THE AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN MODELS OF SPORTS

?PREAMBLE

Over time, professional sport has morphed into a billion-dollar industry. Sport has transcended the sphere of providing mere recreational or social engineering utility and has become a highly lucrative venture. The two juggernauts of sports are arguably North Americans and Europeans, and both have developed unique systems or models for sports organization in their respective regions.

The Americans have an eye for heavy commercialization and are the vanguards of the new dispensation of sports capitalism. Their overwhelmingly great profitability numbers heavily typify this. According to Forbes, the top 3 most profitable sports teams worldwide and 7 of the top 10 are all American franchises. Also, 3 of the top 5 most valuable leagues worldwide are the NFL, MLB, and NBA, all American Leagues. This is startling because the American League, especially the NFL and the MLB, are not extremely popular outside of the United States and Canada. The European Leagues, in contrast, are more popular globally.

There has been an undeniable upsurge of model-related discourses in European football since the idea of the Super League emerged in 2021. Contrarians have argued that it is time for football to tap into its immense popularity to grow the pie, and a closed super league has been proposed as the perfect strategy. ?This article is not aimed at unearthing the mysteries that have made the American companies undisputed financial colossuses or to delve into the merits and demerits of the super league model, but to briefly dissect the exciting differences between the organization of sports in America and Europe alike and explain the unique features that differentiate the models of the two most enormous sporting regions.??

THE EUROPEAN MODEL OF SPORTS

The underlying theoretical thinking behind the organization of European sports is not financial gain but the belief that sports can be instrumentalized for social good. There is a deliberate emphasis on ensuring sports development on the grassroots level and, crucially, the sustenance of a PYRAMID.?The European model is structured administratively and competitively like a pyramid. At the zenith of the administrative pyramid in football, for instance, is FIFA, then UEFA, then National Leagues and Associations, and sometimes Regional Associations like they exist in Spain and clubs. There is the global overseeing body, a regional authority that coordinates with the International Federation, and under the Confederations are the National Associations and leagues, responsible for organizing national competitions in line with the rules of FIFA.

Competitively, the organization is also pyramidical, as often there are significant leagues like the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, etc., and two, three, sometimes as many as seven tiers of competitive football underneath the major leagues. Teams are promoted and relegated from the higher-ranking leagues and compete for their places in the hierarchy of the pyramidical summit. Essentially, the two crucial features of the European model are the Pyramid Structure and the Promotion and Relegation of teams. This is in direct contrast to the Closed or Horizontal structure of the American system of sports, which will be subsequently discussed. In the transfer of players in the European model, players have a say and more autonomy in deciding their destinations. European clubs compete in multiple competitions, like their American count significant, instead of one major yearly competition.

THE AMERICAN MODEL OF SPORTS

The American model of organizing sports is awash with a tapestry of complexities.?For ease of understanding, I will highlight the critical facets of the American model under different subheadings. ?

STRUCTURE: The American model is horizontal. All major leagues are closed leagues, meaning there is no relegation or promotion, as with the European model. Teams are guaranteed their spots in the league for as long as they are viable and sustainable. Teams in American sports leagues are known as franchises, not clubs; this effectively means they are brands. The difference between a club and an association is that a club is a human association that is mainly affiliated with a community, and a franchise, while sometimes rooted in communities, can be moved anywhere, just like the Seattle Sonics of the NBA relocated from Seattle in 2008 to Oklahoma City. Although the five significant leagues are closed leagues, all of them, excluding the NFL, have affiliate lower division leagues, like the NBA’s G-League. All NBA franchises have affiliate subsidiary franchises that compete. There is no ascendency from those leagues; they merely exist, like in the G-Leagues case, to supply talent to the NBA and give youngsters a better alternative to going abroad for more regular game time. Proof of the G-Leagues relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things is that it had to be shut down from the last week of December 2021 till the first week of January because the rise in Covid-19 cases in the NBA meant a plethora of G-League players were given 10-day contracts by NBA franchises thus leading to a lack of players in the G-League and effectively a disruption of the season.

DRAFT: A vital component of the American sports model is its integration with the high school and collegiate system. I find this excellent and plausible. Young talents in North America don’t have to abandon school for sports academies or make an early outright choice between sports and schooling but hone their skills and compete Nationally for their High Schools. Talents are ranked and tracked from all through high school and can opt to be drafted straight to the significant leagues fresh from excellently representing their teams at the high school level. Famous NBA layers like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett were all drafted straight from high school.?Athletes can opt to proceed to college, where they typically play more competitive Basketball for a year or two before announcing they are entering the draft. Collegiate sport is regulated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The organization governs student-athletes from around 1,200 North American institutions. The draft is organized annually by the respective leagues. Teams are assigned turns or picks in the draft based on their performances in the previous season, from bottom to top. In the NBA, for instance, after the regular season, the 30 teams are given picks, with the worst team having the first pick and the best team having the 30th pick. Teams deliberately started “tanking,” which means intentionally losing games or fielding poorer teams. Hence, they have a poor record and can draft the best player available in the draft. The NBA developed a method of dealing with this by creating a lottery system for the bottom 14 teams and adding some randomness to selecting who gets the coveted first pick annually. ?

