re: Will we ever see a publicly traded franchise in a major American sport?

Yeah, but those teams had problems with bad owners. George Shinn was in bad health and he wanted out from owning the Hornets. The McCourts used the Dodgers as a piggy bank and took out all sorts of loans against their interest in the team and billed personal shite like their haircuts to the club. I think some of that could have been avoided by the league taking a better look at potential owners before giving them the rights to buy a franchise. (Frank McCourt was pretty well known in Boston for talking a lot of shite about what he would develop on the site of some parking lots he owned in the city and not doing a damn thing)