A year or so ago Brian Frederick created an interest group called the Sports Fans Coalition and has been trying to find and organize a diverse group of American sport fans in order to give them a voice in Washington. His main objective is to target “television blackouts, the Bowl Championship Series, and the ballooning costs of attending games” and making sports fan’s voices heard on related public policy issues.
Frederick states that finding potential members has been the easy part (there are millions of fans out there); organizing the fans and raising money from members has been the difficult part. Currently Frederick has found a way to raise money for his interest group other than membership dues. Verizon and Time Warner Cable—“both concerned with access to sports programming on its systems”—have made generous donations to the cause. Nevertheless, Frederick wants break away from depending on corporage donations and become a member-funded organization. Had Frederick read Olson's work he would have realized what he was getting himself into. As Olson predicts, in large groups there is a huge incentive for members to free ride; assuming sports fans are economically rational what incentives would they have to share costs (especially when everyone already has to pay for cable or satellite)?
Another concern is the difference between what Frederick considers the interest of the group versus the interests of each member. Frederick is organizing a group of many different sports fans. A baseball fan may not follow football, and vice versa. Who says the baseball fan is willing to share the costs of reducing ticket prices to a football game? That’s just one conflict of many.
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