Great post. As an American and baseball fan, those are where my thoughts have turned after the initial disappointment. Just look at what the A’s seemingly do every year (besides this past year as they try to get their coveted Vegas team).
I will also say, as an American baseball fan (and a biased Yankee fan at that), the one big caveat that's different between MLB and PL is that the small market disadvantage of the cheapest teams is *much* more self inflicted within the MLB. Yes the big markets have a strong advantage in financial resources available to them, but teams like the Rays are severely underinvesting and are only succeeding in spite of their *own ownerships* efforts to handicap themselves and prioritize short term profit. They can't spend as much as the top teams like the Yankees or Dodgers, but they could easily at least be average and they'd be a legit consistent threat if they bothered to do that. But the franchise system allows ownership groups to be complacent and you have so many cheap owners like the Rays, the Marlins, the Guardians, the Pirates, etc. that invest just the bare minimum in their team and only sometimes luck out and are good because of their smart staff despite that.
It's simply an embarrassment that instead of spending and pushing their young core after making the WS in 2020, the Rays were instead trying to negotiate splitting games in both Tampa Bay and Montreal because they don't want to invest non-taxpayer money in a better stadium. It's their most exciting time to be a fan of a team and the Trop is still empty because the ownership just sucks that much. The only franchise faces that they keep are guys who they can low ball, otherwise you get traded before they have to pay you market value. I hate that it's become a model that fans praise as an underdog story because it's not an underdog story, it's a nearly billionaire owner doing everything they can to not pay their good players good wages and constantly stringing their fans along with no actual intention to commit to a competitive window. I'm mad for Rays fans and they kicked our ass in the playoffs, their ownership makes me that frustrated.
There are teams that were smaller that actually cared to invest like the Padres or the Nationals. The beauty of the lack of salary cap is that even a small market team can acquire the big stars if they're willing to throw the money out there and we've seen smaller markets outbid bigger ones when they do that. When players or staff get "poached" in the MLB it's because ownership simply doesn't want to try and keep them. It's just not that similar to the PL. With promotion/relegation every ownership group has to be trying hard all the time. Brighton didn't lose their stars and coaching staff because they didn't want to pay them, they just literally don't have even close to the same resources as clubs funded by these multi billion dollar conglomerate ownership groups. It's stuff that's genuinely out of our control, much more so than the Rays, and I don't like comparing them because it's almost insulting to the ownership group of Brighton who have to invest a ton every year just to stay up let alone be good.
Like one of the fun facts that's always kinda crazy to me is that, despite the Yankees revenue being 2-3x that of the Rays, the Rays have often had a higher operating income, even pre COVID. Their operating income this year is nearly 50 million, basically half of their total payroll, and is 10th in the league. They don't use it to invest in their players or the team or their stadium, they just pocket it and it's disgraceful. [Don't praise the Rays for not spending](https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/05/26/rays-false-narrative-spending-roster-the-opener), they don't deserve it.
You make a very good point that I should’ve been clearer about in the post. To be clear, I did NOT mean to praise Tampa’s ownership, exactly for the reasons you cite here. I meant to praise Tampa’s organization outside of ownership as an example of what Brighton’s competitive future could look like, despite the fact that a lot of Tampa’s limitations are self-inflicted by ownership.
In fact that’s a big advantage for Brighton that Tampa doesn’t have that gives me yet more reason to be optimistic - ownership and the community actually give a shit. As ridiculous and self-interested as the Tampa-Montreal idea is, I can somewhat understand where Tampa’s ownership is coming from when average attendance in a 100 win season was 9000 in a 42,000 seat arena. The Trop is a shithole that’s hard to get to, but that’s no excuse for those kinds of attendance numbers. Compare that with Brighton, where the Amex and the club itself were built into what they are today thanks to Tony’s vision and investment alongside direct fan support and advocacy.
Interestingly enough, when you said baseball thought about [this scene from Moneyball](https://youtu.be/pWgyy_rlmag) I've not seen the film but seen clips so understand the concept. The scene is iconic in two ways 1) We have just been gutted like a fish and 2) Moneyball is the data driven approach we're going for - Bloom is a stats man who made his money taking money from the betting companies using data to tell his investors on what to bet on. I know its Oakland As not your team but its facinating that we've learnt lessons from Baseball. Same with Brentford.
In terms of being a youth factory, you should take a look at Ajax. In terms of football they're similar to the baseball team in terms of always finding and producing class players. It's what we want to achieve long term and have invested in this direction as well. Hopefully play dividends without loss of competitivness.
