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Surely its the features of the league structures which are important, not which sport uses them. What possible relevance could it be that the franchise system was developed by baseball? Especially since the type of sport played in these structures is irrelevant. Its certainly possible to play baseball in a promotion/relegation system, and soccer in a franchise model as they do in America and Australia. Use of the term franchise and franchise model in this sense is common. It seems quite pedantic to argue that the term franchise cant be used just because the sporting clubs arent technically franchises in the strictest terms of a business model, rather than use the name franchise model and put in a line explaining how the clubs are not strictly franchises. Can we please use sensibly descriptive terms? Mdw0 ( talk) 02:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
U.S. system | European system |
---|---|
Rules set by league | Rules set by governing body |
Same teams every year, except for expansion/contraction | Promotion and relegation |
Teams operate under league auspices | Teams operate independently |
Teams play almost exclusively within league | Teams play league and non-league games |
All but a few teams enjoy geographical exclusivity | No geographical exclusivity |
One champion each year | Several potential champions each year |
The biggest difference between the "North American" system and the "European" system, other than promotion/relegation vs. a fixed lineup of teams, is that in the North American system, the teams for all practical purposes exist wholly within their leagues, while in the so-called European system, the league is just one competition that teams play in.
The article formerly explained this well. The explanation has now been eliminated, replaced with only the following paragraph:
This paragraph will be meaningless to a North American reader, who likely has no idea what a "cup competition" or a "knock-out" basis is.
I'm going to put back what's been removed. If you feel this is beyond the bounds of the title, then suggest a new title -- don't go tearing up the article. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 04:51, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to go over the history of this page for the benefit of those who have started to edit it more recently.
Four years ago, some British soccer fans started a page called "Sports franchising." It was intended to be about the North American system of organizing pro sports. Not being experts on the subject matter, they sought the assistance of North American sports fans to craft the article. (The original article title didn't last long.) The article was written with the aim of explaining to those unfamiliar with the North American system how it works, and quickly expanded to explaining to those unfamiliar with the European system how that system works. This is how Wikipedia articles should be written -- aimed at those unfamiliar with the subject matter. People who already know about the subject matter don't need the information.
When writing an article, we should think, "Who is likely to need this information? What are they likely to know ahead of time? What are they likely not to know?" -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 05:30, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
In my view, the European section contains inaccuracies and is premised on pre-conceptions of how professional sports is organized in North America.
I have tried to make changes to the section, but several of my earlier changes, as well as my latest changes have been removed. I have re-produced several of my changes, including the latest ones, on a User page.
In the circumstances, the article should reflect that its accuracy/neutrality is disputed. Rainjar ( talk) 06:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Rainjar has not specifically pointed out what's wrong with each individual line, but he did give a very brief summary of some things he seems to be concerned about. While I don't have time to go compare his proposed changes to the existing article line by line at the moment, I think I can respond quickly to his list above:
Before I started making changes to the article on 11 November 2010, there were just two sections, namely "Fixed number of franchise teams" and "Promotion - Relegation". The "Promotion - Relegation" section (last previously edited on 8 November 2010) read as follows:
English football (soccer) developed a very different system from the North American one, and it has been adopted for football in most other countries, as well as to many other sports played in Europe. The system is marked by:
*The existence of an elected governing body to which clubs at all levels of the sport belong *Games played both inside and outside of leagues *The promotion of well-performing teams to higher-level leagues or divisions and the relegation of poorly performing teams to lower-level leagues or divisions.
European football clubs are members both of a league and of a governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League, a separate organization. The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues. In conjunction with other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs.
The Premier League negotiates television contracts for its games. However, although the league the dominating competition in which a club might participate, there are many non-league fixtures a club might play in a given year. A Premier League team might play a league game one week and an FA Cup game against a team from a lower-level league the next. The third game might be against a Danish team in the UEFA Champions League, operated by the Union of European Football Associations. On occasion all three such games may involve the same clubs.
In any given year, a country could have several champions. In 2004-05, Chelsea won the Premier League championship, Arsenal won the FA Cup and Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League, a multi-country club championship. Usually the national league winners are considered the national champions, similar to the franchise-based leagues, and bragging rights may be settled by means of a Super Cup, although this is considered a special event and has not been mandatory in any league anywhere in the world.
The promotion and relegation system is generally used to determine membership of leagues. Most commonly, a pre-determined number of teams that finish the bottom of a league or division are automatically dropped down, or relegated, to a lower level for the next season. They are replaced by teams who are promoted from that lower tier either by finishing with the best records or by winning a playoff. In England in 2010, Burnley, Hull City and Portsmouth were relegated from the Premier League to the Football League Championship, the second level of English soccer. They were replaced by the top two teams from the second level, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion, as well as Blackpool F.C., which won a playoff tournament of the teams that finished third through sixth.
Relegation often has devastating financial consequences for club owners who not only lose TV, sponsorship and gate income but also see the asset value of their shares in the club collapse. Some leagues offer a " parachute payment" to its relegated teams for the following years, (if a team is promoted again the next year then the parachute payment for the second season is distributed among the teams of the lower division) [1], sums which often are higher than the prize money received by some non-relegated teams, in order to protect them from bankruptcy. There is of course a corresponding bonanza for owners of promoted clubs.
