It's all a matter of perspective. You see those teams as "slipping" because this year they're currently fourth, fifth, and sixth instead of second, third, and fourth. Nobody is talking about any of them getting relegated, and at least two of them will probably end up playing in Europe. Compare that to MLS, where a team can miss the playoffs one year and win the Supporters' Shield the next (and vice versa). The swings are a lot more dramatic.
The swings are more dramatic year to year, but I looked at the standings last year in both leagues and the MLS table was distributed similarly to the PL as a percentage of points won at each place. I haven't done that this year, I'd expect it to be similar.
American sports lack big brands? Sure, but those are teams that are hardly even top 30 in their sport. Which is not balanced. Long term, they are a step below Bobcats and Coyotes. Not very attractive for casual fans. How do you go from that......to saying that NBA, NFL, NHL are not marketable overseas because they are too competitive? i think it's very simplistic if not naive to say that people get hooked up after one Finals game and become fans of a certain team, and leave the sport if that team falls apart. I guess it's hard to prove it one way or another. ohh well... I'd even bet there are recent Barca "fans" who never cared about Barca until they saw World Cup and David Villa&co. by "strong" i mean popularity of course. if you look closer, you'll see that those "plenty of countries in Asia" are occupied by ping pong. or cricket. or one of 100 forms of gridiron and rugby. or some completely different sport. it's one thing to make an American movie, translate it to Hungarian and show it in a country that has no movie production or comparably low quality movie production. it's another to promote a foreign sport. you mean, there's no need to significantly adjust an English TV product? which is mostly built by Rupert Murdoch's TV company in the first place? strange.
NY Yankees and LA Lakers, outside those 2, not really. The cowboys used to be, not anymore, the Bulls with Jordan, maybe the Dodgers in the 80's. Remember we are talking Global.
No Germany? I'd say Bayern has a good shot. They looked good. They faced more talent in their group than Barca and Madrid did combined.
Quarterfinals tops. (actually I have not seen the matchups, maybe they will get easy teams to the semis).
Just looked at the match ups, I like the Italy - England games, top league vs number 3. I see advancing. R.M. Barca Chelsea Milan Bayern Munich Lyon Inter Zenit So if Bayern gets Lyon or Zenit (Benefica) in the Quarters, they should make the semis.
I'd love to see some polls or smth. I tried to google and couldn't find anything. I wonder if Yankees are even top 10 American sports brand on the other side of the border. North America, Japan - sure. But NBA is simply a much more popular league overseas. And NHL has serious overseas following as well. Anyway. we are talking about becoming global. not global brands right now. the question is not "are American leagues more popular than soccer overseas". That would be an idiotic question. the question is "why not?". His answer was that there's not enough brand potential. I disagree. Removing the cap in the NBA or the NFL won't help to promote them overseas. If it did, NBA would've done it years ago. Their main focus right now is Asia and Europe anyway. But it does not help --- because overseas sports market is simply not empty. It's not just soccer, rugby, handball and cricket. It's also a bunch of local domestic sports. NBA is the most successful American league anyway (overseas), and they cap salaries. And baseball got thrown out of the Olympics because it was hardly growing. It's not about cap.
Agree about the NBA, NHL in some European countries. NFL is big in Mexico, maybe bigger than the NBA.
Yes, on a global scale. The sports typically aren't that popular, and parity means there's less sense of clubs being "big" (i.e. always challengers) Take the NFL. People overseas don't see it as the pinnacle of the world game, the best and biggest 30 clubs. The 30th best soccer team will be a competitor in their league, if not a regular winner. The 30th best NFL team will stink the joint out, being useless. Poeople from overseas won't look at the Carolina Pathers and think of them as being one of the 20 best teams in the world. They'll look at them in the same way people around the world regard Fulham or Bologna. The NFL is treated as a league, just like Serie A or La Liga are, and the only glamorous teams are those that are usually winning. As they change from season to season, it's easy for someone who got into the sport following a particular team to lose interest when they stop being any good. If you look even at this site at the overseas team people follow, it's invariably the big guns, and they invariably started following that team during a successful spell. Of course they'll insist they were attracted by the style of football etc that the team played, but winning most weeks kind of helps. Only the Indian subcontinent plays cricket, and rugby is only strong in Asia in the south pacific islands. Many had no history of team sports at all, although baseball had oddly been in Japan long before any efforts to promote sports worldwide were made. Although you can watch the premier league in Asia, in English, that's mainly for ex-pats. The games are shown in the local language for locals. I even saw Sutton United v Notts County in Thai about a month back.
