I vote with my wallet—zero spending on sports, zero time watching sports, zero betting on sports, zero reading about sports. I don’t feel like I miss out on anything. If I had any interest in sports I could go play them for free, but I tend to opt for unorganized outdoor activities.
It boggles the mind how much time and money people spend on this industry.
That said, this is an area where antitrust enforcement would be applicable, if we ever get an admin who’s willing to engage in active trust-busting.
> That said, this is an area where antitrust enforcement would be applicable, if we ever get an admin who’s willing to engage in active trust-busting.
Professional sports in the US are mostly exempt from antitrust law [0], so it would take a change of law rather than a change in administration for anything to happen here.
As someone who has gone back and forth over sports over the years and generally is of the anti-establishmentarian strain of thinking and inherently against sports as a general boring vanilla time sink, I do see the value of having something that folks can synchronize their time and interest to that gives joy to the masses in a shared way that is at least purely entertainment as opposed to something more heated like war.
< entertainment as opposed to something more heated like war.>
As an avid sports fan, I've always thought this. All the emotion and anguish I feel during the seasons for the teams I support is sort of cathartic. But I can't help wonder what the effect legal online gambling will have. Yes, I know gambling and sports has been around since Methuselah, but now regular "Joe's" are in the act, who would have never gambled in the past because of the legal aspect. The heated like war will most likely become heated like costly regret.
We’ve had the public gambling on sports off-and-on since Roman chariot racing.
People don’t have to feel any certain way, but I find many of the comments seem detached from the fact there’s millennia of history about sports, gambling, etc; with many of the same concerns articulated by contemporary authors preceding you by that vast time.
I’m just glad sports mobs don’t burn cities as often as they did in Rome — but I don’t have nearly the panic that more of the same will be the downfall of humanity or civilization.
>I do see the value of having something that folks can synchronize their time and interest to that gives joy to the masses
As a bottom up communal activity yes, American sports is Roman bread & circuses now with their own Temu version of an emperor and his clan at the top. This is sports in the way Barron Harkonnen is throwing sports events for his nephew
People can support non-nation-wide leagues and minor league sports. There are many fly under the radar seasonal leagues. Most don’t make much money. A few do. One doesn’t have to support the huge multi-billion dollar teams.
Yes, they can, but what’s your point? It seems reflexive/defensive, like the parent comment was wrong for not caring, and that they could support smaller leagues… but they said they don’t. Some people don’t.
Exactly, I just don’t really care about sports and find it bizarre how many people are into them. I’ve made an effort with friends who like sports, but never found it appealing. I guess it’s not for me.
Ironically, anyone who lives in a state with major league sports is pouring beaucoup tax dollars into supporting them. The enormous tax breaks and bonds sold and deals made to establish and build stadiums, attract franchises, and keep them happy enough not to move on. It's staggering.
There are two annual baseball events that I have usually attended in past years. I think Imma skip both of them this year. I have not enjoyed live baseball games in my adulthood. They are a circus of peak capitalist greed, centered around selling merch, cheap booze, terrible food, cheap liquor, gambling, and awful beer. Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
I cannot seem to enjoy myself in the stands. Most other people are appallingly rude and don't care if I'm bothered by them. I went to a Spring Training game one time and I swear that I was somehow targeted by frat boys, who were so obnoxious that the family next to me just moved to another section entirely.
My dad loves baseball. His Baseball Superfan spend is $0 or near it. He hasn't attended a live game since the 1980s, but he watches it all on TV. He simply isn't interested in merch or memorabilia or any of that marketing around it. He simply loves the game in its purity.
Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
> Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
Good Lord, what games have you been going to? I see a couple MLB games live every year and a few minor league games. I haven't seen anything like what you're describing. That doesn't mean there are no drunks or obnoxious fans, but that's the risk of doing something in public. The last game I saw live was San Francisco at Milwaukee in June. Giants won 1-0, and the home team crowd was fine. And I mean the Brewers fans like their beer, but in no way was it a zombie apocalypse. Last game I saw in Oracle Park last year was also fine. Even Boston a few years ago, which definitely has more of a college town vibe than SF or Milwaukee, was hardly zombie land.
I'll also say that AAA ball is typically awesome. The games are much cheaper than the big leagues, you get to see some big league talent rehabbing from time to time and see the occasional prospect who gets called up. They also tend to be very family friendly.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
I don't know about that. Baseball has a certain level of honor, sometimes an excessive amount e.g. some of the "code" that has started to fade away the last decade or so. It also invented the concept of a nearly all-powerful commissioner, which was created specifically because players threw a World Series for a payout. It's a wonderful game, a thinking person's game, but it's always been quintessentially American for both good and ill ever since it scaled nationwide during the Civil War.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun.
