Soccernomics, Global Leagues, TV Money and Quality

Well Seattle, New England and DC are much bigger (then there is San Jose 11K but that will change soon). You probably mean MLS S.S. stadiums. But yes outside Red Bull Arena and Home Depot the other SS stadiums are 22K and below. (some maybe more with standing room).

 

Don't forget that the premier league doesn't contain the 20 best supported clubs. That Wigan are there at all is remarkable really. In the 90s they were a poorly supported side by 4th tier standards. In fact in 1995, they had the lowest crowds of all 92 pro clubs.

Clubs also have to allocate at least 2000 seats for visiting teams, and they don't always sell out, particularly at an outpost like Swansea. Wolves were rebuilding their ground last season, so capacity was reduced.

Overall though, I'm not sure why selling out it is any kind of yardstick. Would Blackburn's 22500 average be more impressive in 23000 seat stadium rather than a 30000 seat one?

A lot of the problems clubs have with not selling out is due to too high a capacity. It means fans can pick and choose games, rather than feeling that they need a season ticket.

 

La Liga has games that start 4:00 P.M. or later USA Eastern Time. That's not prime time, but it's after lunchtime.

 

This is just wrong. Just flat-out wrong. The NBA grew when there was the Celtics versus the Lakers. When there were battles...when there was strength on both sides of the continent. The Celtics won 10 years in a row from 1959-1969. No one cared about Basketball back then.

And the Bulls never won more than 3 championships in a row. And they one them challenging other strong teams. The Lakers at the end of Magic, Drexler's Blazers, Barkley's Suns (during his MVP year). Payton and Kemp at Seattle, Stockton and Malone in Utah..they were dominant, yes, but competitive.

Your comments shows a lack of understanding on how strong sports leagues are built.

 

Hypothetically, the EPL can do what the NFL is doing in the US, which is to show some form of its product over 14-16 continuous hours (if you consider ESPN's NFL Matchday at 10 AM through the early Monday morning highlights shows) by combining the live matches with the edited highlight and pre-game/post-game shows.

With five matches on a Saturday and four on a Sunday, it could get into the prime adjacent hours in the US by following this rough format (all times are EST/EDT):

7 AM - 8AM - EPL Matchday preview.

8 AM - 10 AM - Match 1 (marquee teams for the Asian audiences)

10 AM -12 PM - Match 2 (the least favorable pairing)

12 PM - 1 PM - The Midday Review/Preview show with "extended"(*) highlights from the two matches + analysis + preview of the upcoming games.

Extended ~ 20 min each. There's enough action in most games for that.

1 PM - 3 PM - Match 3

3 PM - 4 PM - Midday Review/Preview #2.

4 PM - 6 PM - Match 4.

6 PM - 8 PM - The Post-game highlights, reviews, analysis.

That's 13 hours of EPL, more than enough for the Asian, European and American markets.

This does not include a potential for the prime US TV time "39th" game, which - I predict - will be played somewhere sometime, if not necessarily in the US. (they could play, for example, in Canada)

PS. Zenit St. Petersburg just signed Hulk (from Porto) and Alex Witzel (from Benfica) for about $100M combined. (I believe the breakdown is ~ $60+$40). Hulk is guaranteed ~ $44M under the current exchange rate over his 5-year contract, probably tax free.

The Soccer Econ guys argued that the players would forsake such deals in Eastern Europe. I said then that they were wrong and the Hulk/Witzel signings prove that again.

PPS. The greatest thread to the EPL is political, from the evil meddlers like Platini.

 

If they'd been offered the same money in the more glamorous leagues, they wouldn't have gone to Russia.

Although the Russian league is clearly better, it's the same reason why Didier Drogba is playing in China now. Nobody else would offer him a £200,000 a week two and half year deal.

Certainly "lesser" leagues can attract top names, but they are going to have to pay massively over the odds to do so.

 

That's insane.

 

you totally misunderstood my post. I never said there wasn't competition. My point was that the NBA has done just fine without parity.

 

What's really incredible is despite all the claims of the importance of being global, most of that revenue is still domestic.

Liverpool almost certainly have more supporters in Thailand than in the UK (the place seems to be split Liverpool or Man Utd, with the rest nowhere) for example, but there's no comparison in revenue generated.

