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Comment by mandevil | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_le...

The NFL, MLB, and the NBA are all higher revenue sports than the EPL. Even the NHL brings in more revenue than every other sports league than the big 3 North American sports + EPL- 30% more than La Liga or Bundesliga. So if revenues for sports without relegation are so much greater than the revenues for sports with relegation, why would it improve the sport?

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The best music is also not the one that draws the higher revenues.

Now add up all the major leagues in Europe and sum it up again.

Sure, but let's go by # of teams: The top 58 teams in promotion-relegation system: (EPL+La Liga+Bundesliga- I'll even through in UCL since it's mostly the same core teams driving the attention) 15.5 billion euros The top 62 teams in limited entry leagues: (NFL+NBA) 21.1 billion euros (You can even add in Ligue 1 and Serie A and you STILL don't get to just what the NFL and NBA pull in, setting aside MLB and the NHL. MLS, which does not do promotion/relegation, and is clearly the fifth biggest sport in the US, pulls in ~as much as the EFL.)

In terms of money, which is a rough but reasonable proxy for fan interest, limited entry leagues seem to make more money.

EPL is higher if you normalise by population.

Whose population? The EPL makes so much money because it's a global sport, so why should I normalize by the population of the UK?

If you want the global sport then use global football revenue. If you want apples to apples for a regional league then compare US to Europe or normalise by population for a single country.

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