Clubs may be sold privately to new owners at any time, but this does not happen often where clubs are based on community membership and agreement. Such clubs require agreement from members who, unlike shareholders of corporations, have priorities other than money when it comes to their football club. For similar reasons, relocation of clubs to other cities is very rare. This is mostly because virtually all cities and towns in Europe have a football club of some sort, the size and strength of the club usually relative to the town's size and importance. Anyone wanting ownership of a high ranked club in his native city must buy the local club as it stands and work it up through the divisions, usually by hiring better talent. Buying an existing top-flight club and move it to the city is problematic, as the supporters of the town's original club are unlikely to switch allegiance to an interloper. There have been some cases where existing owners have chosen to relocate out of a difficult market, to better facilities, or simply to realize the market value of the land that the current stadium is built upon. As in the U.S., team relocations have been controversial as supporters of the club will protest at its loss.
The league does not choose which cities are to have teams in the top division. For example, Leeds, the fourth-biggest city in England, saw their team relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in 2004, and then saw their team relegated to the third-tier League One in 2007. Leeds will remain without a Premiership team as long as it takes for Leeds United or in theory any other local club to do well enough in the second-tier division to win the right to play in the Premiership. Famously, the French Ligue 1 lacked a team from Paris for some years.
Territorial rights are not recognized, and successful new teams in a geographical location can come to dominate the incumbents. In Munich, for example, TSV 1860 München were initially more successful than the city's current biggest team Bayern München. [2] Major cities such as London may have many teams in the professional leagues: for example, in 2010–11 it has five teams in the Premier League alone, an additional eight teams in the three fully professional leagues within The Football League, and at least one fully professional team ( AFC Wimbledon) in Conference National, the top level of Non-League football.
This system originated in England in 1888 when twelve clubs decided to create a professional Football League. The "closed shop" aspect of baseball's National League was not deemed to be necessary to ensure stability in England because a national English football league did not require the sort of travel commitments that were necessary in the U.S. A secretariat was created to organize and run the Football League. Later lower tiers (divisions) were added.
This system is widely used in football (soccer) around the world, notably in Africa and Latin America as well as Europe. The most notable variation has developed in Latin America where many countries have two league seasons per year, which scheduling allows because many Spanish-speaking Latin American nations lack a national cup competition. Promotion and relegation has historically been used in other team sports founded in the United Kingdom, such as rugby union, rugby league and cricket.
The system is also used in Europe even when the sports were founded in America, showing that the league system is not related to the sport itself, but more on the tradition of sports organisation in that region. Sports such as basketball in Spain and Lithuania and ice hockey in Russia use promotion and relegation. Alternately, in Australia the A-League follows the tradition of Australian sports having a franchise model that better suits a country with great distances between the country's main population centres, similar to the situation in the U.S. and Canada.
East Asian countries ( Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan) have a particular differentiation among leagues: "European" sports such as soccer and rugby use promotion and relegation, while "American" sports such as baseball and basketball use franchising, with a few differences varying from country to country. A similar situation exists in countries in Central America and the Caribbean, where soccer and baseball share several close markets."
When I first added a European section, I moved most of the above to "Comparison between the North American system and the European system. Intervening changes have also been made by others.
I leave it to the reader to decide which of the above, the current version, or the further changes I propose, is most relevant and accurate. I have no interest in pursuing the matter any further. As I have stated above, bias is inherent in the title of the article, and creates inherent inaccuracy when applied to European sport.
PS. I assume the reference to the formation of the Football League in 1888 is intended to be ironical, as the Football League was a 'closed shop' from its formation in 1888 until promotion and relegation was introduced when the Football Alliance became the Football League Second Division in 1892. Rainjar ( talk) 10:04, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
The first difference between Rainjar's version and the existing version is the subhead "The English example." This is important because Rainjar then goes into a lot more detail about England than the existing version. However, the point of the article is not to inform the reader about English soccer but to explain to the reader how the European system of pro sports organization works. It uses England as an example because that's what the original writers were most familiar with. We need to keep the article focused.
The current version then says, "European football clubs are members both of a league and of a governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League, a separate organization." Rainjar does away with the first paragraph and just says, "In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League."
It's likely the reader will not know what the FA or the Premier League are. Therefore, we need something that makes clear the FA is a governing body, keeping in mind the theoretical uneducated reader does not yet know what a governing body is yet. So I think the first sentence should stay.
Rainjar's next sentence says, "Clubs below the top tier are members of other leagues, such as the Football League (the oldest football league in the world) and the Football Conference." This might be good to add.
Rainjar completes the paragraph as follows: "The Premier League was formed in 1992 when clubs of the old First Division broke away from the Football League[1]. The Football Conference is the lowest level at which there are professional clubs. A club from the Football Conference could, by way of several promotions over several seasons, get to play in the Premier League."
The first two sentences there are unnecessary for the article. The third is misplaced, because we haven't gotten into promotion and relegation yet.
Next comes the description of what the governing body does. The original article tries to do this in two sentences: "The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues. In conjunction with other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs."
Rainjar spends no fewer than five paragraphs on the FA and all of its tasks. This is way too much, since this is not an article on the FA or on English soccer. All we have to do is briefly explain what a governing body is and what it does, perhaps using the FA as an example.
We do not need to mention the FA Cup, FA Trophy, League Cup, League Trophy, Champions League, Europa League or Club World Cup. The current article does mention the FA Cup and Champions League as examples of non-league competitions a club might play in, and that's OK, but we don't need to mention them by themselves. All we need to say is that one of the governing body's tasks is to organize competitions between clubs in different leagues.
