Private Ownership of an AFL Club

The reason there is no private ownership in the Australian football is due to historio-cultural reasons, not financial reasons, IMHO.

There very much is private "club" ownership in sport in Australia - in soccer and basketball for instance. As much as anything, this private ownership is actually a response to insufficient revenues in these sports

Likewise the VFL/AFL's very brief flirtation with private ownership occurred due to financial pressures rather than perceived opportunities.

The US and England have a particular history of private ownership in their sports that is not the case in Australia.

The AFL clubs are likely to have pulled in a billion dollars in revenues this year and the AFL half that again (excluding club distributions). This in an environment where the costs are as under control as most other pro-sports anywhere. What benefit would there be in opening up to private ownership?
England had no real history of private ownership of sports teams before the late 1980's. Neither did many of the other European leagues. USA - well baseball set the trend in the 1880's.

If the money was there, history would be thrown out the window as we have seen in plenty of other parts of Oz society and economy. The money moves with opportunities.

Ego and perceived opportunity was why Edelsten went after the Sydney licence. Same with Skase and Brisbane licence. WCE was floated on the stock exchange in 1987 when the share market was booming. Why did it flop? Because people could see sports in Oz wasn't a great investment not because of historical reasons of member based clubs. They were right short term, but WCE have proved they would be one of those 4 to 6 clubs that would survive in a true free market for a national footy comp.

The Wienert/Willesee group took over from Edelsten/Sportsplay/Powerplay owners, who floated it on the stock exchange and it too flopped, but Wienert and Willesee saw an opportunity. Ruben Peleman was sort of conned by Oakley and co. into taking over from Skase, but he saw it as a business opportunity for himself to have a team on the Gold Coast

The VFL wanted easy money in licence fees. They knew clubs couldn't come up with the money so they went after the greed of 1980's entrepreneurs and got the money that way.
 
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Here you go Man United taken over, loaded up with debt but has a massive earning potential and now paying the Glazer kids dividends. This is why the incentive is in big overseas markets to buy sporting clubs and make money off them because there are big profits to pay dividends to private owners.

2015-16 results
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/01/premier-league-finances-club-by-club
Manchester United
Accounts for the year to June 30 2016
Turnover £515m (1st, the highest in the league)
Wages £232m (Highest in the league, 45% of turnover)
Profit before tax £49m (follows £4m loss in 2015)

Ownership Owned by the Glazer family via Red Football LLC, a company registered in the low-tax US state of Nevada, United plc is now registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Gate and matchday income £107m
TV and broadcasting £140m
Commercial, merchandising and sponsorship £268m
Net debt £261m
Interest and finance costs £20m
Highest-paid director Unnamed: £2.962m (Ed Woodward is executive vice-chairman)

State they’re in Quite staggering figures. United’s owners, the Glazer family, infamously loaded the £525m debt of their 2005 takeover on to the club itself to repay, which has cost United more than £700m since. Yet the massive reach and exploitation of the United name in booming sponsorships mean the club’s income, £515m, is fully £123m higher than the next highest-earning club, neighbours City. Commercial income alone was £90m more than City’s; unusually, the filings of United plc (registered in the Cayman Islands) cite the amounts of individual sponsorships: £72.7m from Adidas in the year; £59m from shirt sponsor General Motors. The payment of dividends began in this year, worth £15m to the six Glazer siblings.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/01/premier-league-finances-club-by-club

And this year the Glazers are taking out £18m dividend. From May this year

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/16/manchester-united-
The six Glazer siblings who own the majority of Manchester United will be paid £18m as a dividend by the club this year, following £15m last year, according to their latest financial statements. The accounts for the three months to 31 March of Manchester United plc confirm the dividend, an annual 18 cents on each share owned, will be paid again in 2016-17. The five sons and one daughter of the late Malcolm Glazer, who bought United with £525m of borrowed money in 2005 and loaded that debt and interest on to the club to repay, own 131m shares, a club spokesman confirmed. The dividend of 18 cents adds up to $23.58m payable to the family which, due to the fall in the value of the pound against the dollar following the referendum vote for Brexit last year, is worth £18.3m. That makes a total of £33m that the family members will have shared in the two years since the dividend was first announced in September 2015.