I've been a baseball fan for years, and I've always hated that attitude. Bob Costas and other purists always talk about the "sanctity of the game" - it's a bunch of BS. First of all the game was never the "pure" or "holy" activity that people make it out to be. The history of the game is full of racism, sexism, drugs, womanizing, greed and so on. Not trying to be a hater, just telling facts. The game's purists like to look at history with rose colored glasses.
And as far as the fans, I wish the fans would be more passionate about the game. I've been to games in other countries - Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, and it's awesome. I'd rather have rowdy fans than people falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDrcWTSczs . I mean, come on, that's a Yankees/Red Sox game, one of the biggest rivalries in sports, and the dude is asleep?! No thanks. Give me the screamers and the drunks.
Not sure I agree with the "respectable players" part either, but for "Baseball has been a game of moral fiber" that could be in the sense that the game has a "moral" thread (one of character) running through it. There are "unwritten" rules to the game that players and fans simply follow but are free not too, if not they get corrected for violations the same way a culture/society corrects members who fall afoul of acceptable moral character or unwritten rules.
Example: guy hits homerun adding to his teams 5 point lead and stands in the batters box admiring his hit before taking a slow excited jog around the bases -- thats just `rubbing it in` and unbecoming. No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit. There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher, he will take his base and he'll take care of it in the locker room with the guy that showed up the badly losing teams pitcher.
For an example of a fan violating this see Steve Bartman[0] an especially egregious violation of "unwritten" rules due to the games importance and its impact on the home team while being a home fan
Other sports, this may lead to brawls or petty snipping in the media and resentment which spilled over to fans. Back when the Radiers were in Oakland and Chargers in san diego you'd want nothing to do with that unless you were looking for a fight. Same with teams in the other football sport.
> No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit.
Committing violence against an innocent bystander, in return for mere nonviolent disrespect, is the complete opposite of morality.
> There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher,
> against an innocent bystander ... is the complete opposite of morality
It's not an innocent bystander, it's against the team to tell the team to check their member. It's not the philosophical understanding of "morality" it's the practiced version. And the "morality" part is not the message telling the other group to check it's out of line member, it's that there is a thread of character or "morality" in the first place to allow a team (or society) to keep order from within to avoid wider violence/incidents that spill over into adjacent populations and last far longer as seen in other sports
> I'm not sure we're watching the same game
If a pitcher is frustrated at losing and beans a guy for no other apparent reason, then either the batter will charge the pitcher or the star player on the pitchers team will get drilled when he comes up to bat and that'll be the end of it. That what i mean with the "unwritten" rules, to the casual observer it just looks like typical fighting or payback for some random thing like other sports, but there is a "gentleman's code" to it
Cherry picking sections of sentences and ignoring (or maybe simply not understanding) the context to pick an argument is against the spirt of HN. Whatever your argument is being based on, it is in a completely different lane than my posts and we are unlikely to not continue talking past one another. Take care.
My argument is simple: a pitcher throwing a baseball at a batter with the intention to hit the batter is unethical, dangerous, and counterproductive.
It's not to be admired. It's an idiotic tradition that should end.
Moreover, the kind of frontier justice promoted here should absolutely not be implemented in society at large, as implied by your first reply to me. I would certainly not put athletes in charge of policing morals (not that our current crop of unathletic billionaires is any better).
This all supposes that the sports team owners really are that: independent owners. Sure that’s what we call them, but it’s more accurate to say they are equity partners in a common enterprise.
It’s not interesting to say that a sports league controls whether there is a new team. Of course it does, just as an existing supermarket chain decides where to open new stores, or an airline decides what cities to fly to. Competition for a sports league comes from other leagues (not necessarily in the same sport) or from different forms of entertainment entirely.
That implies equitable treatment. The reality is there is a class of filthy rich people that make a game of shaking down government bodies to pay for their entertainment venues so they can swim in more money on the public dime.
Equitable would be if a public entity invests 60% into a stadium, they get 60% of the revenue. No billionaire grifter will allow that to happen.
But they get to have their city/state name and a bunch of minimum wage jobs, and extra flight traffic for people and athletes that have no care about the area to come in and spend a few more bucks at chain hotels and restaurants that have their HQ in another state/city
This is only a problem because of the American franchise system where teams are part of a league and fully depend on it. Football teams in Europe play in a league. If the Premier League decided to kick out Man City for some reason they would still exist, own their trademarks and be able to play matches (but also lose major sponsors and have to negotiate with the EFL to get back in the pyramid).
