NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - If baseball players go on strike for the sixth time this Friday, the economic losers will range from minimum-wage workers at the nation's ballparks to taxpayers in nearly two-dozen cities to a multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerate.

The nation's overall economy probably won't be damaged -- sports economists say fans will find other forms of entertainment on which to spend their dollars. But both short-term and long-term losses to a number of businesses that depend on the games will be tough to replace.

Fans spending on other entertainment will mute the economic impact of a player's strike, according to sports economists.

Talks between the players union and owners were continuing Friday morning after all-night negotiations aimed at averting a strike. The first game that could be affected by a strike is a 3:20 p.m. ET game at Wrigley Field in Chicago between the Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. Some baseball officials said a decision on whether there would be a strike would have to be made by noon ET to save that game.

By the time it's known whether there will be a strike -- probably early Friday morning, given the current state of the talks -- hundreds of thousands of hot dogs, hot dog buns and other supplies will be in place at the 15 stadiums set to host games this weekend. Most of those supplies won't be returnable, said Nick Biello, chief operating officer for the contract services group of Delaware North Cos., which handles nine major league stadiums, including seven with games scheduled for Friday.

The privately held company stands to lose sales at as many as 110 to 120 games if the rest of the season is lost to a strike, as well as a good chance of post-season games at one of its best-attended venues, Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The company's workers, some of whom are paid hourly, others who work on commission, also will be hurt. Biello said some of them are volunteers who are working in order to have a portion of the company's sales donated to a charitable cause, such school bands or youth sports.

"The bottom line effect will be more than $1 million for our company," Biello said. "We pay a lot of money to charity groups, and they're going to have to find other ways to raise money if kids are going to get to do something like march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We have vendors and associates work for us, some have been working in stands for 20, 30 years, and they'll lose money as well. They depend on that money."

But Biello said the real hit to the company and other sport services companies will be felt when games resume, especially if it's next year following another lost postseason like that after the 1994 strike.

"When we came back from the last strike, that was not a good time for sports service or baseball," he said. "I think if we're unfortunate enough to see another strike, we'll see a reaction from fans we anticipate and don't look forward to."

The suppliers of various products will also endure lost sales, but at least in terms of beer, one analyst said he doesn't believe it will have significant impact to be felt in the leading brewers' earnings this fall.

"With college football, the NFL and the new fall TV season about to commence, we do not believe cancellation of the baseball season will meaningfully reduce the number of drinking occasions for U.S. consumers," said Carlos Laboy, analyst with Bear Stearns.

Laboy estimates that if the rest of the regular season and the postseason is lost it could mean about 182,500 fewer barrels of beer sold, and reduce overall industry profit by about $2.7 million. But only Adolph Coors Co. (RKY: Research, Estimates) is expected to see even a 1 cent per share decrease in earnings due to the drop in earnings, with leading brewer Anheuser-Busch Co. and No. 2 brewer SABMiller PLC both seeing earnings per share falling by only a tenth of a cent, according to Laboy's estimates.

The stadiums where teams play generally are owned by local governments, which would have to make payments without the revenue of ticket taxes or other lease payments to support the debt service. Only seven of 30 major league parks are privately held.

"It's a double blow to fans in publicly owned cities. You're not only taking away baseball but you're making them pay taxes for stadiums sitting empty," said Bruce Johnson, a professor at Centre College in Danville, Ky., and an expert on the economics of sports.

But unlike major league owners, who get a significant portion of their revenue from television rights based on the postseason playoffs and World Series, most of the government entities already have collected about 80 percent or more of the revenue they expected to see this year, so the impact on them will be somewhat limited.

One company that stands to lose the most from a baseball strike is Fox Entertainment Group Inc. (FOX: down $0.03 to $21.90, Research, Estimates), which has the rights to broadcast the postseason, along with at least some of the regular season games of 25 of the majors' 30 teams. The company also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, which is making a run at its first postseason appearance since 1996.

The company would be due a refund on the overwhelming majority of its rights payments of about $400 million for national broadcasts, although baseball would have until next year to return that money. The network also would get a rebate due to the expected decline in ratings and fan interest in future years that would follow a strike.

Since the network estimates it will lose $225 million for broadcasting baseball through 2006, a year without having to pay most of those rights fees might seem like a windfall. But no company has greater exposure to the downside of fan and customer defection that is expected come with a strike.

And the network depends on the still-large viewership of baseball's postseason to promote the start of its fall 2002 prime time television schedule. While baseball ratings have slipped in recent years, the postseason games still outdistance Fox's normal audience.

Fox plans to broadcast a one-hour show, "America's pastime in crisis," if its Saturday-afternoon nationally broadcast game is cancelled by a strike. It has not revealed its plans to replace the postseason, other than to say it has a "contingency plan."

But despite the losses to companies big and small, an academic study of the economic impact of professional sports strikes and lockouts found basically no impact on average incomes or spending in the cities where teams stopped playing. It looked at the economies of the cities that have had franchises that shut down during work stoppages going back 30 years, such as the first baseball strike in 1972, the 1994-95 baseball strike and the 1998 lockout of players in the National Basketball Association.

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"There is no evidence of detectable effect on the local economies," said Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at University of Maryland-Baltimore County and one of the authors of the study. He said most fans will take the money they would have spent on the sport hit by a stoppage and spend it on other forms of entertainment, such as dinner out or movies, which pumps as much as or more money into the local economy.

Some economists disagree, saying if baseball's postseason is lost once again, as it was in 1994, it will depress consumer spending.

"It's almost absurd to think you can replace the World Series as an economic event," said Bill Sullivan, economist at Morgan Stanley. "In no way does it put the economy at risk of double-dip recession, but I believe the economy loses."

But Humphreys said another study he conducted also found little measurable impact of a World Series or other championship being played in a city. And some other sports economists agree with Humphreys that even the loss of the World Series would be made up by other entertainment spending.

"It's not like fans will be sitting on their wallets if baseball players stop playing," Johnson said.

Even Humphreys and Johnson concede that the strike might hurt some specific supplier companies and lower-paid employees who work as support staff, such as concession vendors and parking lot attendants. But Humphreys said even that work often can be made up if those part-time employees shift to other jobs they might have.

"Almost nobody is a full-time vendor at stadiums," Humphreys said.

But Elaine Gosnell, spokeswoman for Volume Services America, which handles concessions at seven major league parks, said that many of the company's 11,000 employees working at those parks would be hit if there is a strike.

"Many of them do rely on this income during the season because they work at other venues during other seasons," she said. She wouldn't comment on the impact a strike would have on her privately held company, and Aramark Corp. (RMK: up $0.10 to $21.90, Research, Estimates), another major stadium vendor, also declined to comment.