Why have so many wealthy Americans become attracted to the English Premier League? One of the main reasons, writes Joe Nocera, is because the league allows them to operate with more freedom.
While soccer “is the most global sport with the greatest reach,” and while there is more money to be made out of the sport than in the NFL or the NBA, in England team owners can also “act far more like old-fashioned two-fisted capitalists… than they can in the United States.”
“It seems fair to say…that the things British fans claim to hate about the American invasion — increased ticket prices, TV-driven marketing, naming rights and so on — were in place long before any actual Americans showed up,” Nocera says. The league is “far more rough-and-tumble than American leagues, which tend to operate like the Three Musketeers: all for one and one for all.” There is no salary cap in England, fewer marketing restrictions, and teams “can borrow whatever the market will bear. Given the entrepreneurial bent of many American sports owners, the real wonder is that they didn’t stumble sooner into the Wild West of the English Premier League.”