I disagree to an extent. Our #1 sport isn't widely popular but does have very strong pockets outside of the country. However, both baseball and basketball have a heavy presence in all 4 hemispheres. There are highly competitive leagues for both sports in multiple countries around the world. Hockey is a damned popular sport as well. It's regional sure, but even that regionalization is on a global print as well due to the "normal" climate for hockey to be popular to begin with. How can you honestly make this statement ? The 30th best soccer team isn't playing the other 29 best .... while the 30th best NFL team is. Also, because of the divide with the tiered system you'll actually have a few clubs in the upper division that are probably worse than a couple of clubs in the lower division's top end. That crappy 30th NFL team absolutely exists in each division of soccer anywhere else. Hell, just take the top ten in the Championship right now. Burnley is 11 points off of the 21st best team, let alone where they'd be if they were playing the 20 best. They'd be beyond useless and nowhere near competitive or a regular winner. That's a horrible comparison. True, but the exact same can be said for soccer over here. Outside of the absolute bandwagons (ManU/Real/Barca/etc) the same drop off occurs. In pure numbers it probably isn't as much as the NFL drop off somewhere else in the world but that's simply due to the proliferation of the sport, and the ability for them to simply jump to "the next" bandwagon. That rings true for any sport anywhere. If something isn't normal fair in your country, or your country doesn't play a particular sport ... 9 out of every 10 times you've heard of a team in that sport, it's because they're "the best" or are historically a great team. That isn't limited to the NFL. I know you weren't saying that but tossing the comment in when you're talking about it makes it seem that way a bit. I remember when I was first able to watch soccer regularly over here. Arsenal and Liverpool were always on. ManU was sprinkled in and there was plenty of Bayern and Schalke as well. Why ? They were some of the best teams in the world at the time and were of the handful of clubs that could attract people's attention. The NFL dynamic is changing a bit though with the games in London now. I mean, I know guys that are now Tampa Bay fans, of all teams.
Over time, the system is designed to give teams finishing poorly an opportunity to improve. Since it's possible for the worst team now to be the best in two to three years time, then I would expect to see a good measure of parity over multiple seasons. That, IMO, is the advantage of the US system and its point; teams that manage themselves well after a poor run have a chance to contend, while teams at the top must do the same to stay there. There's no built in upper or lower class. There is also not a system in place where success compounds over seasons and widens the gap over multiple seasons. In an individual season, however, we see a pretty normal distribution of teams. Looking at just the standings in one year, you would not know that MLS teams all start out with roughly the same budget. There is a likelihood in MLS of parity over time, but not in any individual season.
