We all know sports fanatics, or more commonly, fans. Sports fandom exists almost everywhere. Whether it is association football throughout South America and Europe, gridiron or American football in the United States, or cricket in India, there are fans everywhere.
However, in each of these situations, capitalist companies and wealthy owners have increasingly taken over. In America, many of the country’s wealthiest people own professional sports franchises. And now that NFL teams rarely go up for sale, some American investors have started buying European association football clubs instead.
For example, about half of the current Premier League teams are controlled by American owners or investment groups. It isn’t just England either, as teams like AC Milan and others across Europe have American ownership. This growing American presence in sports ownership across the world should be concerning. American sports have already suffered from an obsession with maximizing revenue, and I think it is only going to get worse.
I would love to dive into just the NFL as an example. Because there are so few teams, I think it is easy to point out how crazy the amount of attention and money we throw at the sport has become.
Growing up, the NFL played almost all of its games on Sundays, except for one Monday night game each week. Thanksgiving had its traditional games in Detroit and Dallas, with a third Thanksgiving game eventually being added. Now, throughout the season, you can find NFL games scattered across several different days of the week.
Some may say, aren’t they just giving fans what they want, more football? But does the fan really want more football? Or is adding more standalone games, often on subscription services, simply another way to maximize revenue?
I have always believed that too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. Economics even has a concept that fits this idea, diminishing marginal returns. Putting games on Thursday is ridiculous. Not only does it sometimes force fans to pay for another service, in the case of Thursday Night Football, Amazon Prime, but it also takes something away from Sundays.
If I were a Broncos fan and a season ticket holder, I would look forward to my eight or nine home games each year. I would expect most of those games to be on Sunday, and if I were lucky, maybe one on Monday night. Having a game on Thursday seems ridiculous.
I feel the same way about college football. Games used to be on Saturdays. Now, games start on Tuesdays. I don’t want to watch Nebraska play on a Friday night. Or a Thursday night. Or any other day of the week, except maybe Black Friday, when we used to play Colorado but now have the privilege of watching Iowa beat us year after year.
Another example is Delaware. Before moving to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2025, Delaware played in the Football Championship Subdivision, and Saturday football was the norm. Now that Delaware has moved to the FBS and Conference USA, weekday games have become a regular part of the schedule. It is infuriating. Even if Delaware and Nebraska play at the same time on a Saturday, at least it is on the weekend. Saturday is when college football is supposed to happen.
And this isn’t even mentioning the total number of streaming services you need now. Games appear on Amazon, Netflix, Peacock, and who knows what platform will be next. The amount of money required just to keep up with your favorite sports teams is ridiculous. Did the sport do that for its fans? No. They did it because the owners can make more money.
The NFL used to be something you could largely watch on broadcast networks like ABC, Fox, CBS, and NBC. The main characteristic of those channels was that they could be picked up free over the air. However, the billions of dollars flowing into the league from television contracts apparently were not enough. There was more money available through streaming, so games began moving there. And who benefits the most from that? The owners, not the fans.
Then there are the stadium deals. One of the worst things about professional sports is when a team demands a new stadium or threatens to leave. We have seen franchises move repeatedly. The Rams went from Los Angeles to St. Louis, only to turn around and head back to Los Angeles. The Raiders left Oakland for Las Vegas. The Chiefs have announced plans to leave Missouri for a new stadium in Kansas in 2031.
So what do governments do? They offer enormous amounts of public assistance to help build stadiums. And who gets to keep the profits? The owners, of course.
Even worse, ticket prices at these stadiums have grown so high that attending games has become increasingly difficult for ordinary families. It isn’t like the 1990s, when going to several games in a season seemed like something a middle class family could reasonably imagine doing. Now, taking a family of four to one NFL game can become a major expense once you add tickets, parking, food, and everything else. Again, who did that benefit?
So how do we fix this?
I think the biggest change would be giving fans a meaningful stake in their favorite sports teams. Teams should be owned, at least partly, by their fans. This is not some crazy idea. Some of the biggest clubs in the world already operate under versions of this model. FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are controlled by their members, known as Socios. Germany has its 50+1 rule, which is designed to ensure that club members retain majority voting control rather than allowing outside investors to completely control the club.
There is even an example inside the NFL. The Green Bay Packers are publicly owned by hundreds of thousands of shareholders. Packers shares are not traditional investments and do not work like ordinary corporate stock, but the ownership structure has helped keep the franchise tied to Green Bay rather than to a billionaire owner who could simply decide to move it somewhere else.
Would implementing systems like these make sports teams less valuable to private investors? Probably. But do they need to be worth as much as they currently are?
Giving fans more rights and making it more affordable to follow their teams would not suddenly make professional sports economically impossible. Players could still get paid. Teams could still make money. The difference is that maximizing the financial return of a handful of extraordinarily wealthy owners would no longer have to be the overriding objective.
So how could this happen? In theory, there are ways. Realistically, I don’t expect them to happen anytime soon. One way fans have historically forced organizations to change is through protest and boycotts. If NFL fans collectively stopped going to games, watching broadcasts, and buying merchandise, the league would have to pay attention. But that would require millions of fans to act together. And therein lies the problem.
There are relatively few owners and millions of fans. It is much easier for the owners to protect their shared financial interests than it is for millions of fans to organize around theirs. But in theory, if fans across the globe were able to unite and demand something different, they could create changes that would benefit them in the long term. And this isn’t only about the NFL. The same principle could apply throughout professional sports.
So for now, I will root a little harder for the teams that are fan owned. I will dream of a sports paradise where maybe things eventually change. In theory, I know they can. Realistically, I don’t expect them to.
And until then, I will continue watching governments and fans pour more and more money into sports organizations controlled by people who already have more money than they could ever reasonably spend, only for those same organizations to turn around and find another way to charge their fans even more.