thing from an academic standpoint, I taught a class there called Mass Communication Law and Regulation. I asked students to volunteer for a final project that would be a research study with me of the legal entanglements of sports gambling and broadcasting. That paper won an award the next spring from the Broadcast Education Association and a couple of students involved joined me at the conference to give the paper.

And one of those students is now a law student in New York.

[Shirin Mollah] (5:14 - 5:24)
What advice do you give your students that want to go into sports in any field? So communication, journalism, obviously like economics, business.

[Kevin Curran] (5:25 - 7:26)
Number one, you got to be ready to perform any role that might come your way. You really can't go in there and say, I want to be this. You want to be the person who goes in there and says, I want to work for you.

And they say, what can you do? And you can say, well, I could this, this, this, this, this. The idea that you're going to become an ESPN Sports Center anchor or, you know, a major league play-by-play announcer is great, but you have to realize how many of those jobs there are and what it takes to get into them.

So, you know, there are so many roles that are available in a front office or in an ancillary field. You know, the conferences, the college conferences all have major production houses of their own. The MLB, NBA, NHL all run their own production sides.

There are social media sides, digital sides. There's a lot of places you can go that work directly with the team or the league or the conference. And you might even do better financially taking that and then going to an ancillary field.

When I work with the Lakers, there was a communications person who sat on my left side and he left Lakers a couple of years later, and he went to work for one of the big athletic equipment companies. You got to be open to where you want to go and what roles you can get and just be a sponge, grab every bit of information you can grab, develop as big a network as you can grab because you want to be the person who is thought of when somebody says, hey, do you know somebody who can? Like, oh, I know just the person and then you get a phone call or an email and you got to jump on it.

[Shirin Mollah] (7:27 - 7:52)
Yeah, that's very good advice. I teach sports econ and I've learned that there's so many different fields in just sports economics. You have to know history, politics, legal, the business, communication, and you have to know all of these topics.

And the same goes when you're applying it in a job is being able to be adaptable to anything that comes your way.

[Kevin Curran] (7:53 - 8:28)
One of my students came to me, you know, as a freshman, said, I love baseball. And she became a manager with the LMU baseball team, working with the pitchers. She graduated, got the entry-level job at CAA, the Creative Artists Agency.

And now she is the right-hand person to a very well-known sports agent who represents a lot of major league players whose names you would know, even if you weren't a baseball fan.

[Shirin Mollah] (8:30 - 8:50)
Yeah, I know that you've made a lot of impact on a lot of your students and I've known you for so long and it's been great to hear about them all. So let's start talking about the play-by-play announcers and their impact on fan behavior and team revenue. What makes a great play-by-play announcer from a team branding perspective?

[Kevin Curran] (8:50 - 12:08)
Well, what you have to remember is that who does this play-by-play announcer work for? And you can figure that out, first of all, because they have a legal statement they have to make at some point during the game, but also where are you watching the game? If you're watching a regular season NFL game, thanks to Pete Rozell and his efforts back in the 1960s, every NFL game in the regular season is a network game.

Those announcers work for Fox or CBS or NBC or Amazon or whoever, with no responsibilities to the team or the league other than the ones that come with the role. If you're listening to a baseball or hockey or basketball game on the radio, chances are that announcer works directly for the team. If you're watching it on television, the announcer may be employed by the station or the rights holder, but has a responsibility to the team.

The legalization, the legalese in here is just wild. But the easiest one to understand is the radio. They work for the team, unless at one, the Rockies still had the rights holder hiring their people, but leaving them out.

Their full-time job is to be the play-by-play announcer. In that role, they are calling the game as they see it. They are researching the players and the opponents, but they are also salespeople.

They have cards or papers or a tablet, and they have to say things like, pitching change brought to you by speedy oil change. Well, there's your commercial pitch. Or they say, by the way, it's bobblehead night for whatever player next Saturday.

Be sure you're there. Call this number to get your tickets. Well, now they're selling tickets.

Or don't forget that there's a new style of hat now available down in the team shop or online. So all of those roles come into just more than calling the game. And we know that listeners develop what they call a parasocial relationship with a lot of announcers because they sound like their friends.