Furthermore, we don't need to get into the nitty-gritty about how the rules of soccer are formulated. What's important to explain is that this is a responsibility of the governing body or bodies rather than the leagues (as it is in the North American system). I'm concerned that if we mention the IFAB (which is just a consortium of the four Home Nation governing bodies and FIFA), we're making this too much a soccer article rather than a pro sports organization article that uses soccer as an example. If something about soccer isn't analogous to other sports that use the European system, we probably shouldn't mention it but rather should speak in general terms. Therefore, I think the current wording -- "it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs" -- is preferable, as it could apply to other sports.
Rainjar then has the subhead "Miscellaneous," which is not a good choice of word, since we haven't gotten to promotion and relegation yet, which is not "miscellaneous" but a key part of the European system.
The next sentence is, "In England, player salaries are a matter of contract between the club and the player. There have been no rules concerning player salaries since the Professional Footballers' Association successfully brought about the end of the maximum wage in 1961." This sentence is extraneous as this is not an article about salary caps.
Rainjar keeps the next sentence about promotion and relegation from the original article, but deletes the example from the Premier League, replacing it with, "For details of the winners of the various professional competitions and promotion/relegation in the 2009-10 season in England, see 2009–10 in English football." I don't see why he makes that change. The example is helpful for a reader who might not be familiar with the concept of P&R. Rainjar's replacement seems like a non sequitur.
Rainjar keeps the next paragraph but deletes the following two:
"Unlike in North American pro sports, where the "league" is the only competition member teams play in, European teams play matches both inside and outside of their leagues. In English soccer, a team may follow a league game with a match in the FA Cup (a tournament involving hundreds of pro and semi-professional teams), and then a game in the UEFA Champions League (a competition involving the best European teams from the previous year.
In any given year, a country could have several trophy winners. In 2004-05, Chelsea won the Premier League championship, Arsenal won the FA Cup and Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League."
These paragraphs are very important as they explain to the reader (who may only be familiar with the North American system) the key difference between the European and North American system and provides examples of how it works. There is no reason to delete them.
Rainjar then adds the following:
"In the major European football leagues, there are usually 16 to 24 clubs in each division. Clubs play each other twice in the league over the course of a season, each club playing the other at home once and away once. In countries with a significant drop-off in quality outside the main centres or a smaller population, there may only be 10 to 14 clubs in a division and the clubs may play each other three or four times over the course of the league season. The league season usually runs for 8 or 9 months, with either a winter break or a summer break, or both. In England, the league season runs from August to May of the following year."
This, again, is completely extraneous and irrelevant to the topic at hand. The number of teams in a division, how many times they play each other and the months the season runs have nothing to do with what makes the European system and how it differs from the North American system. These things are likely to differ from sport to sport and, in soccer, from league to league and country to country. As stated above, this is an article on pro sports organization as a concept, not on English soccer.
Rainjar doesn't mention the final section of the article. I don't know if this is because he has no issues with it or because he wants to delete the whole thing.
I'm sorry if my comments seem harsh and I appreciate Rainjar's desire to work on the article, but we have to keep in mind the intention of the article and the needs of the likely reader. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
The current version, not the version that existed before I started making changes. The current version already incorporates a lot of my changes. I'll try to summarize the problems here:
The above discussions highlights that the article still lacks a universal perspective.
The use of the term sports league in North America, as contrasted with league competition, in Europe brings out the inherent unsuitability of the word "league" in the title.
The continued reliance on the fact that European clubs play "cup competitions" outside of "league competitions" as a distinguishing feature is a false premise. The comparison is with North America, not the North American system. That Super League clubs continue to play in a separate cup competition even though the Super League has switched to a closed "franchise" system, brings this out. Once you move beyond a strict distinction between a 'closed' system with territorial rights and a 'promotion-relegation' system without territorial rights, you're already moving into extraneous matters. Who is to decide how much extraneous, descriptive content should be allowed? I would accept all extraneous matter being deleted, including the reference to European clubs playing games outside of their "league".
I have sought to address overview issues by amendments to the introduction and adding an "Overview" section at the end of the article Rainjar ( talk) 05:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Rainjar, you have continued to operate in a way that makes it difficult to improve the article. You have come here not with the attitude of, "I have some concerns about the accuracy of the article; let's work together to address them." Instead, your attitude has been hostile and uncompromising. You can't just go onto an article that has existed for four years, make massive changes without seeking consensus, and then when people challenge you on them get all worked up and say, "Well if you just read what I wrote you'd understand!"
I'm going to revert to Mdw0's last version until you try to get consensus on whatever changes you want to make. If you want, we can do a WP:RFC to get more people involved. If you keep acting in the manner you have been, I'll put it on WP:WQA.
Also, I'm going to suggest renaming the article "Organization of professional sports" to take "league" out of the title. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
I think there would be less argument about this page if we based it on academic sources instead of our own experience. Undoubtedly, much has been written about the organization of pro sports, as sports business is a subject of much study nowadays. In 5 seconds on Google Scholar for instance, I found a paper titled "European and North American Sports Differences (?)" from the Scottish Journal of Political Economy. No doubt there are dozens more like it. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
The Football League, the world's first association football league, actually started with a closed system in 1888, with limited capacity to replace member clubs by a system of re-election. There was also originally a rule that only one club from each town should be included. In order to expand, the Football League absorbed the rival Football Alliance in 1891 to form a ' Second Division', with promotion and relegation between the First Division and the Second Division. Promotion and relegation was thus more a result of prevailing circumstances than a conscious departure from a closed system.
