This thread is inspired by the new LIV golf tour, the reaction of the PGA, and reports that the PGA will possibly investigated for violations of anti-trust laws.
In general, it seems like for major sports, there is only one top league in any given country / region. Here in the US we have the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL for the four major team sports. Historically basketball, football, and baseball in the US weren’t dominated by just one league, but that seems to be due the early days of a sport not having yet had the time to consolidate into one league. Eventually the AL and NL merged in baseball, the AFL and NFL in football, and the NBA and ABA in basketball. There are occasionally attempts to start a competing league, especially in football, but they’ve all folded. Even if they hadn’t, the level of play in the upstart league would be inferior to the established league. The other exceptions are leagues that have been set up for historically marginalized groups, such as the Negro Leagues and All-American Girls Baseball League in baseball in the past, and currently the WNBA in basketball. I’m not familiar with the setup for those sports in other countries, much less sports that aren’t as established in the US like soccer, cricket, rugby, etc. I assume, however, that there is probably only one major league per sport per nation.
With that out of the way, the question is this. Are there any scenarios in which two or more sports leagues can be in direct competition with both of them being viable? If not, what does this portend for the PGA with this new arrival of LIV?
Do the top levels of soccer even have a “league”, per se? It’s my understanding that, while the top teams mostly play other top teams, they can also sometimes play against lesser teams, and those teams can in turn play against still lesser, and so on, to the point that a team of guys who get together casually after work can have played a team who’s played a team … who’s played a team who’s played against Manchester United.
I’m not as familiar with the details of the structure of European soccer as I am with American baseball. I assume, however, that those situations are similar to an exhibition game between an MLB team and AAA level minor league baseball team. There’s at least names to the top leagues, like the English Premier League, La Liga, etc. How rigid those structures are compared to MLB or the NFL is a different matter, which I’m not all that familiar with other than being aware that the worst teams will be relegated and replaced by the best teams of the next lowest division.
In Australian Rugby League there was Super League which lasted in the courts longer than it did on the playing field, with a peace deal/merger with the ARL completed after one season. The two leagues were broadly comparable.
In cricket there was the Kerry Packer lead World Series Cricket staged between 1977 and 1979. Arguably the WSC was the better product.
Curiously enough Packer was leader of the breakaway WSC group but on the establishment side in SL.
Yes, there is always a top club soccer league in every country that plays soccer. Most European and South American countries have a promotion/relegation system in which the clubs that finish at the top of their league can move up to a higher league, and similarly, those at the bottom drop to a lower league. Besides exhibition or “friendly” matches, teams in different leagues in a country will only meet in certain cup competitions. For example, in England, all clubs in every league can compete for the FA Cup. In Brazil, each state has its own cup competition before league play begins. Since we’re now in summer, and most of Europe is on soccer break, you don’t quite the get picture of just how many leagues there are around the world. But check this website on a Saturday or Sunday in September and you’ll get a sense of the levels and levels of leagues around the world: https://www.flashscore.com/
Curiously enough Packer was leader of the breakaway WSC group but on the establishment side in SL.
That’s because he didn’t have TV rights to the cricket, he wanted them, and so formed WSC, while he had the existing tv rights to the rugby league and so saw SL as a threat to those.
I’d argue that in the U.S. college basketball and college football count as “leagues” for the purposes of most fans. Granted, they aren’t competing against the NBA and NFL for the best players, but when the NCAA Tournament alone generates more than $10 Billion (with a B) in gambling, I’d call it major competition.
And the NHL and WHL in ice hockey. A monopoly is always the most profitable arrangement for the monopolist. In the United States, professional sports have been exempted from enforcement of anti trust (competition) laws, so monopolies have arisen.
Only baseball has an explicit antitrust exemption. The rest of the sports enjoy de facto exemptions. Antitrust law has not be effectively enforced against the other sports. In those few cases in which it has, the penalties have not been of the level to deter or discourage anticompetitive practices, so the NFL, NBA, and NHL operate effectively as monopolies.
