Originally that’s where most professional sports leagues started, at least the old ones; it’s true in North America too. But once you introduce truly huge sums of money, this sort of thing is just inevitable, there’s no avoiding it. The big ticket football clubs are pulling in staggering amounts of money and it’s going to attract the worst kind of capitalist.
It seems like what those owners need is to take lessons from the Jerry Jones’s of the American sports world. As much as I hate to defend him other American sports owners, the American leagues maintain a lot more parity because of salary caps (or a luxury tax in the word case scenario of MLB). Sure, a team might develop a dynasty that lasts a few years like the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers rivalry of the late teens. But things change, and fans of most other teams really can believe in the old saying of “better luck next year” because team owners have a range of how much or how little they can spend on player salaries.* Even in the NFL with the run the New England Patriots had from 2001 - 2019, it was a matter of luck more than anything else. They got lucky in having picked the greatest QB ever late in the draft while having a decent coach at the same time. It wasn’t because the team owner was throwing around more cash. The closest situation in American sports of a team trying to buy a championship is probably the Los Angeles Dodgers, and even then they’ve only won one World Series in recent memory.
*. I’m not saying there aren’t any side effects from the salary caps. The main one, IMHO, being the high turnover in team rosters. Fans are left rooting for a jersey rather than particular players because most of the players on their team will probably be on a different team a few years later.
Right. And the solution to RM and Barca (and Atletico Madrid) spending more than they earn in order to maintain dominance in their league, according to Perez, is to guarantee more income for those clubs rather than spend less and maybe have to fight on a fairer field to win their leagues. As if the fan cares more for the value of Real Madrid than about an entertaining La Liga.
They seem to honestly believe that the fans want a system where it is an explicit goal that a handful of teams are the only ones that can win their domestic league. That fans like that, as long as their team is one of the few.
They believe that Arsenal fans, for example, hated that Leciester City were able to win the Premier League. But they have it totally backwards. Arsenal fans hated that Arsenal fucked up and let LC win the league, but they loved that it was possible for LC to win. That’s what makes sports exciting and worth watching.
You’re right, but there is a reason why there is an uproar over the owners actions, and been such statements on their role as “current Caretakers” by the public, FA officials, and the government.
Indeed, I’ve heard from more than a few of big club supporters on other boards that their global branding should immunize their clubs from financial failure, even if results on the pitch say otherwise. It simply won’t be possible for those folks and me to reconcile our opposing views.
I might hate the fact that so many millions support the goliath that is Manchester United but I don’t begrudge their financial standing and the on-field success it buys. What really ticks me off is big successful clubs complaining that they have to keep spending their revenues to maintain success on the pitch. Too fucking bad. Welcome to life.
Up until the creation of the Premier League the league might have had more parity than any American sport. The main issue in Europe (Not so much in England unless talking about it from League level to level) is unequal distribution of TV revenues. The main reason Spanish football is so top-heavy isn’t because they don’t have a salary-cap it’s because the Real, Barcelona, etc. demand the majority of the revenue, and I don’t think that would change due to a salary cap.
Additionally, I’d consider the NFL/NBA draft set-up, where the losers are rewarded for losing, more of a factor in their parity than the salary-cap.
The TV revenues from the big national contracts are also distributed equally among all the teams in the NFL and NBA. The Dallas Cowboys get the same amount from the TV contracts as the Cincinnati Bengals. The Los Angeles Lakers get the same amount as the Memphis Grizzlies. The draft order, as you mention, definitely helps as well.
I have a hard time understanding the comparison.
I know of no professional sports league in the U.S. that diverts its best teams to a “super” league, or takes attention away from league championships by promoting teams with the best records to an International Sooper Competition (with the exception of Major League Soccer and CONCACAF).
Yeah I’d consider some of the Continental Football Leagues to be more like how the Big 12 is in the NCAA than the professional American sports. Revenue isn’t even close to equal and the big teams throw their clout around (not unlike Texas or Oklahoma) to receive even more of the money pie.
Yeah. I mentioned earlier in the thread that from what I understand of the European soccer situation, college football is the closest comparison in American sports. There’s Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State at the very top, a second tier of teams like Notre Dame, Georgia, Oklahoma, and LSU, and so on.
But all those college football teams are in regular leagues playing (and usually beating up on) lesser competition, and a true Super League (as opposed to national playoffs) hasn’t been formed.
Yet.
Right.
Now imagine if those teams all created a “College Football Super League” where they could never be kicked out and played each other only. But they also wanted to still play in the Big 10/12/etc so they could get that money too.
It’s not exactly analogous, since nobody gets relegated from the Big 12, but currently there is no strict guarantee that any of those teams will make the College Football Championship Playoff (or whatever it’s called). This Super League was more like a guaranteed ticket to a premier event without having to earn your spot. It was a way to further solidify dominance in the domestic leagues and guarantee an outsized share of the European competition pie.
ETA: I should add that’s it also not a great comparison because the reason those college teams are dominant isn’t about paying their players more, since they don’t pay them (at least over the table).
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s closer. Payment to the athletes is in the form of more national exposure. Someone playing football at Alabama or Ohio State has a better chance of playing in the NFL than someone who plays at Northwest Wyoming Tech or whatever. There is kind of informal relegation, like when the old Big 8 and Southwest Conference merged into the Big 12, kicking out teams like Rice and SMU. There was also the demise of the Big East, with the better teams going to the ACC and the rest left to fend for themselves. The Big 12, in turn, was in danger of breaking up due to the actions of UT that you mentioned, with UT potentially having had to get a taste of their own medicine.
