MLS is in a unique business position for an American league because, unlike NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL, the best players in the world do not play here. It's never going to be the case that 90+% of the best play here. So MLS should be asking itself how, as a business, it can compete for soccer attention here. It has a monopoly on professional soccer TEAMS in the US, but it has no monopoly on sports entertainment and no monopoly on soccer as TV entertainment. Americans can watch the NFL or they can watch EPL, Liga MX, etc.
MLS can't run the NFL playbook and it can't run the LALIGA playbook or EPL playbook. I understand the concept that relegation and open leagues generates competition, but it's an insane business practice and should NOT be adopted by MLS. There is probably a reasonable floor of interest here that means MLS can suck but the league and owners still make a profit. But if they want to grow huge they need a plan to beat their competition and they need to understand who that competition is. I would argue that MBL and NBA are the targets. To win they need to do something truly different, not just be the soccer version of the same thing.
So what should they do? Or rather, where should they find inspiration? Indian Premier League Cricket, obviously.
IPL Cricket is second globally only to the NFL for league revenue per game, despite being a relatively new league. They got their by intentionally competing with nightly soap operas and Bollywood for attention.
There is one game every night at the same time. They intentionally maximize the player drama by replacing a draft with an open bidding system. Teams bid on contracts for the active players, too. That system leads to team parity which makes every game interesting. Revenue sharing is structured to promote competition. They brought in celebrity owners (imagine the drama around, say, a Chief vs Rams match up if Taylor Swift OWNED the Chiefs and Kanye West OWNED the Rams!) And they innovated on the game structure to maximize entertainment (while staying true to the spirit of the game).
I wouldn't say MSL should definitely copy any one of the those specific things. But the overall key to their success was going after an audience that wanted to be entertained but didn't care that much about cricket specifically. The number of people who don't care about soccer in the US is way bigger than the number that do - what should the MLS do to capture that market? The other thing was they saw the league itself as the product, not the teams. They want you to watch every game even if your favorite team isn't playing, and they make it's easy to do that and easy to care about those games.
Love all of this, especially the bidding system. There are a lot of rumors of KDB coming to MLS, but it centers on which team has the “rights” to sign him. It’s bizarre.
That is true, I just looked more into it, this is a detailed overview:
In Major League Soccer (MLS), a Designated Player (DP) is a roster slot that allows teams to sign players who earn a salary above the league's salary cap. This rule was created to attract top international talent to the league and was famously used to bring in players like David Beckham.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Purpose:
The DP rule allows MLS teams to acquire and retain world-class players whose salaries would otherwise exceed the league's salary budget.
Number of DPs:
Each MLS team can have up to three DP slots.
Salary Budget Charge:
A team pays a specific amount for each DP, known as the "Salary Budget Charge". This amount is less than the player's actual salary, but it still counts towards the overall salary cap.
Examples:
Many of MLS's biggest stars are Designated Players, including players like Lionel Messi, Josef Martínez, and Zlatan Ibrahimović.
Mostly agree. There are good stories to be had (Nancy’s Columbus, this year’s Whitecaps) but most of the league feels like a vague soup except for the team I follow. It’s unclear what the way forward for MLS is, and sometimes I wonder if there is even a market for an American soccer league that competes with Europe. The Premier League might just be too entrenched in the US.
I think there is a market for elite American club soccer. We’ll never get it as long as the top flight is closed and the league model is based on franchises.
Maybe. I’m not totally convinced that there’s an audience of people who don’t watch American soccer now but would if there was pro/rel. The Premier League will still be a much better league with much more history and many more fans. I hope the USL pro/rel thing works out and proves me wrong though
Too true. I moved here in the late eighties to a football free zone. Only the excellent USWNT (although ignored by most of your main stream media) gave me the fix I needed. When MLS started I had hopes but soon realized that the standard was high school at best. Thank goodness for Peacock, Paramount Plus etc. now I can get to watch my beloved Arsenal. COYG!
You’re an essential professional soccer curator for those of us who are learning the game. Please work on relegating the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox!
It seems fitting that the MLS leveled the field to discourage standout players and teams from rising to the top, for that "equalizing effect" mirrors how the rules for soccer were designed to make it an "inclusive" sport. Very low scores minimize the ability of great teams to stand out.
