Professional sports leagues have discovered that they are not immune to the current economic difficulties. Revenue is flat or falling. Fixed costs are high. The weakest franchises in some leagues are losing tens of millions of dollars a year.
Amid the carnage, a few smart operators are learning a valuable lesson: You can’t lose $30 million a year on an MLS team when you’re total expenses are only $10 million. Suddenly, an investment in MLS doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, an investment in MLS is starting to look like a pretty good idea.
MLS is the only North American professional sports league that is growing.
Expansion franchises in Seattle (MLS’s 15th team) and Philadelphia (16th) recently agreed to pay $30 million each to join the league, three times what Toronto FC paid to join MLS in 2006. Portland (17th) and Vancouver (18th) are paying a $40 million franchise fee to join MLS in 2011.
Back in 2002, after the league had contracted the Fusion and Mutiny to get down to 10 teams, the situation was bleak. No matter how optimistic you wanted to be about the league’s future, seeing the Fire play the Columbus Crew approximately 15 times a season didn’t make for compelling sport. The critics were right: Major League Soccer was really Minor League Soccer.
But then, as real fans of MLS, we tried not to delude ourselves. We knew we weren’t watching the best players in the world and we were fine with it. The joy of watching MLS came from seeing Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley develop. From screaming at Justin Mapp’s unfulfilled potential. From seeing the mythical John Thorrington injure himself 3 minutes into his Fire debut and not caring that the people sitting next to you had no idea why you were laughing so hard. From hoping that there would eventually be enough good players in the league that a thug like Joey Franchino wouldn’t find a spot on the field or that Preki’s 73 year-old left foot wouldn’t win a second MVP award on one leg.
It came from seeing Chris Rolfe’s wonder-strike against Milan.
MLS was small time, the pleasures were simple and we enjoyed them. We still do.
But small time thrills are only worth so much. As fans, as Americans, we want to watch the best. We want Major League Soccer. Well maybe, just maybe, we’re on the precipe of big changes in the American soccer scene.
2011 and 2012 are poised to be the most pivotal years in the history of the young league. Consider the very real possibilities that:
- The league will have 18 teams in it the summer of 2011 and none of them will be an expansion team in their first season.
- The summer of 2011 may see both an NBA Lockout and an NFL lockout as part of new collective bargaining negotiations.
- The NHL will have just experienced its third straight year of stagnant or declining revenues.
- The Baby Boomers are starting to retire and MLB will be leaning over a precipe of a long demographic decline.
- The 2010 World Cup, held that summer in South Africa, will have achieved record ratings in the United States.
- MLS will used the branding and advertising associated with the World Cup to sign a number of aging, yet still high-performing stars.
- Financial problems at clubs throughout the world will increase somewhat the quality of player available in MLS’ price range.
All of these events are arriving at just the right time for MLS. MLS left the survival phase a few years ago. The expansion phase is about to take a rest. Soon, the league will be able to put all of its energy into increasing quality of play and growing the domestic game into true competition for the European leagues.
What does MLS’ future look like? What kind of growth can reasonably be expected? Let’s explore.
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They need to make a theme pub for the MLS hopefuls to get together and regale each other of how Soccer is gaining critical mass in the US.
They can share it with the guys who swear diesel is coming back and going to be the answer to our fuel problems and the guys who swear linux is ready for the desktop and MS is already dead in the water.
I’ve been hearing these same tunes for years, (decades?) now. I’ll admit, there are compelling arguments driving all 3 groups of crackpots, but I just think there are too many hurdles to overcome for anything to happen in the near term (3-5 years). If you’re looking out 10 years, 20? Then I can see more real potential. But I think (sadly) that Soccer, diesel, and Linux will be relegated to the niche audience for the foreseeable future.
Wow….wow………..wow…..
soccer, diesel and linux.
wow.
Would you like to make fun of my grandmother too?
Oh NO!
You’re not a diesel/linux person are you?
Also, a funny little thing. So, I was reading the Omaha World Herald this morning, which tends to be fairly central (straight news)/slightly right leaning (editorials) and the front page had an article entitled something like “Normandy remembers the sacrifice of US soldiers”. Then it dawned on me that today is the anniversary of D-Day. So I looked to see if it was a local article or a reprint (at least half the World Heralds national stories are pulled from other sources) and was surprised to see it was pulled from the Washington Post. Why was I surprised? Well, normally, the Washington Post is not the place for overly patriotic stories about something great in America’s past. I thought it was strange so I figured I would read the story and find out what would motivate the WP to blubber on about D-Day. Well, it starts out nice enough, mentioning some natives of Normandy observing a remembrance for the 385th who came through there, then BOOM. Guess what? Turns out Obama grandfather was a member of the 385th. Ok, now it makes sense why the Post would be pushing this story. Mystery solved. The MSM is really in a sad state of affairs.
I’ll talk about this more in a couple of upcoming articles, but I’m not asserting that soccer is going to take over the U.S. in the next couple of years. No way am I saying that. What I think I’m saying is that there is a very strong undercurrent of soccer payer-attentioners in this country but it is diffuse.
By way of example. Yesterday I went to the U.S.-Honduras World Cup qualifier at Soldier Field. Apparently, it was the second largest crowd to see a qualifier in U.S. history, about 55,000. Not a bad crowd right? I think it was more people than the U.S.-Brazil game that was held at Soldier last summer.
As an “American” soccer fan however, you could get disheartened. There were more Hondurans at Soldier Field, yesterday than all but 15 cities in Honduras.
The two red spots in this photo were, by far, the largest at the stadium.
This was what the outside of the stadium looked like before the game.
And the inside.
As to D-day, its a “good war” and good wars can be celebrated by both left and right…
Your write an article on Baseball and falling attendance without any real facts and then bolster soccer? Soccer will see the same fall in hype and participation as other mature sports. You need to look harder at the participation polls that are conducted and how they gather their info. Also, with the influx of latin americans coming to our country (Mexico, DR, Cuba, VZ), they play baseball as well. So, they are not all just soccer fans. You would think that football and basketball would fair out the worst, since they are not played as often in those countries.