Garber: MLS has a Harvard Business School plan for MLS to be 1 of the top soccer leagues by 2022

I think a lot of people enjoy a good crowd on televised game, I've just never heard of it being something that draws more viewers*. It's the matchup or action on the field that matters (well, convenience of the timeslot too, of course). I can believe the crowd can matter to people on the MLS threads, since people mention it all the time. But in other parts of life, I've never heard a person say "I was watching the ____ game, but the crowd was dead so I changed the channel."

*Edit: outside of MLS threads.

Profanity can't truly be regulated. It's pro sports, fans who consume various amounts of alcohol, that one whack job who makes the whole SG look bad. I'm not advocating homophobia or racism, just saying it's hard to regulate/prevent it. In the past Garber has alienated some of the SG's in the league.

From what I've read in other posts, and I hope they were right, a club pays 30% of their ticket revenue to the league and then the league turns around and pays for the salary cap portion of the wage bill. So, an increase in salary cap won't affect a poor performing club's bottom line at all.

More often than not, rebranding does not involve changing names. Rebranding is a marketing strategy that can include many things and only sometimes involves a complete name change.

He absolutely did not say this.

All he said that he thought that instant replay was a technology that could be explored similar to goal line technology.

He never said that we should have stoppages every time someone disagrees with a ref's call.

Again, you are making shit up.

There is a difference between a spontaneous chant that voices frustration like the one you cite in the Braves game.

It is another thing altogether when it is a choreographed universal chant around the league every time a certain player kicks the ball.

Massive, Massive, Massive difference. And if you are too small minded to understand the difference then may God have mercy on your soul.

You're right. But again, there is difference between getting caught up in your passion as a fan and being a sophomoric dickbag that gleefully celebrates calling someone an asshole for no reason at all.

Having a 19 team league with 14 teams playing in soccer specific stadiums, and another one set to open next year would have been called impossible 8 years ago too.

I'd like to see the business plan before I dismiss it as impossible.

Don Garber and MLS have accomplished more in the last decade than anyone on here could have ever dreamed of in the last decade. I'm not so ready to sell them short of accomplishing the "impossible" over the course of the next 10 years.

A lot of good points in this post. The one I bolded is one that virtually everyone on here ignores when people talk about the quality of play. You can invest in areas other than the transfer market to improve the quality of play.

In addition to investing in the academies to develop talent rather than buy it, teams can invest in better scouting networks to uncover more players in South and Central American that might be very cheap but also very good. MLS is already getting pretty good at this.

And if you've been paying attention in recent years (which everyone know you haven't) the gap is already closing at a significant rate.

Which basically proves Auto's point. Just because a guy is getting paid more than his MLS counterpart doesn't mean that they are a better player than their MLS counterpart.

I have changed the station on mid season NBA games or NHL games where there are more empty seats than people some nights. A dead crowd lessons the viewing experience for some. Some of the Europa League games or CCL games are almost unwatchable for me no matter what the quality is.

All your points are valid.

As a counter point I find this discussion very similar to the discussions Big Soccer had back in 2006 when ESPN signed the shiny new deal and Skipper came out with the comment that they felt they and the league had the ability to grow the audience up to a million viewers a game. Some people were hopeful that it could happen, especially once Becks signed but most felt it was an impossibility.

What time frame did Skipper say that they would grow the audience to a million per game?

My guess is he didn't and you put your own time frame on it to declare the statement a failure.

He said by the end of the contract if memory serves because it was a long term deal (8 years). So your guess is wrong it looks like but thanks for being a jerk about it when we are just trying to have a discussion.

Here is the exact post from 6 years ago. I was wrong though about the number. It was not a million viewers, it was a million households, which equates to more than a million viewers.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/mls-tv-deal.374211/page-3#post-8960172
In the June 5 issue of Sports Business Journal, ESPN's Head of Content John Skipper said that he wants to grow MLS TV ratings on ESPN2 from an average of about 200,000 households in 2006 to nearly 1 million households by 2014.

What were the average ratings going in to that contract. What were they at the end?