Don't get me wrong, I admire that aspect of soccer for encouraging everyone to get off the sidelines and join the exercise, not to mention to facilitate international playoffs where teams from countries I've barely heard of can sometimes make the big boys sweat a bit. It's all good, except when it comes to actually watching hours of play come down to a 0-0 score and a shootout to decide the winner. I loved to play in my younger days, but never could bring myself to actually watch a complete game on TV and haven't watched more than a few minutes in years.
To reinforce your point, in the past week or two, I have checked the standings in the following leagues for teams I follow: Ireland's First Division (Finn Harps), Scotland's Premier Football League (Hibs), USL League One (Spokane), and all four English Leagues (variety of teams)
The one league where I haven't checked the standings, the MLS (Minnesota). It just doesn't matter.
Excellent post! Thorough and smart as hell. I don’t know soccer well but I DID go to see Austin FC on a day so hot (106? 107?) that they moved the starting time back an hour and we left the little ones at home. It was mildly insane. Beautiful stadium though. Everything shiny and green.
Thanks, Dan! It's not just in Texas. The first SDSU football game at Snapdragon Stadium was a disaster. Sunny, 100+ degree day... I read somewhere that MLS prefers to avoid the cold in the Northern states in the winter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I went to the USMNT qualifier vs Honduras on Feb 2 2022 in St Paul. The wind chill was below zero. I bought a bottle of water and it froze. The Honduran keeper got frostbite.
If the schedule gets switched, which might be the right thing to do, it effectively kills the northern franchises.
Fascinating! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
So that’s where Jan Stejskal went after leaving QPR. A great shot-stopper, but never adjusted to the back pass law. Big Jan with the ball at his feet was like an elephant on roller-skates.
MLS is in a unique business position for an American league because, unlike NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL, the best players in the world do not play here. It's never going to be the case that 90+% of the best play here. So MLS should be asking itself how, as a business, it can compete for soccer attention here. It has a monopoly on professional soccer TEAMS in the US, but it has no monopoly on sports entertainment and no monopoly on soccer as TV entertainment. Americans can watch the NFL or they can watch EPL, Liga MX, etc.
MLS can't run the NFL playbook and it can't run the LALIGA playbook or EPL playbook. I understand the concept that relegation and open leagues generates competition, but it's an insane business practice and should NOT be adopted by MLS. There is probably a reasonable floor of interest here that means MLS can suck but the league and owners still make a profit. But if they want to grow huge they need a plan to beat their competition and they need to understand who that competition is. I would argue that MBL and NBA are the targets. To win they need to do something truly different, not just be the soccer version of the same thing.
So what should they do? Or rather, where should they find inspiration? Indian Premier League Cricket, obviously.
Fair points. I’ll have to check out the cricket 😅
IPL Cricket is second globally only to the NFL for league revenue per game, despite being a relatively new league. They got their by intentionally competing with nightly soap operas and Bollywood for attention.
There is one game every night at the same time. They intentionally maximize the player drama by replacing a draft with an open bidding system. Teams bid on contracts for the active players, too. That system leads to team parity which makes every game interesting. Revenue sharing is structured to promote competition. They brought in celebrity owners (imagine the drama around, say, a Chief vs Rams match up if Taylor Swift OWNED the Chiefs and Kanye West OWNED the Rams!) And they innovated on the game structure to maximize entertainment (while staying true to the spirit of the game).
I wouldn't say MSL should definitely copy any one of the those specific things. But the overall key to their success was going after an audience that wanted to be entertained but didn't care that much about cricket specifically. The number of people who don't care about soccer in the US is way bigger than the number that do - what should the MLS do to capture that market? The other thing was they saw the league itself as the product, not the teams. They want you to watch every game even if your favorite team isn't playing, and they make it's easy to do that and easy to care about those games.
Love all of this, especially the bidding system. There are a lot of rumors of KDB coming to MLS, but it centers on which team has the “rights” to sign him. It’s bizarre.
That is true
The DP's are for other teams not to be to overpowered eg. Liverpool and luton town
Wasn’t DP invented to allow Beckham to enter the league? The DP isnt a roster/parity tool. It’s a marketing tool.
