Premier League CEO Criticizes American Leagues For Offering "A Lot of Meaningless Sport"
By Ty Duffy
"‘I envy America their equality but theirs is an incestuous, contained, domestic world. They have pulled off a trick of putting on a lot of meaningless sport, with nothing to play for, no promotion and relegation, yet still having people watch. The World Series isn’t really. It’s America and one team from Canada. I wouldn’t swap our global appeal."
The level playing field (or at least the perception of it) is imperative to American culture. Opportunity engenders competition in sport as in life. Ingenuity wins out. American leagues have entry drafts and relatively stringent spending constraints. We would find a season meaningless (college football excepted) without each team having a theoretical chance to win. The trade off for this is a number of “meaningless” games in professional leagues (see: MLB in August and September).
English and (by extension European) soccer has promotion and relegation, because it predates clubs being run as businesses. It persists because it’s exciting, and solely because it’s exciting. Imminent financial peril eliminates complacency, but it forces clubs to make short-term, imprudent investments.
Clubs spend beyond their means to stay up. Debts increase. Clubs spend even more to avoid having to settle their debts. Eventually, they go into bankruptcy or get bought by foreign owners. One wonders when those owners will become more assertive about protecting their nine-figure investments. For them, spectacle is not the primary concern. The collective security offered by closed-off American leagues may be only a matter of time.
[Photo via Getty]