Why hasn't there been a new major sports league? | Hacker News Reader

Why hasn't there been a new major sports league?

humaninvariant.substack.com

27 pointssurprisetalk66 comments

The popularity of the English Premier League in the US is a factor not considered anywhere in the piece.

Probably because it’s not a “US league?”

I might consider F1 in that case as it has gained in popularity a lot, and technically it’s owned by a U.S. company, but I’d never think of it as a U.S. league.

I think OP’s point is that the demand is being met elsewhere. The Premier League has exploded in popularity in the US because of accesible TV. It is easier than ever to watch foreign sports and you do not have to deal with local blackout garbage.

As someone who isn't much of a sports fan but will occasionally watch, I've found Premier League more interesting than US major leagues because of the promotion/relegation system.

With US leagues once it becomes clear what teams are in contention for winning the championship that year, games between the rest teams become a lot less interesting.

With Premier League, teams are fighting for the championship, just like in US leagues. The team that finishes #1 is the champion.

But they are also fighting to get into the next UEFA Champions League season. UEFA Champions League is a league for the top clubs from several European country top leagues. The top 4 Premier League finishers make it (so the Premier League champion and the next 3 teams).

There's also a fight for the #5 spot, because that team gets into the Europa League group stage.

Meanwhile the teams at the bottom of the Premier League are also fighting. The teams that finish in the last 3 places get kicked out of the Premier League!

They get moved to the the EFL Championship League. (Not to be confused with UEFA Champions. UEFA Champions is the league with the best teams from Europe. EFL Championship is a league for UK teams that are not quite good enough for Premier League).

Those 3 teams that get kicked down to EFL Championship League are replaced with the 3 top teams from EFL Championship League. (And it doesn't stop there...there are 7 more levels of leagues blow EFL Championship League, with promotion/relegation between each adjacent level).

Premier League has 20 teams and with 5 top spots to fight for and 3 bottom spots to fight to avoid you can get a long way into the season with 3/4 of the teams still having either a realistic shot of making the top 5 or in danger of not staying clear of the bottom 3.

F1 has blown up in popularity too

Are they just going to gloss over Twitch and video gaming like that? I'm fairly sure it qualifies if you don't specifically exclude their online only influence.

ESports is a sizeable chunk of the article?

And yet it's not a "new major sports league" ?

There's a weird perception that's floating out there claiming that video gaming cannot be "a sport", just because it's more mental than physical (although even that varies per game, for example high-level Guitar Hero players require extreme endurance and stamina). I also would wager a non-zero percentage of people with such mindset would also deny that chess is a sport, unless they grandfather it in due to the sheer age of chessdom.

It doesn't help that there is a partially overlapping mindset that believes that video games are for kids, something to grow out of. Since the vast majority of competitive gamers at the extreme top end are young adults, that theory is incorrect, but those who happen to be in the center of that Venn diagram would probably also deny that successful Twitch streamers have a "real job", etc.

This doesn't strike me as that weird. Playing a guitar also takes extreme stamina, for instance, but it takes a great deal more technical skill to hit the rhythmn and fingering. (Or at least if that isn't the case, that's certainly the perception.) Many guitarists also write their own music, and the truly impressive ones improvise.

Many sports require full-body coordination. I would also consider, say, a skilled ballet dancer much more obviously impressive and intriguing than being the best video gamer in the world. The only reason one might not consider it a sport is that it's not as competition-oriented (and I may be completely wrong in that; I can't feign deep knowledge of ballet).

I don't think it's disparaging to not consider video games a sport, either, it just seems like a category error. Much of the skill is simply not visible to people not intimately familiar with the game, the mechanics, and what might be difficult about it. I would put it in the same category as, say, live coding, or watching an expert artisan at work. I also can't fathom, say, the skill it takes to operate a crane as a world-class expert, or ice carving, or fixing a mechanical watch, or blowing glass.

Frankly, I also don't consider most streaming to be a "real" job. But that's probably related to the fact that I don't respect most content that emerges. But you could say the same thing about podcasting, or being an opinion columnist, or a pundit/talking head. This doesn't mean it doesn't take skill or effort; I just think it's not producing much of value.

Guitar Hero also isn't directly comparable to guitar. It's more like piano if anything. But the key point is that it brings a tiny fraction of the feeling of playing guitar to people who are completely tone deaf.

The magic of Guitar Hero is that it does bring a semblance of that performance feeling to non-musicians. If what I feel while playing GH is even 1/1000th of what a real musician feels when they perform their music, then holy shit. It gives me a much greater appreciation for what musicians actually feel when they're performing.

The surprisingly emotional debate of "is it a sport or is it a game" has been around from the moment we invented the category of "sports". I don't think it will ever be definitively settled, because the difference is cultural, not technical, and cultural attitudes change with time and location.

Personally, the technical-ish definition that makes the most sense to me is "if it's a competition and people are gathering to watch it without participating, then it's a sport".

