The road to riches is a lot shorter in the NFL and NBA and neither involves years of minor league low-pay, and bus travel.
About 30 pro teams each in the 3 leagues.
I’d also guess each NFL team pays “good” money to about 50 players, 20 for MLB, and 10 per team in the NBA.
That’s 1500, 600, 300 total big buck jobs respectively here in the US.
Economies play a role in this, but the time it takes to get to one of the leagues is the main reason black participation is down, imho.
Then factor in youth playground hoops, little league, and pop-warner.
Yeah but what are US black basketball players going to do when they start finding themselves shut out from the NBA, by Euro players, who won’t even have to play at US colleges to get drafted. You get better seasoning playing in the Euro Leagues now than playing NCAA basketball.