A lot of these guys have been in their roles for 20 and 30 years. So they're just accustomed to having their voice in their ear at all times. And when you go to a game, you see the people lined up to shake their hands and get their autographs because that's a part of their lives.

And when a team has to change out a longtime play-by-play announcer, you get a lot of complaints from fans. Why is this happening? Because this is the voice of my youth or whatever.

[Shirin Mollah] (12:09 - 12:16)
So that actually leads me to how do teams think about their play-by-play voices as part of their marketing or sales strategy?

[Kevin Curran] (12:16 - 12:57)
They become not only the voice of the game, but they become the voice and face of the team. If you watch an ad on a television station for the team, it is likely that the play-by-play voice is the person who voiced the ad or may actually be in front of the camera for it. If there is a community event going on, they will send a player and a play-by-play person.

You know, just because that's another touchpoint. And players come and go, but as I say, generally speaking, the announcers hang around for a while.

[Shirin Mollah] (12:58 - 13:08)
So can you walk us through a time where there was a play-by-play announcer that contributed to a surge of fan engagement, merch sales, or attendance?

[Kevin Curran] (13:09 - 14:19)
It's not necessarily the individual role of the announcer, but it's how the team decides to market something. For example, we've seen some teams abandoning firework shows in favor of drone laser shows. And so what you want to do in that case is you want to say, how are we going to promote this new type of show to get people to come to the game that night?

And that would include announcements during the game for the fans who are in the stands. That would include television ads, you know, come see the drone show. And then that would include the announcers talking about it, you know, with pre-written liners.

Also, if they're going over the schedule, they might say, and don't forget, there's a drone show that night. They may also bring in a drone operator or somebody from the front office to do a little back and forth during a game about, this is going to be so cool when you see it next week.

[Shirin Mollah] (14:21 - 14:35)
So are play-by-play announcers ever coached or encouraged to emphasize promotions, events, or ticket packages? It's their job. So are they coached or are they, you know, trained?

[Kevin Curran] (14:35 - 16:11)
When you're an announcer, you are, you know, one of the things that makes you good is you know how to read things. And the way you would read a, you know, a serious news story is very different from the way you would read a promotional liner. There's a sheet I get in my email every day before an A's game.

And it's got five or six things that the announcers are supposed to promote in that game. And as time comes along, they just, you know, read this and then they'll read the next one and then the next one. And then when they're done, they'll go back up to the top and read it again.

In the case of one of the basketball teams I work with, he's copied and pasted all of his promos into his lineup for the show so that he knows, okay, we're coming out. We're going into the first break in the second quarter. Don't forget that this casino is welcoming you with some concert next week or something like that.

The thing about play-by-play is that the only thing that's spontaneous is the action on the field. All of the promotional ads, all of the commercials, all of the little features, some of the statistical things that they highlight were all pre-planned in production meetings long before the game started.

[Shirin Mollah] (16:11 - 16:42)
So we talk about promotions, the events and the ticket packages, but there's also a very big component to this play-by-play and the fans. And we've talked about this, but sports in general kind of, you know, connects people, not just like the team itself, but the fans connect. We all connect on a level.

We could be the LA Dodgers, could be the Rams. But from your experience, how much trust or loyalty do fans place in the voice calling?

[Kevin Curran] (16:42 - 18:33)
First of all, it's an informational situation. If you lose credibility with your audience, you're in trouble. What we saw with the situation at the Athletics is that the announcers stayed with, we're calling this game, we're doing what we do to inform you about what's going on on the field.

They stayed away from the controversies over leaving Oakland, selling the team, uh, situations like that, because that's way away from their role of, you know, six, four, three, triple place, double place. You want to get, that's, you know, that's their, that's what the audience expects of them. Now, what I see, like I'm, I got my PhD at the University of Oklahoma, so I'm a proud Sooner.