The strength of the dollar had a negative effect on the debt position of Manchester United plc, which is registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven and floated on the New York stock exchange (NYSE). The club’s net debt, still the original Glazer borrowings plus interest, bank charges and professional fees which have cost United more than £700m in the 12 years since the takeover, increased £17.6m last year to £366.3m. The United plc statement to the NYSE said this was entirely due to the fall in the value of the pound, and the actual dollar amount owing remains unchanged......
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/16/manchester-united-
 
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Not going to happen after the various paths it took at a few clubs in the 1980's and early 1990's.
Other nations with massive populations and different sporting cultures it happens but here with our own game, not going to happen. Which is a bloody good thing. In a way the AFL owns the clubs for most part
(in practice) and I've seen it that way for a good 15 years now. Ground centralisation killed off a lot of say on your own club dealings. To some degree it works like a big bank where there are branches (clubs in this case) where the employees go out in the field and work for but head office controls the whole thing and the systems the branches operate with. Each branch has a budget to work with and head office hires the staff and sends new employees out to the branches. For us this means the draftees sent out to each club every November.
 
Can't be done? But it works for the NFL

The NFL doesn't pay a cent in game development, it drafts readymade players from the college system allowing the owners and players to take significantly larger cuts of league revenues than the AFL. In recent times the NFL have also shamelessly played the relocation card to prise out taxpayer money for their stadiums.

This leaves aside also the muddied motivations of private ownership, is it about winning or making money? For every Kraft in NE or the Rooneys in Pittsburgh, there's a poorly run equivalent somewhere else that is either too interested in money, or too egotistical (Jerry Jones) for the franchise to be successful.

Whilst the NFL is better than most leagues with private ownership, it still has its flaws. Green Bay are effectively the closest thing they have to an AFL type setup, and it's no coincidence that they're consistently one of the best run franchises in the league.
 
The NFL doesn't pay a cent in game development, it drafts readymade players from the college system allowing the owners and players to take significantly larger cuts of league revenues than the AFL. In recent times the NFL have also shamelessly played the relocation card to prise out taxpayer money for their stadiums..
Its not just NFL but also the NBA, MLB and NHL don't spend development monies as its done by schools and colleges (and junior regional hockey leagues in Canada) and that's why players in those leagues get between 47% and 55% of industry revenues and AFL at around 27% under the new CBA and cricket at around 25%.

The NHL got to a ridiculous stage about 12 years ago when the players were paid 70% of revenues and the owners said enough is enough and they refused to negotiate with the players and a season was cancelled. Their CBA now allows for just over 50% of revenues to go to the players.
 

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England had no real history of private ownership of sports teams before the late 1980's. Neither did many of the other European leagues. USA - well baseball set the trend in the 1880's.

I had assumed this to quite recently, but it is not true. All the "big 6" have been privately owned in some capacity since the 19th century, for instance.

Neither Real Madrid or Barcelona are privately owned. The German clubs, including the super-rich Bayern Munich, are also, by law, member controlled


If the money was there, history would be thrown out the window as we have seen in plenty of other parts of Oz society and economy. The money moves with opportunities.

Ego and perceived opportunity was why Edelsten went after the Sydney licence. Same with Skase and Brisbane licence. WCE was floated on the stock exchange in 1987 when the share market was booming. Why did it flop? Because people could see sports in Oz wasn't a great investment not because of historical reasons of member based clubs. They were right short term, but WCE have proved they would be one of those 4 to 6 clubs that would survive in a true free market for a national footy comp.

The Wienert/Willesee group took over from Eldesten/Sportsplay/Powerplay owners, who floated it on the stock exchange and it too flopped, but Wienert and Willesee saw an opportunity. Ruben Peleman was sort of conned by Oakley and co. into taking over from Skase, but he saw it as a business opportunity for himself to have a team on the Gold Coast

The VFL wanted easy money in licence fees. They knew clubs couldn't come up with the money so they went after the greed of 1980's entrepreneurs and got the money that way.

The VFL needed the easy money of licence fees from the spivs at that stage. Perhaps ironically (at a stretch) in the same year they introduced the salary cap mechanism, that has now morphed into a football department cap, that makes private ownership of existing clubs a complete non-possibility. Add to this the distribution of League / TV funds which is also "equalising". What possible reason would club members contemplate selling the club to private owners or public listing?

