As capitalism developed and became increasingly sophisticated over the century, sport could not escape its clutches and has become a major aspect of unbridled capitalism of the Western World. Rather than an escape from work and the real world, sport has evolved into another reflection of capitalism in terms of the commodification of games, the imposition of capital structure on sports and the evolution of the athlete into an icon beyond the game itself. Again, this is not to argue that sport is intrinsically capitalist, but that it is molded to reflect the realities of "the world in which it functions". For example, the revolutionary leaders in Cuba, Castro and Che were prominent athletes who used sports for non-capitalist socialization. Both the USSR and The People's Republic of China employ sport to advance the politics and a sense of cultural superiority of those nations. In the west, then, it should not be a surprise that sport has become a reflection of capitalism and laissez-fair economics. Nor should it be any wonder that the struggles between labour and management are a part of the development modern sport. Many, still tied to myth that sport exists somehow sperate from the rest of society decry the developments in modern sport, believing that sport is something special and should not reflect the realities of capitalist development. This however flies in the face of the history of the twentieth century...

In 1885 the Football Association accepted what was already a reality in English soccer and formally accepted professionalism. Players were paid expenses and small salaries from the gate receipts taken at the parks. In 1895 after a protracted struggle the Rugby Football Union experienced its Great Schism when 21 Northern clubs chose to leave the parent body to allow them to pay and attract top players. In both cases the drive for "pay for play" came from the industrial north where club mangers were also local entrepreneurs who saw the opportunity to make profit from sport. The working class labourer toiled on the pitch while the middle class administrators ran their clubs like businesses. In the new Northern (Rugby) Union, players' salaries were limited and they were forbidden to take certain part-time jobs such as working in pool halls. These businesses were establishing conditions of employment for their workers. When these sports developed a professional focus it was already present within the existing business structure as teams became limited liability companies and sold shares. Rugby Union football chose instead to keep its players amateur, but it too was developing a business structure. Behind the facade of gentlemanly amateurism, the RFU was able to earn profit by the efforts of free labour.

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Although different English sports had various attitudes toward professionalism, by the end of the century all, except Rugby Union Football, were becoming professional and all sport were becoming more business-like. While golf had a long history of professional teachers for the amateur club members, the professionals' status remained low. Cricket had, much earlier, accommodated professionals as bowlers and fielders and by the end of the century Dr. W.G. Grace, a "shamateur", was receiving handsome rewards for his batting exhibitions.

In America by the beginning of the twentieth century baseball was already ensconced as a professional sport. Historian William Baker notes that in 1866 Philadelphia had paid players. Also by the end of the century baseball was seen as "America's Game"...and imbued with a certain mythology that contradicted the ideas of thrusting capitalism and entreprenuership. This reflects the notion that sport and "the real world" were separate spheres, but in 1919 the reality that sport was business broke the hearts of American baseball fans.

With the romantic facade of America's game stripped away, the Black Sox scandal of 1919 was clearly a labour dispute. After years of mistreatment and humiliation by Chicago White Sox owner, Charles Comisky, some of his players (employees) conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. While this was illegal, it was one of the few ways in which players could exercise control over their labour and working conditions. The name "Black Sox", while a fitting for the scandal-ridden team, actually comes from the dirty socks the players were forced to wear because of the owner's cheapness. Even though a Grand Jury found eight players not guilty of taking bribes to throw the series, Major League baseball banned the players for life...and more, indicating that baseball was above labour laws and the decision of the courts. Among the banned players was Shoeless Joe Jackson, an outfielder whose performance in the series still ranks among the best in the game's history.