I'm not sure there is any great debate here. I think it's reasonably settled that when a league caps player salaries and shares revenue so that every team can fund those salaries, it's going to be more competitive, but that competitiveness comes at the expense of big market, rich teams who might otherwise buy a higher level of success. It's a choice. The policies are designed to hobble the big and rich and lift up the small and (comparatively) less rich. Frankly, it seems to have a certain sense of fairness to me and, from a business perspective, I like the fact that by allowing every team the chance to compete, the policies value every market where MLS has shed blood and sweat to get a toehold. Still, I don't think the case for such policies is nearly as clear cut as others do here. Boiled down, the argument usually goes something like this: "if my team doesn't have a chance to compete in a system where it can win the title, I'm not going to watch, and lots of others won't watch either. Those teams will ultimately fail, and the league will be left with a couple teams." I'm just not sure that's true. Or, perhaps more accurately, I don't see where fans of teams that not only have the chance of winning but have really done so respond in any overwhelming fashion. Columbus, Dallas, Colorado -- all have had some very good teams in the last few years, and while announced attendance is up some in some of those markets, the swing up or down isn't that great because of performance. If you accept and believe that MLS is what it purports to be -- a single business entity trying to grow -- I think you have to ask if a single business would adopt policies to channel equal resources to every division when some divisions simply don't make nearly the same revenue or experience nearly the same growth with those resources as others. Put it this way, if I'm running a company with divisions in LA, Seattle and Columbus, and I've got $9 million of payroll to divide between them, as a "single entity" responsible to shareholders I'm going to shift those dollars over time to the divisions that produce the greatest growth and return. Certainly I wouldn't be able to keep funding them all equally forever because it's "fair", or because I wanted to keep the least profitable division competitive. No, if the objective is to grow a single company, resources have to flow where the growth opportunities are. And when you look at MLS markets, those opportunities most certainly are not equal -- not because these markets did necessarily did anything wrong, but often simply because they're small. That, to me, is the great challenge for MLS as it moves forward. Yes, the current policies may make a team like Columbus competitive and viable, but would the league grow faster if more of those financial resources were left with teams that generate them to use as they see fit -- would the league grow faster?
Basketball and hockey aren't popular because of the NBA & NHL though. Those games have often been played since the early days in countries where its big. Baseball certainly has a presence in North/Central America though. It does, and that equivalent team isn't supported by overseas fans, which is kind of the point. Unless, that is, you are trying to say that the lower end NFL clubs, losing far more than they win, are just as appealing to overseas supporters as perhaps Spurs are to overseas fans. How many overseas fans support Burnley? Exactly. Yes, it's certainly possible that an overseas casual watcher of the NFL could see Indianapolis and think that with a few good draft picks, and a few years of good coaching, they could challenge in a few years time, but why would that draw them to the club? You do get the odd fan here an there who prefers to root for the underdog, but they aren't the norm. Normally they go for someone who's winning. For a start winning teams are more likely to be on tv in their country, and the successes of their players will put them into the watcher's consciousness far quicker then players on other teams. I agree, but if someone does pick a powerhouse team, even if they don't win every year, they'll usually be up there challenging. That's when you laughably get overseas Liverpool fans saying they aren't gloryhunters, because they've supported the club through the "bad times". I'm sure it's not limited to the NFL. It would apply to any sports league. Again, I agree. But with those clubs tending to stick around at the top, it's enough to hook fans at least medium-term It's hard to say as it's so rare to ever hear anyone discussing the sport here, but the few people I have heard (I think it's five people in 25 years) seemed to have a favourite team, but just enjoyed the league as a whole. An eastern team would possibly be more likely to get the nod here due to broadcast times. People are less likely to sit through a live game that ends at 2 am on a Monday morning. People might opt to get behind a team that plays a game in London, or they could just adopt them for the day. Whatever they do, it's still very much a niche sport.
Wow, just a horrible example. Indy had 7 12 win seasons from 2003 through 2009 and a Super bowl win. 2010 they had 10 wins. They had the worst record this year mainly due to losing hall of fame QB Peyton Manning to a neck injury in the offseason. Anyone who's followed the NFL at all before this year would know the Colts are better than their record, which we'll see next year assuming Manning returns.
Let's also not forget that even with our capped systems, our sports leagues still produce historically great teams concentrated in a handful in terms of number. Yankees/Dodgers/Cardinals Celtics/Lakers Steelers/Cowboys/Packers Canadians/Red Wings/Bruins The list grows to a top 5/6 over history if you don't simply go by Championships/Finals appearances and go by winning percentage. It may not be as dramatic as say La Liga or the EPL, but it definitely exists and it is definitely a significant separation.
