Who Makes the Game? Examining Private Ownership in Professional Sports
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WHO MAKES THE GAME? EXAMINING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY JONOTHAN LEWIS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communications and Media in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor C.L. Cole, Chair Professor Emeritus Norman Denzin Professor Emeritus Robert McChesney Associate Professor Inger Stole Professor Emeritus Clifford Christians ABSTRACT Using a framework of cultural studies-informed political economy, this dissertation is a critical examination of private team ownership in the major North American professional sports leagues. Despite drawbacks that are apparent to players, fans, media, and scholars, private ownership has been taken for granted as the natural way of organizing professional sport. This analysis argues that private ownership became the norm as the result of social class conflict in the mid-nineteenth century, and the efforts of upper-class sport participants to exclude the working class from the playing field. A decades-long effort to first prevent, and later control, working class sport participation eventually led to the formation of the first major professional sports leagues, with the men in charge guided by the same ethos of exclusion and control. In the era of neoliberal capitalism, private ownership has served to enrich owners at the expense of players, fans, and the public, who are on the losing ends of collective bargaining negotiations and stadium subsidy deals. To make these arguments, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of how the professional sport industry developed; an overview of how the professional leagues currently operate; and a proposal for a hybrid ownership model that gives the players control of league operations and communities ownership of the franchises. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To the members of my committee, Dr. Denzin, Dr. Cole, Dr. Christians, Dr. McChesney and Dr. Stole, I would like to offer my sincerest thanks. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Denzin for agreeing to be my advisor and for continuing to be part of my committee even after suffering ill health; Dr. Cole for stepping in at the last minute and guiding me to the finish line; Drs. McChesney and Stole for laying the intellectual groundwork that inspired this paper; and Dr. Christians, my first professor here when I arrived seven years ago, who has been a consistent and unwavering supporter. I would also like to thank Dr. James Hay, who has always been willing to provide advice when needed; Theresa Harris, who helped make this arduous process much easier; my Florida State advisor Dr. Proffitt, who even after all these years is still in my corner; and numerous other professors and administrators who have been of help these past several years. iii To Adela Lewis and Mitchell Elias. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PROLOGUE ...................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: SPORT AND POLITICAL ECONOMY .........................................................9 CHAPTER TWO: EARLY DEVELOPMENTS .........................................................................60 CHAPTER THREE: A HISTORY OF THE PRO SPORT INDUSTRY ....................................83 CHAPTER FOUR: WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES ..............................................................141 CHAPTER FIVE: A WAY FORWARD ...................................................................................192 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................225 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................................234 v PROLOGUE It is June 19th, 2016, shortly before eleven on the East Coast. Game 7 of the National Basketball Association Finals has just concluded with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers completing an unprecedented comeback from 3-1 down to defeat the heavily favored Golden State Warriors. It is not just one of the great feats in basketball history, but a seminal moment in the history of Cleveland. The city had long been known for its sporting failures, from last-second losses to James’ departure in free agency six years earlier. The Cavaliers’ win marked the city’s first pro sports championship in 52 years. Yet when the NBA Larry O’Brien trophy was handed out during the trophy presentation, the first person to hoist the trophy was not James, the Akron-born star who has been linked inextricably to Cleveland—as a high-school up-and-comer on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a rising young star in the NBA, a hated villain who absconded to South Beach with the city’s title aspirations, and then the favorite son who returned—for his entire career. It was not handed to a representative of Cleveland’s sports angst, such as a long-suffering fan or one of the city’s past greats. Instead, the first person to hoist the trophy was Dan