I was just curious-say, for example, that I cloned a dozen or so James Browns, or Wilt Chamberlains, or Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s, and trained them properly, and, voila, they are ready to do my major league bidding. I want to start my own major league team: The handsomeharry’s.
OK, I’ve got the pure-dee talent; Uncle no-great-shakes-harry will lend me a few mill if I need it. (PS, I’ve already bought a major stadium/arena/etc…, and I’ve greased the local palms). I suspect that there’s not a trial period, but, I don’t know for sure.
What are my next steps to become major league, i.e., who do I call and what will they require of me?
Thanks,
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ETA: Uh, I’m not sure what I meant by MBA in the title…got carried away, I guess.
ETA: OK, I figured it out…NBA!
You need to buy a license from the league, and get approval from the other team owners. It will cost a lot (100’s of millions) and you’ll need a stadium, etc. Also, most leagues won’t add a single team (it screws up the schedules) so you’ll need to find someone else to go in at the same time.
Basically, you don’t start a team. The leagues decide they want to expand and then they seek new prospective owners.
Besides, your players wouldn’t be yours until you drafted them, and you can’t draft them until you’re in the league. They’d be snapped up by other teams so you would be starting with nothing.
What Telemark said. You don’t start with a bunch of players. You start with a bunch of money. You go to the owners of the existing teams and convince them to allow you to start a new team. You’re going to pay for the privilege. You convince a city to be the host city for your team and provide you with a stadium. With some luck, you can find a city that will pay you.
And then you’ll be allowed to participate in a special draft. You’ll be allowed to draft a set number of players from each existing team (and they’ll be allowed to place their better players on an exempt list). Then you’ll be allowed to participate in the regular draft to fill in your team roster. And finally, you can sign up available free agents.
That doesn’t apply to the NBA, which frequently has had an odd number of teams without having its schedule screwed up. Sports leagues resist expansion just because they don’t want to split up their revenue with another mouth.
It depends on the timeframe. There was huge (over)expansion by the NHL a bunch of years ago to warmer climates because they wanted to grow the sport and make lots of money. Same with MLB which IMO has a few too many teams. New markets, franchise fees, greater TV revenues all come from expansion. That needs to be balanced with sharing revenue, diluting the talent pools, and adding small market teams.
There’s no particular reason why the NHL needs an even number of teams, either. MLB needs even numbers (the teams play essentially every day) and the NFL would certainly be harder to run without an even number, but hockey and basketball are fine.
But the essence of the answer is solid; what you need is
A huge amount of money. You need to bribe the other owners with hundredsa of million of dollars, since they are at least initially now splitting a lot of TV and merchandising revenues one more way than before (this is especially true of the NFL, where most of the revenue is collective.)
Local support for stadium subsidies. Even if you can build a stadium yourself the league does not want you to. All major sports leagues in North America have policies, either official or unofficial, that stadia construction and upgrades must be at least partically paid for with taxpayer money. Public subsidies are a large part of their business model and the leagues do not want that precedent messed with. MLB was not at all happy with the Giants building their own park, and you can believe that will never happen again.
A solid business model. No matter how much money you have and how free you can get your stadium, the league must have some confidence your franchise will not become a burden in the existing owners. Situations like we see with the Phoenix Coyotes, or what happened with the Montreal Expos, or what seems to be happening with the Tampa Bay Rays, or Jacksonville Jaguars, and are not things the leagues want.
Part of that business model is the publically financed stadium, but of course you also need a ready market that will contribute to the league’s overall long term growth. A second NHL team in Toronto would make a hillion billion dollars, but would infringe on the profits of an existing team and doesn’t really help the league spread its popularity. A new basketball team in Albuquerque doesn’t much affect any other team and is a new market, but the market is likely too small to be successful.
Proof you’re a team player. Just ask Jim Balsillie, the BlackBerry magnate who had a zillion dollars and wanted an NHL team and had places lined up to host it, but they wouldn’t give him one because, well, he was a big asshole and didn’t get along with Gary Bettman. Solidarity between the teams in dealing with the players unions, government, PR issues and the like is very important. Sports leagues don’t like renegades. They don’t want Mark Cubans, Charlie Finleys, and the like anymore. And Mark Cuban isn’t even that bad; Balsillie would have been ten times worse. It’s a club, and they want club members who’ll go along with the consensus.
You’re both right, I was definitely thinking of MLB and NFL. But has the NBA or NHL ever done an expansion with a single team? They seem to always come in pairs.
The NBA added the Charlotte Bobcats/future Hornets in 2004, which was the league’s last expansion. The three rounds of expansion before that had two teams each.
I don’t think you could get these players into any kind of agreement before you were awarded an expansion franchise. It would probably be some kind of violation of free-agent rules, and anyway if they’re good enough to play in the pros, they would have little incentive to sign with you and stay out of the game while you try to get the rights to a team.
The NFL had an odd number of teams when they added the new Browns in 1999 until 2002 when the Houston Texans were added. 1999 was when they added the bye week – an odd number of teams had a bye each week (including the first and last weeks of the schedule). So they could and have had an odd number of teams, but it’s not the most desirable of schemes.
The “need” for an even number of teams in MLB was also why the NL had 16 teams and the AL 14 for a while, but not they have inter-league play every day so an even number of teams in each league is no longer needed and Houston moved to the AL last year.
Actually since 1936 when the NFL adopted a schedule with all teams playing the same number of games, they’ve had bye weeks in 1936 (before the Rams were added), 1950 (after the merger with the AAFC for one year before the Colts folded) 1960 (when the Cowboys were added) and 1966 (when the Falcons were added). The AFL had bye weeks in 1966 and 1967 (after the Dolphins were added and before the Bengals were added).