I was thinking about pro/rel and how it would work differently for our 4 major sports, and I came up with a theory. I won't tell you what it is now, because I don't want to steer the discussion in any particular direction. But here's the question. On a scale from 0 to 100, let's say that pro/rel was a 50 in 1963. (Date picked at random, except that it's a while back.) Do you think pro/rel is a better system for English club football now than then, or worse? If it's aLOT better, then maybe you'd say today it's an 80. If you think it's somewhat worse today, then you'd say today it's a 35. Obviously, give your reasons why you feel whichever way you feel.
Is the question valid? I mean, how does relegation and promotion become 'worse' or 'better'? Perhaps the financial consequences? The growing gap between Nationwide League and Premiership football obviously impacts upon the practical impact of relegation or promotion. But the game has always had rich and poor. Dunno ... without knowing what your theory is though, I would say that it remains a 50 today.
I'd agree - probably no change. Although I wasn't around in 63, making it hard to gauge opinion then, contrary to what a few posters 'over there' appear to believe, there has been no consideration at all to doing away with it. In fact if anything I'd say it's higher than back then as promotion places were increased in the early 70s, promotion introduced from the non-league game in the mid 80s (which has seen crowds go up 300% in the game's fifth division) and a second promotion place introduced to that division a year ago. I don't think I've ever met an English fan who didn't want it.
I think that asking if pro/rel is better or worse than 40 years ago is like asking American sports fans if deciding championships through play-offs makes more or less sense now than in 1973. Pro/rel is completely internalized by European fans. I don’t think it will ever happen in the States, the main reason being big-time college and high school sports. Can we now read your theory
Is it a better or worse system? Or, let's put it this way...if in 1963 someone had said, hey, let's get rid of pro/rel, or at least dramatically reform it, how crazy would that be? How crazy today?
People would have said "no" then, and they'd say "no" now. They'd probably ask incredulously why anyone would even consider getting rid of it. Who exactly is 'supposed' to be in favour of scrapping it? Who would benefit? By the way, did you think it was better or worse (less/more popular) than 40 years ago? You can't really compare it to asking if American sports should have pro/rel as on the whole there isn't anything of substance outside the major leagues - there's nobody to promote and nowhere to be relegated to. A better comparison would be to ask if the NFL would be better if it only had 4 teams, as that's more the effect that causing the rest of the professional game to wither & die would have. Sure, those 4 teams would be fantastic, but it'd be pretty miserable for all the rest of the teams who folded, and their fans. I've said this before, but at the risk of repeating myself, the American system works well in America because of the country's urban make up. It has a large number of cities(+suburbs) of several million people which are hundreds of miles from the nearest other urban area of roughly equal size. It is ideal for franchised markets. No country in Europe (and generally only 'new' countries like South Africa or Australia) is like that. Imagine the current English clubs didn't exist and you were trying to create a new league using the franchise model. You start happily, put two clubs in London, one in Birmingham, one in Manchester, ..err.. one in the north east, one in Liverpool...err... where next ..ah Yorkshire..hmm Leeds or Bradford or Sheffield or Hull, or perhaps Nottingham a bit further south.......well if they're all in we'd better have teams in Derby and Leicester..err... except those cities are really big enough to compete with Manchester of London so we can't have them...... essentially it'd be impossible to create a league full of 20 or so clubs of equal size, and if you allowed size differences it'd be incredibly hard to know where to draw the line. Also, with different sized clubs in there, the bottom of the league, with inevitably the smaller clubs mainly in it, would get stagnant pretty quickly. You could create a salary cap to introduce parity but people would hate that. As much as we like to see Charlton doing well and pushing for a european spot, we wouldn't want to see the top clubs crippled into mediocrity to allow them the chance to do so.
