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Actually, it’s the anti-trust exemptions / lack of enforcement that allows the leagues (owned by the billionaire team owners) to decide who can and can’t own a team.

Otherwise teams could and probably would be purchased by publicly-owned corporations.

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The NFL ownership rules prohibit public corporate ownership, although that is not due to the antitrust exemption.

There are numerous current and historic examples of corporate ownership in the other 3 leagues. Toronto's teams are all owned by Rogers. The Angels and Ducks were once owned by Disney. Comcast owns the Flyers and once owned the 76ers. CBS owned the Yankees.

That's not a hard rule; there are several counterexamples. I found the Knicks, Braves, Blue Jays, Rangers, and Canadiens are publicly-owned. The billionaires will play their money games, but they don't have full control on the entire league.

Right but those instances only happened because the existing owners approved the sales.

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