Read the previous. I added some info for you.

Contract still has two years to go. We have a very detailed TV ratings thread if you are looking for the current information that we compile every week.

I don't follow the TV ratings that closely. What were the average numbers on ESPN2 for this season?

http://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/mls-tv-ratings.1914571/page-105#post-26693778

These numbers are viewers, not households.

Do those numbers also account for DVR viewings? Back in 2006 when the contract you are speaking of was signed, DVRs weren't nearly as pervasive as they are today. Nearly every MLS game I watch is done via DVR these days.

That could skew the numbers a bit. Not to a million households, but it would move the needle some.

That's an interpretive overreach. I don't think I agree with him at this point, but clearly he's only talking about the 'game-changers'--presumably red cards, penalties and the like, not everything one could argue as you're suggesting.

Again, he's not saying that you never hear profanity at another sports competition: the difference in soccer is organization. Even if you don't like that sort of thing in a baseball game, it's awfully hard to do anything about it because it's more or less spontaneous, and it has to go a while before it acquires any momentum. There's a difference between that and pre-planning the thing.

The championship is, as I recall, the 9th largest league in the world by revenue.

Diminishing marginal returns to scale. When you pay a guy $600k vs $300k, you're getting a better player, but not 'twice as good'--ie your second 300k spent shouldn't be expected to go as far as your first 300k did.

They do not include the C3 numbers (the system used to track DVR since 2007) which are still in the noise for MLS data I believe. It does not move the needle at all (if it did, the league, or the broadcasters would highlight it which they never do in any press release).

The C3 ratings are starting to make in roads to slightly move the needle for other shows but live events, specifically sports have not yet been affected to any serious amount by DVR viewings.

I find it very hard to believe that DVR numbers don't move the needle, but again, I don't really pay attention to the TV ratings.

I pay attention to how much money MLS is getting with each new TV contract, and the quality of networks that they are on. That has improved each and every time.

Don't know what to tell you. You think I keep makings things up for some reason that I can't quite figure out.

I guess try and use common sense. You know that MLS would use any positive item they can find to cast the low tv ratings in a better light but they never mention DVR viewing numbers at all and neither do the broadcasters.

a i see, you assume the wages in europe or say in the championship will not actually fall over time till 2022. you in fact assume they will stay constant. I believe the global economy will take a huge hit especially europe and as a result so will footy clubs.

I didn't say you were making it up. I just find it hard to believe. And you say that the DVR numbers aren't included in the post you linked to, but have no numbers that show the DVR numbers, but then say with absolute certainty that they don't move the needle at all.

And I really don't come across too many press releases put out by MLS regarding TV ratings numbers, so it really seems kind of shallow to use a lack of mention in press releases as any sort of evidence.

I could be completely wrong, but I'd rather see actual numbers and data if they are available before coming to that conclusion.

I look at the ESPN numbers. I look at the ABC numbers and now NBC numbers and I find them encouraging.

I just can't look at the TV ratings and say "Well, Skinner failed to deliver on his estimation with the TV ratings 6 years ago, so anything that Don Garber says now is just pie in the sky dreaming." I guess you can.

Fair enough. Do some research and find them. I have provided you with a bunch of info so go ahead and respond in kind.

If you can prove that the DVR numbers are significantly changing the MLS tv ratings I would love to see it (note that I follow tv ratings in depth reading pretty much everything that is published and have a ton of twitter contacts who report in ratings).

Here are articles with in an in depth look at the TV ratings. You think they just left out the DVR ratings that "moved the needle " for fun?

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/...ting-Major-League-Soccer.html?ref=twitter.com
http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2012/11/28/Media/MLS.aspx?
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...nership-experiences-tremendous-growth/159381/

It's Skipper.

And way to twist the words around. You really are trying to be a first class jerk in this thread first arguing that I was making things up and then when proved seriously wrong you then try and twist words.

I said this current discussion reminded me of the TV ratings discussion we had years ago. I even provided you with a link to see the similarites in the flow. I never said that because the Skipper projection will likely fail, anything that Gaber says is pie in the sky.