sirmitchell:

sofapizza:

Bill Maher on how the NFL is like socialism, & the MLB is like capitalism.

This is actually pretty insightful. Bill Maher is such a prick but he so often hits the nail on the head. 

We were just talking about this in my Business of Sports class. I find it very fascinating that football can be as popular and as competitive as it is mainly due to it being a socialistic economy, if you will. The sport sells itself as an entity, instead of individual teams, and the revenue they receive from television deals are then equally distributed to all. This gives them to opportunity to be competitive as every team has the resources to attain the best possible players. Obviously not all teams will do this and may use the money for other things such as enhancing facilities. But for the most part the NFL has allowed all their teams to be competitive more often than MLB, who lets their teams negotiate individual deals with the media. The Yankees will receive more money then the Royals will in a televisions deal, because they are simply a bigger market. And this edge has allowed the Yankees to be as dominating as they are and even allowed them to expand with the YES network. Of course there have been teams that have been a force to reckon with in the past that I will admit would not have predicted, such as the Devil Rays and Tigers, but often times than not you will see the same teams be competitive year in and year out. Of course there are other factors involved such as player development and team chemistry, but how big a team’s payroll is, is a big factor.

I am also interested in how the CBA will affect this in the up coming year in the NFL. Big market teams want to give less to smaller market teams. The owners also want to cut how much players receive from revenue by 20%. Currently players are receiving 62% of total revenue the league makes and owners receive 38%. It’ll be interesting to see how everything will work out and hopefully there will be a season in 2011.