 

Except for the part where it isn't without parity. Different champions is only one metric to measure parity.

http://offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/parity-the-n-b-a-already-has-it/

 

I can't even get that far. Truth be told, I can't figure out what it means for the EPL, because in all reality, 95% of that revenue is driven by the top 10. At some point, there will have to be a reckoning, but I really don't know what form that will take. Every past movement has been the governing body bending over backwards for the big teams, in whatever guise they end up taking.

For MLS, I think they simply need to worry about their own section of the globe first. I actually think they've got a good thing going with chasing an ever-improving Liga MX, and the two leagues together can push themselves to a height where they can begin to worry about the bigger Euro leagues. As you said before, MLS has mastered crawling, and seems to be working their way up to walking. Running simply has to wait at least until 2015.

 

With the US market anything is possible if the sport grows sufficiently it could easily eclipse most leagues in Europe. If more Americans watch soccer there will be more playing soccer raising the quality of American players and MLS. This will result in more and more people tuning in to MLS games raising TV revenues. Considering the NHL has a salary cap around $70mil with much lower coverage than traditional american sports it would not be unfathomable for MLS to reach a similar numbers in the next 20 to 30 years. If that happens it would be much easier to acquire high quality players from other nations as I'm sure players would rather live in Chicago, Seattle or Boston rather than Liverpool or Manchester. From there international TV revenues would climb and possibly only be topped by a theoretical European super league.

Of course all of this is hypothetical but given enough time whether it takes 20 or 60 years it is entirely possible for MLS to become the top league in the world.

 

I do wonder if people will look at how such a redressing of tv distribution damaged Serie A, and looks to be damaging La Liga now, with it becoming ridiculously uncompetitive at the top.

Every move in the last 25 years though seems to have been towards making it easier for the top sides to stay there. The premier league could go to a closed shop 10-16 team league, but you'd get exactly the same problems happening there as well, but with the likes of Spurs, Newcastle, Everton, Leeds maybe, seen as the struggling fodder that bring nothing to the table.

 

Players though, professional sportsmen, would be far more concerned with the competition they are playing in than where they live. It's not as if playing for Manchester United means you have to live in council house in Burnage.

It could be a factor, but for a player who was concerned about playing somewhere warm and sunny, Spain and Italy are more obvious destinations that Boston or Seattle.

 

QFT

 

Realistically though, that's not an issue for the MLS for our lifetime, at minimum. Yes, we are in a "world market" for players but we aren't anywhere near competing with these types of clubs for those types of players and that type of money. Nowhere close. Our methodical approach has steadily moved us up the ladder and will continue to do so. We're a far cry from having to butt heads with the fact that THAT insane money line is where they are over there.

I think a better look into the numbers would be comparison to our continents over here (NA - so Mexico/SA). Those are much more relevant I think.

Honestly, I think we're seeing something that could end up being a benefit for our little domestic engine that could. European soccer is eating itself alive. There is a breaking point and it is coming sooner rather than later.

 

People have been saying for at least 10 years that the bubble will burst etc, but those tv deals keep going up and up.

The breaking point is more likely to come with ticket prices impacting the domestic market. Arsenal's once massive season ticket waiting list has all but vanished, for example.

The foreign fans seem quite happy with an elite few clubs being at the top, as they don't support anyone else.

The (il)logical conclusion to this all is a world where the game is dominated by an ever-decreasing number of top clubs. That would even happen if a european league came in.

 

The breaking point will result in a European Super League, possibly outside the world of UEFA and FIFA. Not sure how that benefits anyone outside the clubs involved. It would be a situation like the NHL and the IIHF. National teams would be relegated in status and the trickle-down effect of player transfer fees would reduce dramatically if not disappear altogether. Right now the NHL simply poaches players through contract breach and the European leagues receive nothing. There is no strong international governing body to regulate player transfers and compensation.

Before that happens I would rather see UEFA run a European Super League directly.

 

Schalke made € 224m in 2011
Dortmund made €200m in 2011

And starting from 2013 the German league will also get more TV money.

That doesn`t change the fact, that the PL is clearly the nr.1 - but I just wanted to add more accurate figures.