Gilbert, the Detroit businessman who purchased the Cavaliers in 2005 (two years after James was drafted and 35 years after the franchise was founded). Gilbert was best known to sports fans for castigating James in a letter after the latter departed in free agency, and best known outside of the sporting realm as the founder of Quicken Loans Inc., a mortgage giant that in 2011 was slapped with nearly three million in punitive damages and legal costs after it was found to have misled and defrauded a borrower (Asbury, 2011). It is true that Gilbert spent the money to sign the Cavaliers’ best players, James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, a financial toll that set the team up for a record luxury tax bill under NBA regulations. Other than providing the funds to assemble the eventual NBA champions, however, Gilbert had nothing to do with the result on the court. He did not chase down Golden State’s Andre Iguodala and block a sure lay-up. He did not hit the go-ahead three-pointer in the final minute. He did not play tight defense on the Warriors’ best player, Stephen Curry, that 1 prevented a tying shot. Moreover, Gilbert had nothing to do with the 52 years of sport-related suffering that afflicted the city of Cleveland. Yet when all was said and done, it was his trophy to hold. Because when it is all said and done, the Cavaliers do not belong to the players or to Cleveland—the team is Gilbert’s private property. Flash forward a few months. It is November 2, 2016, approaching midnight in Chicago. One of the greatest baseball games ever played has just concluded, with an inconceivable result—the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. If the Cavaliers’ victory is a civic triumph, the Cubs’ win is a national event, attracting a television audience of nearly 50 million during its peak quarter-hour (“World Series,” 2016). In the Cubs clubhouse, amidst the celebrating players, team architect Theo Epstein and well-regarded manager Joe Maddon, the commissioner is set to award the trophy. It may not surprise that instead of Epstein, or Maddon, or one of the players, or even a long-suffering fan like Bill Murray, the trophy was first handed to a quite unfamiliar face—that of team chairman Tom Ricketts. The Ricketts family purchased the team from Tribune Company in 2009, with Tom touting himself and his siblings as “Cubs fans” who “share the goal of Cubs fans everywhere to win a World Series” (“Cubs decide,” 2009, ¶3). Yet as recently as 2013, the clan was said to be not “well known or understood” in Chicago (Smith, 2013, ¶3). Where the Ricketts are well known is in the world of politics, where Tom’s brother Pete and father Joe have been active—the former now the governor of Nebraska and the latter a prominent fundraiser—in supporting Republican politicians, including Donald Trump. As with Gilbert, the Ricketts provided the funds, but little else. It was Epstein who put the team together, Maddon who managed the players, and the players who won the games. After such a titanic victory, one of the most memorable in modern American sports, they each had to wait their turn with the trophy. Because like the Cavaliers, the Cubs are private property. The fans’ 108 years of suffering was not for the Chicago Cubs, but the property of a slew of owners. The Jerry Seinfeld joke about sports fans rooting for laundry may be missing the bigger picture. Fans root for the playthings of billionaires, sometimes corporations. Perhaps if the teams were named after their owners, ala the old Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons of the NBA (named for 2 owner Fred Zollner), the situation would be clearer. The “Cleveland Gilberts” and “Chicago Ricketts” would inspire a lot less loyalty, one presumes, than their current incarnations. Who would wear the interlocking H.S. of the “Hal Steinbrenner Yankees?” Surely far fewer than the interlocking N.Y. of the New York Yankees, an international symbol recognized far beyond baseball. By naming teams after the cities in which they play, franchises connote a false sense of loyalty to their consumers. Every now and again, that spell is broken rather violently by teams moving to a new city in search of a better financial opportunity. Cleveland Browns fans did not realize that they were really rooting for Art Modell’s property until it was too late.1 Seattle SuperSonics fans recognized Clay Bennett’s intentions quickly after the Oklahoma businessman purchased the team in 2006 but could do nothing to stop him. Now Bennett’s property goes by a different name, the Oklahoma City Thunder. Put a giant “Gilbert” across the front of LeBron James’ old “Cleveland” jersey and one wonders whether he ever makes the trek back to Ohio from sunny Miami. James had to swallow some pride to play for Gilbert again after the previously mentioned 2010 letter; one imagines that he did so not out of obligation to ‘his owner’ but to the city that claimed him. Turn on a game and see “Jones 24, Mara 21” and one might be less willing to stay tuned than if it were “Dallas 24, N.Y.