The hoopsters eventually wore their Reebok jackets, but with the company's name obscured. It was a vulgar display to some, but let's face it -- the money chase isn't confined to big-name athletes. For consumers, sports and recreation can be a fountain of youth: They try to stay young through exercise and live vicariously through young athletes. For the professional sports and recreational equipment industry, it's a fountain of wealth, growing at about 5% per year. Athletes, stadium owners, franchises, agents, team owners, sporting goods manufacturers, and athletic shoemakers fetch buckets of money from the estimated $180 billion well.

The trinity of football, baseball, and basketball are considered all-American despite distinctly foreign influences. Baseball, a blend of English cricket and informal stick-and-ball games, has been around since the Revolution; in 1845 the first rules for the "New York game" were adopted by the New York Knickerbocker Club and quickly became the standard. American football, a hybrid of English soccer and rugby, played its first pro game in 1895. Basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a transplanted Canadian, who used a soccer ball and two peach-basket goals. None of these sports drew crowds and money until the professional leagues formed. Today Major League Baseball (MLB) has its roots in two rival leagues, one formed in 1876, the other in 1903; a pro football league formed in 1920 became the National Football League (NFL); and the National Basketball Association (NBA) emerged in 1946. The leagues all had rocky starts; the early pay was so low that players held on to their day jobs. Although baseball had a devoted following and sandlot imitators almost from the start, sports as a whole began to flourish only when Americans began to experience leisure time. As athletes achieved higher performance levels, attendance soared.

Perhaps nothing signaled the corporate domination of sports as much as News Corp.'s purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers for $311 million during 1998 spring training. The Dodgers were owned by the O'Malley family, which had run the team since its start in Brooklyn. The family was one of the last longtime owners of a pro sports franchise; perhaps fittingly, the sale price was the highest ever paid for a sports franchise. More than 50 companies own a team or a piece of a team in MLB, the NBA, or the NHL. (The NFL does not allow corporate ownership.) Media companies Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner (Sports Illustrated's publisher and owner of baseball's Atlanta Braves and basketball's Atlanta Hawks), Tribune Company (owner of baseball's Chicago Cubs since 1981), and Walt Disney all have bought teams as part of their entertainment holdings. Disney's holdings -- hockey's Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (named after a series of Disney movies) and a 25% stake in baseball's Anaheim Angels -- complement its ownership of ABC, its stake in cable sports network ESPN, and its 200-acre Wide World of Sports complex, which hosts some Angels games. Suds-and-sports synergy exists as well: Interbrew S.A., the maker of Labatt, owns baseball's Toronto Blue Jays, and The Molson Companies own hockey's venerable Montreal Canadiens. Anheuser-Busch was one of the first corporate owners, buying baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in 1953 and selling the team in 1996.

Pro-team owners pay to play, and finding funds is the name of the game. The Boston Celtics and the Florida Panthers trade publicly. Corporations pay for stadium naming rights: Historic Candlestick Park in San Francisco became 3Com Park, and MCI Communications (later MCI WorldCom) and SBC Communications' Pacific Telesis paid to put their names on new, high-tech stadiums. Sports broadcasts attract viewers for athletic exploits and contribute to team coffers in the form of hefty rights fees -- the fee paid by networks for the broadcast rights to a sport or certain games. The NFL negotiated a $17.6 billion, eight-year TV contract with ABC, ESPN, CBS, and News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, more than doubling the league's TV revenue. That translated into more than $70 million a year for each NFL team (combining the TV money and average revenue). Similarly, MLB signed a contract in 1996 for an estimated $730 million a year in total broadcasting revenues (including radio), and The NHL has a $31 million, multiyear deal with Fox. US sports networks are also expanding to global audiences. ESPN, owned by Disney and The Hearst Corporation, truly covers the "wide world" of sports, with networks in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. ESPN is not alone. News Corp.'s sports networks serve Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and Fox has teamed with Tele-Communications Inc.'s Liberty Media and Cablevision's Rainbow Media to compete with ESPN.

When athletes sing, "Show me the money," team owners dance to the tune. Traditional talent agencies have moved into the sports world with gusto -- companies such as the William Morris Agency and Worldwide Entertainment & Sports, as well as marketing powerhouse IMG, which manages events as well as athletes. They're all chasing a big pot of gold: Revenue-sharing agreements give players more than 40% of NHL team revenue, and more than half of revenues received by football, baseball, and basketball teams. Revenue-sharing is tied to salary caps in the NFL, NBA, and MLB; the caps, limiting the amount a team can pay out for salaries, are designed to level the playing field so that teams in smaller markets can compete against big-market teams. Teams typically overspend on bonuses for free-agent superstars. Big payrolls, in turn, take big tolls. Florida Marlins owner H. Wayne Huizenga (CEO of Republic Industries) stocked his team with enough high-salaried stars to win the 1997 World Series, then dismantled the club in preparation for a sale, because, he said, the team was losing millions.

The most dominant nonowner in sports is Phil Knight, whose NIKE has set a tone of frank commercialism and anti-establishment attitude in sports. While NIKE's ads, featuring the royalty of athletes, have become legendary, the company's philosophy is that there is no ad as effective as an athlete adorned with a "swoosh" on the Sports Illustrated cover. (NIKE's biggest score came when adidas turned down a young Michael Jordan; NIKE signed the future basketball icon and the rest is marketing history.) The NIKE name now outshines the many smaller makers of athletic shoes: Fila Holding, L.A. Gear, Saucony, and more. The commercialization of sports has sent athletes' earnings through the stratosphere. Brands such as NIKE, Reebok, The Quaker Oats Company's Gatorade sports drink, and many others are star players' bread-and-butter. Michael Jordan, for example, earned $47 million in endorsements in 1997, more than his record-setting $31 million, one-year salary. Pro golfer Tiger Woods earned $24 million in endorsements on top of $2.1 million in tour earnings.

Ticket sales are a big part of revenue; for example, it costs a fan about $40 to see an NFL game. The big money comes through luxury sky boxes, concessions (from which stadiums receive 30%-60% of sales), parking, corporate advertising, and, in some venues, personal seat licenses, which give purchasers the right to buy season tickets or club seats. For food concessionaires such as Ogden, ARAMARK, Host Marriott Services, Marsh Supermarkets (serving racetracks and tennis courts) and Delaware North (owners of The Fleet Center, the Boston Garden's replacement), it doesn't matter who wins or loses: it's the food and drink sales that count. The average attendee spends between $6 and $9 per game on food, so, for example, baseball fans alone spent $360 million in 1996. Stadium revenues are split between the stadium owner (often a city government) and team, but who gets how much is subject to fierce negotiations. In one notable example, the Cleveland Browns football team had a devoted following, but in 1996 owner Art Modell decided to take them to Baltimore for a better deal. The team, renamed the Baltimore Ravens, pays no rent in its new home and receives 100% of ticket revenue. Many times, "new" equates to "more money." A new venue can more than double attendance, as well as make room for more food service areas and sky boxes, but to build a football or baseball stadium requires at least $150 million, and a basketball or hockey arena costs about $100 million. State and local governments may lend a hand, usually to make their prized teams stay put. According to one estimate, the public may pay for half of the $12 billion spent on new venues between 1987 and 2000.