That would make debate a sport. My rule is that it has to have a ball, a race or a fight. I guess you could argue that debate has a fight.

Gymnastics, javelin, high jump, long jump, target shooting, figure skating…

I don't consider those sports. They are mostly games like darts. Competitions that are won by arbitrary judging are their own category of thing. I know fighting sports are judged when there is no KO or concession, but that's why they say don't leave it to the judges because that is not a true win.

> That would make debate a sport.

True. I left out "athleticism" but should have included it. I just took that as a given.

That said, I don't think the idea of debate being a sport is entirely ridiculous. The Olympics had poetry as an event for 40 years or so...

Not by $$$, which is the main focus of the article.

In the second table, LoL esports is explicitly highlighted as a success by mindshare, but not profitability. And below that:

> LoL Esports: loses hundreds of millions of dollars annually, exists solely as a marketing mechanism to get people to play the actual game

"Esports" is not a league. That would be like saying "sports" is a league.

There are leagues around some games (like the ones mentioned in the article). There are also events with "league" in the name that are not really leagues (like ESL Pro League). In any case, none of them are financially successful in the US.

I think F1 got significantly more popular in the past few years with Drive to Survive on Netflix, and then most recently with the F1 movie on Apple TV.

It’s a sports league with history and has been around for a while, but I think significant popular mindshare only happened in the last 5 years.

Popular mindshare in the US in the last 5 years - outside the US it has been huge for decades

I think that heavily depends on regions. In Germany it peaked with Michael Schumacher. Later drivers like Vettel were successful, but didn't attract the same mainstream attention.

But in global terms F1 tried to grow it's reach to China and US. (Which then turned to "night time races" for their traditional European audience.

Indian Premier League (Cricket) is not a US league. Some reasons mentioned in the post apply to IPL. And IMO some don't (nerdy billionaires). There's even an acquired.fm episode on it. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/indian-premier-league-crick...

"So successful in fact that it is the fastest growing major sports league in the world, growing 20x in value since 2008 to be worth more than $16 billion today."

> Fans only want to watch the very best players. Without TV money, new leagues can’t match salaries, and cannot attract top talent.

Is there enough "top talent" to fund a new league? Take American football: there are more players in high school, than college, because the game gets faster and better; the same goes from college to the NFL. The game changes, too; so. success in college doe not mean success in the NFL. There have been 88 Heisman Trophy winners; but, only 10 have made the NFL Hall of Fame. (The only two-time Heisman Trpohy winner is not one of those ten.)

Did (DO) the XFL and AAF have "top talent"? These were players who were not good to get drafted by the NFL. Sure, some players have from the XFL to NFL; but, that makes the XFL more like a minor league or developmental league -- a notch lower.

Top talent is also going to these lesser leagues. Mason Cox was a top NCAA basketball player and got recruited to play AFL in Australia. There's quite a pipeline now because that. Same goes for Australia to US football kickers and punters.

Most of these sports are so variable that they qualify as 'unkind' learning environments, per David Epstein's work. Meaning that a large variety of other education is preferable. Patrick Mahomes is a great example. His baseball training has made him a great quarterback.

Point is, if the sport is sufficiently 'unkind' then any player from other sports should be just fine transferring over

The bit about getting the government to invest with a goal that isn't financial ROI reminds me of the Olympics during the cold war. All that investment to "prove" the dominance of one economic system or another.

The scourge of unfettered capitalism. Everything boils down to "how much money does it make"

Small-time capitalism is good. But beyond a certain size, it falls apart and can even become quasi-governmental. When is somebody going to blend the best part of all political isms to get closer to the best possible form of society

Best for who though? There just is no one size that fits all. Personally I would be happy in a more equal socialistic society but I recognize that others prefer the individuality and excitement of playing the game of chance in our capitalist system.

What I’m looking for is perhaps more at a smaller level of local community, not “state” level.

Best for the largest percentage of people. Clearly, pure capitalism isn't that. But so isn't pure communism, or pure socialism.

There isn’t even a single true implementation of either of those isms. They’re just broad categorizations. I would say communism isn’t even the same broader category.

People tried picking the best bits of capitalism and communism and they ended up with fascism. Maybe it's fine what we have now which is capitalism with piles of restrictions and government spending to fix all the little bugs that've been discovered over time. I'd say society is too complex for some invented -ism to just magically work.

I guess it depends on where in the world you are, but where I am capitalism is ruling the roost and destroying everything in the process, just like the other pure isms

Where are you? Shenzhen? Somalia? Don't say America because that has wildly distorted markets just like everywhere else I know.

Looks like they missed Major League Cricket (MLC) founded in 2023

Is there any market in the world where rival leagues of the same sport compete in the same geographic location? Maybe there aren’t new leagues because Americans don’t care enough about new sports?