I think the question is more of what the result of pro/rel is. The question, which i can't answer, seems to be whether or not the promoted team actually stands a chance in a higher division, or rather they're just using that season before they drop as a way to increase the gate with bigger clubs playing at their home stadium, or if they are relegated, does it hurt them so badly financially that staying one above relegation is such vastly better than to be relegated, if even for a year. The question seems to be then, were promoted teams able to do better or worse in 1963 in the higher division, and were teams dropping a division not hurt, or hurt worse, financially by the loss of status, or gate draw by losing the bigger names. And if that's not the questions you were getting at, I have no idea what you're thinking. Since the debate between using pro/rel to determine team placement and 'franchise placement' like in U.S. sports, where membership is determined by an owner ponying up the money to pay for the franchise and can't be 'bumped' out no matter how poorly they do, and can basically only leave if they wish to sell is not a debate that can be settled easily. Sykotyk
I think you are making the mistake of thinking that promoted clubs at all levels face the same problems clubs being promoted to the premiership face. There's probably no other two linked divisions in the world that have such a large revenue gap between them (as a result of the premiership's TV deal and the collapse of the TV company doing the League's). At no other level are promoted clubs expected to struggle and relegated clubs assumed to be automatic contenders for promotion. Although most clubs inevitably have a division in which they spend most of their time, they usually have spent a considerable number of years in the divisions either side and normally some time two divisions away from their customary home (in either direction). For example since our arbitrary refence point of 1963, 22 clubs have spent time in all 4 pro divisions, and a further 39 have been in 3 of them. In 4 Divsions Burnley Wolves Sheffield United Blackpool Fulham Bolton Leyton Orient Huddersfield Swansea Portsmouth Luton Northampton Swindon Bristol City Millwall Barnsley Bradford Brighton Carlisle Oldham Wimbledon Oxford 3 Divisions Sheffield Wednesday WBA Aston Villa Birmingham Stoke Sunderland Middlesbrough Manchester City Bury Scunthorpe Cardiff Plymouth Rotherham Preston Derby Grimsby Walsall Port Vale Coventry Bournemouth Peterborough Notts County Southend Wrexham Hull Crystal Palace QPR Shrewsbury (now in the conference,their 4th different division) Watford Bristol Rovers Reading Brentford Crewe Mansfield Wigan Gillingham Tranmere York Stockport Staying up is usually always better than going down (although many teams do getter better crowds after relegation if they do well the following year). The american way, giving a first pick of the up and coming talent in a draft, may seem fairer and more of an assistance to that team to allow them to compete better in the following season, but that kind of misses the point of relegation - it's not a consolation prize - it's a punishment. Essentially 'you failed to field a team good enough to compete, so we're going to give someone else a go instead'. Why does a team coming last in the premiership have more of a right to take part in it the following year than the team that wins Division 1? It probably was easier back then as the maximum wage had only just been abolished and it wasn't as easy for the bigger clubs to buy all the best talent as a big club of the day, like Everton, couldn't pay players any more than Blackpool could. On the downside it also meant it would be much harder build a team as you wouldn't be able to entice players either. Movement up and down the divisions has increased since then, not declined. Proportionally the drop/increase in crowds for relegated/promoted clubs has barely changed, if at all. The difference now is the finances involved. 20 years ago you could get into a Division 2 (now 1) match for under £2. Now you are doing well to get change from £20. Even if inflation has caused prices to rise by 200-300% in that time, that falls a long way short of the 1000% rise in ticket prices - and also wages. The problems come in that thanks to the Bosman ruling player, values in Div 1 haven't risen accordingly and the option of selling a player or two to pay off the debts rarely exists. I don't think Reading have made a significant sale since selling Shaka to Newcastle over 8 years ago, for example. 20 years ago a division one club losing £1000 a week would be described as being in a disasterous state. Some are probably losing 50 times that now. Remarkable as it seems some times, since 1963 only two clubs, Aldershot and Maidstone, have folded while being in the league, and Maidstone's closure was rather dubious anyway as they, and Dartford FC (whose ground they shared) both folded just weeks after directors of the two clubs passed a resolution saying that if both clubs folded, and the ground sold, then they'd be allowed to keep the profits of the sale. Thamks to the pyramid system of promotion, the reformed Aldershot Town are now only one promotion away from 'returning' to the football league after 4 promotions in 10 years. AFC Wimbledon, formed by supporters of Wimbledon after the clubs relocation to Milton Keynes, are well on course to complete the first step of a similar rise in the semi-pro world.
Similarly, the reformed Accrington Stanley are now one step away from the Football League. I think these are good illustrations that pro/rel is, overall, actually stronger than it was 40 years ago, as the pyramid system at the lower levels is a relatively recent invention.
