Manchester United, the New York Yankees and You

You might have seen the article today that Malcolm Glazer has completed his purchase of Manchester United, the perennial power in the English Premiership and, quite frankly, in the football (yes, football) world.

So what, you say?

Well, if you're an American, you probably don't care. After all, you call football soccer, might have played it as a kid, your kids might play it now, but you wouldn't pay to see it played, at least not when in competition with American football, baseball, basketball, college football, college basketball and a whole host of other events. You might glimpse at the World Cup every four years, might have thought it was neat that the American women who played soccer did it so well for a while, but that's about it. As for the world football scene, you wouldn't know John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox, from Thierry Henry, the star forward for Arsenal, another perennial power in the Premiership. To you, it's a boring game, and you just don't understand how the rest of the world is so enamored of it.

So you're still not sure why you should care?

It may well be that you shouldn't care, but this branch of globalization could take root in the United States too. What's to say that after George Steinbrenner passes away, in order to pay estate taxes, his family won't have to sell the New York Yankees and his related media empire. And what's to say that the estate doesn't sell to the highest bidder, perhaps by having an investment bank run the auction. And what's to say that a Chinese business magnate, a Russian oligarch or an Indian entrepeneur don't end up owning the Yankees?

Does it matter?

Most likely not. The Glazers are competitive people, so they didn't buy Man. U. for any other reason than to try to establish hegemony over the football world (where, incidentally, there's a much larger consumer market than, say, for their Tampa Bay Buccaneers). That Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea, which right now is leading the English Premiership, didn't buy that football squad for any other reason than to have a totem to brag about (and, as it turned out, to create a top-notch team). After all, when you get right down to it, Chelsea is his team. Which would mean that the Yankees, the Patriots and the Lakers all could end up having owners who live in Beijing, Bombay and Moscow, instead Manhattan (by way of Tampa), Boston and Los Angeles.

So, the locales of the next generation of sports owners could span further and wider than ever before, and my prediction is that it will. After all, it's a big world, and with globalization, more markets are opening up.

But with very wealthy people, it's a small world. There aren't just that many of them, and they compete in ways that most of us cannot imagine, through yachts, show horses, race horses, sports teams, invitations to key events and who knows what else. If one magnate buys one key team, another one is sure to follow.

Even one who's English isn't much better than Yogi Berra's.

One question that intrigues me particularly involves the NBA. What will happen first -- the NBA's starting a league of sorts in China, or a Chinese businessman buying an NBA franchise -- an existing NBA franchise in the U.S.? Sure, many leagues want to take their acts abroad, but many people abroad want to bring their acts to America.

Except, perhaps, in the case of real football.