Leagues don't get to decide if a new club can form in the first place. They can control who gets access (like the failed Super League that would have a semi closed system) but licensing rules fall under the national federation. Every team is its own corporation that's either controlled by club members, publicly traded or a privately owned company. Other teams can't just block them from selling shares out of economic self-interest.
I wish the author could have made more concrete examples on this. I guess for me what's more revealing is more recently, the ease to which the leagues (I mainly follow basketball and soccer, but this probably true for many) adopted partnerships with gambling (sorry "prediction market") companies, essentially going from 'we will go after players who gamble to "why don't we let the fans gamble". I think the ease and speed of it more concerning for me.
The Green Bay Packers are the model for community ownership of a sports team.
Of course the NFL hates this for all the reasons mentioned in the article, and also because the Packers are the only team to publicly reveal their finances. Thus, the NFL decided to ban ownership models like this, making the Packers the one and only.
I grew up idolizing Roger Staubach and followed football fanatically. Over the years, I lost all interest. To me, how the Dallas Cowboys is considered the most valuable franchise while putting out 26 years of ineptitude is mind boggling. I used to watch the games and analyst commentary fanatically. I haven’t watched any game or the Superbowl for ten years. To me, it is now all about sports betting. Who wins is besides the point. It is just naked gambling. I usually have a live and let live attitude. But I have seen gambling destroyed families. It is the work of the devil.
My preferred modern (and non-American) model is the German Bundesliga 50+1 rule,[1] which unlike the Packers is actively employed and enforced within both the league and regulatory bodies, with external ownership instead being the legacy, rare, and endangered exception.
> The name of the rule refers to the need for members of a club to hold 50 percent, plus one more vote, of voting rights - i.e. a majority. In short, it means that clubs - and, by extension, the fans - have the ultimate say in how they are run, not an outside influence or investor.
> Under German Football League (DFL) rules, football clubs will not be allowed to play in the Bundesliga (or second division) if outside investors have the greatest say.
> In essence, this means that private or commercial investors cannot take over clubs and potentially push through measures that prioritise profit over the wishes of supporters. The ruling simultaneously protects against reckless owners and safeguards the democratic customs of German clubs.
...
> Using the concrete example of Bayern Munich, the shareholders of the men's first team (FC Bayern München AG) are the members' club (FC Bayern München e.V. - 75%), Adidas (8.3%), Allianz (8.3%) and Audi (8.3%).
> Things are organised differently at Dortmund. The members' club (consisting of 168,163 members as of November 2022) actually only controls 4.61% of Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA, which oversees the men's first team, reserves and U19s. Signal Iduna hold 5.98% of shares, Bernd Geske 8.24%, Evonik Industries 8.19% and the remaining 72.27% is floated on the stock market. However, the management company in charge of running the football club, Borussia Dortmund Geschäftsführungs-GmbH, is 100% owned by the members' club, ensuring control of matters and thus compliance with 50+1.
The rule's been challenged or subverted frequently. The most recent ruling on it was two days ago from the German Federal Cartel Office:[2]
> It is intended to stop rich, and often foreign, investors transforming German football in the way the English Premier League has changed while keeping smaller clubs competitive. But the likes of Bayern Munich would like the rule scrapped to boost their own coffers.
> A prerequisite for the 50+1 rule is that it be applied consistently and without differences, a statement from the Federal Cartel Office said following a review.
> The Bundesliga - the new name for the German Football League (DFL) which runs the top two men's divisions - must also ensure fans have a role and there is open access to membership, according to watchdog president Andreas Mundt.
> This could be viewed as a nudge to RB Leipzig - controlled by the Red Bull empire - to open up the club more to members.
I like the article, but some of the issues are the law and other issues seem to be not the law, and it confuses me. For example, the fact that teams can’t join the NBA doesn’t seem to be a law in particular.
Per Thompson, after roasting everything wrong with wealth and power concentration in professional sports...
> But ameliorations are possible. Tax law could further restrict the ability to team owners to amortize. And honestly, I don’t know why some local governments shouldn’t own stakes in the professional sports teams that they often directly finance.
Is anyone drafting a manifesto reforming US sports? Local playbooks for public stadium owners? State labor laws? State taxes? Bills that toss out federal monopoly law exclusions? Laws that compensate student athletes with lifetime platinum healthcare? Not my field but it seems there should be more of a movement.
