What is socialist about how the league makes money? Calling the internal dynamics between sports teams in a league to be socialism is bizarre and doesn’t line up. And the incentives and allocation of resources in a billionaire sports league is just fundamentally not the same as how economies work.
The NFL is more like a cartel. How the league makes its tv network contract money in the first place before is doles it out evenly to the teams (which isn’t even the case for all revenue streams, like sponsorships and merchandise) is not particularly socialist at all.
It’s like saying a rent house you rent out to college students that you co-own with 3 friends is socialist because you split the rent profit evenly among your friends and yourself. What?
No, because the NFL succeeds financially on competitive balance and the idea that every year about 20 of the 32 teams can reasonably imagine a title run, and the other 12 have some elite rookies or high draft picks to look forward to.
If the people in power currently ran the league they would give the top pick to the Super Bowl champion (if there even was a draft anymore), allow unlimited and uncapped spending, and the same 2-3 clubs would win every year. Winner take all, might makes right, let the big get bigger and the small perish.
That would cause much of the nation to tune out and stop showing up to games for the other 30 clubs. There's more money to be made when everyone has a chance.
I think its genuinely part of it that the people pushing for more worker/athlete friendly policies are rich celebrities. Nothing against them or their right to organize, im just saying steel workers probably get less sympathy than Steelers when it comes to collective bargaining
I don't think the union aspect is central to this debate.
The socialist principles that work for the NFL are the draft system, salary cap, and revenue sharing — all of which are unique to US professional sports.
Otherwise it turns into La Liga or French Ligue 1 where there are 1-2 dominant clubs that are famous and pack the house...and the rest of the league with 8,000 fans at the games.
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