Essay Sample on Two Sports Governing Organizations in Two Areas of Policy

Introduction

Management and governance are very important aspects of various kinds of organizations, and the sports sector is not exceptional. Since the civilization of man and the integration of sports into different social aspects, a need to have more robust, inclusive, progressive, and supportive sport governing organizations have been up for continuous discussions. Although the functions of such bodies vary depending on factors like their geographical coverage and certain legal jurisdictions, they all execute certain basic functions. The roles include coming up with policies touching on the responsibilities of various structures and stakeholders in the sector. Other functions are on setting regulations that ensure that are to be adhered to by all players of the sport to ensure accountability, control, transparency, and ethical standards, and organize for the events in the areas at which the supporting infrastructure is present. These organizations further act as a link between the players of particular sports with the governments and other partner organizations, therefore, playing a crucial role in spreading the ideals of the sport and increasing the fan-base (Macdonald, Robert, and Rick Burton 230).

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Sports governing organizations can be of three kinds, namely public, nonprofit, or commercial. To begin with, public sports organizations are government-run units. The key aspect is that such bodies are created by the elected or political leaders to look into sports activities within the areas that they represent usually formulate them. As such, they are often run by public funding and seek to develop the needed sports facilities to nurture talents in their areas of operation (Hannington et al., 17). Secondly, there are commercial sports governing organizations that have the main aim of generating profits from particular sporting activities directly or indirectly. Some examples include the leagues, fitness clubs, professional sports franchises entities, sports material, and equipment retailers, and corporations that are involved with supporting certain teams or events (Pierce n.p).

Finally, the other classification is made up of non-profit organizations that govern certain sports activities. Normally, they use sports activities for various humanitarian purposes like promoting peace within communities, integration of certain activities to maintain good physical health in education, and promoting leisure activities for special groups such as professionals or even persons living with physical disabilities and many others. Common examples of such kind of organization are the schools that offer co-curricular activities intending to promote the development of students' talents and ensure their wholesome and all-round growth. In theory, these various kinds of sport governance organizations are seen to exist in isolation (Brave, Scott, and Kevin 752). This is not, however, the issue since great collaboration commonly exists among the organizations. They support each other in many ways, usually as far as sports equipment and expertise are concerned.

Basketball and Baseball are major games, mostly in the United States of America and Canada. They attract not only large following among the ordinary people but also have many participants who take part in the national leagues. Therefore, there are bold moves to ensure that the management and governance of these games are well catered for. For basketball, the governing body is the National Basketball Association (NBA), while the Major League Baseball (MLB) acts as the governing authority for baseball (Dabscheck 153). While these organizations might have several similarities in terms of the policies that they have enacted, there is no doubt that there are certain differences. As such, this paper seeks to compare and contrast the NBA and MLB in terms of two policies, namely, expansion draft and revenue sharing policies.

Brief History of NBL and MLB

The NBA was founded in New York City during the 1946-1947 season as the Basketball Association of America (BAA) to run expert basketball league in Northern America, specifically in the United States of America and Canada. It later transformed to NBA in the year 1949 after its merger with National Basketball League (NBL) (Riess, n.p). The league is rated as the premier basketball league all around the globe and owns NBA Entertainment, and NBA TV operated from New Jersey offices (Asghar 178). It has 30 participating teams from Canada and the remaining 29 from the United States and runs between October and April, with each team participating in about 82 games. NBA works under the USA Basketball (USAB), which is the national governing basketball body in the United States. The worldwide International Basketball Federation (FIBA) dully recognizes the two (Ferreira 93). The main functions of NBA include organizing regular basketball leagues, playoffs, championships, international competitions, ensuring proper, and widespread media coverage of the league games, regulating and setting ticket prices, and performing general management tasks as far as basketball is concerned (Hums, Mary, and Joanne n.p).

On the other hand, MLB was founded as a merger between the National League (NL) and American League (AL) in the year 1903 in New York, although he two maintained their autonomy. The two merging groups each brought in 15 teams making the total participating teams in the MLB league to 30. Similar to the NBA basketball league, 29 of the 30 teams are based in the United States while the remaining one is based in Canada. Each team plays about 162 games during the entire baseball league. Besides the baseball premier league, the organization superintends the Minor League Baseball that is made up of about 256 teams that are affiliated to the participant teams in the Major Baseball League. The organization further presides over the World Baseball Classic tourney in collaboration with the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Other general functions of MLB include leading collaboration with other stakeholders, negotiating the labor, and marketing deals for both their employees and players in the major and minor leagues, signing television and media contracts for the coverage of the league games, and hiring the officiating crews of the sport (Cairney et al., n.p). There is also the function of the general organization roles as far as baseball management, both locally and internationally, are concerned.

