OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post

Marinersfan51 · 06-15-2023, 08:21 PM

The angle for the Saudis to take over American sports is the LIV/PGA approach, not the way they are moving in on Premier League soccer. Forming a rival league (or buying out the USFL) and poaching players would be the way to do it rather than buying their way into the existing league structure. Most American sports leagues are fairly picky about who they let into the owners club because they are all in business with each other much more than is the case with European soccer. The leagues are structured to make it harder to buy your way to the top with salary caps and amateur drafts, so there is less value to the foreign investors if they do buy their way in. They are set up to maximize everyone's profits over letting a handful of teams truly dominate.

I think forming a rival league and poaching stars like they did with LIV would be a more effective angle if their goal is sportswashing. The sport best suited for it would be basketball because of the smaller team sizes and outsized impact of single players along with the relative profile of star players compared to teams. Basketball fans root for players over laundry more than most teams. If they could pull half of the top 50 NBA players over and provided an alternative to the NBA draft for the top amateur prospects, they could probably deal a very serious blow to the NBA in just a few years.

The sheer roster sizes in football and need to have a lot of quality non-marketable players make a compelling product make taking on the NFL a significantly more expensive proposition. Even if they were to poach a bunch of the top QBs and skill players, it would be tough to get a good product out of it without lineman and DBs who aren't really going to drive attention by themselves, but are key to getting the games to be a good entertainment product. They could do it, but basketball seems ripe for the picking comparatively.

06-15-2023, 08:21 PM	#4
Marinersfan51 All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 776	The angle for the Saudis to take over American sports is the LIV/PGA approach, not the way they are moving in on Premier League soccer. Forming a rival league (or buying out the USFL) and poaching players would be the way to do it rather than buying their way into the existing league structure. Most American sports leagues are fairly picky about who they let into the owners club because they are all in business with each other much more than is the case with European soccer. The leagues are structured to make it harder to buy your way to the top with salary caps and amateur drafts, so there is less value to the foreign investors if they do buy their way in. They are set up to maximize everyone's profits over letting a handful of teams truly dominate. I think forming a rival league and poaching stars like they did with LIV would be a more effective angle if their goal is sportswashing. The sport best suited for it would be basketball because of the smaller team sizes and outsized impact of single players along with the relative profile of star players compared to teams. Basketball fans root for players over laundry more than most teams. If they could pull half of the top 50 NBA players over and provided an alternative to the NBA draft for the top amateur prospects, they could probably deal a very serious blow to the NBA in just a few years. The sheer roster sizes in football and need to have a lot of quality non-marketable players make a compelling product make taking on the NFL a significantly more expensive proposition. Even if they were to poach a bunch of the top QBs and skill players, it would be tough to get a good product out of it without lineman and DBs who aren't really going to drive attention by themselves, but are key to getting the games to be a good entertainment product. They could do it, but basketball seems ripe for the picking comparatively.