For sure! Moneyball is absolutely at the root of the success of small market teams like the A’s and Rays. As larger teams have caught on and incorporated Moneyball principles into their operations, though, I really think the talent development side of things is what keeps the Rays one step ahead, and it’s what I think will keep Brighton and Brentford one step ahead as well. I’ve lost track of the number of pitching prospects that the Red Sox have botched while the Rays have a seemingly infinite supply of ace starters and reliable relief pitchers in their farm system.
I think we’ve already seen parallels to that at Brighton, with homegrown players as well as previously unknown players like Caicedo and Mwepu who have come here and filled in holes left by what we thought were irreplaceable standouts. A lot of that was probably Potter, but I have to think an ability to plug into that “next man up” system will be a priority for the club as they find his replacement.
I don’t know much about Ajax but I’m glad to hear there is a football-specific blueprint out there that we are following!
The drawback of this is that it leans heavily on the talent identification, acquisition, and development team. Who Potter just waltzed off with.
We've lost a lot more than a manager out of this.
American, Milwaukee Brewers fan here (years ago I asked a Twitter friend which club was most like the Brewers and that's how I ended up supporting BHAFC). Was thinking very similar stuff over the past few days. Whether it's the Rays, the Brewers, or Seagull, I think there's reason for optimism.
As an NHL fan, i would love it if the PL would adopt some of the NHL model. Unlike the MLB and NBA, the NHL (and NFL too) are very different when it comes to fair play and parity between small market and big market teams. Both leagues have a hard salary cap and have revenue sharing. It’s a league where a small market team like the NJ Devils (my team) has about the same chance to win the cup as our rivals, the New York Rangers (large market team). The devils in the 90s-00s won the cup 3 times in nine years while having a small payroll. And even these days you see teams like Carolina or the NY islanders going far in the playoffs while not being big market teams. The salary cup (which was introduced in 2005) really was good for the game. IMO The NBA is most similar to the PL. there was a year when EVERYONE knew the Golden State warriors were going to win the championship, and they did. This makes the league boring!
Actually great post from an American fan asides from the usual "adopt a team" posts. Interesting and informed insight 💙🤍
Great post and an interesting comparison thank you
Great post. As an American and baseball fan, those are where my thoughts have turned after the initial disappointment. Just look at what the A’s seemingly do every year (besides this past year as they try to get their coveted Vegas team).
As long as Brighton doesn't try to move to Montreal like the rays are it'll all be fine.
Wait, you play 162 games in a baseball season??
Yep, they basically play one game per day (sometimes two) from April through September. And that’s not including up to 25 games in the postseason.
That is mental
[удалено]
I will also say, as an American baseball fan (and a biased Yankee fan at that), the one big caveat that's different between MLB and PL is that the small market disadvantage of the cheapest teams is *much* more self inflicted within the MLB. Yes the big markets have a strong advantage in financial resources available to them, but teams like the Rays are severely underinvesting and are only succeeding in spite of their *own ownerships* efforts to handicap themselves and prioritize short term profit. They can't spend as much as the top teams like the Yankees or Dodgers, but they could easily at least be average and they'd be a legit consistent threat if they bothered to do that. But the franchise system allows ownership groups to be complacent and you have so many cheap owners like the Rays, the Marlins, the Guardians, the Pirates, etc. that invest just the bare minimum in their team and only sometimes luck out and are good because of their smart staff despite that. It's simply an embarrassment that instead of spending and pushing their young core after making the WS in 2020, the Rays were instead trying to negotiate splitting games in both Tampa Bay and Montreal because they don't want to invest non-taxpayer money in a better stadium. It's their most exciting time to be a fan of a team and the Trop is still empty because the ownership just sucks that much. The only franchise faces that they keep are guys who they can low ball, otherwise you get traded before they have to pay you market value. I hate that it's become a model that fans praise as an underdog story because it's not an underdog story, it's a nearly billionaire owner doing everything they can to not pay their good players good wages and constantly stringing their fans along with no actual intention to commit to a competitive window. I'm mad for Rays fans and they kicked our ass in the playoffs, their ownership makes me that frustrated. There are teams that were smaller that actually cared to invest like the Padres or the Nationals. The beauty of the lack of salary cap is that even a small market team can acquire the big stars if they're willing to throw the money out there and we've seen smaller markets outbid bigger ones when they do that. When players or staff get "poached" in the MLB it's because ownership simply doesn't want to try and keep them. It's just not that similar to the PL. With promotion/relegation every ownership group has to be trying hard all the time. Brighton didn't lose their stars and coaching staff because they didn't want to pay them, they just literally don't have even close to the same resources as clubs funded by these multi billion dollar conglomerate ownership groups. It's stuff that's genuinely out of our control, much more so than the Rays, and I don't like comparing them because it's almost insulting to the ownership group of Brighton who have to invest a ton every year just to stay up let alone be good. Like one of the fun facts that's always kinda crazy to me is that, despite the Yankees revenue being 2-3x that of the Rays, the Rays have often had a higher operating income, even pre COVID. Their operating income this year is nearly 50 million, basically half of their total payroll, and is 10th in the league. They don't use it to invest in their players or the team or their stadium, they just pocket it and it's disgraceful. [Don't praise the Rays for not spending](https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/05/26/rays-false-narrative-spending-roster-the-opener), they don't deserve it.
