Dana Blankenhorn

Speaking of Sports

The most interesting economic story right now, verging on the political, involves sports.

Two business models are colliding.

The European business model is built on the club. Clubs organize into leagues, but government interference or subsidy is prohibited. The result is capitalism red in tooth and claw. There are haves, and there are have-nots. But there is some social mobility. A bad club loses money when it drops down the national pyramid. A good club can make money as it rises.

The American model is based on the franchise. Leagues control franchises, much like McDonald’s controls its franchisees. Government subsidy is actively encouraged. Most college teams are controlled by state governments.

Manhood vs. Brohood

I don’t pretend to be a great man. I’m barely average. I try to get better. I try to overcome an upbringing of white privilege, in the Long Island suburb of Massapequa, where I lived until I was 18.

My father passed away in 1999. He could be sexist, racist, and misogynistic. He could also be wildly creative, imaginative, and a great salesman. When he got very drunk (he was a WWII veteran) he’d call himself a “true Aryan.” But he did the best he could. He ran Tower TV, the local TV repair shop, then got into security and locksmithing after moving to California. All four of his kids wound up solidly in the American middle class. His younger son (not me) taught calculus to generations in Los Angeles public schools.

It wasn’t until I moved to Atlanta that I found true manhood. I found it in our “block club,” a group of families on our street who met monthly to exchange news and advocate for services.

Oligarchs are Marxists

Rich dudes all claim a capitalist back story, red in tooth and claw.

But once they got it made, all oligarchs are Russian. They divide markets among themselves to make sure no one below can get in. This is why we need strict anti-trust laws.

Don’t believe me? Look at sports.

Every American sports league is run on a communist basis. Owners are guaranteed a profit. Revenue is shared, and costs are capped. Supply is artificially limited, so that governments can be extorted for new palaces the oligarchs control.

Americans have become blind to this. But when you get to soccer, the world’s game, the blinders come off.

That’s because in most of the world, where capital is limited, and where the word competition means something, the soccer business really is capitalist. Winners get most of the money, including the TV money. Losers get drummed out of the league and (eventually) out of the business.

Soccer’s America Problem

I’m an American soccer fan. But soccer has growing America problem.

European soccer is being knocked on its ass by American money. The English Premier League, powered by big TV contracts and American interest, now dominates all European leagues. The competitive balance that was the hallmark of European soccer is gone.

American owners are increasingly dominating the English game. Todd Boehly, who also controls the LA Dodgers, recently bought Chelsea, and is maintaining the free-spending ways of Roman Abramovich. Americans now own nearly half the league.

Then there’s MLS. The league has yet to realize its potential, but that potential is huge. Most clubs still play in 20,000 seat bandboxes. The ratings are garbage. But nearly all the clubs make a profit, thanks to strict revenue-sharing and salary caps. Apple is going to send a flood of money into the league starting this month. Sellouts are now common. My Atlanta United drew 47,000 fans per match last season, better than the average Premier League team.

We can afford soccer. Other countries can’t. Soccer is now America’s 4^th leading sport, ahead of hockey and right behind baseball. Soccer is growing, baseball is not.

The Tragedy of Herschel Walker

There are many tragic figures in the politics of 2022.

For me the most tragic is Herschel Walker.

Democrats don’t see it this way. More’s the pity. That’s because Walker represents the apotheosis of Jim Crow 2.0, a system of institutional racism that has been making its way across the south since I moved here in 1981.

It’s like this. Give blacks some places. Give them their own places, like Atlanta. Use thinly veiled racism to maintain white discipline and control in the suburbs. Use state policy to ghettoize the places with black majorities and encourage corruption. Meanwhile, take some with exploitable talent and raise them up. Coddle them, make them think they’re as good as white, so they become the new system’s avatars, black faces on a white system.

See, we’re not racist, look at X. Whose idiocy justifies the racists’ instincts.  

Retire Dan Garber

Soccer has a huge opportunity to become America’s favorite sport, as it is everywhere else.

But it won’t get there with the minor league business model of Major League Soccer (MLS) Commissioner Dan Garber.