Further, it’s the teams, not the leagues that make money, which I didn’t pick up in a brief skim of the article. Why would any team want to join an rival league? League monopoly seems like the natural fit, and let the competition happen between teams.

Both the NFL (football) and MLB (baseball) formed from competing leagues in the US.

Right, but they did merge, and I’d argue it’s because it’s natural for a sports league to be a monopoly. Fans wanna see the best players and teams compete with each other.

Darts might not be considered a sport, but the British Darts Organisation [1] and the Professional Darts Corporation [2] co-existed (somewhat acrimoniously) for nearly 30 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Darts_Organisation (BDO)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Darts_Corporation (PDC)

Overtime exists: https://overtime.tv/

Unrivaled only launched last year but its going well and I believe going to be a powerhouse in the womens basketball market as well: https://www.unrivaled.basketball/

3 of the listed leagues were created in the 90s (MLS, UFC and WNBA), even though they are from the previous century I would categorize them much closer to modern times. 30 years difference is not that big of a gap. UFC in specific just got real attention in the last 15 years or so

This is ignoring the massive surge in popularity of college sports in recent years. At a quick glance, it looks like NCAA revenue has ~tripled since 2000. While not exactly the same thing, I think the author needs to explain the phenomena in his theory.

What significant college/HS level sport is not already producing people for a league-based game? Yeah, they can get women's alternatives, which lead to some exciting play, but I can't think of a sport that's not already covered.

There has been, the esports leagues. The viewership on the LoL championship game had a larger viewership than then Super Bowl.

Edit: Got caught not reading the article, sorry. I’ll leave this up as a monument to my shame.

He did mention them.

> The three leagues with even an argument for being not total failures are the NWSL, League of Legends Esports (LoL Esports), and LIV Golf. All have unique advantages over their counterparts, and yet none of them are profitable today or even on a very convincing path toward profitability.

Tfa directly addresses LoL.

> LoL Esports: loses hundreds of millions of dollars annually, exists solely as a marketing mechanism to get people to play the actual game

If viewership is high, does that matter? Football loses hundreds of millions of dollars for Proctor and Gamble, if you look at it a certain way.

It’s a good point. You can view the unprofitable leagues as having one main sponsor, and then it’s just a matter of accounting. Profitability may not be a good metric.

Indoor football (soccer) leagues like the Kings League and Baller League have significant potential to become major players.

They are reported to generate between 50 and 100 million in revenue per season already.

Can we please stop pretending that WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is a sport? Clue: It’s got “entertainment” right there in the name.

Within kayfabe, WWE is a sport. Outside of kayfabe, it's not.

Medical dramas are not medicine, courtroom dramas are not court, wrestling dramas are not wrestling.

That's true. But my parent post was talking about WWE, not real wrestling

All sports are entertainment. No one watches the Jets expecting them to win.

I assume you’re being facetious, but just to be clear: WWE is scripted, while the Jets have a fair chance to win any given game.

But you can place bets on WWE games:

https://www.sbo.net/wwe/

If they are not 100% transparent about it, then it's matchfixing.

yea, betting on the script. Like betting on the content of a new book coming out.

I suppose there's an X-factor in wrestling in the live physicality of it. There could be planned story events that can't be delivered due to injury or physical error. If a wrestler breaks a leg or seriously dislocates something mid-performance, it's going to be difficult to justify slapping a belt around them at the end.

With "One Life To Live", that sort of surprise is less likely, and they can reshoot it if necessary.

Yea, I guess you could also bet on wether a stage actor in a musical will get hurt or not.

Only moderately so.

The Jets are not favored to win many of their games. The expectation is that they lose.

There are multiple teams where mediocrity would be seen as an improvement.

However, people buy the jerseys, go to games, etc.

Things like the Combine and draft are becoming events on their own. The games are only there to provide the structure for why we should care about one group over another.

Sports are entertainment.

There's an enormous amount of money commanded by F1 racing. There are only three, or maybe four, teams that have any chance of winning a race. The other six or seven teams battle to just end up in the points because that determines how the revenue gets shared with the teams.

> The other six or seven teams battle to just end up in the points b

Which means that there is a sportive completion. There are just a few races happening inside a single event.

However in WWE the outcome is fixed and there is no true competition, but a show of fitness, athletism, etc., a more strength based theater piece.

To be clear, I agree with you that WWE is not a sport.

But the counter argument that I have heard which I find the strongest, is pointing out the extreme physical endurance and strength that they have in order to complete their routines. It does take a pretty high level of athleticism to accomplish what they do.

I think that's a strong argument, but I don't think it's enough to make it a sport. It takes an extreme level of athleticism to do plenty of things that we don't consider sports

I personally prefer padel or spec tennis but pickleball seems to be getting attention

I’m open to helping if anyone wants to start the violence network

Popular American sports need a version similar to Rugby sevens

I think a U.S. rugby league has potential.

The author omitted Major League Rugby

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