[onlypassingthru]

Maybe drawing 1000 fans/game because they've been relegated to a lower division is just what some billionaires need to figure out they don't belong in the majors. Ownership should be as competitive as the athletes on the field.

[WorldMaker]

Maybe, yeah.

Relegations would also mean more opportunities for teams to be fan-owned. It's reasonably common in relegation/promotion leagues, especially after major upsetting relegations (though "Welcome to Wrexham" is an interesting story of the reverse, a fan-owned team selling to new money for the hopes of resources for promotion). In the US, we mostly just have the Packers as a fan-owned team, and that situation is truly an exception and almost impossible to replicate.

It does feel strange that so many US "major" teams need a billionaire or two or three to run. Why aren't more of the teams themselves public companies? Why are they all as much private toys for the super-rich as anything else? We've already seen that shows up as a lack of concern for/nonalignment with local/regional/fan interests on long enough timescales (all the "team moves", for instance).

[onlypassingthru]

My elevator pitch also includes the Relegation Series, a best of seven for keeping your spot in the majors. Could even draw more viewers than the WS!

[madcaptenor]

The truly American way to do this would be: - the top half of the league (or most of it - currently it's 12 teams out of 30) play a postseason like we currently have - mirror-image postseason for the bottom half of the league, but the loser moves on instead of the winner

[bombcar]

Publicly owned teams are sometimes banned.

If you have the totality of all baseball salaries, even though it would be “unfair” to whoever is signing the billion dollar contracts these days (have they got that high?) it’d be much nicer if it was spread over many MANY more teams and players, even if the lowest teams are almost “volunteers”.