Over the last few month, there have been many headlines over sports. While it is common to have sports news, these are a different kind of articles.When the average citizen thinks of sports, they tend to infer the sport itself such as goals in soccer, or touchdowns in football. However, the headlines that have been produced over the last couple of months are completely different from what we have been accustomed to be seeing. They have to do with the business side of sports. Not many people think that there is a business involving athletes that do not involve contracts or endorsement deals. Yet, the way leagues and associations actually run is mind-boggling and are just as complicated as other types of businesses. There are two sides in the sports industry; the players union and the owners. For the league to run its normal schedule, there are series of complex processes and agreements the two sides need to decide on. When agreements cannot be made by a certain amount of time, that’s when the players go on strike. To organize this strike, a name has been given to the situation. This event is called a lockout.
Recently, major sports leagues have been in a lockout. For example, both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have been locked out. The two sides that represented the league could not agree to terms in revenue splits and many other issues. While there have been strikes in the past, it is very uncommon to see two major sport leagues get locked down during the same year. The main reason behind this is because the two bargaining sides always sign a lengthy contract that cannot be changed over a certain amount of years. The agreement is called a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and a new deal usually takes place before the old ones run out. This year was different, though. There were many changes in the economy and therefore, there were complications in writing and agreeing to certain rules.
Fortunately for sports fans, both leagues have finally agreed to a CBA agreement and the two associations can now start their schedules. In the National Football League’s case, the league is already in mid-season and the NBA schedule is about to start around Christmas. While the conflicts damaged the relationships between the two sides, they finally managed to hammer out their differences and put a long-term deal into place. NFL and NBA fans should not worry about a lockout for multiple years with the current deal running through at least 2016.
This is a valuable opportunity for fans to understand the importance of the roles of the leaders of both unions. They should be credited for this new agreement because they are the main reasons an agreement could be made at all. It is now full go for sports but we should not forget the business side of sports ever again. Personally, this was a new experience for me to learn the other side of sports other than the athletes and the actual games. This has led me to conclude that all kinds of people other than the athletes has to be present for there to be a professional sports league.