It's kind of the same way with Gulati. The guy was buying balls and bringing them with him to games in central america. He was booking flights, taking meetings with other federation heads, and other logistical stuff in the 90s. His role expanded in the 00s. He gained a lot of power simply because no one else was there and/or able to do / willing to do what he was doing. Hell, MLS signed with Opta and a person who was pushing for it significantly was Robert Kraft/Kraft Group who saw the value in it and pushed for it, most likely due to what happened with the Patriots. The Revs hired a few people to run an analytics division soon after in Kraft Sports Group which has now spun off into a separate entity. Some of the early analytics groups focusing on soccer in the usa had funding/partnership with the Kraft Group. Soccer analytics is hard and still is a losing venture outside of gps positional/fitness analytics.A lot of the power that these groups have comes from doing stuff that no one else was willing to do or taking risks no one else would at the time. My father in laws company bids for government engineering contracts. There is a small firm that consistently wins contracts that require work in foreign countries. My father in laws company never wins those contracts even if they underbid or pledge to do more work than the other competitor. Why? Because for 25 years, the small firm has always finished the work on time, on budget, and without errors. The small firm got in at the right time and has a track record of success. The last part matters.
Could you provide a link to show who recused themselves from the vote? I tried to look it up but couldn't find anything. Thanks.
Its in articles everywhere on the subject. It is stated over and over again that any decision regarding SUM, anyone with a conflict of interest can not take part. What kind of proof are you looking for? specific meeting minutes? http://www.espn.com/soccer/united-s...g-failure-will-cost-sum-more-than-$10m-garber Want to know who the stakeholders are in USSF? The ones actually putting in sweat equity into USSF? https://www.ussoccer.com/about/about-us-soccer/organizational-structure https://www.ussoccer.com/about/affiliates explore this website. Want to know who is on the Board of Directors? How about who is sitting on various committees and task forces? https://www.ussoccer.com/about/governance You want to review USSF Business plans? https://www.ussoccer.com/about/governance/board-of-directors/business-plans How about meeting minutes? Just as an example of someone recusing themselves. If you look at the meeting minutes for January 26th, Steve Malik recused himself from the voting that took place as he had a conflict of interest. Sept 1st 2017 meeting Gulati Recused himself from discussion and voting. From the meeting on march 3rd 2017 emphasis mine. Although for the Cordeiro haters, it might be good to note that Cordeiro is interested in making sure USSF is avoiding those conflicts of interest. February 9th 2017 They only have meeting minutes publicly available for the board of directors meetings. Not sure we will ever be able to get executive session minutes or individual committee and task force minutes. That is where a lot of these decisions are made. I have read a bunch of articles about the NASL vs USSF lawsuits. About the SUM USSF relationship etc. Those with a conflict of interest have to recuse themselves. Whether its on the Professional League Task Force or the Professional League Standards Task Force or those making the decisions about SUM. There is room for more transparency. Definitely.
Thanks. Latham is a good firm that I know well so I have little doubt that their conflict policy is reasonable if they took the suggestions provided by Latham (which isn't exactly what that statement said). It's time to break up the MLS/SUM/USSF financial relationship if only to avoid the hint of impropriety. It would be far better for a completely independent party to act as media partner for USSF as we're not a nascent soccer country.
The NCAA is the one big factor in player development we have that I think is a unique detriment, and it's not going away any time soon. A college scholarship is a lot of money. We're a rich country, but there aren't a lot of good soccer jobs. Life is hard for an MLS squad-filler and especially down the pyramid, where once you fall to a certain level and you're not immediately the Messi of Grand Rapids, Michigan you're probably not getting back up. Other countries' pyramids seem a lot more forgiving of mistakes, of getting sent down a division, of the new manager not liking you etc. But I'm centering this around college because most of the people in those spots are like 23, it's lost years. There is not enough money in the game here and there is no magical swooping angel investor to give the masses of good American players (not the 1%ers - a lot of them go straight to Europe) what college gives you. And you can still go through the college system, get drafted, have a steady MLS career and get your friendly against Bosnia C in the national team shirt.
