Why Do Team Owners Raise the Championship Trophy First?

John Henry, the billionaire investor, owns the Boston Red Sox, the English soccer club Liverpool and the N.H.L.’s Pittsburgh Penguins. After the Red Sox won their most recent World Series, in 2018, Henry stood, beaming, next to Commissioner Rob Manfred to accept baseball’s glistening trophy. When Liverpool won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League in 2020, Henry was nowhere to be seen as the players danced euphorically with the sparkling hardware.

The American tradition of handing trophies to club owners dates to the 1800s, when sports were still an amateur pursuit, said Joe Horrigan, a senior adviser at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The oldest N.F.L. trophy in the Hall’s possession, he said, is from 1924 and inscribed with the name of Sam Deutsch, a prominent jeweler and the owner of the Cleveland Bulldogs.

“It’s been fundamentally the same since the game began,” Horrigan said.

John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball, joked that the practice of honoring team owners — who technically own the trophies, too — had the tenor of a “pagan sacrifice or fertility rite,” with a commissioner that “serves at the pleasure” of the 30 club owners.

“They don’t actually need to be the recipient of the trophy, but that’s not the way egos work,” Thorn said. “It may be illustrative of a larger phenomenon, such as capitalism being the religion of the United States of America. But the owners ought to get something besides profits or losses, shouldn’t they?”

Some players, aware perhaps of who signs the checks, said they understood the moment of glory for team owners.

“At the end of the day, the ownership put the team together,” said Udonis Haslem, a reserve forward and three-time champion with the Miami Heat, who are facing the Denver Nuggets in the N.B.A. finals.