Has money ruined sports?: Market naturalists

The Premier League’s 2025-2029 domestic media rights deal closed at $8.45 billion. Add international rights across 212 territories and total broadcast revenue approaches $15 billion per cycle. In 1992, the entire first television contract was worth $253 million. That is not inflation. That is a market discovering the true value of its product across three decades of audience expansion, competitive improvement, and global distribution infrastructure that did not exist when Sky Sports first broadcast a match.

We are market naturalists, and we start with the number because the number is the argument. Revenue pays for everything fans claim to want — better athletes, better stadiums, deeper rosters, higher production values. The Premier League is a better football product in 2025 than it was in 1995 by every measurable dimension: goals per game, athletic output, tactical sophistication, broadcast quality, global viewership. The money did that. Passion did not build Manchester City’s Etihad Campus. Money built it. The players who train there are faster, stronger, and more tactically sophisticated than any generation before them.

The Saudi PIF’s purchase of Newcastle United is instructive. Before the takeover: a chronically underinvested club, eroding attendance, a mediocre squad. After: Champions League qualification, St. James’ Park sold out every match. Newcastle fans understand precisely where the money comes from. They have decided that a competitive football club matters more to their Saturday than a geopolitical boycott they did not elect themselves to lead.

LIV Golf proves the same principle from the labor side. The PGA Tour operated for decades as a de facto monopoly suppressing player compensation. LIV entered with guaranteed contracts that dwarfed Tour earnings. Players earning $3 million to $5 million per season were offered $100 million. The Tour’s response was not to compete but to negotiate a merger with the entity it had called an existential threat. A labor market functioning for the first time.

Messi’s move to Inter Miami: a single transfer tripled MLS ticket prices, validated Apple’s $2.5 billion streaming deal, and brought global entertainment attention to a league that had struggled for relevance for three decades. Every league in history has been built on star power. The NBA was niche before Magic and Bird. The NFL was regional before the Super Bowl became a national holiday. Stars drive revenue. Revenue drives investment. Investment drives quality.

The ticket price argument deserves a serious answer. A family of four at an NFL game: $160 in 1995, over $500 in 2024. But in 1995 the stadium experience was a metal bench and a lukewarm hot dog. In 2024, stadiums offer WiFi, instant replay on personal devices, premium food, and a production experience designed to compete with watching at home in 4K. Meanwhile, the NFL’s Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV costs $349 per season — less than one game — and delivers every out-of-market match in high definition. Access to the sport has never been cheaper. Access to the stadium has never been more expensive. Those are different markets serving different consumers.

A kid in Lagos watches the Premier League on a phone. Five billion cumulative World Cup viewers. The closest thing the planet has to a shared cultural experience, and money built the distribution.

Where we concede ground: The ownership concentration problem is real and we have been slow to acknowledge it. When City Football Group owns thirteen clubs across five continents and two of them meet in the Champions League, the competitive integrity that makes the product valuable is compromised. Antitrust in sports is not anti-capitalist — it is pro-market. We also concede that sovereign wealth fund owners whose incentives are not primarily economic introduce a category we cannot fully account for. The PIF does not need Newcastle to be profitable. It needs Newcastle to be visible. That decouples investment from the market discipline we otherwise rely on, and when the geopolitical purpose is served, the money may leave. We do not have a clean answer for that morning after.

What would change our mind: If global viewership declined meaningfully over a sustained period — five years of falling ratings, shrinking broadcast deals, reduced attendance not attributable to pandemic effects — despite continued revenue growth, we would concede that the financial model is consuming the product it was built to serve. The test is whether the audience stays. So far, it keeps growing.

Read the full synthesis: Has money ruined sports?