Lovebitesandeveryfing
Well-Known Member
I stand ready to be corrected on this by our American contributors, but it does seem that the owners over there have an entirely different outlook. Clubs are referred to as ‘franchises’, and rather than being the property of the community, spiritually speaking, they are the private property of whoever happens to own them, and can be shifted around lock, stock and barrel. Thus, for example, the Los Angeles Lakers are so called because they were originally founded in Detroit, and when the club started to go under, were purchased by Minnesota owners and moved there. And from thence to L.A. God knows where this left the supporters. It's rather a long way from Minnesota to Los Angeles, I believe. So it seems to me that the logic of the Big Picture is no more than the logic of American sports capitalism, and indeed capitalism tout court. Nobody should be surprised by it. There are entirely different traditions over here, and indeed in Europe generally. Outside of MK Dons, I can't think of any significant club in any of Europe's major leagues that has just upped sticks and moved to an entirely different part of the country. Football clubs are supposed to be money making enterprises, but they were never just that. And never will be. It could be argued that they pretty much replaced organised religion in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
