For once I would like to see a pro/rel person instead of"it will work" "needs to happen" response. Tell me how it will be implemented, how many years, financial structure. How will investors be compensated for financial loss. How MLS goes away from single entity. How will US TV react if LA and Seattle get relegated and Edmonton and Ottawa are promoted? Or how Canadian tv react if TFC and Van are relegated and Indy and Virginia are promoted? So give me a thought out response not jusy normal because everyone does it, MLS should.
None. Red herring. I'm not advocating for pro/rel tomorrow or anytime soon. Just stating a fact that a 2nd tier league without the possibility of pro/rel isn't going to get much investment. So the chances of it becoming strong anytime soon aren't very likely.
I am neutral to American pro/rel. I think it will be almost* impossible to implement at this point, but I do like it from a sporting perspective but I don't think it is a magic button. There are over 200 FIFA member nations and very very few have strong 2nd divisions (or 1st). It won't magically appear if you implement a structure change, and every system we dream up of includes dozens of fictitious clubs and fantasy money. BUT...if it were to happen I think we'd need to make some obvious concessions. Single entity will not end simply because those owners do not want it to end. People talk about Sounders and others being 'held back' which is laughable. Remember that those guys bought into MLS, they could have competed in USOC/CCL/Club World Cup outside of MLS and spent as much money on their rosters as they liked. We are fools to think they would end it, but MLS teams play in competitions with clubs that are not a part of the single entity, for instance USOC and CCL. So I think the only path would be if USSF decided to sanction 2 or 3 divisions once there are 50+ full professional teams with stadiums. Now imagine USOC but just a league format. Just as USSF places lower division teams at the start of USOC and places MLS teams later, they could order their pyramid the same way. But single entity would not need to end technically. Just as you could have single entity teams playing against each other or against non-single entity teams in the USOC you could technically do that in a US Open League. If a 20 team 1st division had 18 MLS single entity teams and 6 teams (or whatever number) of MLS single entity teams were playing outside of 1st division, that partnership/corporation could still share revenues and expenses. MLS D1 teams would kick in their share of their revenue and the D2 teams would kick in their share of revenue and they would redistribute internally. So not much would change for MLS owners they could still do business as they do today they would just be playing in an open league just as they play in an open cup. * There are 2 unlikely scenarios that could result in pro/rel. A) a rival league pops up and MLS decides to merge. Since Vancouver/Seattle/Portland/Montreal/Orlando all decided to jump ship to MLS I think the chance of a rival league is slim to none. If they all decided to stay AND could have convinced their owners to spend MLS level money in NASL and the Cosmos really took off, then MLS would get serious about a merger. But that just isn't what those clubs decided to do, I'd put this chance of happening at like .01%. B) US bids for the WC and gets a huge TV package deal and decides to not sign with SUM but sign with some other media/marketing company to handle the rights and they decide to pump all this new cash into this new league system. MLS would in theory see more money by jumping to the new TV deals around 2026 for a US hosted WC, and a pro/rel league becomes part of the pitch to Fifa. I would put this chance of happening at like 1%.
This is true, but most 1st tiers in the world aren't very strong top to bottom. The clubs at the bottom of the 1st tier are usually pretty similar to the 2nd tier, so there isn't as much of a gap as in the US.
How are we defining a "strong" 2nd division, anyway? Overall level of play? Difference in level of play from the first division? Attendance? Finances? Stability? The NASL is probably in about the same position relative to other 2nd divisions as MLS is relative to other 1st divisions in overall level of play and attendance. It obviously has a long way to go in finances and stability. Regarding difference in level of play from the 1st division, that is a bit hard to measure in other leagues due to extreme imbalances within the first division. For example, the top Championship teams are similar in quality to low level Premier league teams (obviously, due to pro/rel), much closer than NASL teams are to even low level MLS teams. But the difference between Championship teams and the top teams in the Premier League is far wider than between the NASL and the top MLS teams. There are similar situations in all the "big 4" leagues, and most of the smaller ones.
I think the Championship is the strongest 2nd tier league in the world when looking at all the factors you mentioned. Attendance in the Segunda Division is pretty poor. I have no idea about the quality. What would the Championship be like if tomorrow you did away with pro/rel? It would probably collapse like a set of dominoes in less than three years and take the rest of the English pyramid with it (except for the EPL) That just shows the challenge the NASL has.
