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Comment by Yeul | Hacker News Reader

Football clubs have a billion eurodollar budget that they need to pay for. And how do they do that? With TV licensing.

I live in the Netherlands and everyone here has accepted that a Dutch club will never again get into a Championship League finale. Every Dutch star is playing in Spain or England.

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"The European football ecosystem is already dead but it doesn't know it yet."

It's not sustainable and has to pop, but god damn is is resilient, even if it's kind of artificially.

It has already poped in France.

Our clubs won't get any TV rights this season (or really peanuts, like €5M to L1's winner).

At least in the US, there are minor league / feeder teams that are much cheaper to watch. Going to the stadium for a game is essentially free, and actually enjoyable, since getting tickets and entering the stadium isn’t like dealing with the airlines/tsa, but worse.

You’re still supporting the mob though.

Entering the stadium of an MLB game is maybe a 2-10 minute wait in line followed by scanning your ticket. It is in no way comparable to flying, let alone worse...that's absolutely crazy.

Heck even the NFL is just standing around in line, walking through the metal detectors, and scanning your ticket.

Source: have gone to 2-3 dozen MLB and NFL games.

My local MLS team recently switched from airport style scanners (remove keys and phones from pockets) to continuous walk-thru (keep everything in your pockets) style metal detectors. That coupled with NFC ticket readers has made the entire process much faster.

The last MLB game I saw (this summer) was a similarly easy process.

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