Oooh Salary caps and drumming up a support base, something I can take part in!
Just for a bit of background, Rugby League and Australian Rules are pretty much the biggest kinds of football in the country financially (Soccer is uh pretty bad at getting support, Rugby Union is less successful on a local level but works better on an international level, albeit fairly locally. Very financially successful, just less high profile during the regular season, might be a local Brisbane thing though). In Melbourne short of a good decade or so ago you could not get any support for Rugby, it was AFL or get the fuck out. There was a lot of work put into building a successful franchise down there. They got it by winning and spending a ridiculous amount of money. They also introduced Salary caps just after Melbourne started really to pick up. It slowed it down, but generally speaking they have succeeded at creating a franchise from the ground up in the span of a decade.
Just recently Melbourne Storm were caught breaking salary caps. Not just bypassing them by being dodgey fucks like everyone has suspected for years (which people have suspected from more than a few clubs to be honest) but blatantly outright paying players one amount and then telling everyone that they are paying them something is (No I don't know how this worked out for them with regards to Tax, I assume they just lied to the League, not the Tax Office). So Melbourne I think were in a good spot to win this year. They got stripped of all their points and are unable to play in the finals (not to far into the season).
Now there is all sorts of drama about this, Melbourne pay their players a lot even ignoring the breaking the rules. So there is a ton of money invested there. With Melbourne being unable to get into the finals there is talk that this is pretty much the death of Rugby League in Melbourne seriously. All it takes is one weak year and people are talking about packing it in. So there isn't so much just that it is hard to build a fanbase when you aren't at least performing, it is hard to maintain one when you aren't insanely well established (AFL is not going anywhere in Melbourne, they could lose for 20 years and it isn't going anywhere). This is in a fairly small league, you have at most (not actual figures because lol like I care about fucking sports) 2 teams per state on average and you have 16 teams (there is a team from NZ, but not all states have 2 teams. Queensland always struggles to have a second team, franchises have come and gone in the last decade, think we are on to our third non-Brisbane team or something?). I can't even imagine to try and get a franchise up and running in a league as huge as MLB, especially not an established team that has not gone anywhere for a good 15 years (fuck that 25 year shit, you NEED the people without a history to get behind a team to have it gain momentum). That shit isn't going anywhere.
But yeah back to the fun of Melbourne and its salary cap stuff just for giggles and the drama, people have lost or stand to lose a lot of money on this and there is actually talk of them suing the NRL because of the ruling on Melbourne Storm being unable to play in the finals this year and having lost all their points. You see the penalty isn't in the rules. The counter argument there is, you signed a legal document saying this is how much you pay your players, you broke those rules. Boo fucking hoo, you broke the rules and you got punished, you have no place to cry.
So it is a bit of fun drama and honestly, I can totally see where NEB is coming from. If you have no connection to something it makes it pretty hard to give 2 fucks about a sport. The key here would be if you are going to start up new sports to decentralise them a bit. Try to emphasise teams more regionally than just key cities or even states is pushing it a bit (but then US has more smaller states outside a key few, so that might work?). I honestly don't know how to make it play nice with Canada though. Maybe you should just let Canadian teams win all the time.
Edit - Missed the Sopko response there. Yes some people are in it for the love of the game. It helps that you played. Lets be honest here, for some people it is a thing to go out and do with a touch of local flavour, an excuse to get drunk and have inappropriate drunken sex with your married best friend and pretend it never happened. Not everyone is into specific sports for the sake of the game itself. These people are necessary to make the sports function financially.