Over 200 Fifa Member nations and there are probably 1% of those that anyone would consider 'strong' and that is Germany and England. This is due to the fact that you have a pretty large country that has a lot of wealth (therefore people to pay money to watch games), the sport is #1, and there is a long history and strong organization/structure. What has happened is that the game is so popular and there is enough revenue to basically create about 30ish teams that COULD play D1. Because those leagues can't expand that large you end up with a good half of D2 being of very high level, the rest tend to be kinda poor. But this is an anomaly its not a result of structure alone. Almost all the clubs in top Euro leagues systems have 100 year history, their sporting culture dates back to amateur days before the professional game. People of those town/cities just supported the local team (like we do with college/hs) regardless of division because they existed often times before divisions. Its a TOTALLY different situation when you are creating a new expansion team from nothing in a sport that isn't #1 during an era when a kid can just flip on Messi on TV. Now would the Championship or Bundesliga 2 struggle if you close pro/rel? Of course! The entire sports culture was built around the open league system, it existed as far as any fan alive can remember. No one is advocating for them to change. It is different when you are talking about America in which none of our leagues (pro/college/hs) implement pro/rel. It is not a part of our culture and clubs did not exist in an open system at any point. Because we have such strong support of our amateur leagues and have supported rival pro leagues in every sport, it allows for NASL teams to find fan support. D1 status means very little in the US, it was in fact abandoned for a decade. It buys you very little other then yearly trips to Central America to play in a CCL that looses money for the club. Nothing is holding back NASL other than their budgets. They have minor league investments and they are seeing minor league returns. Nothing wrong with that, but D1 vs D2 has little to do with their success, money has almost everything to do with it.
my reply was meant to be "Is there a pro/rel league in the world that brought in the system before it had a strong 2nd tier?" I'd be pretty surprised if the answer isn't no. As for the championship and other 2nd tiers collapsing without pro/rel, I think that's perhaps too strong a term. I think they'd certainly diminish over time, but how fast, and to what extent, is just speculation. Rugby League scrapped pro/rel in the late 90s, and although figures are hard to come by, suggestions are that crowds have halved in the 2nd tier.
Germany had promotion and relegation before it had any second tier to speak of. Back in the early days of German football, leagues were extremely regional (usually not going beyond city limits) * , but they still had promotion and relegation (however, before the 1920s this was a pretty chaotic process in most regions since teams merged, folded or changed names all the time and you sometimes had literally only 2 teams in the local "first division" at times). When the professional first tier was introduced in the 1960s, you basically had one professional league with teams being relegated to and promoted from true amateur football. As late as the late 1970s you had teams promoted to the Bundesliga where almost all players still had a day job. In Germany at least, promotion and relegation were probably used like everything else because it seemed the most fair competition format within the context of the extremely strong amateur ethos in all of German sports. * The winners qualified for regional play-offs, with the winners of those eventually qualifying for the nationwide play-off.
Aguila and Firpo, 2 of the most traditional teams in El Salvador are fighting not to be relegated this year, Aguila is the most popular team in the country with the most fans, basically Aguila feeds the teams with small budgets by packing their little stadiums when they play at home... River went to 2nd division last year, yes River Plate from Argentina
I understand relegation prob doesnt make much sense financially speaking for MLS but could you imagine an small team from a small town like Macon Georgia beating Sao Paolo at Brazil in Libertadores They will have every kid in the South trying to play soccer.
Do you not see any difference between American clubs that play in maybe the 3rd or 4th most popular sport and are only about 15 years old and other clubs that are 90+ years old in countries where soccer is #1? No one is saying that relegation will hurt everyone everywhere, people are saying it will hurt American clubs right now. You can debate that if you want but please talk about American clubs, the comparing the club/sports culture to another country gets us nowhere.
I think you are greatly overestimating the popularity of Copa Libertadores in Macon Georgia. I mean I don't even think its broadcast in English in the US. UEFA CL final is far more popular but I bet even if you went to Macon and ask some random kid playing soccer he probably can only name about 3 or 4 teams playing in UEFA CL and probably zero teams in Copa Libertadores.
Copa Libertadores will be really effing awesome though. In the long I can see pro/rel being a good thing, we just have to do the numbers.
That's only if "every kid in the South" knows who the hell Sao Paulo are. Even if soccer's more popular than it used to be, the average American teenager can probably name fewer than 10 foreign clubs, and all of them will be in the big 4 European leagues.