The problem with the typical European system is that the same hand-full of football teams win year after year (Leicester were only the 6th team to win the Premier League in its 24 years). Compared to the 8 different Superbowl winners in the last eight years and 10 different World Series winners in the last 15 years.
The Premier League system with its entrenchment measures (clubs finishing highest get most resources) is an attempt to bring Major League style stagnation within an open-in-theory system. Also, both Superbowl and World Series have cup-style final stages, while our more-comparable FA Cup has 5 different winners in the last six years... but the MLB/NFL systems are designed to weaken the strongest and strengthen the weakest, so you'd expect them to have more different winners as that's what the structure does.
The unfairness is that the same clubs have occupied the top level of MLB for nearly 20 years, while most of the NFL is from the 1970s - if the English FA had adopted the same model then, we'd have been seeing Huddersfield and Blackpool in the top flight forever and Leicester stuck outside. Any promotion would be by application, a method that English football stopped using after 1986.
It's fair to say that cycling hasn't reached Premier League levels of oligarchy yet, but that's mainly due to sponsors coming and going. What if Sky continue to invest for another ten years? They've won the Tour 4 times out of the last 5 years and to the wider public that's the only race that matters.
Which is a more likely solution to one organisation (ASO, not Team Sky) possibly taking a dominant position: let the current teams dominate instead and so jump from the frying pan into the fire; or aim to strengthen the other races to the wider public? (Can you tell what I think?
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Hopefully the balance of power will shift as it has done in the past, but when Jonathan Vaughters reveals that the highest paid rider in his Tour team wouldn't even be in Sky's top 7 it feels very much like Bournemouth talking about Manchester City.
I'd love to know whether Jonathan Vaughters really knows so many of another team's salaries or if that's just a cute line to further his argument for a closed-shop of teams - unsurprisingly, as a team manager,
Vaughters wants to strengthen teams at the expense of both race organisers and the UCI.
It's worth remembering that Team Sky came from small beginnings and if the conditions for stepping up through the levels are made clearer, another strong team will do that same. Or, who knows, Vaughters might find a bigger sponsor who would commit when there's more clarity about what would allow the team to continue at the top level, rather than the current rather shadowy licensing system - many sports sponsors will be familiar with the idea of divisions from other sports.
. I'm delighted that a GB registered rider has won 4 out of the last 5 and 30 stages overall. But how would we feel if it was French or German domination, or even worse Australian? 
like the last event in that Gladiators show that used to be on. That could be fun to watch.
