America’s National Football League has held a few games in the UK and is trying to form a franchise there. British writer Matthew Engel has let his compatriots in on the league’s radical secret:
“In the US, sport is the habitat of the nation’s secret socialism. Through revenue sharing, salary caps and the draft (which gives the worst teams first pick), the NFL pioneered the notions that the last must be allowed to finish first. To that end, the rich must subsidise the poor.
In part, this is a mechanism to make capitalism work better, though it is not a mechanism favoured in other aspects of American life ….”
“… I suspect the NFL is using London as it uses Los Angeles which, bizarrely, has been without a franchise for 20 years. If any city gets mean and refuses to subsidise a new stadium or whatever, there is a threat so obvious it hardly needs saying: ‘Pay up or LA will.’ In Britain, such geographical shifts are almost unknown and totally anathema. Another piece of secret socialism: American teams are subsidy junkies.”
— “‘Socialist’ NFL would fail in capitalist London,” Matthew Engel, Financial Times
Hipper Brits already knew this, because UK artist Fraser Davidson animated the passage of Bill Maher’s book that points it out:
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Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-kef
Photo by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Note: Product pictured is not made from hair.
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Tags: animation, Bill Maher, football, Fraser Davidson, Matthew Engel, NFL, pro sports, socialism, sports, subsidies
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