A look at MLS parity compared to other leagues using the Gini coefficient

There's lots of good stuff in here, but one critique is the MLS vs other sports comparison is problematic. It doesn't come to grips with the different number of games, as well as the different rules.

The NFL's disparity looks much higher than it is, because each game essentially must have a winner (there are actually ties but they are very rare), because there is an 'easy score' (the field goal) which parses fine-grained differences between teams you don't see in soccer--and because there are only 16 games, each game will change one teams winning percentage in a significant way.

Meanwhile in baseball, pitching rotations sometimes mean your staff ace winds up against the 3rd starter on the other team. Also, hitting is an unlikely event (>30% chance of success) each time, meaning a little bit of luck can go a long way in a game. And at 10x as many games, each outcome has a pretty trivial effect on winning percentage. Add that up, and it's not hard to figure out why basically every team is going to win at least a fourth of them.

The comparison of MLS vs other soccer leagues and MLS over time works much more neatly, I think.

 

Perhaps but again it is far from apples to apples comparison.
I will just copy/paste this over instead of making the same arguments again here.

How can they calculate MLS as a single table when it does not have a balanced schedule?
Some teams play each other up to 3 times from the same conference and only play cross conference rivals once.
So teams in the West only played the best team in the league once and some of the worse 3 times.
Also when there is an imbalance of quality throughout the conferences as there was 2017 with West being weak and East strong these parity figures only become less reflective of reality.

If there were a balanced schedule then it stands to reason Toronto would no doubt have accrued far more points playing weaker tams more often and the likes of Galaxy and Colorado far fewer playing stronger teams more often.

In short these parity figures are skewed and MLS has less parity than what is claimed though no doubt still much more than many top European leagues.
Not that parity over quality should necessarily be the yardstick of success for a league.
It is great that MLS does things different but that doesn't make other systems worse or better.
Vive la difference.

PS
I posted few years ago how MLS could not possibly grow and maintain parity.
While this may not have fully manifested itself as yet in results it will logically do so in time - a disparity in funds will ultimately result in an onfield disparity and as MLS parity rules are slowly relaxed to accommodate the demands of the larger franchises so that will be more in evidence.
As MLS grows so will disparity between franchises, it is inevitable.

 

Parity is overrated. MLS needs a few super-clubs to be able to compete with Liga MX and win CCL and do well in the Club World Cup. International results matter in league ranking and "parity" won't move MLS up if MLS sides can't do well vs other leagues with dominant clubs.

 

Does league ranking mean anything to anyone in MLS's fanbase outside the 10% of fans who post on message boards like this one?

 

Idiot

 

What good is it for someone to gain the whole CCL, yet forfeit their league?

Mark 8:36, slightly altered.

That fact that you're completely, totally, undoubtedly, tautologically, indubitably, unequivocally right doesn't make this any less of a personal attack.

 

Kinda reminds me of a situation we had at one of our rec games a few years ago. One of the coaches called the wife of the opposing coach a bitch. It was all I could do to refrain from saying, "Well, if you wouldn't act like a bitch, people wouldn't call you a bitch."

 

Trolls aren't people.

 

A very cool and informative post, with a very well supported conclusion about the high degree of parity in MLS.

However, parity sucks IMO. Especially to the extent it is ruthlessly enforced by the rules. It both deprives the fanbases that spend the most money on tickets as well as the best run teams of the excellence that they deserve, but it also drains a league of the sort of Yankees-like villains and underdog stories that cause casual fans to tune into sports. It gives the whole thing a bland sameness.

MLS is gonna do what it's gonna do, but as a fan of the game, I would much rather see a few teams entrench themselves in the upper echelon and be free to spend to stay there rather than what we currently have. And I would say the same even more strongly to the NFL and NHL who have all of the same problem with none of the "fledgling startup just trying to keep the lights on" excuse.

College sports and the European game are best of all, as a viewer and fan. There's no substitute for the thrill of there being no safety net. And I say that as a fan of a college sports program that is nothing but a puddle of goo on the sidewalk next to the Empire State Building. Illinois Athletics is dead, and everything about the NCAA model stands in the way of it ever winning meaningfully at anything ever again. That inspires a love that no corporate cabal league that rewards failure could match. JMO.

 

I want to challenge this. How is an individual who lives in Seattle and supports the Sounders more deserving of anything than someone living in Denver supporting the Rapids? Hell, if anything, the latter is more deserving because it's less fun to support Colorado than Seattle.

And if the difference between the two clubs was the acumen of the front office, there's even less reason for one fan to "deserve" more success than the other.