Taiwan is a tiny example, but currently we have a P-League and T-League that are both full-fledged basketball leagues that vie against each other for attention, revenue and fans.
It’s probably only a matter of time until one folds, though. In the past, every time Taiwan had 2 leagues in any sport (such as baseball), one inevitably went under. Just a matter of evolutionary survival of the fittest.
The NFL actually has been adjudicated as being a monopoly, in the case that the original USFL brought against them back in the 1980s. The jury, though, found that the problems of the USFL were predominantly of their own making, which is why they only awarded them $1 in damages (trebled to $3 under antitrust statute).
The USFL is probably the last time we will see any sort of serious attempt to challenge any of the Big Four American sports leagues. The primary reason for this is money; the AFL was successful in the 1960s partially because your typical football player was making a five figure income; even the top stars (think Joe Namath) weren’t making more than six figures. Nowadays, your average athlete is a millionaire and the top talent demands salaries in the tens of millions per year. Acquiring stars is the only way an upstart league is going to work; even if you could find owners capitalized to be able to do this, are they going to be willing to do so, particularly for a new league (where they will probably have to endure losses for several years before seeing any return)?
Several upstart football leagues have tried playing in the spring to avoid competition with the NFL. Aside from the previous issue mentioned, another obstacle, IMO, is the simple fact that people don’t want to watch football all year round. They need to take a break from it in the summer and let the build up take place so they are ready come late August for it to get going again.
I was going to add those in as examples supporting the hypothesis that having only one top league is stable once big money is part of the picture. With OU and UT moving to the SEC, and UCLA and USC moving to the Big 10, and with other dominoes sure to drop (Clemson, Miami, and FSU are my guesses for the next round of defections), NCAA Division I seems to be headed that way. My guess is that some time in the next 10 to 20 years the SEC and Big 10 will be the only two top conferences and in a similar relationship to the NFL and AFL before the merger. Then there will be a division / league one step below that, with the best of the leftover teams from the ACC, Big 12, and PAC 12 and maybe a few bottom tear teams from the current SEC and Big 10 that get “kicked out” in some way. Then more divisions further down, each with their own championship. Even now, it doesn’t make sense to me why the mid-majors stick around trying to compete with the likes of Alabama and Ohio State. Their chances of ever even coming close to a championship are a lot worse than the worst professional teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars, Pittsburgh Pirates, or Orlando Magic.
This is what I’m trying to get at. Even without anti-trust laws, the natural state of big money sports seems to be to have only one top league. Short of some sort of law forcing the dominant league to contribute money to an upstart league, or the upstart league starting at a monetary advantage to the established league (the LIV scenario that we’re currently seeing play out), I can’t picture a scenario with two co-dominant leagues. Should the PGA suffer some sort of anti-trust penalty, my guess is that the end result will be that they will eventually fold and LIV will become dominant.
With more teams, as in college football where the number of teams suitable for the top level seems to be around 60 something, a two league / conference situation might happen. Even then, however, I expect some sort of merger to happen between the Big 10 and SEC once the other conferences go the way of the dodo.
This is no different from most industries. Remember, in the United States around the turn of the century, pretty much all major businesses were controlled by monopolies or oligopolies.
I’m not sure what’s the best way to consider competition between sports leagues. Sure, we can take the stance that the NFL has a monopoly on professional football. But the NFL is also competing against the NBA. For example, money spent on NBA gear is not being spent on NFL gear.
Considering how little the US broadcast is showing the current leader, Dustin Johnson, I think it’s obvious that the PGA and R and A are trying to punish, downplay, etc. the LIV guys. They show everyone else (including just about every Tiger shot - who is miles from making the cut), but no Dustin Johnson. Ridiculous.
I’m curious what you imagined soccer is like. Like the entire thing is just a knockout tournament (FA Cup or whatever)?
Interestingly enough, in theory, we could form a soccer team on the SDMB and end up playing for the Club World Cup in 4 years (or 3, the US Open Cup isn’t super clear to me). It wouldn’t need to be “a team that played a team that played…” it could just be us playing Real Madrid.