One of the things that they encourage the listeners to do is get on X and tell them, hey, where are you listening to this game? And then Toby Roland, their play-by-play person will say, and we want to thank this person listening in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and this person listening in London, England. And wow, this person's been listening for 12 years in Minot, North Dakota.

You know, just, it gets the fan directly into the broadcast. It's a great idea.

[Shirin Mollah] (18:34 - 18:41)
In history, have you seen any play-by-play announcer that has made a big impact on the fans?

[Kevin Curran] (18:41 - 20:23)
One of the things that I'm proudest of the way that my career has developed is that each major sports hall of fame has an award for a broadcaster. Ford Frick Award in baseball, Kirk Gowdy Award in basketball, Foster Hewitt Award in hockey. I've worked with two Ford Frick announcers in baseball, Bill King and Lon Simmons.

I've worked with a Foster Hewitt announcer in hockey, Nick Nixon, and I've worked with a Kirk Gowdy Award winner in basketball, Chick Hearn. So to be able to attend a Lakers game with Chick Hearn sitting here at my right side was just amazing in many ways. But I think what happened later goes right to the heart of your question.

Chick had the longest streak of consecutive broadcasts in sports history. It was well over 3,000 games. It broke when he got sick.

He came back, continued the streak, and then Chick passed away. There were people lined up outside the Staples Center to walk past Chick's broadcast location. The street that runs in front of the Staples Center is Chick Hearn Court.

Chick was such a vital part of the Lakers and Los Angeles community, and it was because he was the voice of the Lakers.

[Shirin Mollah] (20:25 - 20:40)
So let's shift gears to media groups and play-by-play. How do right holders, radio, TV, streaming groups use their full station network to cross-promote teams and games? Well, I'll use the smaller example first.

[Kevin Curran] (20:40 - 23:28)
The NFL plays a schedule now, which is 17 regular season games plus three preseason, and then hopefully some playoff. They almost all happen on Sundays. A radio station can commit to a football schedule very easily because it's a rock-and-roll radio station that we're taking going after the football because of the really minimal commitment.

A baseball play-by-play schedule is 162 regular season games plus whatever you might get on either the front or back end. Then, yeah, you might do a coach's show on a Tuesday night, but it's what's around those games. Even if you've got an all-sports station that takes all 162 baseball games, you could have eight radio stations in the group.

So you find different ways to use the different stations in the group to push whatever you're looking for from that team you're working with. If it's a football team that plays on Sunday, you not only say, hey, catch the football game on Rock 1027, but you also say, you know, we've got the chance to win tickets, the chance to buy merchandise, whatever, through the other stations in the group. On the network level, NBC is paying the NBA a small fortune to go back to the NBA after losing that contract to ESPN and ABC a couple of years, a few years back.

The reason why NBC is willing to pay that much money to the NBA is because it brings that male-dominated, middle-upper-income audience to the network for appointment television. Appointment television hardly exists anymore. We don't sit down to dinner in front of the local news and the network news anymore.

We don't go to bed after we've watched the late news and turn on the talk shows, which is why Stephen Colbert will be gone next spring. But you have to watch sports live. So this is like the last place where you know you can get the audience that way, which is why NBC is willing to pay the money for the rights and to provide whatever promotional tie-ins the NBA wants to go with those rights.

[Shirin Mollah] (23:29 - 23:40)
You talked a little bit about this, but what's the business relationship like between teams and right holders? Are play-by-play talent hired by the team or by the station?

[Kevin Curran] (23:40 - 24:05)
In almost every instance, the player, the play-by-play announcer is hired by the team. You may get some situations where the rights holder has the ability to hire the announcer. That was the case in Denver with the Rockies and the Broncos.

I don't know if it still is for both of them, but usually it's the team that's responsible for hiring the announcer.

[Shirin Mollah] (24:05 - 24:20)
Now, this is a business, finance, economics question that we all want to know in sports. How do teams and right holders measure their return on investment for play-by-play and cross promotion?

