The Penalty Box: American Leagues Blinded By Expansion
February 19, 2025 at 8:00 a.m.
I am not, by nature, a businessman.
I do think, however, I have a pretty good grasp on how businesses operate and how people think.
Good business minds know how to tie those two things together and sell people stuff that they need and want and make a living at it.
It continues to bother me that American sports leagues are so enamored by taking their products to foreign markets.
Maybe more so, I am bothered by the thought that commissioners are willing to throw competitive balance out the window for the sake of global staging and promotion.
The National Football League played a regular game in Brazil to start its season.
The Pacers played in Paris in the middle of their season.
The Cubs open their season with two regular season games in Japan in March, then come back for more spring training, and then open the main body of their season the next week.
Why?
“Globalization of their brand” you hear them say.
“Expanding their outreach” you hear from others.
“A load of hooey” is what I say.
Rather than forcing your teams to play real games in other countries, why not do off-season goodwill tours where the superstars of their sport travel together to London, Paris, Berlin and wherever else they see as a fertile ground.
But that raises the next question: “fertile ground for what? What is the ultimate goal here?”
If you look at the comments made by the commissioners of the leagues adjacent to these overseas events you see and hear things that make you think that they are fishing expeditions to judge the appetite for creating expansion franchises in Europe, Brazil and Mexico. Teams that would be just as much a part of the NFL, for example, as the Bears and Colts.
That is never going to work.
Specifically, it won’t work in Europe.
Remember, most of Europe is five to seven hours ahead of us.
Let me play this out for you.
Barcelona comes to Chicago to play the Bears. It’s a big deal and NBC grabs it for its Sunday night game of the week.
Kick of Sunday Night Football in the Eastern time zone of the mainland United States is 8:15. In Barcelona, that is 2:15am Monday morning.
Do you think Spaniards are going to do that and then go to work after the game ends at 5:30am?
No, of course they aren’t.
OK, so you make that a 4:30 window game.
Still no go…that’s a midnight kickoff in Spain.
And no one on earth thinks that having teams come from Europe to America to play in the 1pm ET time slot for regional coverage where only 20-percent of the nation will be assigned that game is a good idea.
The only other alternative is to start those games at 9am ET. But look at the ratings for those Sunday morning games played in Europe now. They are well below the norm.
What American sports leagues should be seeking from overseas is TV audiences and merchandise sales.
They should be pitching TV rights and Travis Kelce jerseys—the red ones and the white ones.
We have two examples to follow here.
NASCAR spent incredible time, resources and energy to drag stock car racing from its roots in the southern states to places in the north like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana.
It worked for a while, and racing exploded to the forefront of sports. But then the economic crisis of 2008-2009 hit and people couldn’t fill their RVs for a weekend of hanging out at the track anymore.
In reality, NASCAR fans were predisposed to turn on the love of their lives because it turned its back on its core fan base in search of conquering new kingdoms.
Result: NASCAR tracks are half empty on race days and most sports fans can’t name five drivers.
In contrast, look at the English Premier League.
They have a solid foothold here in America because they found a TV partner in the NBC family of networks. They host “watch parties” each weekend around the US to gather (mostly in drinking establishments) to watch Aston Villa meet West Ham or for the North London Derby.
That approach exudes strength. They are projecting an aura of “we have something you are looking for, and we are happy to share it with you, all the while remembering that the supporters of Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool are our primary concern.”
American soccer fans are quite good with that. We don’t need the EPL to start franchises along the east coast of the US to draw us in.
I hope our league commissioners figure it out before they do something totally regrettable.
I am not, by nature, a businessman.
I do think, however, I have a pretty good grasp on how businesses operate and how people think.
Good business minds know how to tie those two things together and sell people stuff that they need and want and make a living at it.
It continues to bother me that American sports leagues are so enamored by taking their products to foreign markets.
Maybe more so, I am bothered by the thought that commissioners are willing to throw competitive balance out the window for the sake of global staging and promotion.
The National Football League played a regular game in Brazil to start its season.
The Pacers played in Paris in the middle of their season.
The Cubs open their season with two regular season games in Japan in March, then come back for more spring training, and then open the main body of their season the next week.
Why?
“Globalization of their brand” you hear them say.
“Expanding their outreach” you hear from others.
“A load of hooey” is what I say.
Rather than forcing your teams to play real games in other countries, why not do off-season goodwill tours where the superstars of their sport travel together to London, Paris, Berlin and wherever else they see as a fertile ground.
But that raises the next question: “fertile ground for what? What is the ultimate goal here?”
If you look at the comments made by the commissioners of the leagues adjacent to these overseas events you see and hear things that make you think that they are fishing expeditions to judge the appetite for creating expansion franchises in Europe, Brazil and Mexico. Teams that would be just as much a part of the NFL, for example, as the Bears and Colts.
That is never going to work.
Specifically, it won’t work in Europe.
Remember, most of Europe is five to seven hours ahead of us.
Let me play this out for you.
Barcelona comes to Chicago to play the Bears. It’s a big deal and NBC grabs it for its Sunday night game of the week.
Kick of Sunday Night Football in the Eastern time zone of the mainland United States is 8:15. In Barcelona, that is 2:15am Monday morning.
Do you think Spaniards are going to do that and then go to work after the game ends at 5:30am?
No, of course they aren’t.
OK, so you make that a 4:30 window game.
Still no go…that’s a midnight kickoff in Spain.
And no one on earth thinks that having teams come from Europe to America to play in the 1pm ET time slot for regional coverage where only 20-percent of the nation will be assigned that game is a good idea.
The only other alternative is to start those games at 9am ET. But look at the ratings for those Sunday morning games played in Europe now. They are well below the norm.
What American sports leagues should be seeking from overseas is TV audiences and merchandise sales.
They should be pitching TV rights and Travis Kelce jerseys—the red ones and the white ones.
We have two examples to follow here.
NASCAR spent incredible time, resources and energy to drag stock car racing from its roots in the southern states to places in the north like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana.
It worked for a while, and racing exploded to the forefront of sports. But then the economic crisis of 2008-2009 hit and people couldn’t fill their RVs for a weekend of hanging out at the track anymore.
In reality, NASCAR fans were predisposed to turn on the love of their lives because it turned its back on its core fan base in search of conquering new kingdoms.
Result: NASCAR tracks are half empty on race days and most sports fans can’t name five drivers.
In contrast, look at the English Premier League.
They have a solid foothold here in America because they found a TV partner in the NBC family of networks. They host “watch parties” each weekend around the US to gather (mostly in drinking establishments) to watch Aston Villa meet West Ham or for the North London Derby.
That approach exudes strength. They are projecting an aura of “we have something you are looking for, and we are happy to share it with you, all the while remembering that the supporters of Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool are our primary concern.”
American soccer fans are quite good with that. We don’t need the EPL to start franchises along the east coast of the US to draw us in.
I hope our league commissioners figure it out before they do something totally regrettable.