It's an interesting comparison between American sports leagues and the ruthless competitiveness of European football.
It's quite possible in English football to found a "startup" like AFC Wimbledon and get it into the major leagues.
But there's still barriers - an absolutely astronomical investment is required to compete in the Premier league. "Welcome To Wrexham" really illustrates the power-scaling of wealth, as Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac (and many of their club's players) go from big millionaire fish in a small pond, to small fish in the multi-billionaire sovereign wealth fund pond.
Once the “biggest crime athlete can commit” became betting on own games / sport (this supercedes all other crimes including rape, domestic violence, mutilating dogs…) the sports as we knew it came to an end. I used to be huge sports fan, the watch-meaningless-regular-season-NBA-game-in-January kind… now it has been years since I watched any sports game outside national team matches
Yeah but this is the entire point of Neoliberal economics: enabling rent seeking behaviour to allow Capital to accrue wealth by virtue of being the biggest pile of wealth. It's ultimately not sustainable: the reductio ad absurdum of this state of affairs is one Capitalist owning everything. Clearly the pitchforks will come out before that, its just a question of how long it takes before it all explodes
> Rent seeking is enabled by government involvement in markets
Twaddle. Bad government can increase it, but government is also the only force with the capacity to oppose it. In other news, medicine can kill you.
Adam Smith noted rent-seeking in the 18th century. We have had plenty of laissez-faire government during that time. It did not eliminate rent-seeking.
It did not eliminate rent-seeking because rent-seeking is not created by the application of this or that economic policy; it's because animals seek easy meat.
Over time, that trumps any system based on codified rule of law. It is, by Gödel, impossible to write law that decides the legality of all behaviour. Sufficiently smart sociopaths will get around any codified system. Ideology founders on biology.
That does not mean we should give them free reign. The solution to am arms race is not to place your head on the block - not when your enemy is a sociopath.
Free market fundamentalism, like all dogma, is espoused by exactly two sets of people: grifters, and cretins. Ideology - be it free market fundamentalism or communism or any other holy book that claims to solve 7 billion humans doing human things - is nothing more than the expression of a hunger for simple solutions to complex problems. There is no fault in _liking_ simple solutions, but _needing_ them is an intellectual disability.
That, and also an extremely sophisticated media ecosystem, surveillance apparatus, police forces, etc. But there is also close to no collective responsibility in the US culture
Seems like between the lines there is a little success jealousy. Only a billionaire can own one of these major teams, and you get all of the problems this carries. It doesn't seem unique, and if anything its an anti-climatic use of wealth that could be spent on a million other problems. That's all I took away.
Actually, it’s the anti-trust exemptions / lack of enforcement that allows the leagues (owned by the billionaire team owners) to decide who can and can’t own a team.
Otherwise teams could and probably would be purchased by publicly-owned corporations.
The NFL ownership rules prohibit public corporate ownership, although that is not due to the antitrust exemption.
There are numerous current and historic examples of corporate ownership in the other 3 leagues. Toronto's teams are all owned by Rogers. The Angels and Ducks were once owned by Disney. Comcast owns the Flyers and once owned the 76ers. CBS owned the Yankees.
That's not a hard rule; there are several counterexamples. I found the Knicks, Braves, Blue Jays, Rangers, and Canadiens are publicly-owned. The billionaires will play their money games, but they don't have full control on the entire league.
I vote with my wallet—zero spending on sports, zero time watching sports, zero betting on sports, zero reading about sports. I don’t feel like I miss out on anything. If I had any interest in sports I could go play them for free, but I tend to opt for unorganized outdoor activities.
It boggles the mind how much time and money people spend on this industry.
That said, this is an area where antitrust enforcement would be applicable, if we ever get an admin who’s willing to engage in active trust-busting.
> That said, this is an area where antitrust enforcement would be applicable, if we ever get an admin who’s willing to engage in active trust-busting.
Professional sports in the US are mostly exempt from antitrust law [0], so it would take a change of law rather than a change in administration for anything to happen here.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Pr...
I wasn’t aware of this, interesting. That’s an unusual historical quirk. Thanks for sharing.
As someone who has gone back and forth over sports over the years and generally is of the anti-establishmentarian strain of thinking and inherently against sports as a general boring vanilla time sink, I do see the value of having something that folks can synchronize their time and interest to that gives joy to the masses in a shared way that is at least purely entertainment as opposed to something more heated like war.
