Who owns sport? No one knows. One reason is that sport initially became wealthy and global by explicitly claiming not to be about money. Guess what: the Victorian world-view hasn’t held. But it hasn’t completely died either, and that’s the root of the current messiness. Sport is business, but it’s not just business. And that grey area is part of the magic but it’s also the argument.
Which comes back to ownership. Players are the stars, but without fans to entertain they are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Administrators “run” sport and sometimes act like entrepreneurs, but are they really “bosses” or more akin to union representatives?
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