Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
One difference between other sports and racing is that sports teams are part of a league. They operate on their own to some extent, but they mostly compete at the sport (for players) and not against each other as businesses. They are all part of the NBA, MLB, NHL etc... and have a common interest in each other's success. The Lakers are not trying to put the Celtics out of business, just beat them at basketball.
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This is right, but the leagues make explicit what is implicit.
Let's compare golf. There's no necessity of a league in professional golf. You can certainly conceive of a world where there's just a bunch of independent golf tournaments around the country that compete for the best golfers. But the problem is, that's not really in anyone's interests. Something like the PGA Tour was an inevitability- you can create a common set of rules, a schedule of events, and an incentive for golfers to play in all the tournaments. It just works better- and it recognizes that golf is a national sport, not just a local one.
What happened with racing is that it developed state-by-state because it was tied to state legalization of gambling, so it ended up being regulated by a bunch of state regulators with little uniformity or central authority. But that's NOT the way of most sports. Indeed, the only other major sport that really works this way is boxing, and that's for much the same reason- because each state had to separately legalize and regulate prize-fighting.
It's a historical accident, not in any way a superior way to run a sport.