< entertainment as opposed to something more heated like war.>
As an avid sports fan, I've always thought this. All the emotion and anguish I feel during the seasons for the teams I support is sort of cathartic. But I can't help wonder what the effect legal online gambling will have. Yes, I know gambling and sports has been around since Methuselah, but now regular "Joe's" are in the act, who would have never gambled in the past because of the legal aspect. The heated like war will most likely become heated like costly regret.
We’ve had the public gambling on sports off-and-on since Roman chariot racing.
People don’t have to feel any certain way, but I find many of the comments seem detached from the fact there’s millennia of history about sports, gambling, etc; with many of the same concerns articulated by contemporary authors preceding you by that vast time.
I’m just glad sports mobs don’t burn cities as often as they did in Rome — but I don’t have nearly the panic that more of the same will be the downfall of humanity or civilization.
Honestly I don't give a shit what sports fans do I just don't want tax payer money to go it.
Build public swimming pools for kids.
>I do see the value of having something that folks can synchronize their time and interest to that gives joy to the masses
As a bottom up communal activity yes, American sports is Roman bread & circuses now with their own Temu version of an emperor and his clan at the top. This is sports in the way Barron Harkonnen is throwing sports events for his nephew
People can support non-nation-wide leagues and minor league sports. There are many fly under the radar seasonal leagues. Most don’t make much money. A few do. One doesn’t have to support the huge multi-billion dollar teams.
Yes, they can, but what’s your point? It seems reflexive/defensive, like the parent comment was wrong for not caring, and that they could support smaller leagues… but they said they don’t. Some people don’t.
Exactly, I just don’t really care about sports and find it bizarre how many people are into them. I’ve made an effort with friends who like sports, but never found it appealing. I guess it’s not for me.
We also spend so many resources for producing books, movies etc. People are like that spending on useless things.
Ironically, anyone who lives in a state with major league sports is pouring beaucoup tax dollars into supporting them. The enormous tax breaks and bonds sold and deals made to establish and build stadiums, attract franchises, and keep them happy enough not to move on. It's staggering.
There are two annual baseball events that I have usually attended in past years. I think Imma skip both of them this year. I have not enjoyed live baseball games in my adulthood. They are a circus of peak capitalist greed, centered around selling merch, cheap booze, terrible food, cheap liquor, gambling, and awful beer. Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
I cannot seem to enjoy myself in the stands. Most other people are appallingly rude and don't care if I'm bothered by them. I went to a Spring Training game one time and I swear that I was somehow targeted by frat boys, who were so obnoxious that the family next to me just moved to another section entirely.
My dad loves baseball. His Baseball Superfan spend is $0 or near it. He hasn't attended a live game since the 1980s, but he watches it all on TV. He simply isn't interested in merch or memorabilia or any of that marketing around it. He simply loves the game in its purity.
Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
> Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
Good Lord, what games have you been going to? I see a couple MLB games live every year and a few minor league games. I haven't seen anything like what you're describing. That doesn't mean there are no drunks or obnoxious fans, but that's the risk of doing something in public. The last game I saw live was San Francisco at Milwaukee in June. Giants won 1-0, and the home team crowd was fine. And I mean the Brewers fans like their beer, but in no way was it a zombie apocalypse. Last game I saw in Oracle Park last year was also fine. Even Boston a few years ago, which definitely has more of a college town vibe than SF or Milwaukee, was hardly zombie land.
I'll also say that AAA ball is typically awesome. The games are much cheaper than the big leagues, you get to see some big league talent rehabbing from time to time and see the occasional prospect who gets called up. They also tend to be very family friendly.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
I don't know about that. Baseball has a certain level of honor, sometimes an excessive amount e.g. some of the "code" that has started to fade away the last decade or so. It also invented the concept of a nearly all-powerful commissioner, which was created specifically because players threw a World Series for a payout. It's a wonderful game, a thinking person's game, but it's always been quintessentially American for both good and ill ever since it scaled nationwide during the Civil War.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun.
I've been a baseball fan for years, and I've always hated that attitude. Bob Costas and other purists always talk about the "sanctity of the game" - it's a bunch of BS. First of all the game was never the "pure" or "holy" activity that people make it out to be. The history of the game is full of racism, sexism, drugs, womanizing, greed and so on. Not trying to be a hater, just telling facts. The game's purists like to look at history with rose colored glasses.
And as far as the fans, I wish the fans would be more passionate about the game. I've been to games in other countries - Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, and it's awesome. I'd rather have rowdy fans than people falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDrcWTSczs . I mean, come on, that's a Yankees/Red Sox game, one of the biggest rivalries in sports, and the dude is asleep?! No thanks. Give me the screamers and the drunks.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players
Wait, when was this?