In any event, prior to the formation of the Premier League in 1992 by the clubs of Football League First Division, and the introduction of automatic promotion and relegation between the then Football League Fourth Division and the Football Conference in 1987, the entire four tiers of the Football League could be regarded as 'closed' system, with promotion and relegation taking place internally. Such a multi-tiered closed system with internal promotion and relegation is not uncommon in association football and other "European" sport.
Further, association football's equivalent to Major League Baseball's financing of minor league teams are reserve team leagues, such as the Premier Reserve League.
Nevertheless, the use of the North American system is increasing worldwide. As team sport becomes increasingly commercialized, the 'closed' system, with territorial rights, and without the financial risk of relegation, allows for greater business stability and profitability. For example, in cricket, the Indian Premier League, launched in 2008, operates on this system. The Super League, which is the top level of rugby league in the United Kingdom and France, will be run on a franchise basis from 2009. [6]
The increasing use of the 'North American system' for league competition in countries that previously used the European system, while continuing to maintain a separate cup competition, has resulted in increasing 'hybridization'. For example, clubs playing in Rugby League's Super League continue to participate in the Challenge Cup.
The global nature of association football also gives rise to a hierarchy of governing bodies. Even though they operate under a closed system, Major League Soccer and the A-League are both subject to governance by FIFA.
In the final analysis, the only real difference may be the availability of territorial rights in the North American system, and the absence of such rights in the European system. Rainjar ( talk) 06:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
As the above discussion with Mwalcoff and Mdw0 has degenerated and become unnecessarily personal, I will leave them to their misconceptions and tendency to treat this article as their own. I will revert the European section to the version that existed before I started making changes on 11 November 2010. I would be grateful if none of the changes that I made are re-introduced. Rainjar ( talk) 14:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
League, association, conference, division — and maybe others. Reference to the following articles may be useful. (I expect to add some listings before deliberating much.)
These aren't well explained at wikipedia. I think this article is right to imply or to establish that league is one preferred general term (lowercase). The articles on associations, conferences, divisions, etc, should note that some Yadda Yadda Leagues (proper nouns) aren't leagues; some Yadda Yadda Associations aren't associations; etc. -- P64 ( talk) 22:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
The article notes that NHL, NBA, and MLS teams have faced outside hockey, basketball, and soccer teams. What is the purported distinction between systems? Is that all matches with non-league opponents are exhibition games, in the American system? -- P64 ( talk) 23:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
With few exceptions, clubs in the American system have exclusive territories. I have changed that to say that all American system clubs have territorial rights, which are usually exclusive territories.
That is true on the American side. Is it true that European system clubs have no territorial rights at all? -- P64 ( talk) 23:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Only in terms of exclusive rights to their grounds, not to any other territory. A new club could start up tomorrow anywhere and if successful on the field, they could enter the top leagues. This can create fascinating rivalries - just look at Machester United and manchester City now. Of course it doesnt happen often. AFC Wimbledon is a London club that was formed in 2003 and currently plays in League Two, the 4th tier of English football, so they have a long way to go before Chelsea has to look over their shoulder. In Italy, Chievo Verona was promoted five times from 1975 to 2001 from Serie D to Serie A, and the older Hellas Verona had no say in it. You win, you rise to the top. Mdw0 ( talk) 06:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
This has been deleted as a small part of the latest edit.
"(the league has, however, promoted teams from lower level leagues to MLS, but not through automatic means)"
This is material for a footnote or a link to the section of Major League Soccer where it is explained. Offhand it seems important enough that it should be explained there. -- P64 ( talk) 15:42, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The link in the opening paragraph to Franchising is troublesome, as that article explicitly excludes the North American sports concept. It has a note stating: "For the concept of "franchising" in sports, see Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada." However, that article does not actually go over the concept in a particular section. Facts about franchises and the franchise model are spread throughout the article. Is there a more focused article to direct this to? If not, shouldn't there be? Does anyone have any idea about how to structure such an article? -- Khajidha ( talk) 17:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
It is not easy to compare 'levels of play.' Just because a national USA basketball or baseball team dominates opponents, that is not necessarily indicative of the 'level of play' in the national league. The line suggests that the level of play in the American national leagues is superior even to international level. Unfortunately saying the only way to tell unless you play them doesnt make sense, because you cant throw in a club side from a different league and expect that to be significant. Not even in football's Champions League does that really work, because Real Madrid and Barcelona's success does not reflect the relative weakness of the domestic Spanish league. It is true to say a USA gridiron team has never been tested by an international opponent, but since there has never been a challenger, trying to use this basis to say that the NFL is not the top level of American football has no merit. The one true challenge is with ice hockey, where it can easily be argued that Olympic play is often superior to the NHL, and the intensity of Canada vs USA is at a higher level than between the North American franchises. The trick is to replace that line with a better one, yet still maintain the point. As for being world champions, it depends on who is challenging them. The Superbowl champions have no challengers. The European basketball and hockey clubs or Japanese baseball clubs have not been beating their chests saying they are better than the American champions. Mdw0 ( talk) 00:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The title of this article is confusing. A league is an organization, so adding organization at the end makes it seem "professional sports league" is a modifier to "organization". So the topic of this article could be about organizations in professional sports leagues, otherwise known as teams or clubs, rather than the leagues they play in. I would just move the article to "professional sports league", but there are lots of redirects from the sports meaning of franchise, including Franchise (sports), which should be an article, not a redirect to professional sports league, even if the articles themselves will have overlapping content. But they aren't the same thing. A short article that wikilinks to this article would be sufficient to start to untangle this issue, including significant confusion on Wikidata, which is already named professional sports league. Any discussion? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 16:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
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Surely its the features of the league structures which are important, not which sport uses them. What possible relevance could it be that the franchise system was developed by baseball? Especially since the type of sport played in these structures is irrelevant. Its certainly possible to play baseball in a promotion/relegation system, and soccer in a franchise model as they do in America and Australia. Use of the term franchise and franchise model in this sense is common. It seems quite pedantic to argue that the term franchise cant be used just because the sporting clubs arent technically franchises in the strictest terms of a business model, rather than use the name franchise model and put in a line explaining how the clubs are not strictly franchises. Can we please use sensibly descriptive terms? Mdw0 ( talk) 02:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
U.S. system | European system |
---|---|
Rules set by league | Rules set by governing body |
Same teams every year, except for expansion/contraction | Promotion and relegation |
Teams operate under league auspices | Teams operate independently |
Teams play almost exclusively within league | Teams play league and non-league games |
All but a few teams enjoy geographical exclusivity | No geographical exclusivity |
One champion each year | Several potential champions each year |
The biggest difference between the "North American" system and the "European" system, other than promotion/relegation vs. a fixed lineup of teams, is that in the North American system, the teams for all practical purposes exist wholly within their leagues, while in the so-called European system, the league is just one competition that teams play in.
