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Posted by on Feb 1, 2013 in Blog, Sports Betting | 6 comments

How Socialism Made the NFL into America’s True Pastime

Karl Marx

 

Who is the person most responsible for making the National Football League into the world’s richest and most successful sporting entity?

Try this one on for size.

Karl Marx.

 

That’s right, Karl Marx — otherwise known as the father of the global movement referred to as “socialism.”

This Sunday, more than 100 million people will tune into the Super Bowl.  Among those watching will be red-meat ravishing Red Staters and stalwart conservatives, their minds all chained to the Dystopian conservative philosophical mantle insisting that acute competition between businesses and among individuals combined with the prioritization of profits breeds widespread economic prosperity.

That’s certainly not true in professional sports.  Fact is, the NFL has enjoyed unparalleled success because it adopted virtually all of the principles of socialism.

The NFL is a socialist enterprise.

Socialism works.

*     *     *

The National Football League is a juggernaut.

It’s the richest and most successful sporting institution in the history of the world.  It’s the true national pastime.

Forget Major League Baseball — which slipped off the pedestal as the nation’s premier spectator sport half a century ago and has a future about as bright as archery.

Football initially surpassed and eventually supplanted baseball as the national pastime way back in the 1960s, when television became the new barometer of popularity.  Now, both college and professional football demolishes baseball in ratings to the point where Major League Baseball now avoids scheduling its post-season games against the NFL regular season.  Consider that nine of the top ten most-watched television programs of all time are Super Bowls.  By contrast, the World Series of Baseball’s highest-rated game ever in history ( played in 1986) drew about a third of what an average Super Bowl attracts.

How did this remarkable transformation come to be?  Two words — revenue sharing.

If football has a Karl Marx figure, it’s most certainly former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle.  I suppose it’s Friederik Engels would then be Lamar Hunt, who held the same power over in the American Football League (AFL).  When the two pro football leagues signed huge national television contracts, Rozelle and Hunt had the tremendous foresight to divide profits and share the millions in revenue equally between all teams.  That meant money from CBS and ABC would be divided into equal shares between New York, Chicago, Los Angeles — and places like Green Bay.  Despite the bigger market teams enjoying significantly greater numbers of fans and viewers, Rozelle and Hunt (along with team owners) understood that the overall game would be much better off if all teams were given an equal chance to compete, win, and proper.  In 1970, the two leagues merged and adopted this same policy for all teams.

Today, all NFL teams receive roughly an equal share of the profits generated from the league.  For this reason, Green Bay (population 70,000) can compete with New York (population 8,000,000).  Both teams can also be just as profitable.

By contrast, baseball maintains an economic system reminiscent of the robber baron days of Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan, an area of “haves” and “have nots.”  In baseball, big market teams reap and keep the lion’s share of their television money and merchandising.  Accordingly, powerful teams like the Yankees, Mets, and Dodgers can buy up all the talent every year when players around the league become free agents.  Smaller cities like Kansas City and Pittsburgh — with far less money to spend on good players — simply can’t compete.  The competitive imbalance causes fans in some cities to lose interest.  The entire league suffers.

Indeed, while professional football is based on the principles of socialism, baseball remains very much wielded to the principles of capitalism.  And based on any tangible metric, the evidence is abundantly clear as to which system is more successful.

*     *     *

Socialism is all about sharing and cooperation.

Let’s examine how the NFL operates as a business.  Consider the following:

REVENUE SHARING — All 32 NFL teams share television money in equal shares.

MERCHANDISING PROFITS — Until 2010, NFL teams shared most of the royalties earned from merchandise sales.  However, courts recently ruled that this policy violated anti-trust laws.  Now, the 32 teams will be able to make their own deals, which ruins a system that has worked well for the past fifty years.

THE NFL DRAFT — Every year, the weakest teams are given the opportunity to make the first picks when drafting new players.  This gives bad teams a greater opportunity to improve and perhaps become better.  By contrast, the best teams must pick last in the draft.

SCHEDULING — The best teams are required to play tougher schedules the following year.  The worst teams play a weaker schedule.

GAME DAY — All teams play games on the same day at the same time (in rotation).  No team is permitted to schedule its games apart from the rest of the league.  The league strictly dictates the NFL’s regular season schedule and game times.