I don’t think it has much to do with America’s urban make up. I haven’t got a clue, but do Australians have pro/rel in their major leagues? As I said, I think that the status of college and high-school sports are the major obstacles for a pyramid system to be introduced in the US. While in Europe every city has a pro or a semi-pro team to support Americans support their local school teams. That leaves little space for pro-sports, one league per sport to be precise. Dave can correct me if I’m wrong on this but I think that pro leagues in the States have been price fixing cartels since their creation which won’t let anyone in who might endanger their profits.
OK, here's why I started the thread. Of our 4 major sports leagues, tackle football is, easily, the LEAST appropriate for pro/rel. Basketball comes next, and then baseball and ice hockey are both excellent candidates. Now, remember two things. First, I understand that I'm speaking theoretically, not practically. There's been some talk about pro/rel in sports here, esp. hockey and baseball. But it ain't happening. Second, pro/rel is a BUSINESS ARRANGEMENT. There's nothing intrinsic in soccer that makes pro/rel good there, and there's nothing intrinsic in football that makes it bad there. Anyway, thinking about the sports scene here, I noticed that the ONE sport that is MOST dependent on league TV revenue, and LEAST dependent on attendance, is also the league for which pro/rel is complete nonsense. And the opposite is true for hockey and baseball. And as I thought about it, I realized, that makes sense. One thing pro/rel does is it get every club into its proper weight class for its fanbase. But if the Packers get just as much from the league-wide TV revenue as the Chicago Bears or the New York teams, and if that revenue is so critical, then any NFL team is pretty much already IN its weight class. So I was wondering if the EPL TV contract had made pro/rel less appropriate, or if the CL money, unevenly divided, made it more appropriate, or neither.
Let me address the 2nd point first. Baseball became organized in the 1880s. Since baseball is played nearly every day, it was a necessity that teams organize into geographic leagues. It was beyond impractical for a team in 1885 to play the San Francisco Seals in SF on a Thursday, and then play the Minneapolis Millers on Friday-Sunday, and then play the Atlanta Crackers on Tuesday-Thursday, then start a homestand in Cleveland on Friday. And once leagues were geographically based, it was inevitable that the strongest league would cull its weakest markets and add stronger ones. The geography of the US dictated the cartel nature of the leagues. The early history of every US league shows that...the NFL started out as a regional league with teams in football-mad industrial towns like Staley and Decatur and expanded into bigger cities as it grew. At the same time, it crushed the other pro leagues. The National League grew from the American Association of the 19th c., which was only a first among equals at the time. They didn't have any master plan to crush the other leagues. Their growth depended in part on improvements in rail service. They just wanted to make their league stronger, and the inevitable result was the cartel system we have now. I don't think colleges are the problem. I just don't think it would be practical for a bunch of baseball guys to look at the midsized cities of the South (for example) and set up a lesser baseball league based in New Orleans, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Birmingham, Memphis, Charlotte, etc. College baseball is a non-factor, but this wouldn't work just because the league would be so clearly second rate. As for pro/rel...I believe that baseball would be alot stronger if it said, OK, we're gonna have 3 divisions of 16 teams each, each division divided into two leagues, 3 up, 3 down. And oh yeah, the existing teams can't prohibit other teams from the system from "invading" their market. In other words, the Brooklyn team (the Cyclones?) would be a 3rd division team, but they'd surely take away some of the appeal of the Yankees and curb the value of their cable TV deal. A big part of baseball's problem is that there are only two New York teams. Anyway, there'd be a team in the Washington DC area. My local team, the Durham Bulls, would probably bounce between the 2nd and 3rd divisions (based on market size), and that would be very cool. Etc. Hockey could get back into markets like Winnipeg if they went with two divisions, I believe.
I think that schools are a problem, because they have the duty of developing talent in America while pro teams are only that. Why should people in smaller American communities support a “bunch of mercenaries” on a lower league team when they can support their local school team for which many of them played for? It’s completely different in Europe. I played for the youth teams in my home town(6 000) club from the age of 10 and some games for the first team in my last high-school year. And about 60-70 % of the 500 people who usually come to my clubs games played for the club in their youth. People in the States simply don’t have that kind of bond with sports clubs. I’m not saying that one system is better than the other, I’m just saying that pro/rel is almost imposible in America.
