For decades, fans of the four major North American sports—Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, and Football—have been accustomed to the pure domination of dynastic teams. Whether we are talking about the 1990’s Chicago Bulls or the 2000’s New England Patriots, dynasties in these four sports were very common.

 

Contrastingly, over the past half-decade, dynasties in the core four sports have become far less common. Of course, there are exceptions such as the Kansas City Chiefs, however by and large, dynasties have almost become impossible in these sports. This shift in the competitive landscape of sports raises an obvious question: why are dynasties so few and far between in this day and age? Let’s talk about it.

 

Sports as an Entertainment Product

 

Although athletes may claim that sports are all about winning, at the core of what sports represent, they are entertainment products. All of the leagues of the core four North American sports (The NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL) were created to generate large amounts of revenue. 

 

Over the years, these leagues have realized that a more competitive league makes for a better entertainment product. Through this realization, these leagues have attempted to create incentives and rules to make bad teams better and make it difficult for good teams to make significant improvements.

Take the NBA for example, where new rules have been implemented around the salary cap structure (the amount teams can spend on player contracts) where teams who spend a lot of money are limited in how they can acquire new players to make their teams better.

 

Another example is the NBA play-in tournament. This is a tournament where teams ranked 7-10 in their respective conferences battle for the last two playoff spots in each conference. Before this was introduced, the teams that ranked 1-8 in each conference would automatically make the playoffs. With this tournament being added, it gives bad teams an incentive to be competitive, rather than tanking to get a higher draft pick (the worse you are, the better draft pick you get). 

 

This, in turn, makes for a more competitive league in which teams lower in the standings can beat teams higher in the standings on any given night.

 

Cinderella Stories

 

Over the past few years, the storyline arc of mid-tier going on unexpected playoff runs has been a common theme. Though this is a result of sports being an entertainment product, these Cinderella stories display the end product of these new rules.

 

For example, the epitome of a Cinderella story in the NHL was the 2022-23 Florida Panthers Cup final run. Throughout the regular season, the Florida Panthers were a mid-tier team that struggled to gain major success, barely making the playoffs, and being the last team to clinch a spot. In the first round of the playoffs, they ended up shocking the Boston Bruins (who were arguably the greatest regular season team of all time) in a 7 game series. The Panthers ended up riding that momentum into a Stanley Cup finals appearance.

 

Another example of this is the 2022-23 Miami Heat in the NBA. Similar to the Panthers, the Heat were one of the last teams to make the playoffs, only making it through the aforementioned play-in tournament. Throughout the playoffs, they found key contributions from role players who turned into stars and relied on their superstar, Jimmy Butler. They ended up making the NBA finals closely resembling the Florida Panthers’ finals appearance.

 

These examples directly show how the increase in competition fosters incredible Cinderella stories and in turn, makes it extremely difficult for good teams to become dynasties.

 

With sports primarily being an entertainment product and the increase of Cinderella stories, the overall lack of dynastic teams is no shock. Today, the core four sports are designed to have the smallest margins to win, where the smallest differences can impact the results of a game. 

 

We may never see a true dynasty again, or, we may see a team win eight championships in the next ten years, who knows? All we know is that sports is a dynamic scene where changes are made constantly. Though we may not be seeing dynastic teams right now, a single change could alter the way we view sports as a whole.