Stop making sense triplet. It gets in the way of ideology. This is one of the most competitive Premier League's ever from top to bottom even if there's really only two or three teams who could win the title. If soccer fans around the world wanted parity then the Bundesliga and Brazilian Serie A would be the most watched leagues around the world and attendance - EVEN AT THE SMALLER CLUBS - wouldn't be higher in England now than it was in the pre-Bosman/pre-UCL era. The idea that the United States and Canada (together) are likely to end up like Scotland gives the game away. Scotland has one major city with a (metro area) population of over one million people... in a country of 5 million people. The next biggest city is about half that size and the third biggest is barely bigger than the (not even nearly the biggest) SUBURB of Toronto where I live. The idea that a free spending North American league would inevitably end up looking like the duopoly Scotland ended up with is fantasy pure and simple. And I say all this as someone who enjoys the openness and competitiveness of MLS. My frustration starts when rigid ideological adherence to the notion that every team should have a nearly equal chance of winning every year gets in the way of teams improving. Or even staying as good as they are. To me, that's the perfect level of competitive balance in a sports league: good/wealthy teams are not punished for being good but at the same time can't use their financial muscle to make their opponents weaker. I absolutely hate it in the NFL or (post-lockout) NHL when a team drafts well and brings through a good group of players but eventually has to break that team up because right as they start to achieve success they can't afford to keep all those players under the salary cap. On the other hand I'll happily acknowledge that the ManUs and Bayerns of the world being able to buy the best player off a direct rival - the classic Bayern strategy historically because the Bundesliga's unipolar alignment makes every other team subordinate to them; they don't have a duopolistic partner on their financial level - thus strengthening themselves at the expense of a team that could rise to challenge them is equally problematic. Fortunately, modern (expanding DP rule) MLS is starting to edge precisely into the territory I prefer. I think that will make the league stronger if it hasn't started to already. Meanwhile the randomization device of the playoffs will continue to keep the league title relatively open and the shared resources and cost control afforded by single-entity means that every team is starting from an at least comparable base of resources. So: MLS has it right (and is getting better) but chapka's argument overreaches.
With Hockey, a lot of people don't realise how pervasive it is. Virtually every college in the US has a team, but they have to operate as clubs, because funding such an expensive sport is difficult under Title IX. It's very popular in the former Warsaw pact countries and Scandinavia, but there are also pro leagues in places like Australia and Japan. One of the Oldest Soccer teams in the world, Nottingham Forest, start out playing Bandy, which is a precursor to modern Ice Hockey. With Basketball, it was created 110 years ago last month, to keep kids busy in gym class during the winter. It was designed to require a lot of running, but no roughness or defense.
Yet even in the non-capped pre-lockout NHL the richest team in the league still never managed to win a title, or even play in a championship series, in my lifetime. And you had to leave the (hardly poor) Red Sox off your list of perennial championship baseball teams. Salary caps are about cost certainty for owners not competitive balance. That's how they're sold to fans though (and I'm not suggesting that MLS shouldn't have some form of centrally managed salary control; I just hate indiscriminate hard caps in sport).
The illustration was simply that: The EPL and it's non-capped structure have produced a 4-6 club elite tier. The US sports leagues and their capped structure have done damn near the same thing. Red Sox ? Left off because of the 86yr title drought, the 4 AL pennants in 70yrs from '18-'86, and the fact that of all of the "good clubs" they've got the largest spread in terms of dominant runs. Sure, they've been top the last decade but there was a 70 year run in there that was very rollercoaster and much worse, than better. However, I did mention overall winning percentage as well .... and for a reason. Hockey less so for sure. Basketball ? I'd say there's a good chunk of popularity derived from the NBA, especially now that top superstars from many of the countries that have domestic leagues are playing/played in the NBA (Tony Parker, Yao Ming, Ginobili, etc). I mean, what drove basketball popularity more in Yugoslavia/Croatia ? The fact they had a domestic league, or the fact that Drazen Petrovic and Toni Kukoc were all stars in the NBA ..... Or say Germany and the same thing with Nowitski ? But that isn't what you said. You said that the 30th team (or worst) in a soccer league over there would be competitive or a winner. That simply isn't true. Much more what I was trying to get to. Even with teams going 4-12 or worse in the NFL, they are probably just as appealing to someone outside of the US as an Aston Villa/Everton level club from the EPL is to someone outside of England despite being relatively a "worse" team. 100% on the same page here. Absolutely not debating the "niche" or "lower" level overall impact of the NFL over there. What I am seeing though (from my experience with the people I know living on the Eastern side of the world) is very much what I saw with soccer over here the last 15 years. You're right, (again outside of the outright bandwagons) people were just enjoying watching the EPL or Bundesliga (two most visible 15yrs ago over here) and enjoying whatever was on. The talk was limited to small circles but it was definitely there and allegiances were being formed for the most random of reasons (such as not being able to comprehend that a guy with the size of a goalie was playing QB and the most athletic guy on the field). When I talk to some of my friends in England it's the same thing. They know about 4-5 other guys that really enjoy the NFL and they stay up to watch games ... but it's just those 4-5 guys.