The other avenue, of course, is the AFL issue-ing licences to private investors for new "clubs". The fact that the AFL didn't countenance this in the set up of GWS and the Gold Coast is a sure sign they are not interested (and/or the clubs they need to tick off on it would not be). I would suggest the AFL could easily have structured licences that would have shifted a considerable amount of the financing and risk of this to willing private owners. Again, though, there was no need.

The AFL has its costs under control to the extent that the longer term risks of private ownership are just not worth the benefit of transferring some financial costs and risk.

The idea though the the league and clubs with collective annual revenues of $1.5 Billion (that have pretty much increased year on year for 3 decades), hundreds of millions in equity and costs well and truly under control, would not attract private investment if it could get at it, doesn't hold water.
 
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The NFL doesn't pay a cent in game development, it drafts readymade players from the college system allowing the owners and players to take significantly larger cuts of league revenues than the AFL. In recent times the NFL have also shamelessly played the relocation card to prise out taxpayer money for their stadiums.

This leaves aside also the muddied motivations of private ownership, is it about winning or making money? For every Kraft in NE or the Rooneys in Pittsburgh, there's a poorly run equivalent somewhere else that is either too interested in money, or too egotistical (Jerry Jones) for the franchise to be successful.

Whilst the NFL is better than most leagues with private ownership, it still has its flaws. Green Bay are effectively the closest thing they have to an AFL type setup, and it's no coincidence that they're consistently one of the best run franchises in the league.

That's right. A recent article in the age about the travails of the NFL this year finished with a reference to the AFL/NRL "slavishly" following the NFL but you have highlighted a number of the critical differences. The AFL puts considerable money and resources into grass roots/community and elite pathways. The member owned club structure (Packers aside, non existent in pro american sport to my knowledge) has allowed for this. It has also allowed for the evolution of a far deeper mechanisms of equalisation than I suspect would be possible with private ownership and longer term expansion decisions.
 
The idea though the the league and clubs with collective annual revenues of $1.5 Billion (that have pretty much increased year on year for 3 decades), hundreds of millions in equity and costs well and truly under control, would not attract private investment if it could get at it, doesn't hold water.
There will be money prepared to invest in the top 6 to 8 clubs, but not the rest because they don't make money.

$1.5bil is probably $1.2~$1.3 bil given the AFL gave the clubs $255m in 2016 and that will be $320m+ in 2017 and I dont think you will get you $1bil total club revenue total as per your post in the other thread. Plus that pays for development grants which the private owners wouldn't have access to. Players salaries in sports where the competition isn't liable to pay for development are at around 50% of industry revenues.

Clubs can't make money on $50m revenue. Remove the extra distributions from head office and they are in the red. If the AFL asked for a licence fee then they would ask for around $25m if they asked for $4m, 30 years ago. You have to finance that $25m. You would have finance capital expenditure. At the moment how many $30-$60m facilities are being financed with the help of governments?? That would fall by the wayside if there isn't a community benefit for the government to justify the expenditure.

If you don't own stadiums you play in, you don't make capital appreciation on that stadium which you can sell when you sell your licence to another private owner. When you don't own your stadium you don't have the costs, but you are also restricted how hard you can work a stadium to increase revenue. When you are owned by private owners people don't volunteer as much to do things, so things now done for free would have to be paid for.

There is enough money to have a private AFL competition. I never said otherwise. But as other markets in Oz show, you are looking at Oligopoly set up if its to be a true private market league, then it will be 6 to 8 teams not 18. People aren't going to invest $25m-$100m over the first decade just to break even. The competition model would look drastically different to what you see today.
 

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There will be money prepared to invest in the top 6 to 8 clubs, but not the rest because they don't make money.

$1.5bil is probably $1.2~$1.3 bil given the AFL gave the clubs $255m in 2016 and that will be $320m+ in 2017 and I dont think you will get you $1bil total club revenue total as per your post in the other thread. Plus that pays for development grants which the private owners wouldn't have access to. Players salaries in sports where the competition isn't liable to pay for development are at around 50% of industry revenues.

