While this article was written due to the upcoming sale of WFT, there's a more proximate event in the sport world that would push back on the narrative. Last night, the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in their sixth season in the league. In those six years, the team has already doubled in value. While I've never attended a game there personally, reputationally the atmosphere is anything but milquetoast. They're a great example of a unique product that has led to wild success both on and off the ice.
I think there's an interesting contrast here to the recent Atlantic article on Baseball's latest rule changes. There's an almost game-theoretic thing where organizations optimize to the outcomes that benefit them the most at the organizational level that is responsible for those outcomes. So the team will optimize on winning, the franchise will optimize on money, and the league will optimize on overall growth. At each level, there's some correlation and some tension. If homogenization is locally good but bad for the overall health of the league, it's up to the league itself to put in incentive structures that cause differentiation.
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