This is a great point. The NCAA ctually hurts development due to restrictions on practice time, and the season is squished into 3 months. It’s similar to the pay to play travel soccer teams in some respects. Meaning more games, and not a lot of practice time. There has been a movement to discuss splitting the NCAA season into a fall and spring sport. This way the games are more spread out, allowing for more practice time, and also less time traveling in the fall.
If you ask an MLS team owner, confidentially he'd tell you that the goal of owning a professional sports team is to make money. Dead stop. Now, that doesn't mean to make money today, if there is a viable roadmap to profitability in the future. Some have shorter road maps, some see a longer horizon. We want MLS to develop the players for the USMNT. MLS may see that as a way to increase eyeballs and clicks on MLSSoccer, but certainly not its driving force. The MLS goal is to manage a viable professional soccer league in America. Nothing more, nothing less. I would imagine that with MLS HQ there is some sort of relationship with the USMNT because within the landscape of Garber and co's road map to success, one of the 62,000 points along the way includes success of the USMNT. You cannot blame MLS, however for wanting to have viable football clubs and make money for its owners but not deeming development of domestic players as their top priority. Currently we have very few outstanding and exciting footballers, and those that are, will necessarily ply their trade in Europe. I am the absolute last person to come to MLS defense, as I'm not sure I have ever watched an MLS game all the way through. But as a capitalist, I felt I had to say something.
You can move to MLS Academies more freely that people believe. Atlanta for instance has Justin Garces from Miami, brought in two players who played last year with the Philadelphia Union Academy. They brought in Chris Durkin's brother. They signed 16 year old, Deigo Lopez from FC Golden State (which is inside LAG territory) to USL who is playing with their Academy now. Nothing stops families from relocating to another area and moving their children for soccer or non-soccer reasons. The best two HGP for SKC (Lindsey / Busio) are from NC and had options to move to a number of MLS Academies and choose SKC because they thought it was the best fit for them. You have options if you want to explore them.
USSF should bid out the contract, but there are not many qualified vendors that market and produce soccer programming and tournaments, so it isn't like their are tons of choices out there. There is a reason why the Mexican Federation uses SUM to market their friendlies and SUM also have contracts with other entities outside USSF to market and product soccer and that is because they do a quality job for what is deemed a fair price. It is possible that SUM is simple the best option and if it does go out to bid and SUM wins the contract that doesn't mean that their is some nefarious plot. It could simple be that of the options and the bids that SUM was the best value.
MLS has had the exemptions for teams to get players from other MLS territories for a while with teams like SKC getting more while teams like NYR and LAG getting very few. Kids in territories without MLS teams have typically been up for grabs. The trouble that MLS and to a lesser extent USL teams have had is that state/local associations have been pushing back against teams setting up residency academies and/or bringing in kids from out of the region. Some of it is that they don't feel the local kids are getting a chance. The only real competition for SUM with regards to the national team is Relevent Sports who run the ICC in the summer and friendlies during the year.
There is no reason why you have to sell your rights to a third party to market. Most American sport leagues market their rights directly to broadcasters. The role that SUM plays is not only overly lucrative for their owners, causes conflicts of interest all through USSF, but is completely unnecessary. Fox, NBC, ESPN could just buy the rights from the USSF directly.
Could be a blessing in disguise, European clubs under Yank investors are doing terribly, with a couple of exceptions.
If you think it was on shaky ground in 2008, look at 2000-2003 when the paperwork to fold the league was (almost?) submitted until Lamar Hunt said "not on my watch" and a five-year plan went public.
Having foreigners who play good soccer may save the ratings a bit, but nothing ups the ratings like having good MLS players who are also good with the NT. See Donovan and Dempsey, they caused spikes in viewership. I feel in part the decrease is due to several MLSers flopping or looking subpar with the NT: Nagbe, Altidore, Bradley, Zardes. Why watch a bunch of guys who look worse than mediocre when facing decent opposition?
