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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21741 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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I would say that the motivation isn't to maintain competitive balance, it is to maintain the organic link between clubs and their local fanbases. In American sports (with an unprincipled exception for the Green Bay Packers) the league considers a team to be the property of the owner, and an owner moving a team to a different city for commercial reasons is, while rare and unpopular with fans, part of the way the system works. In the culture that is European football, moving a team is a crime against football, and is banned by the leagues except in the most exceptional circumstances.

The politics of sports leagues mean that TV revenue is shared more equally than local fan revenue, so leagues with a stronger culture of hometown fandom (and European football has such a structure) have less revenue equality, and the richest clubs (like Manchester United or the New York Yankees) are the most dependent on gate revenue at the stadium, with the poorer clubs dependent on TV money. Using revenue sharing or similar to maintain competitive balance would mean that clubs are dependent on the league for revenue and not their fan bases, which would move us closer to a US franchise model.

A wealthy superfan who bought a team and spent a lot of his own money driving it up the football pyramid was traditionally considered fine (the owner would be loved by his team's fans and not particularly resented by rival fans) - and indeed Financial Fair Play is not enforced at the levels of the pyramid where that is still plausible. Nobody in Europe is rich enough to buy an EPL/Serie A championship with their own personal cash. But at the level of money going into something like Man City, the money is clearly going in for non-fannish reasons.

But at the level of money going into something like Man City, the money is clearly going in for non-fannish reasons.

Bezos is amongst those buying a share of Liverpool FC. My gloom is positively Eeyorish at this point. I doubt it's because of his devotion to the results of the Carabao Cup.

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