I'm pretty confident it will hit $1B for the clubs. If not it will go very very close given the remaining clubs need only increase revenues by marginally more than the increased distribution. The AFL, consolidated, had $300m surplus over and above the club distributions last year. There will be almost $100M TV cash above those extra distributions, they purchase of Etihad will add apparently ~$80 to turnover and I suspect that other revenues

Anyway, this is rather moot to this discussion.

Clubs can't make money on $50m revenue. Remove the extra distributions from head office and they are in the red. If the AFL asked for a licence fee then they would ask for around $25m if they asked for $4m, 30 years ago. You have to finance that $25m. You would have finance capital expenditure. At the moment how many $30-$60m facilities are being financed with the help of governments?? That would fall by the wayside if there isn't a community benefit for the government to justify the expenditure.

If you don't own stadiums you play in, you don't make capital appreciation on that stadium which you can sell when you sell your licence to another private owner. When you don't own your stadium you don't have the costs, but you are also restricted how hard you can work a stadium to increase revenue. When you are owned by private owners people don't volunteer as much to do things, so things now done for free would have to be paid for.

There is enough money to have a private AFL competition. I never said otherwise. But as other markets in Oz show, you are looking at Oligopoly set up if its to be a true private market league, then it will be 6 to 8 teams not 18. People aren't going to invest $25m-$100m over the first decade just to break even. The competition model would look drastically different to what you see today.

The AFL is, itself, a monopoly, certainly in half the country. Just like the NFL is. Both of these monopolists long ago understood that competitive balance is central to maximizing interest and revenues. The NFL arguably is in the dominant position it is today because it realised this first and institutionalized competitive balance into its operations through draft and trade mechanisms. The AFL has taken this further through football department caps (not aware if these exist in the NFL) and equalising revenue distributions. I would argue that the AFL was only able to achieve these extra mechanisms precisely due to the lack of private ownership.

There is no necessary relationship between private ownership and oligopoly. The richest league in the world is almost totally privately owned. At some point, the private owners in this league gave power over to an independent commission which ultimately constrained their ability to dominate but still made them very rich (or alot richer at least). Two of the richest soccer clubs in the world, operating in one of the most unequal leagues in terms of revenue distributions, are both member owned.

Also, sporting club ownership is certainly not just about dividends. People buy clubs for reasons of grandiosity (inc the examples you gave earlier), benevolence, hobby, political power, image cleansing (ie in the case of the kleptocrats that are buying up soccer clubs everywhere), as a loss leader placing.

Again, the AFL has no private ownership out choice, not through lack of potential private interest, because it is in the league and codes best interest. You have identified another reason for this in terms the strength of business cases to access public grants for facility development. Also another reason the AFL only has 27% of prescribed revenues going to players, compared to the ~50% for the NFL, is because private profits create a far stonger case for greater pay share for players.

The only chance we will see private ownership of AFL clubs again is if everything heads south financially, and it would have to be drastically.
 
There is no necessary relationship between private ownership and oligopoly. The richest league in the world is almost totally privately owned. At some point, the private owners in this league gave power over to an independent commission which ultimately constrained their ability to dominate but still made them very rich (or alot richer at least). Two of the richest soccer clubs in the world, operating in one of the most unequal leagues in terms of revenue distributions, are both member owned..
The richest league in the world has 32 teams spread out over about 29 markets because no city has more than 2 teams and its natural economy is one where you can have 10-12 major players in its national market unlike Australia where its basically an oligopoly market once you become a national company chasing national market share. There would not be 18 teams in an AFL privately owned clubs market if there were minimal subsidies from the AFL. Most AFL clubs depend on AFL subsidies and are not very rich. How many AFL clubs have bank guarantees issued by the AFL and listed in the contingent liabilities part of the AFL annual report?

Private owners did not hand over power to an independent commission. They were directors of membership clubs who had no private beneficial ownership of that club that eventually gave over powers to a central body. That's why it was easy to hand over powers. They didn't personally lose anything.
 

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The richest league in the world has 32 teams spread out over about 29 markets because no city has more than 2 teams and its natural economy is one where you can have 10-12 major players in its national market unlike Australia where its basically an oligopoly market once you become a national company chasing national market share.

