Funny thing is that Fortuna Sittard, the club of Yank Abroad Novakovitch, has hopes for EL football, but at the same time have to fear for relegation, as the points difference upwards and downwards for either possibilities are minimal. So half way the competition they have two things to fight for.
In a non pro/rel system you'd be perpetually consigned to a particular minor league with no opportunity to qualify for the promotion playoffs and moan about being robbed by refereeing decisions. No Football League team has gone bust since 1992 so I wouldn't get your hopes up about Bury, especially as the sums they purportedly owe creditors are small.
I doubt Notts County would be springing for a cartel admission fee. The bottom line is that mobility in a pro/rel pyramid is just a tad higher than in a closed league system.
That doesn't answer the question. Notts, and plenty of others also aren't springing for a "merit" fee in order to move up or stay up.
Yes it does. In fact, in a closed league system Notts County might not even exist. Nottingham Forest would likely have "territorial rights" over Nottingham.
A closed league system and territorial rights are not synonymous. NRL is a closed league in which teams even share stadiums. Anyway it's unlikely the F-word would have had territorial rights as they are the younger team, both overall and in the Football League.
I prefer pro-rel, though I was never a big fan of extending it outside of the Football League. Still, Luton, Mansfield and Lincoln are making up for lost time. I think we've established that England is pretty unique, in that there's always someone who will come along and bail teams out. And in the last 30 years we've seen the rise of supporters' trusts who are willing to administer clubs while trying to find investors. However, several EFL clubs have gone bankrupt in recent years after dropping out of the league. Scarborough were wound up in 2007, Halifax in 2008, Chester in 2010, Rushden and Diamonds in 2011, Darlington in 2012 and Hereford in 2014.
All of which now have phoenix teams in their place. Several of those teams - Darlington and Hereford in particular - were horribly managed. Unlike in a closed league system where failure is rewarded, such teams tend to get their comeuppance sooner or later in a pro/rel pyramid.
So it's OK for fans of a team in a pro-rel environment to suffer the humiliation of losing their team due to terrible ownership but when it happens with Chivas or Columbus, or Miami, or Tampa Bay, it's a symptom of a closed league.
That the following statement you made is incorrect: "In a non pro/rel system you'd be perpetually consigned to a particular minor league" Which does nothing to erase the fact that they went kaput. Which all boils down to "it's ok for me because I like this way ... it is clearly not ok for you because I don't like your way"
Rewarding failure on the field of play means that other - likely better managed - teams and their fans are deprived of the opportunity to see their team play at a higher level. Not sure why you find that acceptable. Additionally, the fans of all those teams have the opportunity to support their phoenix teams and, due to pro/rel - watch them move up the pyramid. I see 4 of the 6 teams you mentioned play either 1 or 2 levels below the Football League. Scarborough could make it 5 next season.
Was it fair that US fans were deprived of the opportunity to see their teams play at a higher level for 134 years, from the first recorded game in 1862 to 1996? In a very immature market fans still have a choice of who they support, from Detroit City FC to NYC FC to Borussia Dortmund. English non-league fans were deprived of the opportunity to see their teams play at a higher level for 99 years. Maybe by 2095 the US will have a soccer infrastructure that will support an open pyramid. I think it's more likely that the big European teams will play outside of the traditional soccer pyramids by then.
Not sure why people find it acceptable to take a team that played inferior competition and have it replace a team that played superior competition ... but here we are
There's a difference between being poor on the field of play and being badly run from a business point-of-view. I don't believe pro/rel is intended to punish the latter. In fact, I don't think - at least in an ideological or philosophical sense - that punishment/reward is truly the intention at all. It's about organizing teams into competitive tiers. There are numerous measures in place intended to mitigate or marginalize teams finding themselves operating in a scenario where they aren't viable. MLS has shown that they will certainly take off-field action against owners and teams that are severely failing at the business end.