Garber’s business model was crafted in the 1990s, when MLS feared failure. All teams are controlled by the league. The season runs from the spring to the fall, and ends in a series of play-offs, just like baseball.

The league has prospered, thanks to expansion fees. New owners pay hundreds of millions to join MLS, and this gets split among existing teams. This means teams can’t be relegated if they refuse to be competitive. It makes for lazy owners and bad soccer. It means the most important games are played when they don’t draw interest.

The answers are simple, but Garber won’t consider them. He needs to go.

Once he’s out of the way, MLS should buy the minor league United Soccer League. It can do this by selling its own interest in member teams. This will create a windfall that can fund a new structure.

A Simple Plan for Saving College Football

It’s Labor Day. Put down the tech, put down the markets, put down the politics and the media.

Let’s talk sport.

Specifically let’s talk about a game that’s dying before our eyes. College football.

Football is dying because of its cost. You need over 100 players, 10 coaches, training facilities. It’s impossible, except for the small number of teams that can fill huge stadiums and get on TV every week.

As with so many things today, there’s a simple solution to the problem. It starts by admitting that colleges don’t compete with professionals. The job of a college isn’t to build NFL rosters. It’s not to be a free minor league.

It’s not the job of a college to train anyone for an athletic career. Most sports recognize this. The best soccer players leave the academic environment in high school. The best basketball players are also being directed, increasingly, toward professional training.

The Close Season

Update: Atlanta United chose Frank de Boer as manager instead of Guillermo Barros Schelotto, who is heading to the LA Galaxy.

It has to do with playing style - de Boer's is closer to Tata's. President Darren Eales also decided that Atlanta can now recruit South America on the club's reputation, rather than the manager's. Time will tell how that works out.

The first thing de Boer must do is convince a big European club to pay Miguel Almiron starter's money in a transfer. Getting starter's money -- $15 million or more -- is a key to the whole project. We need to make a profit on turning starlets into stars. Do that often enough, build the league, and in time we'll be able to compete on salary against Europe, head-to-head.

Note that Zlatan is getting $7.5 million, which equates to a UK salary of nearly 147,000 UK Pounds a week, more than that league's top stars make, but less than many U.S. baseball shortstops make. 

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Let’s not talk about politics this week. It’s Christmas.

Let’s not talk about business, or technology, or global warming. Let’s talk about something fun and exciting.

Let’s talk about football.

The most important off-season in Atlanta sports history, the most important one in America’s soccer history, began December 8 with the sight of a sad coach losing a big game.

Unions and Management

Unions are, by their nature, conservative organizations.

Their aim is to protect members from change. Workers whose skills drive change, like computer programmers today, don’t need unions. Biology researchers don’t need unions.

But most other people do, because without unions competing in the marketplace, without labor being as organized as capital, imbalances grow that can tear any society apart. That’s what is happening now. The imbalance of power, between labor and management, between workers and owners, is tearing the fabric of American society apart as we watch.

I’m often asked whether I’m liberal or conservative, left or right. I’ve been both. Mainly, I’m for balance. I’m for muddling through. I’m for open competition, and for maintaining competition after the capitalist game ends and most players lose. Only government can maintain that balance, when it’s supported by the people and their interests. Unions are one such interest.

To say, “I’m for the unions,” however, as many liberals do, isn’t an adequate answer. Because, as I said, unions are conservative. Give them power and they’ll slow progress. Union bosses can be corrupted, and can corrupt everything they touch, because like managers, like entrepreneurs, like government officials, and like writers, they’re human beings.

Sport and the New Political Divide

The political divide today is less the traditional left-right than nationalist-internationalist.

This was brewing before Trump. But it has become the new normal. It’s a fault line people are still willing to cross, because it’s new. We love our nation, but can we love another without betraying it?

My point today is that this fault line has appeared in every area of our lives. Not just in politics, but in economics. It has appeared in music and art. And it has appeared in sport.

I have described how it works in sports here in Atlanta, where the Atlanta United “football” team has taken intown’s love from the Atlanta Braves. They moved to Trumpistan, specifically suburban Cobb County, with its long history of racism aimed at the central city. The bridge on I-75 over the Chattahoochee to Cobb County is still named for Lester Maddox, for gosh sakes.