Sports is a part of life. Fans in this world can live or die on their favorite sports team and to watch your team win can bring you great satisfaction. If your a die hard fan and your team has a losing season it may feel like your world is over. However, if your team doesn't even get to play a single game in a season because of a lockout, you may feel like your dead for a whole season. Lockouts in professional sports are a part of the negotiations discussed in order to decide on how profits will be compensated in exchange for the labor the players give. Recently lockouts have been a major talk in the two biggest sport markets we have here in our country. Here in the year 2011 sports fans had to endure a rare occasion, the NFL and the NBA both were in their contract negotiations at the same time and both leagues did not negotiate very friendly. The NFL negotiations had talks of threatening to cancel parts of the season if a deal wasn't made however that came to an agreement. However, the NBA negotiations started in the same track although still hasn't diverted and consequently has resulted in a delayed season. What has been the differences in these two cases to why one league has came to an agreement but the other league has chosen to delay.
First let's look at the details for the NFL lockout. The NFL market makes more revenue than any other professional sports league in the U.S. That said the NFL commission and the NFL union of players were debating on how to split up the 9 billion dollars of revenue the league makes. As a fan and an outsider perspective of the situation the NFL was going through I thought it was absurd that the two sides could not make a fair agreement to split up the revenue. However, hours before the deadline the two sides came upon an agreement to divide the revenue, after realizing what the devastation that could occur if the part of the season were to be cancelled. The NFL association and the players realized that an agreement had to be made in order to save a full season and the integrity of the game.
Now looking down the road at the NBA lockout the deadline for the season is approaching. Similarly to the NFL negotiations, talks are heated and neither side is budging. The difference between the two however is that the NBA season opener has long been passed back in October and now currently in December there is still no professional basketball. This brings myself to ask, why has an agreement not been made? The NBA is second behind the NFL market grossing a total of around 5-6 billion in revenue so why can't they agree on how to split the revenue? Talks have recently been suggested of an agreement to be made where the season starts on Christmas Day and a full season to be played out ending around the normal time in June. This brings fans to wonder how the players are going to feel towards the end of the season when they are not getting the rest in between games and injuries start to arise.
As a fan you have to endure times like these when the ugly parts of the game have to be dealt with and luckily they only come around once a decade. Before fans had to endure this years NBA lockout the last sport lockout was baseball in the 1990's. Sports went 20 years without having to be put on hold, hopefully another 20 plus years will go by with uninterrupted play.
No comments:
Post a Comment