Joe Jackson in the Virtual Hall of Fame

The idea that baseball was special and above the law was confirmed in 1922 when a Supreme Court decision declared baseball was unique in terms of trade and commerce and therefore anti-trust and interstate labour laws did not apply. This gave the owners complete control over their players and the workers no protection from the employers. The justification: baseball was somehow a separate world from normal labour relations because of what it meant to the American psyche. This position would be used by owners as late as the 1970s in defense of their unconstitutional control over their players' labour. Even the Babe was suspended and fined for barnstorming after the baseball season had ended reinforcing the fact that players did not own their skills. In another example of hypocracy, while baseball remained racially segregated, white owners would rent their stadiums to Afro-American teams while their own teams were out of town. It seems that even racism could not stand in the way of profit.

By the twentieth century, Canada was becoming increasingly influenced by the US and moving away from British influence in the area of organized sport and unbridled capitalism. This was obvious in the emergence of professional hockey. In 1904, the International Hockey League was formed among clubs mostly from the Northern US (with one Canadian team). Although the league lasted only three years, its dedication to professionalism forced teams in Montreal, and later other Canadian cities, to adopt professionalism or face losing their top players to the American teams. There was even talk of a Montreal franchise in the IHL which would have made it even more threatening to the amateur clubs of the city. Ontario, more British than Quebec, held to the Victorian amateur ethos longer, but top clubs there too eventually accepted that sport was a business and conceded to professionalism. Competition for athletes who were able to translate their sporting skills into employment became increasingly the norm in Canada because of the proximity to the US and its preference for entrepreneurialism.

Returning to baseball, following WWII the game prospered and grew as franchises were granted outside the dominant north east. Travel was less prohibitive and television broadcast rights generated increasing revenue. These developments came to threaten the closed shop and unfair control owners had over their players. In 1969 star outfielder, Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals was traded to Philadelphia. He was reluctant to make the move but was faced with two choices, go or retire. Flood challenged the control of the owners under the anti-trust laws, but lost his case. However, players in professional hockey, basketball and football began to challenge owner and league control more successfully because of the emergence of rival leagues. It was harder for the NHL, NFL and NBA to retain its hold on their players when there were alternative employers willing to create legitimacy for their ventures by signing the likes of Joe Namath and Bobby Hull. In 1975, two baseball players, Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith again challenged the authority of Major League Baseball. The players and owners agreed to have the issue heard by an independent arbitrator who ruled that after the another season with the clubs which owned their contracts the players were free agents able to sell their skills to the highest bidder. The decision was challenged in law but upheld in the Supreme Court, thus breaking the owners' monopoly. Free agency created bidding wars among owners who were less tied to the traditions of the past and sought to create winners by attracting top free agents. Money from television revenues allowed new clubs to compete with established rivals who for years held players' contracts forever. Following the advent of free agency in all professional sport in America, players sought agents and lawyers to secure the best possible deals.

While it may be argued that free agency, strikes and astronomical salaries have destroyed "the true meaning" of sport it can also be argued that it has given players as employees labour freedom granted to all other workers, but denied to ball players. It was not the players who made sport a business, but the owners. With the help of government these owners were, until 1975, in best possible position a businessman could hope for. They had a product in great demand, produced by skilled labourers who had no control over their labour. Recognizing that sport was a business, the Supreme Court decision only gave athletes the freedom and protection ensured to other workers in a free-trade economy. In October 1998, President Clinton signed the Curt Flood Act into law, which made baseball subject to the antitrust laws (with certain exceptions) and went further in recognizing that sport is a business.

In contrast, the Rugby Football Union in England and the International Rugby Board (the world governing body for the amateur version of rugby) clung steadfastly to the ethos of amateurism even at the upper levels of the game. At the same time that national unions and international clubs were functioning as businesses and realizing great profits, players were unpaid for their efforts. International level players in Wales were expected to play weekly club fixtures, represent their county and train and play for the national team, all without pay. For this reason Wales lost many of its top players in the 1970s and 80s to Rugby League (the professional version of rugby). Over the same time as these defections occurred, surely countless potential players chose to direct their talents to sports which better compensated them for their athletic skills. Finally in the mid-1990s Rugby Union became professional...conceding to a fact that had faced them as early as 1895...sport is business.