I mean, Babe Ruth was infamous for drinking and womanizing.
Not sure I agree with the "respectable players" part either, but for "Baseball has been a game of moral fiber" that could be in the sense that the game has a "moral" thread (one of character) running through it. There are "unwritten" rules to the game that players and fans simply follow but are free not too, if not they get corrected for violations the same way a culture/society corrects members who fall afoul of acceptable moral character or unwritten rules.
Example: guy hits homerun adding to his teams 5 point lead and stands in the batters box admiring his hit before taking a slow excited jog around the bases -- thats just `rubbing it in` and unbecoming. No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit. There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher, he will take his base and he'll take care of it in the locker room with the guy that showed up the badly losing teams pitcher.
For an example of a fan violating this see Steve Bartman[0] an especially egregious violation of "unwritten" rules due to the games importance and its impact on the home team while being a home fan
Other sports, this may lead to brawls or petty snipping in the media and resentment which spilled over to fans. Back when the Radiers were in Oakland and Chargers in san diego you'd want nothing to do with that unless you were looking for a fight. Same with teams in the other football sport.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bartman_incident
There have been plenty of bench clearing brawls in baseball for any number of silly reasons. It's no more moral a sport than any other.
> No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit.
Committing violence against an innocent bystander, in return for mere nonviolent disrespect, is the complete opposite of morality.
> There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher,
I'm not sure we're watching the same game. ;-)
> against an innocent bystander ... is the complete opposite of morality
It's not an innocent bystander, it's against the team to tell the team to check their member. It's not the philosophical understanding of "morality" it's the practiced version. And the "morality" part is not the message telling the other group to check it's out of line member, it's that there is a thread of character or "morality" in the first place to allow a team (or society) to keep order from within to avoid wider violence/incidents that spill over into adjacent populations and last far longer as seen in other sports
> I'm not sure we're watching the same game
If a pitcher is frustrated at losing and beans a guy for no other apparent reason, then either the batter will charge the pitcher or the star player on the pitchers team will get drilled when he comes up to bat and that'll be the end of it. That what i mean with the "unwritten" rules, to the casual observer it just looks like typical fighting or payback for some random thing like other sports, but there is a "gentleman's code" to it
> It's not an innocent bystander, it's against the team
But "the team" doesn't get hit. One guy gets hit.
> It's not the philosophical understanding of "morality" it's the practiced version.
It's practiced violence.
> to avoid wider violence
Eye for an eye never ends. The way to avoid violence is to never start it.
> there is a "gentleman's code" to it
No, it's a caveman code for brutes. Gentlemen use words to settle their disagreements, not fastballs.
Cherry picking sections of sentences and ignoring (or maybe simply not understanding) the context to pick an argument is against the spirt of HN. Whatever your argument is being based on, it is in a completely different lane than my posts and we are unlikely to not continue talking past one another. Take care.
My argument is simple: a pitcher throwing a baseball at a batter with the intention to hit the batter is unethical, dangerous, and counterproductive.
It's not to be admired. It's an idiotic tradition that should end.
Moreover, the kind of frontier justice promoted here should absolutely not be implemented in society at large, as implied by your first reply to me. I would certainly not put athletes in charge of policing morals (not that our current crop of unathletic billionaires is any better).
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This all supposes that the sports team owners really are that: independent owners. Sure that’s what we call them, but it’s more accurate to say they are equity partners in a common enterprise.
It’s not interesting to say that a sports league controls whether there is a new team. Of course it does, just as an existing supermarket chain decides where to open new stores, or an airline decides what cities to fly to. Competition for a sports league comes from other leagues (not necessarily in the same sport) or from different forms of entertainment entirely.
> equity partners
That implies equitable treatment. The reality is there is a class of filthy rich people that make a game of shaking down government bodies to pay for their entertainment venues so they can swim in more money on the public dime.
Equitable would be if a public entity invests 60% into a stadium, they get 60% of the revenue. No billionaire grifter will allow that to happen.
But they get to have their city/state name and a bunch of minimum wage jobs, and extra flight traffic for people and athletes that have no care about the area to come in and spend a few more bucks at chain hotels and restaurants that have their HQ in another state/city
Equity as in stock
What's the shakedown?
Pay for my stadium or I move the team.
This is only a problem because of the American franchise system where teams are part of a league and fully depend on it. Football teams in Europe play in a league. If the Premier League decided to kick out Man City for some reason they would still exist, own their trademarks and be able to play matches (but also lose major sponsors and have to negotiate with the EFL to get back in the pyramid).