The article formerly explained this well. The explanation has now been eliminated, replaced with only the following paragraph:
This paragraph will be meaningless to a North American reader, who likely has no idea what a "cup competition" or a "knock-out" basis is.
I'm going to put back what's been removed. If you feel this is beyond the bounds of the title, then suggest a new title -- don't go tearing up the article. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 04:51, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to go over the history of this page for the benefit of those who have started to edit it more recently.
Four years ago, some British soccer fans started a page called "Sports franchising." It was intended to be about the North American system of organizing pro sports. Not being experts on the subject matter, they sought the assistance of North American sports fans to craft the article. (The original article title didn't last long.) The article was written with the aim of explaining to those unfamiliar with the North American system how it works, and quickly expanded to explaining to those unfamiliar with the European system how that system works. This is how Wikipedia articles should be written -- aimed at those unfamiliar with the subject matter. People who already know about the subject matter don't need the information.
When writing an article, we should think, "Who is likely to need this information? What are they likely to know ahead of time? What are they likely not to know?" -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 05:30, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
In my view, the European section contains inaccuracies and is premised on pre-conceptions of how professional sports is organized in North America.
I have tried to make changes to the section, but several of my earlier changes, as well as my latest changes have been removed. I have re-produced several of my changes, including the latest ones, on a User page.
In the circumstances, the article should reflect that its accuracy/neutrality is disputed. Rainjar ( talk) 06:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Rainjar has not specifically pointed out what's wrong with each individual line, but he did give a very brief summary of some things he seems to be concerned about. While I don't have time to go compare his proposed changes to the existing article line by line at the moment, I think I can respond quickly to his list above:
Before I started making changes to the article on 11 November 2010, there were just two sections, namely "Fixed number of franchise teams" and "Promotion - Relegation". The "Promotion - Relegation" section (last previously edited on 8 November 2010) read as follows:
English football (soccer) developed a very different system from the North American one, and it has been adopted for football in most other countries, as well as to many other sports played in Europe. The system is marked by:
*The existence of an elected governing body to which clubs at all levels of the sport belong *Games played both inside and outside of leagues *The promotion of well-performing teams to higher-level leagues or divisions and the relegation of poorly performing teams to lower-level leagues or divisions.
European football clubs are members both of a league and of a governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League, a separate organization. The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues. In conjunction with other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs.
The Premier League negotiates television contracts for its games. However, although the league the dominating competition in which a club might participate, there are many non-league fixtures a club might play in a given year. A Premier League team might play a league game one week and an FA Cup game against a team from a lower-level league the next. The third game might be against a Danish team in the UEFA Champions League, operated by the Union of European Football Associations. On occasion all three such games may involve the same clubs.
In any given year, a country could have several champions. In 2004-05, Chelsea won the Premier League championship, Arsenal won the FA Cup and Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League, a multi-country club championship. Usually the national league winners are considered the national champions, similar to the franchise-based leagues, and bragging rights may be settled by means of a Super Cup, although this is considered a special event and has not been mandatory in any league anywhere in the world.
The promotion and relegation system is generally used to determine membership of leagues. Most commonly, a pre-determined number of teams that finish the bottom of a league or division are automatically dropped down, or relegated, to a lower level for the next season. They are replaced by teams who are promoted from that lower tier either by finishing with the best records or by winning a playoff. In England in 2010, Burnley, Hull City and Portsmouth were relegated from the Premier League to the Football League Championship, the second level of English soccer. They were replaced by the top two teams from the second level, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion, as well as Blackpool F.C., which won a playoff tournament of the teams that finished third through sixth.
Relegation often has devastating financial consequences for club owners who not only lose TV, sponsorship and gate income but also see the asset value of their shares in the club collapse. Some leagues offer a " parachute payment" to its relegated teams for the following years, (if a team is promoted again the next year then the parachute payment for the second season is distributed among the teams of the lower division) [1], sums which often are higher than the prize money received by some non-relegated teams, in order to protect them from bankruptcy. There is of course a corresponding bonanza for owners of promoted clubs.