Your analogy of the tendency to oligopoly in Australian industry is misguided. Like I said before, the AFL is effectively a monopolist. In reality, the AFL is a league (with broader "code governance and development responsibilities) with 18 member clubs. Through an "industrial organisation" perspective, it is far more logical to think of the AFL as the "firm" and the various clubs as "business units" within the firm.

There would not be 18 teams in an AFL privately owned clubs market if there were minimal subsidies from the AFL. Most AFL clubs depend on AFL subsidies and are not very rich. How many AFL clubs have bank guarantees issued by the AFL and listed in the contingent liabilities part of the AFL annual report?

Again this is moot, because the key is that the current structure of the AFL is that of a heavily equalised competition. It is this way because it is in the long term interest of the game to be so.

It is an interesting thought experiment perhaps about where we would end up if you removed all equalisation and cost control mechanisms and encouraged private ownership, but it is not relevant to discussions about whether or not private investors would be willing to buy into the current model

The AFL would need to establish a more defined funding model, but it could easily welcome in private ownership under the current approach which sees it giving more money to lower revenue clubs. Again, it won't do that because it is not worth it to it.

The FFA / HAL barely has two bronze razoos to rub together but it has 10 privately owned franchises pretty much all losing money.

Private owners did not hand over power to an independent commission. They were directors of membership clubs who had no private beneficial ownership of that club that eventually gave over powers to a central body. That's why it was easy to hand over powers. They didn't personally lose anything.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure pretty much all the NFL clubs have always been privately owned. At some point they moved to an independent commission model which introduced aggressive equalisation measures to achieve competitive balance. That's the point. Alternatively, the laliga, whose two superclubs are member owned, has little revenue sharing at all.

There is simply no necessary relationship between private ownership and competitive balance.
 
Your analogy of the tendency to oligopoly in Australian industry is misguided. Like I said before, the AFL is effectively a monopolist. In reality, the AFL is a league (with broader "code governance and development responsibilities) with 18 member clubs. Through an "industrial organisation" perspective, it is far more logical to think of the AFL as the "firm" and the various clubs as "business units" within the firm.
This thread is about private ownership. Private ownership in Australia wont work in an 18 team national comp because true market forces wont let 18 survive, That's the whole premise of the thread, why isn't there private ownership in the AFL? Private owners wont let those who drain resources year in year out survive. A true private ownership AFL wouldn't let 9 teams survive in Melbourne and you might only have 1 team in the other capitals, maybe 2 in Perth. In the NFL you see forced relocation of struggling teams to markets where they will survive. Shape up or ship out.

Again this is moot, because the key is that the current structure of the AFL is that of a heavily equalised competition. It is this way because it is in the long term interest of the game to be so.

It is an interesting thought experiment perhaps about where we would end up if you removed all equalisation and cost control mechanisms and encouraged private ownership, but it is not relevant to discussions about whether or not private investors would be willing to buy into the current model

The AFL would need to establish a more defined funding model, but it could easily welcome in private ownership under the current approach which sees it giving more money to lower revenue clubs. Again, it won't do that because it is not worth it to it.

The FFA / HAL barely has two bronze razoos to rub together but it has 10 privately owned franchises pretty much all losing money.
The thread looks at why things aren't a certain way. Current rules prevent private ownership but if they did change, investors who don't have lots of money to piss up against the wall, like Arab oil billionaires and Russian oligarchs who stole assets worth billions from the state for nothing, would struggle to see an economic case to own some of the 18 teams. That is undeniable.

Some wealthy owners might value the other intangibles of team ownership at a decent dollar value to them, but if they are going to try to sell the club, then if the buyers don't value the intangibles the same as them, just the value of what are in the books and the forecasts, they wont find buyers. We saw that in the 1980's and 1990's people owned teams for ego reasons. It didn't work because they weren't large millionaires/ billionaires who could subsides the team from other income producing assets they owned.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure pretty much all the NFL clubs have always been privately owned. At some point they moved to an independent commission model which introduced aggressive equalisation measures to achieve competitive balance. That's the point. Alternatively, the laliga, whose two superclubs are member owned, has little revenue sharing at all.

There is simply no necessary relationship between private ownership and competitive balance.
I thought you were talking about V/AFL clubs handing over power. My mistake.