Except for college sports, there aren’t any American equivalents to UEFA, which has fitty-some national leagues competing in the larger European association. What the Super League was attempting to do was locking in 75% of its participants permanently, immunizing them from the merit-based up and down rat races to which all the rest are subjected. And that is a very American concept.
“Informal” relegations don’t cut it for me. I want promotion and relegation to be earned on the field, not in the boardroom. It is a curious characteristic of American fandom that it is generally ok with the latter.
I’ve spent many hours daydreaming about a college football pyramid. It would work and the next generations of fans would love it.
As you should know, the “rat races” exist in every pro and college sport in America, and no one is “immunized” against competition.
I agree that it probably would work. The incentives would still be there for the top players to want to play at OSU, Alabama, or Clemson. But there would also be incentive for a good player to play at a lower level and show that they can elevate the level of play of a lower tier team competing against those in the next tier up. sort of like what University of Central Florida has done recently.
The NBA does not distribute all TV revenue equally. The central contracts are league-wide, but teams have individual, local broadcasting deals as well that cover most regular season games and local playoff rebroadcasting rights, and those vary a lot from team to team. That contributes heavily to the fact that the difference between NBA teams in revenue can be quite substantial; teams like the Lakers make far more money than do teams like the Pacers.
The NFL has no local system like that.
The North American leagues don’t have to do that. They already ARE the super leagues. They started this process in the nineteenth century when baseball’s National League was formed. The structure of MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA are basically what the Super League was to be - a higher league independent of others, with no structural connection to teams outside of that division of teams, no concept of promotion or relegation.
Obviously the difference is that NFL teams don’t simultaneously compete in a lower league at the same time; the Chiefs don’t play the Patriots on Sunday in the NFL and then beat the shit out of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Wednesdays. The Yankees don’t fit in MLB games around their scheduled series with the Nippon Ham Fighters. But it’s the same central concept of a league based on set franchises that are a permanent part of the league disconnected from all others, largely based around the most profitable markets (you may think Milwaukee isn’t a big market, but it’s sure as hell a more lucrative market than Toledo, Shreveport, or Ottawa.)
It’s not at all curious; it’s a different way of doing it but it’s just as valid, in part because it obviously promotes more competitive balance at the highest level.
I see many pros with the European system, but it’s silly to deny the cons, and the biggest one is clearly competitive balance. European football leagues are dominated by a handful of teams to an extent North American leagues haven’t been in a couple of generations. La Liga is basically a two team race. Bundesliga can barely even be called that. Ligue 1 has been won by Paris St Germain seven out of the last eight years. No team in any North American sports league, not even the Yankees or Lakers of Patriots, can claim anything like that in the last… forty years? The Celtics in the 1960s were like that, I guess. Even Wayne Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers were not as dominating as Bayern Munich. European football leagues generally have a few teams with any real shot at the title, about as many teams desperately trying to not get relegated, and a bunch of teams in the middle who do okay but aren’t going to win it all. If you’re a fan of a North American major pro sports team you have a hope; every franchise, no matter how miserable their recent history, can win a championship in five years or fewer with a few good decisions and a few good breaks.
If you created a promotion/relegation system for, say, baseball (note that Japan does it the same way MLB does) then leaving aside the business arrangements you’d have to change, yes, this year maybe Louisville and Sacramento would get promoted and Baltimore and Colorado get relegated. But if we’re carrying this to its likely conclusion what then happens is that Louisville, Sacramento, Baltimore and Colorado will end up in a perpetual state of drifting between the bottom of the MLB standings or the top of the International League standings. The only likely way the Colorado Rockies could break out of that is if a super rich billionaire buys the team and forks out hundreds of millions to grab a dozen premiere free agents in one go. That’s a way to do it, and it certainly would be interesting to see the Walton family buy the Arkansas Travelers, import a billion dollars’ worth of ballplayers and see what happens, but I’m not exactly sure how that’s pushing greed and big money OUT of the game.
Better comparison than you might think.
There’s the Power 5 Conferences and there’s everybody else. The Big 12 may not be the Super League but the Power 5 together virtually are. Getting even 1 (out of 4) playoff spots from outside the Power 5 is already virtually impossible, though the current structure was advertised as making it a real possibility. It gave the appearance of giving the little guy a chance while guaranteeing the big schools maintained their dominant position.
And while the Power 5 teams don’t pay their players directly, they spend a lot more money on football. That massive spending shows up as top notch facilities, higher quality of travel/hotel, higher visibility, and that attracts elite players to those schools vs smaller ones. So, yes, they are basically doing the same thing by spending lots of money to attract elite talent and maintain their dominant market position.
I would watch the crap out of an exhibition series between MLB and NPB. Even with expecting the worst MLB team to win more games overall against the best NPB team. Just the difference in how the game is approached these days would be fascinating.
When people talk about these things they forget about the massive size differences between countries here. England is the size of the US state of Alabama. France & Germany are about the size of Texas. Meaning, in a system of promotion/relegation you aren’t going to be all the far from a top tier team in European countries, whereas in the US you would be.
I remember laughing when there some Twitter post about congratulating the Newcastle fans for making the super long road trip to London for a match… it’s a 5 hour drive!! At that time, the closest away MLS team to my home team - Atlanta United - was 6 hours. It’s better now - we have an opponent team in 4 hours away from us.
A pro/rel system in the US would have quite the real possibility of a massive portion of the country/population having no top tier teams. Imagine if Colorado goes down (in MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL), the closest top tier team to Denver would be 8 hours away!