Clubs may be sold privately to new owners at any time, but this does not happen often where clubs are based on community membership and agreement. Such clubs require agreement from members who, unlike shareholders of corporations, have priorities other than money when it comes to their football club. For similar reasons, relocation of clubs to other cities is very rare. This is mostly because virtually all cities and towns in Europe have a football club of some sort, the size and strength of the club usually relative to the town's size and importance. Anyone wanting ownership of a high ranked club in his native city must buy the local club as it stands and work it up through the divisions, usually by hiring better talent. Buying an existing top-flight club and move it to the city is problematic, as the supporters of the town's original club are unlikely to switch allegiance to an interloper. There have been some cases where existing owners have chosen to relocate out of a difficult market, to better facilities, or simply to realize the market value of the land that the current stadium is built upon. As in the U.S., team relocations have been controversial as supporters of the club will protest at its loss.
The league does not choose which cities are to have teams in the top division. For example, Leeds, the fourth-biggest city in England, saw their team relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in 2004, and then saw their team relegated to the third-tier League One in 2007. Leeds will remain without a Premiership team as long as it takes for Leeds United or in theory any other local club to do well enough in the second-tier division to win the right to play in the Premiership. Famously, the French Ligue 1 lacked a team from Paris for some years.
Territorial rights are not recognized, and successful new teams in a geographical location can come to dominate the incumbents. In Munich, for example, TSV 1860 München were initially more successful than the city's current biggest team Bayern München. [2] Major cities such as London may have many teams in the professional leagues: for example, in 2010–11 it has five teams in the Premier League alone, an additional eight teams in the three fully professional leagues within The Football League, and at least one fully professional team ( AFC Wimbledon) in Conference National, the top level of Non-League football.
This system originated in England in 1888 when twelve clubs decided to create a professional Football League. The "closed shop" aspect of baseball's National League was not deemed to be necessary to ensure stability in England because a national English football league did not require the sort of travel commitments that were necessary in the U.S. A secretariat was created to organize and run the Football League. Later lower tiers (divisions) were added.
This system is widely used in football (soccer) around the world, notably in Africa and Latin America as well as Europe. The most notable variation has developed in Latin America where many countries have two league seasons per year, which scheduling allows because many Spanish-speaking Latin American nations lack a national cup competition. Promotion and relegation has historically been used in other team sports founded in the United Kingdom, such as rugby union, rugby league and cricket.
The system is also used in Europe even when the sports were founded in America, showing that the league system is not related to the sport itself, but more on the tradition of sports organisation in that region. Sports such as basketball in Spain and Lithuania and ice hockey in Russia use promotion and relegation. Alternately, in Australia the A-League follows the tradition of Australian sports having a franchise model that better suits a country with great distances between the country's main population centres, similar to the situation in the U.S. and Canada.
East Asian countries ( Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan) have a particular differentiation among leagues: "European" sports such as soccer and rugby use promotion and relegation, while "American" sports such as baseball and basketball use franchising, with a few differences varying from country to country. A similar situation exists in countries in Central America and the Caribbean, where soccer and baseball share several close markets."
When I first added a European section, I moved most of the above to "Comparison between the North American system and the European system. Intervening changes have also been made by others.
I leave it to the reader to decide which of the above, the current version, or the further changes I propose, is most relevant and accurate. I have no interest in pursuing the matter any further. As I have stated above, bias is inherent in the title of the article, and creates inherent inaccuracy when applied to European sport.
PS. I assume the reference to the formation of the Football League in 1888 is intended to be ironical, as the Football League was a 'closed shop' from its formation in 1888 until promotion and relegation was introduced when the Football Alliance became the Football League Second Division in 1892. Rainjar ( talk) 10:04, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
The first difference between Rainjar's version and the existing version is the subhead "The English example." This is important because Rainjar then goes into a lot more detail about England than the existing version. However, the point of the article is not to inform the reader about English soccer but to explain to the reader how the European system of pro sports organization works. It uses England as an example because that's what the original writers were most familiar with. We need to keep the article focused.
The current version then says, "European football clubs are members both of a league and of a governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League, a separate organization." Rainjar does away with the first paragraph and just says, "In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League."
It's likely the reader will not know what the FA or the Premier League are. Therefore, we need something that makes clear the FA is a governing body, keeping in mind the theoretical uneducated reader does not yet know what a governing body is yet. So I think the first sentence should stay.
Rainjar's next sentence says, "Clubs below the top tier are members of other leagues, such as the Football League (the oldest football league in the world) and the Football Conference." This might be good to add.
Rainjar completes the paragraph as follows: "The Premier League was formed in 1992 when clubs of the old First Division broke away from the Football League[1]. The Football Conference is the lowest level at which there are professional clubs. A club from the Football Conference could, by way of several promotions over several seasons, get to play in the Premier League."
The first two sentences there are unnecessary for the article. The third is misplaced, because we haven't gotten into promotion and relegation yet.
Next comes the description of what the governing body does. The original article tries to do this in two sentences: "The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues. In conjunction with other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs."
Rainjar spends no fewer than five paragraphs on the FA and all of its tasks. This is way too much, since this is not an article on the FA or on English soccer. All we have to do is briefly explain what a governing body is and what it does, perhaps using the FA as an example.
We do not need to mention the FA Cup, FA Trophy, League Cup, League Trophy, Champions League, Europa League or Club World Cup. The current article does mention the FA Cup and Champions League as examples of non-league competitions a club might play in, and that's OK, but we don't need to mention them by themselves. All we need to say is that one of the governing body's tasks is to organize competitions between clubs in different leagues.
