Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

[ursus arctos]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

That's definitely true, and it's also true that the existing economic structures have developed in tandem with the established sports structures and are generally not flexible enough to accomodate radical change (and certainly not interested in fostering it).

Television networks, for instance, find it much easier to work with leagues under central control (and rival television networks have even funded new leagues in order to "create product"). Financial institutions much prefer the security of the less volatile "revenue streams" produced by a closed league, and even North American player unions have grown to rely on the structure (they don't include "minor league" players, for one thing).

The flag-waving predelictions of much of the US sports establishment (and the media that covers it) also puts any new idea that can be characterised as "foreign" at an immediate disadvantage. If ESPN were somehow able to have packaged promotion and relegation as part of an "Xtreme Soccer" concept ten years ago, the idea might actually have had a chance, but now "everyone knows" its a foreign plot.

[goldstone97]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

Quite a pertinent blogpost on the same subject appeared yesterday.

[NHH]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

I'd say it was quite impertinent, actually.

Anyway, as I said about the media. Here's the latest from 'FC Business' magazine, written by Colin Mafham, who writes for the Non-League Toilet Paper:

(Referring to 15K watching the game with Peterborough) "if ever there was a justification for the Dons moving up the M1 it was there and then in a City proud to have them, willing to support them and offering them the sort of future they could never have dreamed of back in those dark old days in South London

...somewhere near the Premier League status that appeared to mean so little to the people of Wimbledon who chose to stay away in such numbers back in January 1993 and, indeed, on countless other occasions before and after as well.

Winkleman is too much of a gentleman to say it, but the brutal truth is that it wasn't him who robbed Wimbledon of a football team, more the so-called supporters who turned their backs on it to such an extent that if he hadn't come in when he did there almost certainly wouldn't have been any Dons left.

I you ever wonder why I despise the sport press so much, it's precisely because good people like E10 appear only in WSC, yet shithacks like Mafham make a fucking career out of it.

[goldstone97]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

I'd say it was quite impertinent, actually.

You don't think a post on the exact same topic as the thread is relevant, NHH?

[NHH]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

I was trying to be witty, and clearly failed. You said the subject was germaine, and thus pertinent, wheras I thought his opinion was wrong, and thus impertinent.

[goldstone97]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

I considered that, but I thought the odds of you trying to be funny in any way related to this topic were less than none, to be honest.

[E10 Rifle]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

Ta for the compliment NHH, but my own half-arsedness and almost anti-careerism has something to do with that too.

Anyhow, all this "people of Wimbledon" shit is the wrong way even of attacking a London club's small crowds. London's clubs have never been about "the people of Wimbledon", or Brentford, or Highbury, or Leyton - their supports and catchment areas are patchworks and they develop their identities in tandem with those alongside them.

[NHH]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

Bah. I am a humourless 1980s lefty bastard after all then.

[My Name Is Ian]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

I gripe. It's what I do.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Statute of Limitations on Franchise?

For me? Never. Thankfully, I've never met one of them. I fear I'd turn into a screaming incoherent wreck.

Or maybe just sit in the corner growling.