If you have not seen the Ken Burns documentary on baseball you should. It is well done and covers a lot of baseball owners, setting up leagues and their rather heavy handed approach with players and competing leagues. A couple of times competing leagues were set up to treat players better only to get shut down. One of the reasons the BlackSox scandal happened in 1919 World Series where some of the WhiteSox players took money from a gambler to throw the series was hatred of the owner and wanting to cash in with a big payday.

I think it is now apparent there is way too much money in all sports where owners and players are racking up huge sums of money, even in college, and advertisers seem to continually pony up the money as well as fans. I went to a baseball game and someone with us wanted to look in the team store and it was packed and people spending tons of money on jerseys. They had kids (under 10) shirts going for as much as $129. Not sure how people justify that expense but they do.

Apparently advertisers have bottomless pools of money.