Leagues don't get to decide if a new club can form in the first place. They can control who gets access (like the failed Super League that would have a semi closed system) but licensing rules fall under the national federation. Every team is its own corporation that's either controlled by club members, publicly traded or a privately owned company. Other teams can't just block them from selling shares out of economic self-interest.
I wish the author could have made more concrete examples on this. I guess for me what's more revealing is more recently, the ease to which the leagues (I mainly follow basketball and soccer, but this probably true for many) adopted partnerships with gambling (sorry "prediction market") companies, essentially going from 'we will go after players who gamble to "why don't we let the fans gamble". I think the ease and speed of it more concerning for me.
The Green Bay Packers are the model for community ownership of a sports team.
Of course the NFL hates this for all the reasons mentioned in the article, and also because the Packers are the only team to publicly reveal their finances. Thus, the NFL decided to ban ownership models like this, making the Packers the one and only.
I grew up idolizing Roger Staubach and followed football fanatically. Over the years, I lost all interest. To me, how the Dallas Cowboys is considered the most valuable franchise while putting out 26 years of ineptitude is mind boggling. I used to watch the games and analyst commentary fanatically. I haven’t watched any game or the Superbowl for ten years. To me, it is now all about sports betting. Who wins is besides the point. It is just naked gambling. I usually have a live and let live attitude. But I have seen gambling destroyed families. It is the work of the devil.
My preferred modern (and non-American) model is the German Bundesliga 50+1 rule,[1] which unlike the Packers is actively employed and enforced within both the league and regulatory bodies, with external ownership instead being the legacy, rare, and endangered exception.
> The name of the rule refers to the need for members of a club to hold 50 percent, plus one more vote, of voting rights - i.e. a majority. In short, it means that clubs - and, by extension, the fans - have the ultimate say in how they are run, not an outside influence or investor.
> Under German Football League (DFL) rules, football clubs will not be allowed to play in the Bundesliga (or second division) if outside investors have the greatest say.
> In essence, this means that private or commercial investors cannot take over clubs and potentially push through measures that prioritise profit over the wishes of supporters. The ruling simultaneously protects against reckless owners and safeguards the democratic customs of German clubs.
...
> Using the concrete example of Bayern Munich, the shareholders of the men's first team (FC Bayern München AG) are the members' club (FC Bayern München e.V. - 75%), Adidas (8.3%), Allianz (8.3%) and Audi (8.3%).
> Things are organised differently at Dortmund. The members' club (consisting of 168,163 members as of November 2022) actually only controls 4.61% of Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA, which oversees the men's first team, reserves and U19s. Signal Iduna hold 5.98% of shares, Bernd Geske 8.24%, Evonik Industries 8.19% and the remaining 72.27% is floated on the stock market. However, the management company in charge of running the football club, Borussia Dortmund Geschäftsführungs-GmbH, is 100% owned by the members' club, ensuring control of matters and thus compliance with 50+1.
The rule's been challenged or subverted frequently. The most recent ruling on it was two days ago from the German Federal Cartel Office:[2]
> It is intended to stop rich, and often foreign, investors transforming German football in the way the English Premier League has changed while keeping smaller clubs competitive. But the likes of Bayern Munich would like the rule scrapped to boost their own coffers.
> A prerequisite for the 50+1 rule is that it be applied consistently and without differences, a statement from the Federal Cartel Office said following a review.
> The Bundesliga - the new name for the German Football League (DFL) which runs the top two men's divisions - must also ensure fans have a role and there is open access to membership, according to watchdog president Andreas Mundt.
> This could be viewed as a nudge to RB Leipzig - controlled by the Red Bull empire - to open up the club more to members.
1: https://www.bundesliga.com/en/faq/what-are-the-rules-and-reg...
2: https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/german-watchdog-permits-fo...
I like the article, but some of the issues are the law and other issues seem to be not the law, and it confuses me. For example, the fact that teams can’t join the NBA doesn’t seem to be a law in particular.
Per Thompson, after roasting everything wrong with wealth and power concentration in professional sports...
> But ameliorations are possible. Tax law could further restrict the ability to team owners to amortize. And honestly, I don’t know why some local governments shouldn’t own stakes in the professional sports teams that they often directly finance.
Is anyone drafting a manifesto reforming US sports? Local playbooks for public stadium owners? State labor laws? State taxes? Bills that toss out federal monopoly law exclusions? Laws that compensate student athletes with lifetime platinum healthcare? Not my field but it seems there should be more of a movement.