[Kevin Curran] (24:21 - 25:17)
There was a time when that would be hard to do, but now that we have so many CRM systems available where you can track people through apps, what they buy at a game, how many tickets do they buy, how often do they come to a game, that gives you a much more granular view of where these folks are coming from. You might try to do things in slightly different ways. If you want people to enter a code for a contest, you might have them issue one code that goes to people on the radio, one code that goes to people on TV, one code that goes over this app, one code that goes over this social media network.

Then you can compare the codes when they come in and see what was the referral source.

[Shirin Mollah] (25:18 - 25:28)
That would give you some kind of an idea of your ROI. Do play-by-play announcers maintain their voice across platforms or do they adjust based on where they're being heard?

[Kevin Curran] (25:29 - 27:04)
In any form of mass communication, the most important thing for the person who is sending out the information is to consider the platform on which the audience will be receiving it. In the case of a radio broadcast, the audience cannot see where the players are at and where the ball is going. So it is important for the announcer to say, you know, here comes the pitch.

Then they will hear the crack of the bat. But the question is, what's happened to the ball after that? Did it foul over to the third base stance?

Is it going to deep center or just blooping to short? Or is it a home run that is screaming out to the second deck and left field? The radio announcer has to explain that, whereas the TV announcer knows the person, the camera is following the ball and they can figure it out.

But unfortunately, we have teams that what they do is they simulcast games. They use the same broadcast for radio and television. And sometimes the announcer forgets that they're on one or the other and you get a TV call that leaves the radio listeners scratching their head.

[Shirin Mollah] (27:04 - 27:10)
So what do you think is the most important part of play by play?

[Kevin Curran] (27:11 - 28:12)
First of all, play by play maintains loyalty. If you know that all 82 or 162 or 17 games are on the air and you will find them and you will listen or watch as much as you can, as time permits, that's a loyal fan. And that's why I said you get to know these announcers or think you know these announcers really well because they're always in your ear.

But that's how they know, hey, this bobblehead is coming up. This is fireworks night. This is this is a new player who's coming in from a trade or a contract signing.

This is what's going on down in the minor leagues. So there's just a wealth of information that keeps coming at them while those games are going on.

[Shirin Mollah] (28:14 - 28:44)
So we just talked about a lot in play by play. And now we know that there's a lot going on in technology like AI. So let's talk about the future of play by play and how it's changing and the economic landscape.

With AI, play by play entering the picture, do you think a human voice is still essential for building fan loyalty?

[Kevin Curran] (28:45 - 31:06)
We've seen instances where AI can be used, but not necessarily in the direct calling of a game. So, for example, during the last Olympics, you could order a highlights package of stuff that you wanted to see. And then an AI generated version of Al Michaels' voice would be the track for that package.

Whether you could properly train AI to follow the ball from the pitcher to the bat, to the outfield, from the quarterback, from the snap to the quarterback, to the handoff, that would be extremely difficult to do because even the best announcers can make mistakes. Your football announcer is looking at the field, they see the player get a handoff, but there's six guys around them because they're trying to sack the quarterback at the same time. And I've seen veteran football announcers call a handoff play and then didn't realize until the tackle came and they looked at the guy on the bottom of the pile and they had called the handoff to the wrong player because they couldn't quite see the number or the player they thought was on the quarterback's left was actually on the quarterback's right, you know, something like that.

How would AI make up for that? So, I don't know if AI play by play tracking is actually something that could be done at least anytime soon. What we have seen with baseball is they're using automatic balls and strike systems in the minor leagues.

We tried it at some of the stadiums in spring training and the commissioner has indicated that he would like to move further along that way, but that's not calling the game. That's just determining whether the ball fit into that rectangle that the strike zone is.

[Shirin Mollah] (31:07 - 31:24)
So, the example that you gave is kind of saying that human mistakes can make a big difference in the announcer's role. It kind of brings in that connection. It does.

It really does.

[Kevin Curran] (31:24 - 32:46)
Announcers are humans, too. You know, in baseball, you're generally calling from a level of the second deck behind home plate. In football, you're way up at the top of the stands and depending upon the stadium, you may be calling the game from over the end zone.

