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...
Are MLS Teams Profitable? MLS owners have created the perception that MLS has been losing money since its inception. That operations haven’t created a positive cash flow. And while that may have been true prior to the last couple of seasons and still might be...
MLS Teams have three primary sources of revenue: gate receipts, sponsorships and television. Over the last few years, MLS has found ways to increase revenue from all three sources. Stadia In order to improve gate receipts, MLS teams have spent the last decade finding...
MLS’s national television deals provided approximately $23 million from ESPN, Fox, HDNet and Univision in 2007. That amounts to less than three percent of the Premier League’s new three year, $850 million-a-year television rights deal. But just because the big...
MLS’ desire to improve the quality of the league is complicated by its expansion efforts over the last decade. Growing a sports league and improving quality of the game are difficult objectives to achieve simultaneously. The four major U.S. sports leagues all...