Comparison based On Expansion Draft Policy

Expansion draft refers to policies put in place by league professional sports organizations with the main aim of promoting the introduction of particular franchises. The practice has its origins in Northern America, and although the related practices have been embraced in other parts of the world, the practices exhibit several differences depending on the location and certain specific scenarios. In applying the policy, the prevailing teams are given priority to select a given number of contracted players and submit a list of their names to the league governing headquarters. By doing so, the teams are said to have 'protected' the players on their list and, therefore, no upcoming team can lay a claim on them. Afterward, the upcoming expansion teams are usually given a chance to select a given maximum number of players that are not on the protected lists of the well-established teams.

As a trend, to ensure that the engrained teams remain strong and with the best talent, they ensure that they list all the top players that they need in the protection lists before the elapse of the deadline given by the governing body. The system has been leaving only uncompetitive players to the expansion franchises. The expanding teams more often have a chance to select from injury-prone, old, and sometimes expensive players who require a lot of finances to keep in the club. Owing to these cost inefficiencies, the upcoming teams have had rough times making to the top of the list, and some even end up being completely dissolved soon after the start. However, the introduction of free-agent policy leaves other players off the constraints of protected list hence can freely solicit offers from or sign to play for any club, whether existing or upcoming.

If the upcoming team finds a great team of players and withstands the challenges during the onset years, it develops to the level of coming up with its talent from the academy or through other local talent discovery activities. In the United States of America, both the NBA and MLB have implemented the expansion draft policies. Although certain irrefutable similarities can be identified from their modes of application, glaring distinctions can be observed as well.

The NBA has had several expansion draft policies implemented within the years. The policies include Bobcats Expansion Draft of 2004, Supersonic Expansion Draft of 1967, and the Chicago Bulls Expansion Draft of 1966, to mention a few popular policies (Downs 11). Since the NBA did the policies, they present numerous similarities that will form a great part of the following discussions. To begin with, and about the player selection, NBA sets the dates for the selection of players by the expanding teams and sets a limit of a minimum of 14 players of the contracted or restricted free agent players (Schreiber n.p). The new teams also have to pick players left unprotected by 29 NBA teams and only a single player from any particular team. While the players under contract selected by the new teams automatically appear on their player roster, the unrestricted free agents are prohibited from being selected by the upcoming teams.

Concerning the salary caps, the new teams are allowed to select players they want with little or no regard for the salary cap. During the first season of admission, each new team is usually allowed a salary cap equivalent to 66 percent of the salary cap applicable to another existing team, and it increases to 75 percent in the second year. Further, a trade exemption is normally offered for the replacement of players by the teams that have a team salary greater than the salary cap set by the NBA. Regarding the pre-expansion draft trade, the teams are legible for pre-expansion draft trades in case a new team picks or declines to pick some unprotected players in return. Finally, the expiry of the expansion draft duration completely bars a new team from acquiring the player that is lost, except if another team did not request the player during the following expansion draft.

On the other hand, the MLB has also held expansion drafts throughout the years, the most common one being the 1997 Major League Baseball expansion draft that saw the Tampa Bay Devil Raya and Arizona Diamondbacks attain the requirement for a roster with 40 men as per the requirements (Brown et al., n.p). Contrary to the NBA's system, where the existing teams are only allowed to protect eight players, MLB allows protection of up to about 15 players, including those with no-trade clauses and has not considered waiving such rights during the season (Kolovich et al., n.p). All the remaining players who are citizens of the United States and Canada and have more than three years of experience are all eligible for drafting.

Dissimilar to NBA, the MLB expansion draft is done in three rounds and involves selection by the two teams that are seeking admission into the Major League (Lemez, Nick, and Joseph 1724). To determine the team to perform the first selection, a flip of a coin is used to guarantee the winner either the second and third picks or the first and the fourth picks. Additional picks are then done alternately between expansion teams until each gets 14 players, followed by the protection of three players by each one of them to end the first phase.