Big sports have plateaued on TV ratings. Several have even declined. Much has been made about the NFL's 8% slip this year, but the NBA is well off its peak. Average viewership for the NBA on ABC and TNT peaked in 2011-12, and in 2010-11 for ESPN; last season was off that by 33%, 27%, and 17% for the three, despite having a much better system in place to select the most desirable games. In general, too much is made from significant annual fluctuation, and not enough is spent looking at longer trends, which are generally neutral or negative. MLS's slow and consistent growth is abnormal.
Why would it be in the owner/investor's interest to expand MLS to 36 teams? What's in it for them? How would they profit from that. Remember, professional team owners, in North America, are basically Ferengi. Nothing more.
MLS is driven by local revenues right now, particularly those in expansion markets. Unless that changes, increasing the number of clubs means an increase in the league's revenue.
I suppose that's why MLB, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL all had about a dozen teams each before the television era.
Travelling long distances is significantly less daunting now than it was pre-tv era.. Also, while the leagues themselves only had 12 teams, there were more leagues for some sports.
How exactly does splitting up the existing TV/Media Rights Dollars Pie with more people lead to more revenue? $80M/20 Teams does not equal $80M/24 Teams............
Uh.... because by adding more markets the size of the pie grows... it's not like a ton of people in Tampa Bay or Detroit are tuning in to MLS right now.
Yes, but at some point you hit saturation. There is a reason why none of the other major sports have gone past 32 teams. I doubt MLS goes past 32 teams before the others do.
The big difference between MLS and the other sports is the other sports already have a majority of fans of those sports watching it. Most people who like American football watch the NFL. Same with basketball, baseball, and hockey. The difference is MLS has a large number of soccer fans in the US who don't watch MLS. One way MLS can try and bring those fans into the fold is by having a team in their market. So there might be a case that it's worth dividing the revenue up even more, because of the new fans being brought in.
NCFC owner Steve Malik joins Don Garber as the two Pro Council representatives on the US Soccer Board of Directors for 2017. Malik owns NASL and NWSL pro teams. Being on the board with Garber (among others) can't hurt Raleigh's expansion chances. I was at the NCFC/Courage media luncheon yesterday and got to listen to, then chat with Steve, and color me impressed. In 18 months, he's redifined the professional soccer landscape in Raleigh-Durham, within the last 8 months he's gone from starting the process to bring the NWSL to Raleigh to owning the defending champions. Throw in the fact that he's brokered a truce/merger between one of the youth soccer giants in the country (CASL) and an elite level offshoot (TFCA) who will join forces under the NCFC banner. Five years ago I had no real hope or suspicion that the Triangle would have MLS anytime soon. Now I wouldn't discount it. While not as public and flashy as some of the other bidders, Malik is definitely going about doing the organizational things that are necessary. You want to get a bunch of potential business partners serious about bringing you in, it doesn't hurt to start running your business the way they run it.
But it's not just owners that have a stake in MLS or TV rights that is driving league growth. One of the league's raisons d'être is to develop American soccer players that can compete for the World Cup. Each of those new franchises is expected to have a professional academy associated with it to pull talent from their surrounding region. Look at how many loopholes/incentives MLS gives teams to help sign homegrown players. Would the USSF rather have 28 centers of soccer excellence or 32 (or 36)? Imagine once all the MLS academies are at a level where they start producing talent like FC Dallas. It's not just viewership holes MLS is looking at, but professional player development holes they want to fill. In a 32-team league, if each of those academies produced one world-class player every 8 years, the USMNT would have a full roster of players at or near their peak talents for every World Cup. And the number of domestic professionally-qualified coaches will increase as professional players retire and take up joining their local leagues to pass on their knowledge. Just watch where the USA ranks in FIFA in 30 years. I'm sure they'll be consistently top 10.
That might be a reason for the league to exist, and a reason for USSF to sanction a Division I league, but you'll likely find it nowhere in the operational priorities of MLS, LLC. As long as it is beneficial to MLS to develop domestic players - they're cheaper than foreigners, there is a lot less legal hassle to employ them, USSF and CSA maintain certain limits on the number of foreign players for each club, growing local academies can be tied in with long term grass roots fan development goals - you'll see MLS trumpet the development of the American player. If, however, they could sell out NFL stadiums with UCL level rosters and no interference from USSF with regards to mandating any domestic player minimums (like the NHL), then you'd see the number American players plummet. MLS is slowly preparing for the day the USMNT slips up and fails to qualify for a World Cup (unlikely). MLS will always try to take advantage of the success of the USMNT, but it also wants to insulate itself from any USMNT failures. Don't confuse marketing convenience for operational imperatives.
Im not the one that created the highly successful sports leagues in North America that decided 30 or 32 teams was just right. They had teams of really smart people figure out that expansion didnt really make their pie much bigger and only caused them to have a smaller slice.
agree 100% but again the difference is MLS may be able to grow the pie through expansion while the other sports are just dividing it up more.
The bolded isn't true. MLS is under no obligation to, nor does it necessarily have an interest in, producing World Cup quality players for the USMNT/CanMNT. It may be a side effect of MLS's interest to improve the quality of an inexpensive resource (domestic soccer players), but it certainly isn't an important reason for its existence.. It certainly isn't going to include the ability to create new academies to produce WC caliber players in its reasons to expand..
There is a nice write up out of Detroit. It has a little new info (I think), it is bias towards Detroit team, but discuses other teams too. Here is what stood out to me... and this....
Just because the NFL is currently stuck at 32 does not mean MLS is limited by the same number. Each sport is different, it could prove that soccer can support 36 teams instead of 30 to 32. One of the reasons the NFL is stuck at 32 is because they have very little potential for growth in viewership by adding another team. That may not be the case with MLS. It might take going to 36 teams for MLS to be as ubiquitous as NFL, but we can't know what the maximum for MLS will be until we reach it.
Yes, exactly, which in business I think is safe to assume means maximizing profits. The question is at what number of teams does MLS maximize its profit per team? Looking at what the other major sports leagues do is a good starting point, but it shouldn't be assumed what is true for those leagues is true for MLS. One variable that is radically different for MLS is it is not the definitive top league in the world, so in the world of soccer it will be facing competition the other leagues do not. There are also differences in the amount of advertising space allowed by soccer. In football you have a guaranteed minimum of 3 commercial breaks, and practically guaranteed 4 or 5 other breaks. In the NBA they have rules that force a team to take a time out by a certain point in the game specifically so TV stations can have more commercial breaks. Soccer doesn't have those luxuries, and it could drastically alter the economics of the TV deals.
Might have little bit to do with the $$ billions need to start and NFL, MLS, and even NHL teams. Takes an entirely different level of ownership than what it costs to get into MLS.
Yes, indeed. But, in the NFL, the NBA, the NHL & MLB, owners really cash in when they sell their franchise. That's far far far more important to owners than annual profits, which is not to say that annual profits aren't a big deal.