Furthermore, we don't need to get into the nitty-gritty about how the rules of soccer are formulated. What's important to explain is that this is a responsibility of the governing body or bodies rather than the leagues (as it is in the North American system). I'm concerned that if we mention the IFAB (which is just a consortium of the four Home Nation governing bodies and FIFA), we're making this too much a soccer article rather than a pro sports organization article that uses soccer as an example. If something about soccer isn't analogous to other sports that use the European system, we probably shouldn't mention it but rather should speak in general terms. Therefore, I think the current wording -- "it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs" -- is preferable, as it could apply to other sports.
Rainjar then has the subhead "Miscellaneous," which is not a good choice of word, since we haven't gotten to promotion and relegation yet, which is not "miscellaneous" but a key part of the European system.
The next sentence is, "In England, player salaries are a matter of contract between the club and the player. There have been no rules concerning player salaries since the Professional Footballers' Association successfully brought about the end of the maximum wage in 1961." This sentence is extraneous as this is not an article about salary caps.
Rainjar keeps the next sentence about promotion and relegation from the original article, but deletes the example from the Premier League, replacing it with, "For details of the winners of the various professional competitions and promotion/relegation in the 2009-10 season in England, see 2009–10 in English football." I don't see why he makes that change. The example is helpful for a reader who might not be familiar with the concept of P&R. Rainjar's replacement seems like a non sequitur.
Rainjar keeps the next paragraph but deletes the following two:
"Unlike in North American pro sports, where the "league" is the only competition member teams play in, European teams play matches both inside and outside of their leagues. In English soccer, a team may follow a league game with a match in the FA Cup (a tournament involving hundreds of pro and semi-professional teams), and then a game in the UEFA Champions League (a competition involving the best European teams from the previous year.
In any given year, a country could have several trophy winners. In 2004-05, Chelsea won the Premier League championship, Arsenal won the FA Cup and Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League."
These paragraphs are very important as they explain to the reader (who may only be familiar with the North American system) the key difference between the European and North American system and provides examples of how it works. There is no reason to delete them.
Rainjar then adds the following:
"In the major European football leagues, there are usually 16 to 24 clubs in each division. Clubs play each other twice in the league over the course of a season, each club playing the other at home once and away once. In countries with a significant drop-off in quality outside the main centres or a smaller population, there may only be 10 to 14 clubs in a division and the clubs may play each other three or four times over the course of the league season. The league season usually runs for 8 or 9 months, with either a winter break or a summer break, or both. In England, the league season runs from August to May of the following year."
This, again, is completely extraneous and irrelevant to the topic at hand. The number of teams in a division, how many times they play each other and the months the season runs have nothing to do with what makes the European system and how it differs from the North American system. These things are likely to differ from sport to sport and, in soccer, from league to league and country to country. As stated above, this is an article on pro sports organization as a concept, not on English soccer.
Rainjar doesn't mention the final section of the article. I don't know if this is because he has no issues with it or because he wants to delete the whole thing.
I'm sorry if my comments seem harsh and I appreciate Rainjar's desire to work on the article, but we have to keep in mind the intention of the article and the needs of the likely reader. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
The current version, not the version that existed before I started making changes. The current version already incorporates a lot of my changes. I'll try to summarize the problems here:
The above discussions highlights that the article still lacks a universal perspective.
The use of the term sports league in North America, as contrasted with league competition, in Europe brings out the inherent unsuitability of the word "league" in the title.
The continued reliance on the fact that European clubs play "cup competitions" outside of "league competitions" as a distinguishing feature is a false premise. The comparison is with North America, not the North American system. That Super League clubs continue to play in a separate cup competition even though the Super League has switched to a closed "franchise" system, brings this out. Once you move beyond a strict distinction between a 'closed' system with territorial rights and a 'promotion-relegation' system without territorial rights, you're already moving into extraneous matters. Who is to decide how much extraneous, descriptive content should be allowed? I would accept all extraneous matter being deleted, including the reference to European clubs playing games outside of their "league".
I have sought to address overview issues by amendments to the introduction and adding an "Overview" section at the end of the article Rainjar ( talk) 05:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Rainjar, you have continued to operate in a way that makes it difficult to improve the article. You have come here not with the attitude of, "I have some concerns about the accuracy of the article; let's work together to address them." Instead, your attitude has been hostile and uncompromising. You can't just go onto an article that has existed for four years, make massive changes without seeking consensus, and then when people challenge you on them get all worked up and say, "Well if you just read what I wrote you'd understand!"
I'm going to revert to Mdw0's last version until you try to get consensus on whatever changes you want to make. If you want, we can do a WP:RFC to get more people involved. If you keep acting in the manner you have been, I'll put it on WP:WQA.
Also, I'm going to suggest renaming the article "Organization of professional sports" to take "league" out of the title. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
I think there would be less argument about this page if we based it on academic sources instead of our own experience. Undoubtedly, much has been written about the organization of pro sports, as sports business is a subject of much study nowadays. In 5 seconds on Google Scholar for instance, I found a paper titled "European and North American Sports Differences (?)" from the Scottish Journal of Political Economy. No doubt there are dozens more like it. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 00:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
The Football League, the world's first association football league, actually started with a closed system in 1888, with limited capacity to replace member clubs by a system of re-election. There was also originally a rule that only one club from each town should be included. In order to expand, the Football League absorbed the rival Football Alliance in 1891 to form a ' Second Division', with promotion and relegation between the First Division and the Second Division. Promotion and relegation was thus more a result of prevailing circumstances than a conscious departure from a closed system.