Play in a league that is still uncapped, with a "luxury tax" so toothless only one team has to pay it and a severely broken revenue sharing regimen. Won most of their titles before the salary cap was instituted, in 1984. Since then, the Celtics have won 2 and the Lakers have won 8 out of 27 titles. The Bulls have actually won more than the Celtics in the salary cap era. The NBA is probably the most unbalanced of the capped leagues, but the Lakers still had some terrible "rebuilding" seasons (1990-1999 and 2004-2007) between their three post-cap dynasty runs--something you rarely see in completely uncapped leagues. In fact, the Lakers were a symptom of the problem that led to the recent NBA lockout. The new CBA includes more revenue-sharing, a higher luxury tax, higher cap floors, some relief for teams stuck under the cap, changes to the midlevel exception and tighter rules on what rich teams can and can't do--all of which should reduce the current competitive imbalance. So yes, there's still a lack of balance in the NBA. But it's a serious enough problem that the league was willing to lose half the season to address it. Won most of their titles before the salary cap was instituted in 1984. In the salary cap era, the Steelers have won four, Cowboys three, Patriots six of 28 titles. The Broncos and Niners have each won more titles than the Cowboys since the cap was put in place. The very worst example. The NHL salary cap was only instituted in the 2005-2006 season, which is why there was a lockout in the first place. Since then, the Bruins and Red Wings have each won once, and the Habs haven't won at all. In the salary cap era, what we've seen are teams building dynasties, winning for a few years, then rebuilding and going back to the back of the pack. The Cowboys are a great example of that; they had a great run, then some terrible years, and now are putting together good teams again. The equivalent would be Manchester United winning a few titles, then finishing mid-table, out of Europe for a few years before getting back to the top. It's a very different dynamic.
I clearly qualified my statements though. I presented the "championship" teams and also mentioned overall winning percentage. I also clearly said "historical." While the winning of championships isn't directly correlated due to the "parity" a cap brings and the playoff structure of the leagues, these teams have continuously been amongst the best teams in their respective leagues. For example, the Steelers have won 4 SB since the cap, but have also been in 4 other AFC Title games in that span, have won their division 12 times in that span, and have been in the playoffs 16 times. Not only that, but once they're in the playoffs they're tough to beat as they hold the 2nd all time playoff winning percentage. Also, you're "cyclical" point backs mine up and is pretty much what I'm talking about. The Steelers and Cowboys have done it in every single decade. What about the 4 Finals appearances by the Lakers that they didn't win ? That's 12 out of 27 times they've been in the Finals. I'm not going to get much deeper into this because this discussion is going way too far down the road of where I was actually making my point. Take whatever era you want in our sports leagues here in the US and you will find that there are always a handful of teams that are amongst the "best" .... they always keep coming back to that spot even if they have some "off" or "rebuilding" years. Despite our structure, system, and way of doing salaries we still get a very clear "top" in our leagues.
The thing with US sports is that your team generally isn't guaranteed success simply by being in the bigger market or by being the most famous team. Teams can sustain success but have to work at it a bit harder.