In fact, there's one college stadium where the TV booth overlooks the 50-yard line, but both radio booths are behind the end line on the north goal. Same thing with hockey. It tends to be called from very high up, close to center, although I did do an NHL game in a minor league hockey arena where we were overlooking one of the goals.

So, for the guys to call the game, they were actually leaned out the window, and that's when you really hope that the uniform designs are good. The last thing you want is a maroon number on a black jersey. Might look cool in a picture.

You can't see that at a distance, and that could lead to confusion over who's who out there.

[Shirin Mollah] (32:47 - 32:54)
Could we see a future where teams own and control all of the play-by-play via streaming rather than leasing to networks?

[Kevin Curran] (32:55 - 35:35)
The economics would go that way at some point, but you've got so many different ways of looking at it. First of all, you just have the costs. A television broadcast could involve as many as 20 people working in the truck, working the cameras, then going back to a control room where you've got more people involved, and you've got to pay all those people, and satellite time, or fiber connections, and then you multiply that over multiple games.

So, you've got a lot of costs involved just to get the game on the air. Beyond that, what's it worth to the audience? The old ESPN model, where they just insisted that every cable subscriber get ESPN on a basic tier, and then they get $5 per month per subscriber or whatever money, is not working for them anymore.

They're now going to start a more full-throated streaming service. But what are people willing to pay? You read stories about people who are big football fans, and in order to get the full NFL experience, they're buying the NFL Network, the Sunday Ticket, but they've got to have ESPN, they've got to have Peacock, they've got to have Amazon.

It could cost them hundreds of dollars a year if they want to watch the full football season and have the ability to watch just about every game. So, the question is, are there enough of them willing to pay that freight? And then how does it match up with the costs of putting the games on the air?

And there's just so many moving parts. Now, you can supplement that with advertising. So, you've got another revenue stream coming in from the advertisers as well as from the viewers, which is the change from like in broadcasting, the only revenue comes from the advertising.

You can watch TV and radio all you want. It's a public good. So, it just, as many people who want to watch or listen can watch or listen, and it doesn't affect the quality of the product.

[Shirin Mollah] (35:36 - 36:17)
I mean, you just did a great explanation on public good. So, it's a positive externality right there. You mentioned a lot about the networks and the cost.

It's probably a lot of cost and benefit analysis that are going in through the play-by-play and how they should be streaming versus leasing to networks. I have a question about how new platforms like team-run podcasts or fan-focused streaming might change the play-by-play job and its economic role.

[Kevin Curran] (36:18 - 37:48)
There is a gentleman who works with me at The Athletics who has really tried to embrace this idea of going full digital. He has a 24-7 streaming channel that runs pre-games, runs post-games, but also runs a lot of features and game reruns and things like that. At one point, there was a thought that it could replace the radio play-by-play.

That did not happen. That's still an important part for the fans of where to reach out to the teams. Now, as we get today's younger fans maturing and they're more accustomed to taking everything digital, that might change.

Remember that the audience for those alternative streams is not as big as the audience for the play-by-play. You're getting the loyal fans, or the casual fans, or the gamblers. Your best people are the ones who are really sitting there waiting for an actual game to come along.

[Shirin Mollah] (37:49 - 37:54)
If play-by-play goes digital or AI-based, what might be lost economically or emotionally?

[Kevin Curran] (37:55 - 40:52)
If there is no tie, if there is no parasocial tie between the person calling the game and the person watching or listening to the game, that takes a lot out of it. You want to be able to yell when something goes right, yell when something goes wrong. It's one of the reasons why I miss baseball in Montreal.

If you were sitting in the stands at Stade Olympique, whether the fans were angry or happy, it looked the same. They were stomping their feet and yelling and whatever. I have somebody I work with who gets on social media, and there's one play-by-play person that that person does not like.

If he says something that does not hit that person right, right on to the X comment. What is he thinking? That doesn't happen with the AI, because the AI doesn't think.

The AI just does. Go to my earlier example. You might be able to train AI to gauge whether a pitch is a curveball, fastball, slider, and then follow the connection of the bat and follow it.