No. Nor does South Africa. They have teams in the big cities. The Aussies do have several teams in each city though as it's complicated by the fact that some parts of the country are very strongly for rugby league, while other parts like Aussie rules football (I think). The point about the urban make up is that you can have 20-30 teams of roughly equal size. Each team is allocated a catchment area big enough to make filling 65,000 seats every week for NFL games no problem. You can't do that in any european country (even with a smaller crwod target). It'd be like if you tried to create a league in Texas. You could have maybe half a dozen big teams in the big cities, but beyond that you'd struggle to find 14 other cities with any chance of matching those big 6. There are only about half a dozen clubs in England capable of pulling in 40,000 a week (assuming they had the capacity). If I start you off with Man Utd, Liverpool, Man City, Newcastle, Chelsea, Arsenal, you try naming 14 other English clubs you could give 'franchises' to who'd be financially on a par with those clubs without salary-capping them into enforced mediocrity. Actually finding 14 other teams won't be the hardest thing. the hardest thing will be that you'll find another 14 after that who have at least as good a claim as the last few you select. And after that you'll find another 14 who could just about make it onto that reserve list. Then 14 more who have the potential to get on that second reserve list....and so on.
[pedant] The National League played its first game in 1876. The American Association came later, in the '80s. The two leagues were very definitely competitors and just as cutthroat as you might expect of organizations run by 19th century businessmen. The main differences between the two at the start were that the Association played on Sundays, and charged only 25 ¢ admission where the NL charged 50 ¢. The Association collapsed in the late '90s and the existing Western League moved franchises east to fill the void in competition with the National League. By the early years of the 20th century each team had eight members. 5 cities had a team in each league and New York also had Brooklyn across the river. [/pedant] The duty? I don't think so. Their duty is to educate their students. In fact a group of universities is now talking about suing the NFL to recover some of the costs of running what is in some respects a cost-free farm system. I don't think the local school team argument works too well, at least out here on the coast. Most Californians came from somewhere else; another state or from somewhere else in the state. I'm very rare in that I've lived all my life (including college) within 25 miles of the city I was born in. b.
Research the history of the Pacific Coast League. Because baseball was centered in the northeast, teams in Cali formed their own league, and it was a big deal. Or look at minor league baseball in the 1910s, when college football was already pretty big. All that was withOUT the hope of being promoted.
The TV contract and the artificial financial divides it creates causes problems - and I say artificial because if Bracknell Town FC (Rymans League Div 2 South) were in the premier league and still pulling in their current average of 140 people, they'd still be financially a bigger club than Sunderland in Div 1 averaging 39,000. I do think they are going to have to look at a solution before it really does become impossible for a promoted club to stay up. The only way I can see would be if they introduced a sliding scale of payment based on final position, allowing a similar smaller chunk of cash to be distributed the same way to Div 1 clubs. That would depend and the traditional bottom half clubs agreeing to a drop in revenue though, which many would expect to be unlikely, even though they are the ones most likely to be hardest hit by relegation. CL money has no bearing what so ever on relegation. There does appear to be a belief among some over there that the big clubs are looking to protect their interests by calling for an end to relegation. There is not a shred of truth in that though and I've really got no idea why so many appear to believe it.
Indirectly, it does. Take your Bracknell Town/Sunderland example. An excellent point. But there's a gap between any run-of-the-mill EPL club, and the two (now, apparently, three) clubs who can safely include CL revenue in their yearly budget. It separates EPL clubs from one another. To use the example of the NFL, if playoff revenue were as big, proporotionally, as CL revenue is, the pro/rel would be somewhat less ludicrous in tackle football.
My main arguement that the old firm will never be in the Premiership. Why give up the guaranteed Euro money? The gulf between divisions is much greater now than it was even 20 years ago. Relegation, though never enjoyable, can now ruin a club. Back then it was just a matter of reloading and getting back up.
I should have been more precise. I meant “role”. Pro franchises certainly don’t develop players, do they?
In baseball, they certainly do. Major league clubs operate franchises in the minor leagues for the express purpose of developing their young talent. A young player coming out of high school or college will be drafted by a major league club and assigned by them to a 'farm' team. He'll usually start at the A level and progress to AAA before being called up to the parent club. For football and basketball it's different. Development occurs in the colleges, for which the professional game pays not a dime. b.