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Thought this was a really interesting comment from ESPN's Ryen Russillo during the Grantland Basketball Hour in December. He was talking about the moves by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé (also known for Gladwell's writeup of his all press all the time approach to his daughter's basketball team) and generally what it's like for these guys who have made a lot of money in the business world coming into sports.
New owners can’t help themselves because you think about how successful these guys are at amassing their wealth. They go, "I'm the man, and now I'll just buy a team, I'll apply the same analytics, the same principles … I'll just go win." But the model in business allows many companies to be successful, the model in sports only allows one.
I never really thought about it like that, but it's true. Although many think of business as being zero sum, it isn't really, especially in the world of technology where people are bound to use multiple devices and applications (that's not to say within a specific category it can't be zero sum). Sports is different in that there is only one winner. Of course the counter-argument here is that something can't really be zero sum when everyone gets rich, but it's interesting to consider nonetheless.