In any event, prior to the formation of the Premier League in 1992 by the clubs of Football League First Division, and the introduction of automatic promotion and relegation between the then Football League Fourth Division and the Football Conference in 1987, the entire four tiers of the Football League could be regarded as 'closed' system, with promotion and relegation taking place internally. Such a multi-tiered closed system with internal promotion and relegation is not uncommon in association football and other "European" sport.
Further, association football's equivalent to Major League Baseball's financing of minor league teams are reserve team leagues, such as the Premier Reserve League.
Nevertheless, the use of the North American system is increasing worldwide. As team sport becomes increasingly commercialized, the 'closed' system, with territorial rights, and without the financial risk of relegation, allows for greater business stability and profitability. For example, in cricket, the Indian Premier League, launched in 2008, operates on this system. The Super League, which is the top level of rugby league in the United Kingdom and France, will be run on a franchise basis from 2009. [6]
The increasing use of the 'North American system' for league competition in countries that previously used the European system, while continuing to maintain a separate cup competition, has resulted in increasing 'hybridization'. For example, clubs playing in Rugby League's Super League continue to participate in the Challenge Cup.
The global nature of association football also gives rise to a hierarchy of governing bodies. Even though they operate under a closed system, Major League Soccer and the A-League are both subject to governance by FIFA.
In the final analysis, the only real difference may be the availability of territorial rights in the North American system, and the absence of such rights in the European system. Rainjar ( talk) 06:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
As the above discussion with Mwalcoff and Mdw0 has degenerated and become unnecessarily personal, I will leave them to their misconceptions and tendency to treat this article as their own. I will revert the European section to the version that existed before I started making changes on 11 November 2010. I would be grateful if none of the changes that I made are re-introduced. Rainjar ( talk) 14:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
League, association, conference, division — and maybe others. Reference to the following articles may be useful. (I expect to add some listings before deliberating much.)
These aren't well explained at wikipedia. I think this article is right to imply or to establish that league is one preferred general term (lowercase). The articles on associations, conferences, divisions, etc, should note that some Yadda Yadda Leagues (proper nouns) aren't leagues; some Yadda Yadda Associations aren't associations; etc. -- P64 ( talk) 22:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
The article notes that NHL, NBA, and MLS teams have faced outside hockey, basketball, and soccer teams. What is the purported distinction between systems? Is that all matches with non-league opponents are exhibition games, in the American system? -- P64 ( talk) 23:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
With few exceptions, clubs in the American system have exclusive territories. I have changed that to say that all American system clubs have territorial rights, which are usually exclusive territories.
That is true on the American side. Is it true that European system clubs have no territorial rights at all? -- P64 ( talk) 23:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Only in terms of exclusive rights to their grounds, not to any other territory. A new club could start up tomorrow anywhere and if successful on the field, they could enter the top leagues. This can create fascinating rivalries - just look at Machester United and manchester City now. Of course it doesnt happen often. AFC Wimbledon is a London club that was formed in 2003 and currently plays in League Two, the 4th tier of English football, so they have a long way to go before Chelsea has to look over their shoulder. In Italy, Chievo Verona was promoted five times from 1975 to 2001 from Serie D to Serie A, and the older Hellas Verona had no say in it. You win, you rise to the top. Mdw0 ( talk) 06:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
This has been deleted as a small part of the latest edit.
"(the league has, however, promoted teams from lower level leagues to MLS, but not through automatic means)"
This is material for a footnote or a link to the section of Major League Soccer where it is explained. Offhand it seems important enough that it should be explained there. -- P64 ( talk) 15:42, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The link in the opening paragraph to Franchising is troublesome, as that article explicitly excludes the North American sports concept. It has a note stating: "For the concept of "franchising" in sports, see Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada." However, that article does not actually go over the concept in a particular section. Facts about franchises and the franchise model are spread throughout the article. Is there a more focused article to direct this to? If not, shouldn't there be? Does anyone have any idea about how to structure such an article? -- Khajidha ( talk) 17:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
It is not easy to compare 'levels of play.' Just because a national USA basketball or baseball team dominates opponents, that is not necessarily indicative of the 'level of play' in the national league. The line suggests that the level of play in the American national leagues is superior even to international level. Unfortunately saying the only way to tell unless you play them doesnt make sense, because you cant throw in a club side from a different league and expect that to be significant. Not even in football's Champions League does that really work, because Real Madrid and Barcelona's success does not reflect the relative weakness of the domestic Spanish league. It is true to say a USA gridiron team has never been tested by an international opponent, but since there has never been a challenger, trying to use this basis to say that the NFL is not the top level of American football has no merit. The one true challenge is with ice hockey, where it can easily be argued that Olympic play is often superior to the NHL, and the intensity of Canada vs USA is at a higher level than between the North American franchises. The trick is to replace that line with a better one, yet still maintain the point. As for being world champions, it depends on who is challenging them. The Superbowl champions have no challengers. The European basketball and hockey clubs or Japanese baseball clubs have not been beating their chests saying they are better than the American champions. Mdw0 ( talk) 00:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The title of this article is confusing. A league is an organization, so adding organization at the end makes it seem "professional sports league" is a modifier to "organization". So the topic of this article could be about organizations in professional sports leagues, otherwise known as teams or clubs, rather than the leagues they play in. I would just move the article to "professional sports league", but there are lots of redirects from the sports meaning of franchise, including Franchise (sports), which should be an article, not a redirect to professional sports league, even if the articles themselves will have overlapping content. But they aren't the same thing. A short article that wikilinks to this article would be sufficient to start to untangle this issue, including significant confusion on Wikidata, which is already named professional sports league. Any discussion? - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 16:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)