I've been a Leicester fan for over 20 years so, unlike most people on this board, I've actually watched Championship and League One matches. The top 6-9 teams in the Championship are usually decent but the lower half of the league is unwatchable. League One is obviously worse. I'd rather watch a MLS match than a match between two lower-half Championship teams or any League One teams. As for the specific question, MLS is important in developing young American players but its structure is very limiting on how well it can develop that talent. There is simply not enough pressure to improve. Basically, MLS is important as a start for young players but the best ones do have to go to Europe or Mexico to get to the next level(s).
I'd put Toronto at around the level of Bristol/Fulham, but only if they play like they mean it, not like they played in their friendlies in Mexico where a team of Mexican Navy dishwashers beat the TFC B team with ease.
No network wants to pay even medium dollar for any one Soccer package .SUM acts as an aggregator, gathering enough properties to get network bids.
I just saw this... If you are strictly a Nats fan, maybe you consider MLS to have not lived up to your expectations of building an unstoppable USMNT. But MLS is not a failure if you consider how popular the game is in North America today, vs 20+ years ago. During the season, close to a 1/4 million people go to a match every week. By the time we hit 24 teams, it will be a solid 1/4 million. More people are watching the TV and Streaming broadcasts. Shirt sales are generally good. And this grew from Nothing in 1996, and survived two significant recessions in the meantime. Kids are playing soccer at levels that are higher than ever, and have sports heroes that they can see on a weekly basis, instead of just once every couple of years if the Nats happen to be playing within a hundred miles.... And High School athletes with multiple sports to choose from can imagine themselves cashing large paychecks playing soccer games, with the opportunity to play anywhere in the world. And that addresses probably the largest problem Americans have about competitiveness... the sports kids choose to pursue professionally. And I think not only has MLS been successful at changing the trajectory of kids dreams and ambitions, but I think it will only continue.
My daughter just made her high school JV team. She's a freshman, and on JV, so obviously the purpose of the team is to develop players for the varsity team over the next 2-3 years. They play THREE (3) (no, seriously, 3) games a week. The schedule has about a 8 week schedule with games typically every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Practices will only be on Tuesdays. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. I mean, the team has only a head coach, no assistant, so it's not like the #2 can talk to the players on the bench or as they sub out and teach then. Yeah, but you're the guy who pretends to be able to rate 50 leagues. You're not You process information like the rest of us humans and you need to make the boards better by stop pretending to know things you don't know.
I doubt this. It might be true that MLS couldn't get much, but USMNT and USWNT games would get a decent price. Through SUM, USSF gets $20 MM for their TV rights; SUM gets $70 MM. Even if you think the MLS part is 50% (and I would think MLS might reduce the top figure), then direct marketing of the rights would bring in $45 MM, over double what they are getting! SUM is just an off the books exercise to provide a subsidy to MLS from USSF. Maybe it was necessary in 2002; but if it is necessary in 2018, something is wrong with the entire MLS enterprise. SUM has procured other rights deals, but with the huge profit they are making without competition from USSF, pretty easy to leverage that into other deals. SUM probably is giving the FMF a much better deal than USSF for instance. In fact, by using the windfall from USSF, they have probably low balled competitors and cleared the playing field for themselves.
It would be interesting to see what the FMF gets relative to the USSF, although it's not inconceivable that Asoc's perspective is right and SUM is paying the market clearing price. Visibility would be very very helpful, particularly when there's the potential appearance of conflict.
They could market their own rights but they probably wouldn't. College conferences generally market their rights through an agency such as IMG. When you hear about the Big-Whatever getting x billion dollars for their rights, they never talk about marketer, but they're there. The USSF is pretty small scale without much marketing expertise. How many USMNT games are there in a year? Maybe 10? MLS sells 86 games this year in the US. It makes sense to bundle, but if they didn't bundle, they would surely go through an intermediary.