Of all the problems that governments should be working on, this is among the least important.
It's an interesting comparison between American sports leagues and the ruthless competitiveness of European football.
It's quite possible in English football to found a "startup" like AFC Wimbledon and get it into the major leagues.
But there's still barriers - an absolutely astronomical investment is required to compete in the Premier league. "Welcome To Wrexham" really illustrates the power-scaling of wealth, as Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac (and many of their club's players) go from big millionaire fish in a small pond, to small fish in the multi-billionaire sovereign wealth fund pond.
Once the “biggest crime athlete can commit” became betting on own games / sport (this supercedes all other crimes including rape, domestic violence, mutilating dogs…) the sports as we knew it came to an end. I used to be huge sports fan, the watch-meaningless-regular-season-NBA-game-in-January kind… now it has been years since I watched any sports game outside national team matches
As the saying goes:
“Republicans vote socialist on football”
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To anyone who sees the parent comment as a non-sequitur, note one of the names in the partnership discussed at the beginning of the article.
Quite something to see neither Jared nor his in-laws mentioned here
Yeah but her laugh /s
Yeah but this is the entire point of Neoliberal economics: enabling rent seeking behaviour to allow Capital to accrue wealth by virtue of being the biggest pile of wealth. It's ultimately not sustainable: the reductio ad absurdum of this state of affairs is one Capitalist owning everything. Clearly the pitchforks will come out before that, its just a question of how long it takes before it all explodes
> entire point of Neoliberal economics: enabling rent seeking behaviour to allow Capital to accrue wealth
Rent seeking is enabled by government involvement in markets. The idea that it was the point of "Neoliberal economics" is simply wrong.
> Rent seeking is enabled by government involvement in markets
Twaddle. Bad government can increase it, but government is also the only force with the capacity to oppose it. In other news, medicine can kill you.
Adam Smith noted rent-seeking in the 18th century. We have had plenty of laissez-faire government during that time. It did not eliminate rent-seeking.
It did not eliminate rent-seeking because rent-seeking is not created by the application of this or that economic policy; it's because animals seek easy meat.
Over time, that trumps any system based on codified rule of law. It is, by Gödel, impossible to write law that decides the legality of all behaviour. Sufficiently smart sociopaths will get around any codified system. Ideology founders on biology.
That does not mean we should give them free reign. The solution to am arms race is not to place your head on the block - not when your enemy is a sociopath.
Free market fundamentalism, like all dogma, is espoused by exactly two sets of people: grifters, and cretins. Ideology - be it free market fundamentalism or communism or any other holy book that claims to solve 7 billion humans doing human things - is nothing more than the expression of a hunger for simple solutions to complex problems. There is no fault in _liking_ simple solutions, but _needing_ them is an intellectual disability.
> "...is espoused by exactly two sets of people: grifters, and cretins"
This is when you can tell someone has a really strong argument. Anyone who disagrees with you is, by definition, scum.
A true Scotsman would never support free markets fundamentalism.
Sorry to tell you, but no pitchforks will come to save you
Maybe collapsing ecosystems will
Why did they come out in the French Revolution and countless other times and they won’t now?
Because our lives are 100x better (maybe more?) than the lives of the average subject in France in the 18th century.
That, and also an extremely sophisticated media ecosystem, surveillance apparatus, police forces, etc. But there is also close to no collective responsibility in the US culture
Capital built stronger, taller, AI-enhanced walls to keep the peasants out.
Seems like between the lines there is a little success jealousy. Only a billionaire can own one of these major teams, and you get all of the problems this carries. It doesn't seem unique, and if anything its an anti-climatic use of wealth that could be spent on a million other problems. That's all I took away.
Actually, it’s the anti-trust exemptions / lack of enforcement that allows the leagues (owned by the billionaire team owners) to decide who can and can’t own a team.
Otherwise teams could and probably would be purchased by publicly-owned corporations.
The NFL ownership rules prohibit public corporate ownership, although that is not due to the antitrust exemption.
There are numerous current and historic examples of corporate ownership in the other 3 leagues. Toronto's teams are all owned by Rogers. The Angels and Ducks were once owned by Disney. Comcast owns the Flyers and once owned the 76ers. CBS owned the Yankees.
That's not a hard rule; there are several counterexamples. I found the Knicks, Braves, Blue Jays, Rangers, and Canadiens are publicly-owned. The billionaires will play their money games, but they don't have full control on the entire league.
Right but those instances only happened because the existing owners approved the sales.