The NFL and American FL clubs, before the merger in the late 1960's early 1970's as represented by NFC and AFC, pretty much all started as private clubs and they moved into a competition where they wanted to be part of an existing private competition. So they didn't hand over any existing powers, but yes overtime they agreed to pool resources as TV revenue took over from match day revenue as the most important revenue stream. The 1972 perfect season Miami Dolphins squad, most of the players still had jobs, mainly out of season and it was considered a big professional league then, but there was bugger all TV monies.
 
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This thread is about private ownership. Private ownership in Australia wont work in an 18 team national comp because true market forces wont let 18 survive, That's the whole premise of the thread, why isn't there private ownership in the AFL? Private owners wont let those who drain resources year in year out survive. A true private ownership AFL wouldn't let 9 teams survive in Melbourne and you might only have 1 team in the other capitals, maybe 2 in Perth. In the NFL you see forced relocation of struggling teams to markets where they will survive. Shape up or ship out.

I agree that, if there was full private ownership of the AFL it would almost certainly be a smaller number of teams (perhaps 12 with 6 vic, 2 wa/sa, 1 sydney and bris), and I suspect there would be a more even and transparent split in revenue distributions and a lot less spent on game development. Privately owned clubs would be on their own, beyond this, and would bare the full financial risks of participation. I also suspect, overtime, it would result in less revenue and a weaker game than we have now.

Logically, when you think about it, it is not true that the question "why is there no private ownership in the AFL" is the same as "why is there not a full private ownership model". The FFA started a franchise league where there is full private ownership of franchises which (notwithstanding current happenings) have little control over the league itself and its revenues or their own IP. The NRL has a number of privately owned clubs operating within broadly a similar model to the AFL.

More realistically, if the AFL were to open up to private investment, it would be within its current parameters. Of course, the value of clubs would be heavily constrained by those parameters, included limited distribution of central revenues, no direct ownership of IP etc.

My argument is that the primary reason the AFL has not interest in this is because it is not worth it to them precisely because the AFL is so flush with cash and has its costs under control. I have little doubt that the AFL could have transferred a considerable portion of the investment cost and risk of the expansion teams through a private ownership model. It didn't do so because it did not need to, not because it wouldn't have been able to achieve it.

The AFL is wedded to the club / NFP model now. It is the best model for the games long term growth

The thread looks at why things aren't a certain way. Current rules prevent private ownership but if they did change, investors who don't have lots of money to piss up against the wall, like Arab oil billionaires and Russian oligarchs who stole assets worth billions from the state for nothing, would struggle to see an economic case to own some of the 18 teams. That is undeniable.

Some wealthy owners might value the other intangibles of team ownership at a decent dollar value to them, but if they are going to try to sell the club, then if the buyers don't value the intangibles the same as them, just the value of what are in the books and the forecasts, they wont find buyers. We saw that in the 1980's and 1990's people owned teams for ego reasons. It didn't work because they weren't large millionaires/ billionaires who could subsides the team from other income producing assets they owned.

Sure, the VFL's brief flirtation in the spiv boom of the late 80s was short lived. It was also when it was broke


I thought you were talking about V/AFL clubs handing over power. My mistake.

The NFL and American FL clubs, before the merger in the late 1960's early 1970's as represented by NFC and AFC, pretty much all started as private clubs and they moved into a competition where they wanted to be part of an existing private competition. So they didn't hand over any existing powers, but yes overtime they agreed to pool resources as TV revenue took over from match day revenue as the most important revenue stream. The 1972 perfect season Miami Dolphins squad, most of the players still had jobs, mainly out of season and it was considered a big professional league then, but there was bugger all TV monies.

I'm not deeply across the details of the NFL history but I am aware from a reliable source it was heavily influenced by the louis-schmelling paradox identified in Neal's "Peculiar Economics" thesis. The basic idea is that the commercial value of a sporting team / individual increases with the extent it has opponents of similar capability - in a way the uncertainty itself is a key value element. It is a "paradox" because it inverts the orthdoxy that a "firm" will always aspire to monopoly.

