I’ve only been watching the Prem since the 2014-15 season and today I counted about 13 of the 24 clubs in the Championship this most recent season which had spent time in the top tier during my fandom. So there is indeed a bit of a churn. But which also makes the second tier incredibly competitive and entertaining.
There are success stories, too. Not counting the special financial situation enjoyed by Manchester City, Leicester won the league a few seasons after promotion (and is returning), Newcastle qualified for Champions League last year after rebounding from relegation a short while ago, Villa has clinched a CL berth after having been sent down a few years ago, Brighton and Southampton (probably forgetting a couple more) have qualified for Europa League (my Saints will play Leeds in the playoff final June 26).
When cities beform large enough to absorb surrounding teams the town name often remains as a district of the city. While Brentford was just outside London when the club was formed (London went as Har as Hammersmith), Chelsea, Fulham and Woolwich were all districts of London (At that time Arsenal were called Woolich Arsenal and were located in East London until 1913).
Also most of the teams (at least in the UK) had small beginnings. For example Everton was formed as St Domingo FC my the minister of St Doingo Chapel in order to provide a winter sport for the youngsters in the church (they already had a cricket team). Their first match was against Everton Church Club. As the club opened up to people who were not members of the church they changed the name to Everton.
Liverpool is actually an offshoot of Everton. Everton were playing at Anfield but there wasa big dispute over whether to pay a significantly increased rent or look to move elsewhere, the dispute ended with the club being split in two with the FA recognising the section that moved to Goodison as still being Everton FC.
It is not unheard of for US teams to be names after districts, the Brooklyn Dodgers played in NY.
It could work in baseball, where there’s already a well-defined stratified series of sub-levels underneath the Big Leagues (viz, AAA, AA, and so on). But any other sport - not a chance. Especially not soccer. Give us another 100 years to develop a strong soccer culture and maybe - IF (gridiron) football AND baseball both fall by the wayside.
While copying the pro soccer system would enable the Hackensack Bulls to move up the ranks and eventually play the Yankees it is far from perfect.
Getting relegated results in a significant drop in income, and it is hard to reduce costs by a similar amount. If you buy a player for 40m and give him a contract paying him 10m a year and he ends up playing rubbish and getting you relegated noone will buy him off you.
This was not as bad when the majority of a clubs income came from match day sales relagation would mean smaller crowds but TV and advertising revenue which now dominates income srteams falls MUCH faster.
Clubs are tempted to spend money to get to the next level in the expectation the increased revenues will pay for it, this worked for Man City and Chelsea but caused teams like Portsmouth to go bankrupt. Financial fair plays rules try to prevent this but can result in double jepardy, Everton were regularly playing in Europe and bought players at prices of players to meet that standard but instead were barely good enough to stay in the Premier League, the reduced revenues from lack of European football and a lower league position meant they breached the financial fair play rules and got punished by points deductions which could easily have resulted in relegation and a further drop in revenues.
The chasm between the haves and have nots is only getting wider, while this is only the second time all three promoted teams have gone straigtht down it is usual for one or two of them to do so. The chasm between the big 6 and the rest is also huge, of the 45 highest paid players in the premier league every one is in the big 6 including 12 players from Manchester City, Tottenham are very much the sixth member with 4 in the top 45 and none in the top 30.
The other big European leagues are the same, for example Spain is dominated financially between Real Madrid and Barcelona
I know the NFL has a salary cap to promote equality that is not in MLB I could only find the top 10 in Salary in MLB and they came from 8 different teams so baseball has FAR for parity than European football.
The opposing argument is that it’s perhaps the lack of a connected system which is keeping us from developing a strong soccer culture.
Despite the problems with big club dominance in Europe, I still prefer pro/rel where one day Gettysburg might be battling Waynesboro for promotion and a crack at those arrogant snots at Altoona.
And the American sport increasingly moving towards a structure lending itself to pro/rel is college football.
Generally you don’t request evidence for the null hypothesis, but the NFL doesn’t seem to be suffering. I suppose you could posit the counterfactual where the NFL holds 100 of the top 100 broadcasts of 2023 rather than a pathetic 94/100, but that seems far fetched.
What evidence would I want? I dunno, a sport taking off after pro/rel is instituted or cratering when it’s taken away. A sport growing faster than a competitor when including pro/rel. You know, anything at all related.
I think that if US Soccer ever did try to convert to pro/rel, they’d need to set out a plan to make it happen in … oh, give it five decades. Build enough interest in cities that have USL (the USA’s second-tier professional soccer league) that they can sell out 20,000-seat stadiums AND get good sponsorship deals AND get good TV deals. Then repeat the process over again in smaller cities, then in smaller cities still, and MAYBE by 2074 the day will come when Joplin and Kalamazoo and other American cities of 50-60,000 or so (a la Wrexham) can field professional teams that could theoretically have a hope of competing against the Big Boys.
Of course, in that time, baseball will have to have continued to sink in popularity and, the Big Daddy of American sports, (gridiron) football will have to have suffered a decline in popularity as well.
We do indeed have a different history of sports in this country, one where the most profitable clubs/franchises have banded together to restrict participation to a lucky few. American fans, I’m convinced, can’t imagine another way.
I think it’s because they’ve never been presented with an alternative structure. Profit doesn’t have to be everything.
Not true. There have been multiple professional baseball leagues that have tried to compete with the National League (the Federal and the Pacific Coast are the only two that I can think of off the top of my head, but there have been others); they either failed outright, or merged with the major league (like the American League), or survive as minor leagues.
Same story with football - the All-America Football Conference, the AFL, the USFL v.1, USFL v.2, XFL v.1, XFL v.2., WFL. Same deal - they either merge with the dominant league (like the AFL) or send their best teams to it (the AAFC’s Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts), or fail.
Whatever the reason European-style league arrangements haven’t taken root in North America, it’s not because the big leagues have never had competition.
And, in fact, if the new UFL (itself a merger) hits it off it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that you could see a two-tiered gridiron football system in the US. The lower league would have to significantly grow. The market for pro football is certainly big enough to support that many teams.
Probably the biggest difference in US sports is actually how much more “competitive balance” is valued. NBA, NFL, and NHL all have hard(ish) salary caps. MLB is the least competitive salary-wise, but still more balanced that the Premier League, at least the last time I checked the numbers.
There is no way for an NFL team to be so bad that a UFL team, for example, is arguably better than them (not that a few NFL teams don’t seem to be trying…). They can pay players such a higher salary. In England there are definitely players on Championship teams making more than many players in the Premier League, and very little limit on how much you can spend (at least over a short-ish period of time).
Conversely, there is no way for a super-wealthy owner to buy a UFL team and pay huge salaries to make it good enough to join the NFL due to the salary caps in the lower leagues. So the Wrexham story just isn’t possible in the US.
I wish US sports did this. It would add a few twists that would make the end of the season much more interesting. Of course there is no way the billionaire owners of those teams would allow such a system. What’s in it for them?
Nearly entirely so at this point. The AAA, AA, and A teams are farm teams for the majors, as are teams in the Rookie leagues. Many of them are independently owned, but they are directly affiliated with an MLB team.
There are still some independent minor-league teams and leagues in operation, though my understanding is that their level of player talent is probably equivalent to players in an MLB-affiliated Rookie League, or A league, at best.