A Brief History
On February 16, 2005, the National Hockey League cancelled its entire 2004-2005 regular season and playoffs after locking out the players due to labor problems. This event was the third of four times the NHL suffered lost games, the earliest incident taking place in 1992, and the most recent in 2012.
Digging Deeper
The NBA has had four lockouts and a strike in 2020. The lockout of 1998-1999 lasted six months and resulted in lowered salaries for players. Other lockouts occurred in 1995, 1996, and 2011. So that you do not become too upset, think of Stephen Curry pulling down a cool $55,761,217 salary. The 2020 strike was done as a protest by the players about alleged police brutality toward African Americans.
The NFL has had its share of individual holdouts and player problems, most notably in 1968, 1974, 1982, and 1987. Several high profile lawsuits by players and their union have also occurred.
The worst MLB labor stoppage happened in 1994-1995 and eclipsed the previous longest MLB work stoppage in 1981, 232 days vs. 50 days.
Other sporting or athletic leagues have suffered complaints and lawsuits by players, including college players demanding a cut of marketing proceeds based on their personal images and the like. Professional women athletes have complained of earning disparity with male athletes.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Do player strikes work?
If you liked this article and would like to receive notifications of new articles, please feel welcome to follow History and Headlines on Facebook and X!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Steidinger, Joan. Stand Up and Shout Out: Women’s Fight for Equal Pay, Equal Rights, and Equal Opportunities in Sports. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020.
Walsh, Conor. Lockouts and Work Stoppages in Professional Sports: Select Analyses. Nova Science Pub Inc, 2014.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Horge of the words “2004–05 Season Not Played” engraved on the Stanley Cup, acknowledging the canceled 2004–05 season, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