In terms of how professional sports have evolved in the modern era: 1 european soccer is very much the exception and 2 it is very much independent of private ownership (again, note the la liga example). Soccer perhaps has sufficient dominance in its strongest traditional areas and also arguably more "leveled" by the difficulty to score. Beyond that, the worst performed american sport (again I take this from a very reliable source) in terms of relative standings over the last half century has been the one with the least equalistaion (ie baselball)
 
In terms of how professional sports have evolved in the modern era: 1 european soccer is very much the exception and 2 it is very much independent of private ownership (again, note the la liga example). Soccer perhaps has sufficient dominance in its strongest traditional areas and also arguably more "leveled" by the difficulty to score. Beyond that, the worst performed american sport (again I take this from a very reliable source) in terms of relative standings over the last half century has been the one with the least equalistaion (ie baselball)

The thing that makes soccer different around the world is promotion and relegation, so you see market forces at play and it makes it harder to have central control like other sports. Plus you have a true free market, a global market, for player movements once the contract is completed, and you don't have salary caps in most of the big leagues in Europe, South America and Asia. You have fully private owned leagues like EPL, mixed leagues like France and Italy and solely member based leagues like Spain and Germany. The north American sports don't have promotion and relegation, even in the MLS.

Australian sports don't have it. The NSL used to have it a bit in the late 1989's and early 1990's - the bottom two NSL clubs dropped out, replaced by champions of NSW (NSW, Northern NSW and the ACT) and champions of Victoria, Queensland and South Australia (in a playoff) provided they met financial criteria and of course wanted to be promoted - but it was part pregnant stuff.

I think a mixed ownership model league is the worst of the outcomes and its why the NRL suffered from it especially when News Ltd had game with veto rights until a few years ago when the ARL Commission took over and they owned teams, Brisbane, Melbourne and secured funding a lot of teams who had supported them in the super league wars. Brisbane were protected from having a 2nd and 3rd team compete in Brisbane because of News' veto power. It allows them to dominate and make big profits which can then be taken out of the club's books.
 

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The thing that makes soccer different around the world is promotion and relegation, so you see market forces at play and it makes it harder to have central control like other sports. Plus you have a true free market, a global market, for player movements once the contract is completed, and you don't have salary caps in most of the big leagues in Europe, South America and Asia. You have fully private owned leagues like EPL, mixed leagues like France and Italy and solely member based leagues like Spain and Germany. The north American sports don't have promotion and relegation, even in the MLS.


Well promotion and relegation is one thing that makes soccer different among the other successful professional team sports (Rugby league also has a form of it in the ESL). For promotion and relegation are not very compatible with uniform constraining mechanisms like salary caps. Again though, soccer lends itself to it because of its dominance of its key markets and the nature of the sport where there is still significant uncertainty within matches where teams are massively imbalanced in quality.

That said, european soccer has flourished in spite of uncapped inflationary spending, not because of it. This is a challenging concept, I'm sure, for the doe eyed cultural cringers who look to european soccer like it is some advanced civilisation, but UEFA's introduction of fair play financial regulations is actually playing catch up with american and australian pro sports in terms of evolved administration. They are moving away from what I think you are calling a "true free market" because it makes sense in terms of financial sustainability to do so.

As you have implicitly acknowledged though, the model of competitively unbalanced big european soccer has no necessary relationship to private ownership. Arguably the most imbalanced has none at all and the fully private one has one of the more equal revenue distribution models


Australian sports don't have it. The NSL used to have it a bit in the late 1989's and early 1990's - the bottom two NSL clubs dropped out, replaced by champions of NSW (NSW, Northern NSW and the ACT) and champions of Victoria, Queensland and South Australia (in a playoff) provided they met financial criteria and of course wanted to be promoted - but it was part pregnant stuff.

I think a mixed ownership model league is the worst of the outcomes and its why the NRL suffered from it especially when News Ltd had game with veto rights until a few years ago when the ARL Commission took over and they owned teams, Brisbane, Melbourne and secured funding a lot of teams who had supported them in the super league wars. Brisbane were protected from having a 2nd and 3rd team compete in Brisbane because of News' veto power. It allows them to dominate and make big profits which can then be taken out of the club's books.

I agree. News limited's behaviour with its ownership of NRL clubs precisely demonstrates why the AFL won't go near private ownership. Its a big reason why the AFL clubs agreed to hand over IP to insure against a superleague war of its own

Again, the AFL does not need private ownership so it and this is why it doesn't have it. Australian soccer needed it to make a fully professional league happen and look at the mess it's in now!
 
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