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Barozi on 24 July 2014
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Goatseye said:
Barozi said:

and look how many American teams are purely artificial and change their name and home location or go completely out of business.1 (What team had to change name and location to dodge bankrupcy?)

It makes them more money since it's just one country and thus only one major professional league for each kind of sport and they all share a very similar taste. If the team is unsuccessful or not profitable enough, it will disappear, thus only leaving the big clubs alive.

In Europe there's only one major sport and that is football. The top clubs there can compete with the American teams in terms of value. After all Real Madrid is the most valuable sports team in the world.
Aside from football each country has another form of sport that is rather big there, but not on a worldwide or even European-wide scale.
Cricket (England), Handball (Germany), Basketball (Spain), Hockey (Russia), Rugby (Britain), Volleyball (Russia)2   .(And just in US there is Boxing, Baseball,Basketball,Football,Nascar,Hockey, etc... all multi-billion dollar businesses with top paid athletes also)

(countries in brackets are IMO the most influential in that kind of sport. Didn't want to mention more than one country.)

With European football most people only care about the domestic league (national interest) and how these teams do in Champions League (national pride). If there was a single country of 300m people in Europe, expect much more clubs to be multi-billion dollar franchises in that country.3 (It would never reach that status because clubs in the mediterranean countries, would just be surrogates for money laundering machines. Plus if Americans all loved the same sports there would trillion dollar teams also.)
Much higher potential to sell merchandise products, build bigger stadiums and everyone could watch the games there because they all have access to the same channels.

I love soccer as you can see. However, it needs to be regulated a bit so the mooches can be wed out.

The construction of the stadiums in Brazil prove my point. It's a shame.

1. None. I just said that the team owners do everything to make the team a multi billion franchise and that includes giving the team a new image by changing its name or by relocating it to a completely different city. (Basically taking a piss on the existing fanbase). If that still doesn't help the team owner sells all players and lets the club die. I don't see how that system is anything to strive for.

2. I think we were talking about club sports here? Some others you mentioned are individual sports, which really aren't comparable. Also for Nascar there is Formula 1 and Boxing is very popular over here as well.

3. Trillion dollars ? That's a bit exaggerated. I said a very similar taste. The popularity of the big 4 forms of club sports is rather equal in the US. American football being the most popular, then either Baseball or Basketball and then Hockey.
In most European countries the popularity of football is much much higher than any other kind of sport.
So yeah if, let's say the same percentage of US Americans loved a single type of sport as the Europeans do with football, then those teams would easily beat the likes of Real Madrid.

 

You're complaining about the money from rich Arabs and Russians, but the same is happening in the US. The only difference being that American millionaires and billionaires have control over the clubs. Again, nothing to strive for, especially as a fan.
I'm not complaining about the league system there though with geographically separated leagues, play-offs, drafts and all that.

About the stadiums in Brazil, I'm not quite sure what you're aiming at.
If you're talking about the treatment of the workers, don't blame the sport. FIFA has nothing to do with that.
If you're talking about stadiums that were built in regions where there's no big local club, blame the Brazilian football association. The FIFA has set a minimum amount of stadiums that is required for a world cup. Brazil built 4 stadiums more than necessary.