 

I can't speak to the ticket prices in non-Chicago MLS markets, but let me analogize this in terms of the Chicago Blackhawks who assembled a dynastic super-team, which led to both great success and the highest attendances in the league with enormously high ticket prices, over four times as much at the median as teams at the bottom (https://www.vividseats.com/blog/nhl-team-rankings-by-median-ticket-price). And the enforced parity rules of the NHL have stripped that team away piece by piece and distributed those stars as well as the draft resources for new ones to Phoenix and Raleigh and Miami etc, while the much larger fanbase in Chicago continues to drive the revenues of the league.

That's a fairness issue, in my view. Small market owners get revenue sharing to pad their bottom lines, but there's no ticket price sharing for large market fans.

Sure, in some broader moralistic sense all fans "deserve" to see their team win, but rigidly enforced cyclical parity can make those cycles feel cheap and meaningless. And when there are structural gaps between bigger teams and smaller ones, there become different bars for success. I would be popping champagne for an Illinois football season that would get a coach at USC fired. Or Swansea City or whoever defying the odds against relegation year after year.

MLS is gonna do what it's gonna do for its bottom line and its growth and viability as a business. And obviously there are tradeoffs involved. Barcelona 7-0 Deportivo Nowhere does get old. But from my perspective as a fan, as I get older I am drawn more and more towards competitions where there are real stakes in team management, as opposed to rigid parity and rewarding failure.

 

Not sure what this is meant to mean.

 

Easy: 7 Head Coaches lost their jobs this season. I'd say that the competition had REAL STAKES IN TEAM MANAGEMENT.

THere were 6 managerial changes made in MLB this past off-season as well.

 

My apologies to those who have made the same points earlier, but I think this issue ties into the NFL. Within a season, fans (particularly neutrals) do not want parity, they want a few great teams because it makes for better stories. Across seasons, fans (particularly non-neutrals) want the great teams to be different since it also makes for good stories - when will the champion finally fail? who are the new contenders? - and it gives the fans of bad teams a reason to watch since their is always next season.

For whatever reason, the NFL seems to get this right. Its relative lack of parity within a season isn't really a problem, actually it's probably just right, and it also seems to generate enough turnover across years.

I think this comes from three characteristics, a relative tight salary cap, a game where strategy/tactics matter a lot (so innovative teams can get a temporary advantage), and a game where no single person is dominant but several good skill players can make a difference. The team with the one best player won't be dominant but a team that can put together 10 great players will be, although not forever as the salary cap and time do their work.

For MLS, I'm not sure that the middle item is hold true: tactics are not that important in the scheme of things. However, 2 or 3 designated players can make enough of a difference, although luck seems to matter more for soccer than football.

 

You know perfectly well that wasn't what I meant.

The Cleveland Browns haven't made the playoffs since 2002, have gone 4-12 or worse 8 times in that span, and will receive the top available college player for their troubles, have the same amount to spend on players as everybody else and make a profit for their ownership year after year thanks to revenue sharing and collectivized TV and merchandising contracts and all the rest.

That's a different thing than being a college sports program or a European soccer team. You all understand that, and the ways in which it is different. If you don't like the framing of that difference as "stakes in team management", so be it, call it what you like.

Some would argue the NFL model is better, certainly NFL owners would, many of whom also own MLS teams. But as a fan and a customer I disagree.

 

@Fighting Illini I would argue that management is LESS important in college sports and non-parity leagues. Take the EPL from around 2000 through 2010. In order for ManU to win the league, they had to be better than first Arsenal, and then Arsenal and Chelsea. That's much, much easier than being the best in MLS, even if you compare apples to apples and talk about the Supporter's Shield. In La Liga, it's a major, major upset if anyone besides two teams win...how hard can it really be with Barcelona's and Real Madrid's massive financial advantages to be better than everyone else? How hard is it to win at Bayern Munich (if you're not Jurgen Klinsman)?

About 10 college football programs are much easier to win at (Michigan, OSU, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, USC, and now Florida State and Florida...I'd say Notre Dame dropped out) than the other 120.

You've turned reality on its head. Management is MORE important in a competition where everyone, or almost everyone, has the resources to win, than it is in competition where a small handful do.

One reason the EPL has suddenly gotten interesting is that the TV money is so enormous, the financial advantages of being a global brand or even being in the CL has relatively declined. Thus, Leicester.

 

Are those honestly supposed to look to everybody like the Yankees and Rays? Or, more to my point, Manchester United and Burnley, or Illinois and Ohio State? Do YOU watch the MLS?

They are different things. You understand this. Your transparent reflexive thirst to smugly dunk on a poster that disagrees with you notwithstanding.

 

Maybe, sounds like you're in the minority here. The sameness of the EPL and to an even greater extent the rest of Europe is one of the reasons I prefer the MLS. You may love watching the same teams crushing their opponents game after game and year after year with little to no movement in the between the lower teams and the top teams. I for one would not be interested in watching the Varsity team beat up on JV teams all season long.