Some Americans e.g the Glazier family, have been buying English soccer clubs (teams). They'll do fine with the locals once they have learned, inter alia, that the fans and the players call the game 'football' (only the posh English call it 'soccer') and have stopped talking about 'the franchise' The first mistake is understandable but the second is puzzling. What is a 'franchise' in the context of pro sport in the USA? What is it a franchise of? A franchise here is a right to sell certain goods under a licence, so, for example, a car dealer might get the Mercedes franchise which means that he can sell Mercedes cars exclusively in a town. Or it can be the right to use a brand name, so a toy manufacturer here might get the right to make dolls and sell them as Barbie dolls. Or, most commonly,it's the right to run a business as , say, a Starbucks, and that right is restricted to trading in a manner directed by the corporation that owns Starbucks .

Major league sports teams in the United States are franchises. Fees into the hundreds of millions of dollars are paid to the league for the franchise rights.

The franchises generally satisfy your definition. The National Football League's Carolina Panthers, for example, have the "rights" to sell the NFL product and are restricted in the manner in which they may do this. Certain revenues, such as television time and merchandise sales, may in fact be shared according to league policy.

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Originally posted by coldfuse:
Major league sports teams in the United States are franchises. Fees into the hundreds of millions of dollars are paid to the league for the franchise rights.

The franchises generally satisfy your definition. The National Football League's Carolina Panthers, for example, have the "rights" to sell the NFL product and are restricted in the manner in which they may do this. Certain revenues, such as television time and merchandise sales, may in fact be shared according to league policy.

So it bears little or no resemblance to the Leagues in England.No club in England is paying anything much to be in a League .There'd be no point because no team in England can be sure that it will be in the same league division from one season to the next ! That's because of relegation and promotion.The very best clubs may hope to survive for years in the top division but nothing is certain: the division is so competitive that currently only four clubs of the twenty can feel at all confident of staying in it for even as long as the next eight years.In practice several clubs have been there much longer already but that's no guarantee for the future. The rest of the twenty live season to season in varying degrees of hope and anxiety.

There are four divisions: the top division, termed the Premiership, negotiates its own TV rights for its twenty member clubs. However the clubs that finish in the bottom three places of the Premiership at the end of the season are relegated out of the Premiership and three clubs from the top of the next division down take their place in the Premiership.This happens every season in all four divisions so, in theory, a club could work its way up from the fourth to the top division (Premiership) in successive seasons but, equally could fall down through the divisions from top to fourth (Swansea City almost did this in successive seasons when they went through the divisions from fourth division to top and back from top to fourth, between 1976 and 1986). That second division and the two divisions below it, 24 clubs per division, so 72 in all,collectively negotiate the TV rights for their members and sort out which of their divisions gets what. Promotion and relegation make an enormous difference to a club's income: to and from the Premiership makes a difference of many millions.Obviously TV companies pay a lot more for rights to the games played by two of the current top twenty teams than they do for games between teams in the divisions below.

And the profit from merchandising of goods, club branded credit cards, replica shirts, the club's name and endorsements, the team sponsorship deals, stadium name sponsorship and all the rest is all kept by whatever club is doing it .

The Glazers might be unlucky, though that is not presently probable in the case of their club, Manchester United. An Icelandic billionaire who bought one Premiership club this season has just seen it lose or draw (tie) too many games. It is now certain to be relegated.

In this way the pro soccer clubs are far different from the NFL. A relatively small number of teams in the case of the latter, many clubs in Europe. Some might argue that maybe the NFL should adopt the rising and falling system, whereby a losing team is replaced, perhaps by the U of Florida, USC or Ohio State. In Italy, the system was used as a way to penalize the teams involved in last year's scandal.

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And the profit from merchandising of goods, club branded credit cards, replica shirts, the club's name and endorsements, the team sponsorship deals, stadium name sponsorship and all the rest is all kept by whatever club is doing it

They take it a step further here Fred. The Major League Soccer organization here in North America has taken sponsorship deals to the next level. The team that plays in New Jersey is now called the “ New York Red Bulls ”.

By no coincidence is also a popular energy drink sold here.