The US has multiple professional soccer leagues going on currently right now that aren’t affiliated with one another. Most of the other sports had the same thing. The only thing that happened post merger was ticket prices went up, parking went up and cable costs skyrocketed (ie the anti-trust should have held, all things being equal - but they weren’t b/c they weren’t political animals at all).
The only thing that happened post merger was ticket prices went up, parking went up and cable costs skyrocketed ...
Why did this happen post-merger? For the same reason why the NBA and NHL went through the same consolidation process in the 1970s: television. Before television, teams generated most of their revenues through ticket sales and merchandise sales. When that was the case, it was common to see regional sports leagues to exist all over North America. Television put an end to all that because each team now had the ability to broadcast to a national market. It was inevitable that TV contracts would eventually be governed by sports leagues instead of individual teams, because these leagues couldn't maintain a competitive balance on the field if they had to deal with the dominant teams broadcasting into the smaller regional markets.