BTRTN: Hey, MAGA, Enjoy Today's Woke and Progressive Social Engineering Project. It's Called the Super Bowl.

[reggieandlee]

On the day of the Big Game, Born To Run The Numbers ponders whether the MAGA faithful really understand that the NFL is the antithesis of Musk/Trump’s vision of unregulated, unfettered, “meritocracy” free market capitalism.

https://borntorunthenumbers.com/2025/02/08/btrtn-hey-maga-enjoy-todays-woke-and-progressive-social-engineering-project-its-called-the-super-bowl/

Excerpts: "How do you think J.P. Morgan Chase would react if 31 other banks could select the top talent from Harvard Business School before it could choose someone? And how would you feel if you were one of the top grads of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and someone told you that you had been selected by – and must go work for — the National Bank of Indianapolis, even though Goldman, Blackstone, and Nvidia are all dying to hire you? The NFL draft is one big exercise in social engineering. The worst team gets the first draft pick, and then teams pick players in inverse order to their achievement. The players have no choice about where they work. The goal is to equalize talent so that everyone has a better shot at winning...
"But that’s far from the only anti-capitalist practice in the NFL. How about that startling broadcast revenue-sharing contract? All 32 NFL teams get an equal share of the league’s centrally negotiated contract for television and streaming services. Talk about anti-competitive: the NFL is — by an act of Congress — exempt from U.S. anti-trust laws 'for the purpose of collectively selling the rights to television broadcasts of games.' Free market competition? The NFL is a government-sanctioned monopoly. Frankly, that revenue-sharing system is genius. Buffalo, Green Bay, and KC manage to be perennial powerhouses in some of the league’s smallest markets...
"Just compare today’s Super Bowl (KC and Philly) with last fall’s World Series – NY and LA. With revenue sharing deal, the big cities of Major League Baseball have a crushing economic advantage. So, which league is the bigger business success? The “free market” baseball model, or the "socialist" NFL model that shares revenue? Hint: the average viewership of last fall’s World Series was 16 million people. The viewership of the 2024 Super Bowl? 202 million. Sure looks like the NFL’s woke economics are darn good for business."

[Coolgoober]

1. Well said

I love it. That helps explain why I watch the nfl all season. And pretty much the only league I watch. Thanks again for sharing. Oh yeah, and talk about DEI?!!

[John1956PA]

2. I do not care for Bill Mahar, but he made this observation twenty years ago.

He did a piece on his show "Politically Incorrect." He used the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates as examples. The Pittsburgh market is relatively small compared to some other markets. At the time, the Pirates were on a decades-long decline and the Steelers were a high caliber franchise. Mahar said that the NFL takes the broadcast revenue from all of the teams and throws it into "one big Commie pot" and disburses it evenly among all of the franchises. On the other hand, MLB allows each team to retain its broadcast revenue. Over the years, I have thought of that that biting description of the disparity between the business models of the NFL and MLB.