In other countries, especially in sports like football (soccer), teams from major urban centers tend to dominate leagues and championships, often because of higher financial resources. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case in the United States, where titles in major sports like basketball and American football are more evenly spread among cities or regions. For example, about football in other countries, it seems almost impossible for a team located in a city similar to where the Green Bay Packers are located to be relevant. Just look at the history of the Premier League, Bundesliga, or La Liga.Perhaps the question is more about why titles are more evenly distributed among regions in these sports in United States, comparing with other countries.
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The biggest reason is probably salary caps. Teams have a set pool of money to spend on salaries so teams in big media markets with tons of revenue can’t just sign all the best players by making them insane offers other teams can’t match.
a lot of American sports like basketball and football have salary caps. Teams are only allowed to spend a certain fixed amount on players. Equipment is standardized for the sport, so investing money in equipment shouldn’t give an advantage. So higher financial resources don’t really matter.
American sports leagues actively try to prevent domination by restricting spending on players and giving worse-performing teams more opportunities to sign promising young players.
As far as I know, enforced parity isn’t really a thing in European soccer.
The New York Yankees, LA Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Dallas Cowboys, and San Francisco 49s are historically among the best teams in their respective sports, and represent the 5 wealthiest cities in the USA.
The Yankees won about 1/4 World Series, Lakers about 1/4 of the Championships, Dallas has the most wins, and Dallas and the 49ers most Superbowl appearances at 8, with both tied for wins at 5.
Titles aren’t really that evenly distributed. For instance, LA Lakers and Boston Celtics make up about half of all NBA titties. New York Yanks are 1/4, and the next 3 teams make up about 1/4th.
The wealthiest cities *do* win the most in the big leagues.
theres a few elements here. the first is that in american sports, teams cannot fall in/out of minor leagues, and thus maintain their relevance even if they have failing years. this, in addition to broadcast deals and powerful leagues, evens out the income. this is especially true in the NFL, where even the poorest performing teams have higher profits than many of the best soccer clubs
the second and more obvious element is that the leagues, which have more consistent teams and an interest in balance, have put in place measures that stop the richest teams from simply spending more for players. this manifests most obviously again in the NFL, which has a strict salary cap that completely prevents teams from spending above a certain amount. less obviously, leagues like the MLB and NBA have luxury taxes, which make spending above the cap more and more prohibitive. while this does not stop spending over the cap, it makes it much less effective
the last element is the draft. new players entering these leagues coming from college are mostly forced to enter through that league’s draft, which allows for teams to pick players in order. while players arent usually /forced/ to play for the team that drafts them, its usually a de facto requirement. the drafts are each ordered to either benefit the team that lost the most, or is otherwise random, and the end result is that even the worst teams have a reasonable chance to get access to upcoming talent
They are. Your premise is incorrect.
The NFL teams with the most championships are:
1. New England Patriots (Boston) – 6
2. Pittsburgh Steelers – 6
3. Dallas Cowboys – 5
4. San Francisco 49ers – 5
5. Green Bay Packers – 4
6. New York Giants – 4
Green Bay is an anomaly rather than the norm. The 5 other teams with 4 or more championships are all from major urban centers.
The MLB teams with the most championships are:
1. New York Yankees – 27
2. St. Louis Cardinals – 11
3. Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland Athletics – 9 (5 in Philly between 1910-1930, 4 in Oakland between 1972 and 1989)
4. Boston Red Sox – 9
5. New York/San Francisco Giants – 8 (5 in NY between 1905 and 1954, 3 in SF between 2010 and 2014)
6. Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers – 7 (1 in Brooklyn in 1955, 6 in LA from 1959 to 2020)
All 6 MLB teams with 7 or more World Series are from major urban centers.
Professional sports in the United States exist (largely) as a cartel to make money for the owners. Hence you don’t see the relegation system over here, as that can mess with the money. As part of that, most professional sports have made it part of their rules that cap spending on player salaries.
It’s somewhat similar to the Financial Fair Play rules being enforced in European football right now. Only instead of being tied to revenue, there tends to be a max limit on what can be spent, so richer clubs can’t outspend the others. Additionally, European football pays out based league position. US sports tend to pay out equally, with the exception you get a little bit more for premium TV games.
The US sport that has the closest structure to European football is baseball. And similar to football, you’re beginning to see the concentration of elite talent in the biggest markets that will support that spending. Similar to European football, the beginnings of professional baseball dates back to the late 1880s. I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence in the financial structure or if they’re related.
Two words: salary cap. All US sports leagues except Major League Baseball have a salary cap in place that limits the amount of money that teams are allowed to spend on player salaries, which results in each team having more or less the same opportunity to pay for and attract talent. And the salary caps in US sports are true, real caps. Not that half-assed “financial fair play” garbage that does nothing but lock in the financial advantage of the big clubs that UEFA enforces. No, a simple dollar and cent limit on player spending.
Major League Baseball is the one exception, thus to no one’s surprise the most successful club is the New York Yankees.
It’s boring if the same teams win every year. The leagues don’t care who wins, they just want people to watch, so they do things like set salary caps and reward poor-performing teams with higher draft picks. US sports also don’t have relegation; no matter how badly a team performs, they don’t get kicked out of the league.
Green Bay admittedly is still quite a bit of an outlier; it’s far and away the smallest metropolitan area with a professional sports team (Buffalo is a distant second) and the reason they still exist is a bit of a fluke; most other teams which started in small cities like Green Bay move to larger cities once they get successful, but the Packers are community-owned so they’ve never moved.
I don’t think this is true. Teams homed in cities with metro area populations greater than 4 million have won 8 of the last 10 super bowls and 7 of the last 10 nba championships.
If there’s a difference, it’s that European countries usually have only have one city with that kind of population.
And Green Bay is a weird special case.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NBA_champions
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Bowl_champions
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