That is true, I just looked more into it, this is a detailed overview:
In Major League Soccer (MLS), a Designated Player (DP) is a roster slot that allows teams to sign players who earn a salary above the league's salary cap. This rule was created to attract top international talent to the league and was famously used to bring in players like David Beckham.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Purpose:
The DP rule allows MLS teams to acquire and retain world-class players whose salaries would otherwise exceed the league's salary budget.
Number of DPs:
Each MLS team can have up to three DP slots.
Salary Budget Charge:
A team pays a specific amount for each DP, known as the "Salary Budget Charge". This amount is less than the player's actual salary, but it still counts towards the overall salary cap.
Examples:
Many of MLS's biggest stars are Designated Players, including players like Lionel Messi, Josef Martínez, and Zlatan Ibrahimović.
Mostly agree. There are good stories to be had (Nancy’s Columbus, this year’s Whitecaps) but most of the league feels like a vague soup except for the team I follow. It’s unclear what the way forward for MLS is, and sometimes I wonder if there is even a market for an American soccer league that competes with Europe. The Premier League might just be too entrenched in the US.
I think there is a market for elite American club soccer. We’ll never get it as long as the top flight is closed and the league model is based on franchises.
Maybe. I’m not totally convinced that there’s an audience of people who don’t watch American soccer now but would if there was pro/rel. The Premier League will still be a much better league with much more history and many more fans. I hope the USL pro/rel thing works out and proves me wrong though
Too true. I moved here in the late eighties to a football free zone. Only the excellent USWNT (although ignored by most of your main stream media) gave me the fix I needed. When MLS started I had hopes but soon realized that the standard was high school at best. Thank goodness for Peacock, Paramount Plus etc. now I can get to watch my beloved Arsenal. COYG!
I think you meant Come on you SPURS… you’re still welcome to the newsletter tho…
Crucial European games coming up this week for the both of us! You look like you're through, 50/50 for us.
You’re an essential professional soccer curator for those of us who are learning the game. Please work on relegating the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox!
Just relegate the Rockies. Pope Leo is a White Sox fan!
It seems fitting that the MLS leveled the field to discourage standout players and teams from rising to the top, for that "equalizing effect" mirrors how the rules for soccer were designed to make it an "inclusive" sport. Very low scores minimize the ability of great teams to stand out.
Don't get me wrong, I admire that aspect of soccer for encouraging everyone to get off the sidelines and join the exercise, not to mention to facilitate international playoffs where teams from countries I've barely heard of can sometimes make the big boys sweat a bit. It's all good, except when it comes to actually watching hours of play come down to a 0-0 score and a shootout to decide the winner. I loved to play in my younger days, but never could bring myself to actually watch a complete game on TV and haven't watched more than a few minutes in years.
To reinforce your point, in the past week or two, I have checked the standings in the following leagues for teams I follow: Ireland's First Division (Finn Harps), Scotland's Premier Football League (Hibs), USL League One (Spokane), and all four English Leagues (variety of teams)
The one league where I haven't checked the standings, the MLS (Minnesota). It just doesn't matter.
Excellent post! Thorough and smart as hell. I don’t know soccer well but I DID go to see Austin FC on a day so hot (106? 107?) that they moved the starting time back an hour and we left the little ones at home. It was mildly insane. Beautiful stadium though. Everything shiny and green.
Thanks, Dan! It's not just in Texas. The first SDSU football game at Snapdragon Stadium was a disaster. Sunny, 100+ degree day... I read somewhere that MLS prefers to avoid the cold in the Northern states in the winter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great article. I have hopes for the USL as well.
I went to the USMNT qualifier vs Honduras on Feb 2 2022 in St Paul. The wind chill was below zero. I bought a bottle of water and it froze. The Honduran keeper got frostbite.
If the schedule gets switched, which might be the right thing to do, it effectively kills the northern franchises.
Yes, changing the schedule would require trade-offs. I don’t dispute that. Maybe I explore that in a future piece.
Amazing article. Thanks n cheers from Athens Greece (yeah, some words were so "Greek to me" 🤭)
🍻⚽️
The problem is that you also can’t play soccer in Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, or Montreal in January in a blizzard. At least you shouldn’t.
Fascinating! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
check us out:
https://thesecretingredient.substack.com
So that’s where Jan Stejskal went after leaving QPR. A great shot-stopper, but never adjusted to the back pass law. Big Jan with the ball at his feet was like an elephant on roller-skates.