Virtually everything the NFL does is patterned on the principles of sharing and cooperation.  Profits are divided equally.  Teams needing help are given competitive advantages.  And teams that consistently perform well are asked to sacrifice more.

Indeed, this all sounds a lot like socialism.

Note:  I was glad to see Bill Maher and Jon Stewart essentially deliver this same message on their shows the last few years.  But I wrote about this subject more than ten years ago, so I’ll go ahead and take some credit for coming up with this idea first. 

6 Comments

  1. All due respect, Nolan, this is one of the dumbest things you’ve ever written. It’s a cartel, not socialism. If it were socialism the profits would be shared equally with all the players and other employees. Instead, the owners get all the profits and artificially keep the players’ salaries down. This is a very effective, and often illegal, form of capitalism.

  2. I believe the success of the NFL has far more to do with its marketing prowess and less to do with the economics of socialism. Since the days of Pete Rozelle, he and Steve Sabol have created an increasingly more TV-friendly product, while baseball has remained stuck to radio. Most importantly, the NFL has constantly revised its rules with an eye to creating more appealing television. Baseball has steadfastly refused to do this, relying on “tradition”. If football still adhered to the “tradition” of “three yards and a cloud of dust”, it would not be the entertainment juggernaut it is. Credit goes to Rozelle (and especially Sabol, who was a genius), not to Karl Marx.

    • NOLAN REPLIES: Naturally, there are other factors as well, including those you cite. However, if there was not competitive balance in the league, I do not believe the game would be as popular. Fans in some regions would eventually give up and tune out the NFL. I certainly agree with you about Rozelle and Sabol (I wrote a tribute to Sabol a few months ago after his death).

      Thanks for sharing your comments.

      — ND

  3. Thanks for the thoughtful, intelligent reply. I read your blog daily, even though I disagree with almost all of your assertions, because I am sick of the “We disagree, so you are an idiot” mentality that permeates the media (especially conservatives, though I count myself one). Listening to and having respect for opposing views is what separates a creed from mere prejudice. Anyway, I understood your blog to say that socialism was the reason the NFL is so successful. It is certainly a reason it is so successful. Competitive balance is important. Ironically, European soccer leagues are not competitively balanced. Manchester United, Bayern Munich, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid dominate their leagues every year. And the labor market for soccer is one of the least restrictive of any industry in Europe (another irony). There could be reasons why European soccer is popular in spite of this, e.g. in the US the media makes it much easier to follow a non-local team, and the transient nature of Americans means there is less loyalty to the local team. But the Europeans have a much more elegant solution to the issue of competitive balance than the restricted free agent/salary cap/luxury tax garbage that is designed to give comfort to owners, not fans. Their solution is relegation. Relegation serves two purposes: 1) it gets rid of franchises whose owners do not keep the team competitive (think: Pittsburgh Pirates). 2) It generates interest among fans of teams who are performing poorly, by giving them something to play for. As a Mariners fan, I know the fan base would be more interested if the Mariners were in danger of leaving MLB (at least that is what happens in Europe.)

    • NOLAN REPLIES: David, you are always welcome here and to challenge what you read. I’m falttered that you would take the time to look at alternative points of view. I find that when I do this, I either solidify my beliefs, or modify them to conform to new evidence that’s brought to my attention. As for the socialism tag on the NFL, please understand that this is a dirty word in the US, and accordingly, I relish in challenging this gross misuse and overuse of the term (i.e. “Obama is a socialist.”). While I stand by everything I wrote, I also agree that the NFL is hardly the People Republic of Football. It is, after all, a business. Good points about European football and the “uncompetitive balance” (your term) which exists between glamour teams and ther rest. Very strong point in your favor. Once again, thanks for reading and for the comments.

      — ND

    • I’m a football fan (soccer for Americans). Football in Europe is highly unequal and becomes less and less competitive by each passing season. It has become the image of it’s economic system with 3-5 super rich clubs, 20 rich and “the rest”.

      Relegation does keep the lower barrier but if you talk about winning the English premier league, you could only pick 3 richest clubs. And it is like that for almost every year. I don’t think that makes football (soccer) so popular. The fact is that European football is taking the similar course of American sports (FIFA financial fairplay rules) speaks for itself.

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