Commoditising Sports and Sportspersons

I have been following Sports here since the Summer of 2004.. I was in Detroit the whole of Summer 2004. My cousin used to watch the playoffs daily there and I also started watching it and began to like it. Nowadays since I have become an ardent fan, who knows the game deep, I found out a new and interesting fact about Sports here.

Sports is just another Business here. Sportspersons are commodities who could be bought or traded at will. The best player can be bought . NFL, NBA and MLB are all big Businesses in their own right. All involve great amount of investments and marketing. All the owners involved are great Businessmen evident from the names of Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), Howard Schultz (Seattle Owner and a Big name in Microsoft) and many others. Even College Basketball, Football are commoditised to a certain degree. All the respective leagues have done a great job in commercialising and made huge chunks of money.

Whak makes me come to these conculsions? TV channels controlling the schedule and the tip off time of the games. All the games scheduled to be in primetime. The huge number of trades involved in all the leagues. More than the trades, the complexities and calculations involved. A player easily ending up playing 10 - 12 different teams during his career. The referees giving good calls to star players and home teams.The referees in the league playing a different game of their own. I can give a lot of other things too.

Is it good or bad? It is probably a bit of both. It generates a huge amount of revenue which is a very good thing. The money earned by the sportspersons are definitely increased by the ruthless business owners. If not for the commercialisation of these sports, these sportspersons would be earning much less. The goodwill things done by the league. The bad thing is there is too much commercialisation some times involved. Business owners being ruthless and sometimes not paying due respect to a player. Players being treated like commodities to get the best possible deal. Star players controlling the whole team and getting the players and coach the wants. Money being the prime thing to assemble a great team. Teams buying players with huge salary cap.

Commercialisation of sports is not only done here. The BCCI is making unimaginable profits with little or zero investments or marketing just by taking players. The meangingless match between India and Pakistan in Abu Dhabi is just one example. there are also rumors about the BCCI having its own network with exclusive rights ( something on the lines of NFL Network ). The IHF also has started a local domestic league with fancy team names such as Chennai Veerans. This is a step in the right direction, but due to the obsession of indian fans to cricket and the poor following and the poor state of affairs of Hockey (Apparently the National Game ???? ) it is having mixed results. I think if there were leagues in Indian Cricket, it would be a huge hit.

The sad truth about all these commercialisation is that as in all Businesses, there is a huge potential for success and failure and lot of ebbs and flows, growth and decline and sell offs and shutdowns in a franchise. For every Detroit Piston owner or a New England patriot owner, there is a New York Knicks owner or a Seattle Supersonics owner. The business process is ruthless and this is the prime reason we see very few Reggie Millers or Kobe Bryants (People who stay with the same team for the whole of their career..I hope Kobe stays with the Lakers till the end of his career)