Originally Posted by
Kolbjorn
The cat is already out of the bag though, so that simplistic view is no longer valid.
The view that "the players are costing the team money" is based on the idea that racists are the only demographic that watches football.
But here's the thing, the racist demographic is shrinking, and POC demographics are growing. If you're going to tell a demographic to pound sand, do you pick the shrinking one or the growing one?
The owners would have to employ a pretty terrible marketing team to choose the racists as their core future demographic.
Further, the only players that will simply kowtow to demands are the league minimum ones. The stars will be able to make choices (retire, change teams, etc.), and have quite a bit more power than you realize. They're not all replaceable McDonald's employees.
If you want to look into this in another industry, feel free to pull some Budweiser annual reports and/or investor calls, and see what they think is a bigger structural change coming to beer: craft beer or Modelo/Corona/etc.