A few days ago, the sports and basketball world was shocked by the news of the (in many ways) controversial transfer of Luka Doncic from the Dallas Mavericks to the LA Lakers. Throughout the media and the general discourse on the case, there is a perception of support for our basketball player, as there is at least a latent awareness that the private business aims of the ruling class in sport have gone too far this time (as they have so often), but it is rare to see a critical interpretation of this kind of development. So what is it all about?
Sports clubs, as companies, are nowadays mostly owned by private investors around the world, whose aim is to maximise their profits through the competition revenues of the club they own. Of course, since sport is also part of the overall capitalist system, in order to be competitive in a competitive sense, clubs have to resort to various commercial and business strategies that would ultimately bring in additional earnings. It is always the public, however, that fills the club's coffers with purchases of match-viewing (through tickets or the sale of television rights) or other goods that can be defined as objects of commerce, or objects that can be bought and sold. This is a process of commodification, whereby an object is given a new value, which is not its use value, but the exchange value on the basis of which it is sold to the consumer.
One of the most controversial examples is the increasing level of bundling of people and labour within the industry. This is particularly the case for the athletes themselves, as they have come to see themselves as a key commodity in the market (despite often enormous wages) to achieve sporting goals. Their workforce has become an object of trade that can be sold or bought with the intention that the quality of their workforce could potentially contribute to maximising profits based on competitive success.
Luka Dončić, who initially had no knowledge of his transfer and had no say in it, has thus become an object of sale, despite his sporting prominence, because in the end he is still just a commodity in the current system, generating profits for private owners through his labour.
The fundamental problem therefore lies primarily in the private ownership of sports clubs, since the power of the ruling class will always lead to the objectives of making the highest possible profits for one or a few owners through the activities of sports clubs, while athletes will be increasingly targeted and the public will be increasingly distanced from the piece of the pie that they create through their consumerism.
The solution lies in a general democratisation of the ownership structure of sports clubs. Although there are some models (especially in football) where fans as club members contribute to decisions and build (co-)ownership together, the implementation of broad-based ownership in sports clubs is relatively underdeveloped. This would allow both the supporters and the local community to contribute as co-owners to the running of the club, while at the same time making the club's objective a competitive performance rather than a private moneymaking venture. This is why economic democracy is also needed in the context of sport, as clubs today operate like many other businesses.