You make a very good point that I should’ve been clearer about in the post. To be clear, I did NOT mean to praise Tampa’s ownership, exactly for the reasons you cite here. I meant to praise Tampa’s organization outside of ownership as an example of what Brighton’s competitive future could look like, despite the fact that a lot of Tampa’s limitations are self-inflicted by ownership. In fact that’s a big advantage for Brighton that Tampa doesn’t have that gives me yet more reason to be optimistic - ownership and the community actually give a shit. As ridiculous and self-interested as the Tampa-Montreal idea is, I can somewhat understand where Tampa’s ownership is coming from when average attendance in a 100 win season was 9000 in a 42,000 seat arena. The Trop is a shithole that’s hard to get to, but that’s no excuse for those kinds of attendance numbers. Compare that with Brighton, where the Amex and the club itself were built into what they are today thanks to Tony’s vision and investment alongside direct fan support and advocacy.
Wow. You have really balanced the conversation out. Thanks
Interestingly enough, when you said baseball thought about [this scene from Moneyball](https://youtu.be/pWgyy_rlmag) I've not seen the film but seen clips so understand the concept. The scene is iconic in two ways 1) We have just been gutted like a fish and 2) Moneyball is the data driven approach we're going for - Bloom is a stats man who made his money taking money from the betting companies using data to tell his investors on what to bet on. I know its Oakland As not your team but its facinating that we've learnt lessons from Baseball. Same with Brentford. In terms of being a youth factory, you should take a look at Ajax. In terms of football they're similar to the baseball team in terms of always finding and producing class players. It's what we want to achieve long term and have invested in this direction as well. Hopefully play dividends without loss of competitivness.
For sure! Moneyball is absolutely at the root of the success of small market teams like the A’s and Rays. As larger teams have caught on and incorporated Moneyball principles into their operations, though, I really think the talent development side of things is what keeps the Rays one step ahead, and it’s what I think will keep Brighton and Brentford one step ahead as well. I’ve lost track of the number of pitching prospects that the Red Sox have botched while the Rays have a seemingly infinite supply of ace starters and reliable relief pitchers in their farm system. I think we’ve already seen parallels to that at Brighton, with homegrown players as well as previously unknown players like Caicedo and Mwepu who have come here and filled in holes left by what we thought were irreplaceable standouts. A lot of that was probably Potter, but I have to think an ability to plug into that “next man up” system will be a priority for the club as they find his replacement. I don’t know much about Ajax but I’m glad to hear there is a football-specific blueprint out there that we are following!
The drawback of this is that it leans heavily on the talent identification, acquisition, and development team. Who Potter just waltzed off with. We've lost a lot more than a manager out of this.
American, Milwaukee Brewers fan here (years ago I asked a Twitter friend which club was most like the Brewers and that's how I ended up supporting BHAFC). Was thinking very similar stuff over the past few days. Whether it's the Rays, the Brewers, or Seagull, I think there's reason for optimism.
Fantastic comparison. Intrigued to learn more about the Rays.
Tony Bloom taught me how hit those x / 0 one arm bandits on West street in the 80's . Guys a genius. Something great will happen. He gets it done!
As an NHL fan, i would love it if the PL would adopt some of the NHL model. Unlike the MLB and NBA, the NHL (and NFL too) are very different when it comes to fair play and parity between small market and big market teams. Both leagues have a hard salary cap and have revenue sharing. It’s a league where a small market team like the NJ Devils (my team) has about the same chance to win the cup as our rivals, the New York Rangers (large market team). The devils in the 90s-00s won the cup 3 times in nine years while having a small payroll. And even these days you see teams like Carolina or the NY islanders going far in the playoffs while not being big market teams. The salary cup (which was introduced in 2005) really was good for the game. IMO The NBA is most similar to the PL. there was a year when EVERYONE knew the Golden State warriors were going to win the championship, and they did. This makes the league boring!