How Socialism in American Sports Converted Me From a Football Fan to a Futbol Fan.

Growing up, I was obsessed with the three major sports in America - football, baseball and basketball. I couldn’t get enough of ESPN replays and analysis of games, and of course the top 10 highlights segment was a must watch. I mainly followed Baltimore sports teams and Penn State football but I’ve always been a sucker for the storylines that supplement the action. On top of this, I was a fantasy sports fanatic - often having 3 or more teams for each sport for years in a row. Even if my teams weren’t doing well there would always be a reason to keep interested.

There was a confluence of events that led to me falling out of love with sports that started with the Penn State child sex abuse scandal in 2011. The nature of the topic is extremely divisive, but I will always stand by my feelings that punishing the (then) current team for the institutional failings of decades before was tragic and misguided. Penn State Football exceeded everyone’s expectations despite their 4 year ban on postseason footbal, but the damage to the integrity and history of the program was heartbreaking as a local and fervent supporter.

The other main event that led to my eventual disinterist with football was the Ravens winning the Super Bowl in 2013. It is certainly counter-intuitive that the only instance of one of “my teams” winning a championship would play a factor in the sport, but it felt like closure. It was a truly miraculous underdog run for a franchise that was achingly close to the top for many years. While I remained interested in the Ravens and continued playing fantasy sports, I stopped feeling like the sport owed me anything after that Super Bowl victory.

The final key to my disillusionment with American sports is the socialist structure of American sports leagues which incentivizes tanking (i.e. losing games in order to get a higher draft pick to rebuild for the future). I am by no means against democratic socialist politics in general, but when it rules an institution in which each franchise owns a small part of a monopoly - it leads to a cycle of bad teams becoming good, good teams becoming bad, the predictability of which grows tiresome. Of course there are still underdog stories, but the system which dictates player acquisition, including salary caps, which leaves a much smaller gap in talent between franchises in all professional American sports leagues making underdog stories less David vs Goliath and more Apple vs Android.

How Soccer Is Different

European Soccer has always been a free market enterprise as far as player acquisition is concerned. In addition, the existence of a promotion/relegation system promotes a win at all costs approach by nature.

In order for a promotion/relegation system to exist, there must be multiple tiers of professional soccer in each country. In England, there are four professional leagues, and countless below them which are considered semi pro, but which still feeds into the “English Pyramid” and thus can rise to professional status. In each professional tier below the top league (the Premier League), the three clubs at the top of the division at the end of the season are promoted to the next division. In turn, the bottom three clubs in each division are relegated to the lower division. There is no reward for finishing worst, or being the lowest placed team to not be relegated. It is quite the opposite.

The T.V. Money

In 2019, overseas broadcasting rights for the English Premier League (EPL) rose 30%, which brought the total (domestic + foreign) T.V revenue income for the EPL to $12 billion for the 2019-2022 cycle, according to USA Today. That money is distributed to clubs in the EPL, as well as the other divisions in the English Football Pyramid and the English Football Association, which is the organization that oversees domestic competition and the English National Team. It is not, however, distributed evenly.

At the end of the 2019/2020 season, the T.V. money was doled out in five ways. First, each club was given an “equal share” of £31.8 million, which amounts to 50% of the total domestic T.V. revenue. The only other equally shared source of revenue is the “Central commercial revenues” which amounted to £5 million for each club in 2019/2020.. There is also the “facility fees” which accounts for another 25% of the total domestic T.V. revenue and is given to clubs based on how many of their games were broadcast on national T.V, a system which favors the bigger clubs. Another 25% of domestic T.V. revenue is doled out according to a club’s position in the table (final standings) at the end of the season, which is referred to as “merit payments.”Liverpool, the champions of the Premier League in the 2019/2020 campaign were awarded £35.5 million in merit payments. Norwich City on the other hand, who finished last (20th), only received £1.8 million. “Overseas T.V. revenue” is also awarded based on league position in decreasing increments of £1.4 million for each position further down the league table.

Thanks to planetfootball.com for all the figures.

I do not watch soccer because I am interested in club finances. I watch it because it is the beautiful game. However, I have a strong appreciation for the relatively fair distribution of resources, which leads to a myriad of interesting club philosophies in terms of how to build for the future while ensuring success in the present. This can take the form of buying expensive players to try to take the club to the next level, or investing in a club’s youth academy in hopes of unearthing the next big English superstar. Tanking is not a viable strategy in this domain, and it is a blight on American professional sports leagues which, at times, makes games unwatchable. There is no inconsequential game in the EPL, and this holds true in the majority of leagues in Europe.