But if you look at total income, the difference still is huge. The top has way more income from merchandise, sponsorship, and revenue share from UEFA tournaments (champions league, in particular)

For example, http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N... shows that Manchester United had £320M revenue in 2012; 'only' £60M of that is from those broadcast rights.

At the bottom, http://www.wolves.co.uk/news/article/wolves-headline-financi... reports a total revenue of £60.6M.

I'm not familiar with the sport at all, but Red Bull's other sponsorship ventures would lead me to think that the money they would spend on a team is not tied to the direct profitability of it. It would help letting smaller teams have a bit more cash, but it wouldn't prevent the top teams from continuing to spend them out of competition. We actually have seen this as well in the Premier League. To really get balanced competition you need a host of financial regulations, not just caps and limited revenue sharing, with a monopoly on your sports leauge, ala the NFL.

More to the point, the two major investor groups pull about a billion a year in profit out of F1, while adding no value to the sport.

Not sure the premiership is a good model it sucks all of the money away from the lower divisions.

The premiership also has been trying to wall its self off from the other clubs so that they dont have relegation - unlike the NFL the worst performing teams get relegated which keeps the teams honest to an extent.

The one thing I think all US sports should incorporate is the idea of relegation. It make the rest of the season so much more exciting.

It's like one of the commentators pointed out. The Premiership is one of those leagues that even if you're mid-table, you might be safe since there are more points between say the #1 team and the #5 team as opposed to the number of points which separate the #5 team and the #20 team.

Plus, now it's just as exciting who's going down and who's staying up. As well as which teams from the Championship is getting their big break and can they stay up for more than one year?

If US teams had more of a setup like this, the story lines would be endless. I think it makes for a much more fan friendly league.

yes though American sports seems to run on socialist lines can you imagine Man U not being allowed to sign the next pele.

"sorry lad we love to sign you but rules is rules your going to be playing for Gillingham F.C in the second division of the Beezer homes League"