SALARY CAPS AND CONTRACTS: Player contracts in American sports are complex and will require a separate article if I am exhaustive. All leagues have salary caps to prevent teams from overloading talent and allowing some competitive balance. Teams are annually given a stipulated amount they are allowed to spend on player salaries. The salary cap for the 2021/22 NBA season was $112million, and an NBA franchise has to pay a luxury tax if it spends a dollar more on salaries for all 15 players on their roster. As a franchise, it is challenging to have three superstar players earning above $35million each on the same roster. To do that, you sacrifice the overall strength of your roster and will need to get older veteran players willing to earn the minimum. Leagues like the NFL and NBA have different contracts, ranging from guaranteed to non-guaranteed. The Leagues also have stipulated minimum and maximum contracts. Agreement exceptions to the salary cap and minimum and top contracts rule exist. Apart from paying luxury taxes, some leagues like the NBA have specific instances where teams are permitted to pay a player over the maximum without penalty. Leagues like the National Hockey League have hard salary caps and do not give the option of luxury taxes. Still, mandate teams to keep expenses below the cap or risk ineligibility.

TRADES: In American leagues, players are assets and can be traded for draft picks or other players without their consent. This contrasts with the modus operandi of European leagues, where players have a say on the destination of their transfers. A classic European football transfer requires the consent of the team that owns the player and the player. Given how the American league is structured and the presence of a significant factor like salary caps, giving players a say in their 'transfers' will make it difficult for General Managers to build their rosters. This is why players can be traded without their consent.

PLAYER UNIONS: All American Leagues have player unions representing players’ interests and signing Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) with their respective leagues. Those CBAs dictate the rules of player contracts, trades, revenue distribution, salary caps, and the draft. There have been instances where player unions and leagues have had lengthy disputes in trying to make amendments to the CBAs leading to lockouts like the 2005 NHL lockout and the 2011 NBA lockout, which lasted 161 days. European sport is different, and there are very few cases of the leagues having player unions that bargain on key terms of service with leagues. In football, there is none known to me, and the closest thing to a unified pro player platform is FIFPRO which is not a players union anyways. However, in Basketball, the recently formed Euro League Players Association (ELPA)?Euro League Players Association (ELPA) represents the interests of players of the Euro League.

COMPETITION: ?American leagues are typically divided into regular and postseason seasons. In the regular season, teams play a specific number of games against each other. In the NBA, each team plays 82 games in the regular season; in the NFL, the number is 17, then the highest-ranked teams proceed to the playoffs, where they compete for a championship. In the NBA, for instance, a final is not a one-game affair, nor is any playoff match. Teams compete in a best of 7 series for the crown of NBA champions.

FAN EXPERIENCE: ?There is a stark difference between American and European sports fan experiences. Fan experience in European sports, especially football, is centered around the game itself. In American sports, there is a real emphasis by the leagues on entertainment and fan engagement. This entertainment comes in multiple forms. It typically comes through halftime performances by A-list music artists, dancers’ pre-game, or during halftime. Sometimes fans get in the thick of the action by competing for prizes through various contests. The Super Bowl is an excellent example of this, as sometimes it can be mistaken for a musical concert, and a chunk of people who tune in do not care for the game as much as they do for the musical performances of top acts. In European football, the culture is different, the main attraction is the game itself, and the tension and intensity of the fans can never tolerate mid-game shows. There was, for instance, a massive pushback against the performance of Camila Cabello during the past Champions League final, and she complained on Twitter about the rudeness of fans. This shows how different the cultures are. American sports fans will probably be disappointed if they went to a Final of an event and there were no major musical performances. Still, European football fans get disappointed when they have to watch performances before or in between games.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Both the European and American models of sport have been highly successful in their own right, and it is impossible to conclude that one system is better than the other. As earlier noted, in recent months, conversations about the future organization of European football have emerged. The proposed and highly scrutinized super league is not dead and buried, mainly because the European Court of Justice just began hearing the dispute between the four vanguards of the competition and UEFA. The underpinning and driving logic of the super league is centered around the desire to commercialize further and multiply the profitability of football. This logic directly clashes with the need to sustain the sanctity of the footballing pyramid. A closed European football league, without a doubt, has the potential to eclipse the commercial successes of the American leagues by leaps and bounds; this is because football is a more globally popular game.?While the architects of the avant-garde super league model continue to be demonized and vituperated, we cannot all pretend like their propositions are without a modicum of good reason. Key questions must be asked: What does the future hold for European football? Are there things the Americans are doing right that European football can copy? Is the 'attack' on the pyramid model of European football administration the kamikaze mission it has been framed to be? No one has the answers yet, and maybe there are no outright answers. I know that it does help greatly when fans and stakeholders understand the issues as clearly as they should, and I hope this article is one tiny step in the right direction. ??

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REFERENCES

1)?????https://sportsbite.blog/north-american-vs-european-sports-system/

2)????European Football vs. American Sports: Some Interesting Differences – Soccer Politics / The Politics of Football (duke.edu)

3)????A comparison of the European and North American models of a sports organization. - Free Online Library (thefreelibrary.com)

4)???North American Sports Models vs. European Models – J_WIZE (wordpress.com)