Throughout the twentieth century athletes have been used to promote commodities, related or not to their profession. These included sports equipment, cigarettes, clothing, health aids and bubble gum cards, making sporting heroes pop culture icons, beyond the game. By the 1960s, it had become increasingly difficult to separate aspects of popular culture, as it became an intertwined system of relationships that fed off and promoted each other. The compartmentalization of popular culture is more often an academic exercise that facilitates easier understanding, but does not take into account the inter-weaving of popular culture. For example Shaquil O'Neil is a basketball star who promotes his music and film career through his fame as an athlete. For the businesses of sport, film and music this works extremely well, as devotees of each of the areas of O'Neil's interest cross over as fans of the person. The sporting heroes have now become cultural icons beyond the game, admired beyond their sporting abilities or team and community identification.

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This development, while complex and difficult to unravel, seems, in part at least, to have its developments as far back as the 1960s, with the advent of free agency and other freedoms afforded athletes. Certainly prior to the 1960s when sporting teams could hold a player for life and could exert undue influence on their careers outside the sport, fans supported teams made up of familiar players. There was a relationship between teams and communities. Once players achieved the freedom to sell their abilities and their image to the highest bidder, the stability of a team diminished. Top players sought contracts from wealthy teams, often in large markets with huge viewing audiences leading to the ability to attract the best players. Soon players rather than teams became the focus of fan interest as team make-up could change radically from one season to the next (note the Florida Marlins baseball team and the Chicago Bulls basketball team). Fan loyalty and local interest diminished in smaller markets to the point where once competitive teams could no longer compete for players with New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and in Canada, Montreal and Toronto. Instead fans (consumers) became supporters of individual players.

With this switch from loyalty to a team to loyalty to an individual such as Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan, it became possible to market the individual as much as the team. This made the attraction of large market teams even more appealing to top athletes, as they could earn more from endorsements in larger markets than in smaller markets in the American Midwest or on the Canadian prairies. While teams such as the Green Bay Packers and the Edmonton Oilers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders are still supported as "teams", for the most part, sports fans which support players for their skills are fans of big city teams who can employ them. Fan loyalty is now transitory, depending on where their favorite players is employed from year to year. Fans nation wide and beyond may support or abandon their support for the teams which hires the services of Dennis (The Worm) Rodman, for example, based on their opinion of his lifestyle and conduct.

Since the 1960s the trend in professional sport has been the concentration of top teams in large cities at the expense of smaller areas. While under contract to the Edmonton Oilers, Wayne Gretsky, Mark Messier and Grant Fheur brought the small market team championships but it was not long before these stars ended up in Los Angeles, New York and St Louis. In baseball, teams such as the Montreal Expos and the Milwaukee Brewers have become "farm teams" for the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Socks and the Atlanta Braves. This trend has placed small market clubs in jeopardy in that they cannot attract and hold top players and therefore fail to draw fans. Consequently these clubs lose money and face being sold or moved. This was the case of the Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques in hockey. Even ideas such as revenue sharing among teams in professional leagues has not rescued the small market teams because top athletes are still lured to big cities where they can parlay their talents in sport to other areas of success, and where endorsement contracts are greater.

Sport in the twentieth century in North America has revealed that sport has not remained "pure" in the Victorian sense of the idea. Sport as part of the culture has become another example of capitalist advances and the concentration of wealth and influence in large urban centres. Television and other areas of mass media have made it possible for fans to exist beyond the immediate areas in which teams play. Since the top players are concentrated in large cities, local teams have lost support, revenue and therefore face extinction. Players who were "slaves" to clubs and owners are now dictating the conditions under which they play, taking advantage of labour legislation and increased employment opportunities. The days of the close relationship between the team and the community are in jeopardy, as sport, in the capitalist world has reinvented the fan from a supporter of teams and communities to fans of individual athletes.