BCWWF
12-18-2008, 10:19 AM
Soccer has Champion's Leagues on every continent, where the best teams from each league competes. The most notable one is in Europe.
No other team sport transcends quite like soccer/football, but with globalization in everything else, it seems only a matter of time before the world outgrows some of the existing structures.
My guess would probably be NHL and then NBA. Basketball has gotten a lot of publicity lately as some European teams have been able to outbid the NBA, but I'd still think hockey is a little closer.
Hockey has had established leagues with quality players throughout eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and I feel like the NHL would be more likely to "go down" to their level than the NBA at this point.
That said, eventually there will be some pretty good teams in Spain, Greece, Russia, China, and more, and it will be hard for the NBA to not get into that. It looks like the NBA is going to try to expand their own brand into Europe before joining a competition with them, but hopefully Europe is strong enough to avoid that. I think it would help the NBA a lot if this happened though.
No other team sport transcends quite like soccer/football, but with globalization in everything else, it seems only a matter of time before the world outgrows some of the existing structures.
My guess would probably be NHL and then NBA. Basketball has gotten a lot of publicity lately as some European teams have been able to outbid the NBA, but I'd still think hockey is a little closer.
Hockey has had established leagues with quality players throughout eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and I feel like the NHL would be more likely to "go down" to their level than the NBA at this point.
That said, eventually there will be some pretty good teams in Spain, Greece, Russia, China, and more, and it will be hard for the NBA to not get into that. It looks like the NBA is going to try to expand their own brand into Europe before joining a competition with them, but hopefully Europe is strong enough to avoid that. I think it would help the NBA a lot if this happened though.