But that doesn't tell you, that doesn't bring the emotion to it. The most important thing that a play-by-play person has in his toolbox is to zip his lips. You have to let a play breathe.

You have to say, you know, it's a long bomb to the end zone. It's hot. Touchdown.

And just don't say anything. And let the crowd coming out of the stands yelling and screaming make the play for you. And then after about 20 or 30 seconds of that, you say, you know, what an incredible catch by this person.

And then the analyst can say, you know, it was a really lucky shot for the quarterback who did this. AI can't do any of that. AI can just call it what it sees.

[Shirin Mollah] (40:53 - 40:58)
What would you say to teams considering cutting back on play-by-play investment to save cost?

[Kevin Curran] (40:59 - 43:31)
One of the unfortunate results of the pandemic is that we have learned ways for technology to make production less expensive. If you remember when the games came back, the announcers were not in the stadiums. Or the home announcers were, the road announcers were not.

So the baseball announcers would sit in a studio or in their houses looking at a set of cameras trying to figure out how to call the game from that. And mistakes were made because the camera might not be pointed where the ball was going or there might not be a camera in the bullpen or what have you. But it gave management an idea.

Why are we sending all these people to these sites? We can keep them here and save the travel money. So you have two major league baseball teams whose announcers do not travel with the teams.

If you had one NHL team in the New York area that went to three road games because they were drivable and then everything else they called from home. And then last season they decided they didn't need a separate radio team at all. On the production side, you now have what they call Remy shows or remote shows where the producer, the director, the graphics, the replay, whatever are all somewhere else.

The only thing that comes out of the stadium are the cameras and the audio and the announcers might be at the stadium or they might be back in the studio. I remember looking into the TV booth at a football game and the only thing in the booth was a camera on a tripod focused on the stands on the other side of the field. And the reason that was there was that when they went to the studio with the announcers on the green screen behind them, it could look like they were sitting in the stadium.

But if you can't see everything in front of you, especially things like that pile up handoff that I talked about, you're going to miss something. And then you have to backtrack to say when it was.

[Shirin Mollah] (43:33 - 44:06)
There was something that you mentioned earlier that was really important about this kind of play-by-play. It gives this thrill where it's like a story where they're telling the game in a way that engages the fans, but also lets the fans be a part of the game where you talked about them cheering. What are your thoughts about the storytelling behind being a play-by-play announcer?

It is.

[Kevin Curran] (44:07 - 46:13)
The whole thing is building the excitement. Now, look at hockey. Hockey is a low-scoring sport.

So, and fans know that. So, I have, you know, seen the play-by-play guy say, and a big shot from this person, you know, really excited, goes slightly to the right. Okay.

It wasn't a goal, but he had it set up so that if it was a goal, he was already got the fans excited about the shot. So, if it had gone in, it'd be like, wow. One of the rarest plays in baseball is the triple play.

I remember doing a game where one happened, and the thing is the announcer all of a sudden realized that the triple play was about to happen. He gets the first out, he gets the second out, and then he realized, oh my gosh, we're going to get a triple play here, because he didn't see that coming. Now, it's a rare play.

You probably don't see it coming, but that was just like, here it is. You're going to get it now. Same thing with, you know, when you talk about statistics, you know, this guy is batting whatever with runners in scoring position.

This field goal kicker has not missed a field goal in this long period of time. This hockey goalie has stopped an incredible number of shots. You know, all of those things to build up.

Then, of course, the problem is, if you mentioned the statistic, are you jinxing the situation? Do you really say that this guy's got a no hitter going through eight innings, and then watch a guy get a hit on the first pitch?

[Shirin Mollah] (46:16 - 46:55)
Thank you so much, Dr. Curran. It's been a pleasure having you on this podcast, learning all about play-by-play, the communication, journalism, business of sports from your perspective. It's always nice to have a colleague talking about economics of sports.

Great to see you too again, Dr. Muller. Until next time, teammates, I'm Dr. Shereen Muller, and this is The Sports Economist. If you enjoyed today's discussion, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review.

Don't forget to follow us on social media for more insights into the fascinating world of sports economics. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.