Conflict of Interest

The NBA season officially started a few hours ago. A little over a week ago the NHL season started. The NFL season is through 7 weeks and is in full swing. The MLB season has been over for awhile, but the World Series is set to start tomorrow. Where I am going with all this? This is the only time of the year where all 4 major professional sport leagues in North America are playing at the same time. While some are considering MLS to be a major professional sports league, I do not think it has gotten to that point yet. Although Commissioner Don Garber has done a fantastic job of making the league relevant enough for some to consider it a major North American sport. By now you are thinking this: why is any of this important? Well to put it simply, if you had an organization that makes millions of dollars would you like three other million dollar organizations running at the same time as you? I'm pretty sure none of the league commissioners or individual team owners like this time of the year, but some leagues have it better than others.

The NFL and MLB are the two primary sports out of the top 4. The MLB has been around for over 100 years has simply been planted into the minds of Americans. It used to be known as America's favorite pastime, and it has the longest season, excluding playoffs, of the 4 leagues. The length of the of the league's existence and its season has created very deep fan bases and rivalries. The deep fan bases and rivalries are why the MLB is still immensely popular today. The NFL's rise to fame was very much the opposite. The NFL has been around for 50 some odd years and became popular because of the physical prowess involved in the sport. People have always enjoyed violence, see Ancient Rome, and football brings a violence that is just enough to not be sick and disturbing. As a result of this violence, deep fan bases are also part of the NFL due to the intensity any given Sunday. NFL has proven that you do not need a terrible long season to be successful as well. Shorter season obviously means less games and thus each game means more. Neither the MLB nor NFL worry too much about the conflicting schedules of the 4 sports because they know they are the upper echelon so to speak.

The NBA and NHL are then two secondary sports. It is almost unfair to call them secondary because they are both successful and make millions of dollars, but it is the truth. There once a time when basketball and hockey were immensely popular, when players like Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky played, but both have fell are relatively hard times. The NHL recently had a lockout (2005) and so they are on the rebound. The NHL has never really been to dominating a league with their salary cap somewhere around 60 million per team for this season. The NHL has trouble because most of the talent in the NHL comes from outside the United States (see my article No USe for more on that), making it harder to get behind players. It is also hard to follow on TV because you can barely see the puck zip around the ice. The NBA had a lockout as well, but it was over a decade ago and I would say they recovered from. The NBA has a lot of stars, both from the US and around the world, and so they are fine in that regard. The NBA's problem is that the elite teams have remained the same in recent years. It has lost one of the most important factors to why people watch sports: unpredictability. I learned this from many of my college professors, and it is common sense if you think about it. Who wants to watch an event when you can predict what will happen and you will have a good chance of being right? For the last decade, it would a safe and easy to say that the Lakers would be in the Finals with a good chance of winning them and it is the same this season, it is much different in the other three sports. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl for the first time in February. Although the New York Yankees won the World Series last year, this year a team that has never won (Texas Rangers) and a team that hasn't won in nearly 50 years (San Fran Giants) will battle out for the title. The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup for the first time in nearly 50 years in hockey. What happened in basketball? The Lakers won for the about the 4th time in the last decade. Parity lacks in basketball, and it's one of the key reasons in lags behind the NFL and MLB. With that being said, the NBA does a lot internationally and is the most advanced of the 4 leagues in that sense. I'm sure the NBA and NHL do not like starting their seasons in the midst of the MLB Playoffs and the start of the NFL season, but they have no choice really.

To conclude, what the leagues don't like the fans do like. All 4 leagues playing at the same time means sports on virtually all the time, which is a sports fans dream. Not to mention MLS season is going on for its fans and college football is almost to it's halfway for its many fans. The only hard part for fans is which one to watch. With the technology these days, it is quite easy to watch multiple, but I still this time year can turn into quite the conflict of interest.