Several topics have led me to start this thread since I've dove-tailed into it. The NFL seems to promote this facet into it's regular business model as the league's very rules and attitude seems to encourage this. For over a decade since it's two LA franchises were allowed to leave the market, the NFL has made the two stated intentions of staying at 32 teams and having a team in LA adamant and clear. This ensured that at least one team in the league would be moving to LA. For decades, this served the league well in creating a sense of urgency whenever stadium negotiations were broached, with LA in the background as the boogieman for every municipality that wouldn't play ball. NFL's standing rule that all ownership groups, outside of the grandfathered Green Bay Packers, must be owned by a single person or family also limits a substantial barrier to team movement. Without ownership by committee, it only takes one person or family's word in order to greenlight a team's move. The Carson Stadium/Chargers topic got the talk about franchise relocation off the mark, but I wanted to come here to really focus on MLS' future with regards to this. Thankfully the precedent has been broached and running as far as not moving branding and history with franchises and MLS immediately followed that trend with San Jose/Houston. It doesn't solve all issues like a current dynasty of players having it's accomplishments divided between two different clubs and cities, but it far preferable to the alternative as displayed in the NFL. So, returning to the reasons for starting this thread and stated in my above quotes from other threads, it seems to me that the Single Entity structure of MLS is the one thing that ensures that such a policy can be enforced by MLS since, while an investor/owner/operator/whatever you want to call them can move a team, the MLS owns the name and branding outright once they enter the league ensuring that they can never leave and that the league can enforce a franchise's identity remaining with it's city of origin. MLS is unique in appealing to grassroots supporters culture and encouraging branding having significant regional appeal. This makes franchise movement problematic in ways that it isn't in other US sports. So, going forward, it seems like MLS will continue this trend. Thoughts...
I think things like the academies will stop teams from picking up and moving. Not saying it will never happen but I feel like MLS teams roots are in the ground a lot farther then any of the other big leagues.
This. Each year that passes and academies get more roots in their communities makes it a big cost for a team to move. They'll be way behind the rest of the league in their new market.
This is something I completely hadn't even considered mentioning even though I've heard it mentioned before. In addition, many of the existing unclaimed regions are considered key for some MLS teams. Existing ownership groups might have reservations about certain moves. Yes, it would be difficult to uproot teams. And with MLS' membership in the USSF and stated goal of improving player development, uprooting academy support willy-nilly would not be good for public relations. MLS sells alot of it's current stadiums partly based on the player development camps and academies that they offer.
The biggest question though is what happens when MLS is finally capped. Moving may be a moot point though because any city that a team might move to would probably already have a supported Div. 2 team in town.
That depends on how well D2 support is sustained once MLS is capped. If you still have a number of Sac Republics, FC Cincys or Indy 11s out there pulling 10k-15k plus per game, then a case can then be made that perhaps MLS can support a two-tiered 40 team league with... wait for it... P&R. Sac Republic might have been a potential test case for this had the two ownership groups over there not come away with a deal in time; can MLS seat a team in a market that already has a well-supported D2 team and expect to unseat them? Soccer supportership says no, but many believe that the casual fans who make up the majority will switch or at least divide their allegiances. But one can make a case that anyone who would religiously watch a D2 team is more of a diehard than one might give them credit for. All said, I doubt that this is a situation that MLS wants to put themselves in domestically. Especially when one of their stated goals is supporting the growth of the sport in this country; putting successful products out of business runs counter to that. However, another test case can be construed if they decide to place a product in San Diego. A significant portion of the potential diehard fanbase is already committed to Club TJ. So they may not be competing with a domestic product, but they would be competing with an existing one. It's no secret that TJ's owners consider SD to be part of their market and they will stop at nothing to defend it. So MLS would have a fight on their hands should they decide to place a team there. So it will be interesting to see how a capped MLS will affect D2 markets as well as how tied to their club culture those markets are. It's different with direct affiliates like Beth Steel or Sounders II type deals, but with affiliated but independent teams, there might even be resistance from the fanbases. However, if D2 fanbases shrink without the whip of potential MLS membership to drive them, then those former fanbases could provide ample fertile ground for owners looking to relocate. E2A: please don't expound on the P&R reference here too much. It was added as an aside since my flow of thought led to it as an aside. It's not meant to be the focus here.
I think there are ways to handle "relocation". Let's go with a potential relocation for the "Young Boys of Boise". - Make owners jump through hoops to justify a relocation - Have them find new owners for the Young Boys of Boise, who have demonstrated their commitment to the club (maybe fans) - Parachute payment - Provide Young Boys of Boise with a D1 or D2 stadium, existing or new - Effectively relegate Boise but maintain their history and tradition
This could be an interesting manner of quasi-relegation. Say the MLS invester/operator of Young Boys of Boise wants to move the beloved franchise out of the city, MLS can say fine. But you cannot take the colors, name or history and contingent upon the move, you must find an owner who is at least willing to run the franchise in USL or agree to run them yourselves until one can be found for a period of 10 years (once again, at the USL level). So the fans still have their club, MLS keeps their owners happy and still maintain some leverage on stadium negotiations. It still does not solve what happens when moving said team and players to an existing team's location. If it's an NASL club, then MLS has to decide whether or not they want to compete with said team's possibly entrenched fanbase or try to work out a deal to buy the rights to the team and history. If it's USL, then a simple merger can be enforced so as not to displace brands which affiliated USL teams have spend years cultivating. FIFA's league requirements hardly address the realities of running a professional league here in the States, but the USSF can be the ones to take the lead here and enforce regulations on the manner in which D1 ownerships can do business while still maintaining some semblance of purity with regards to authentic club/fan culture.
The primary reason the NFL didn't want to expand to Los Angeles doesn't have to be because the NFL wanted other cities to be afraid of their teams moving. It could be that the NFL would need a totally new schedule format if it added one or couple of teams. An odd amount of teams would require at least one team to have a bye every week. 34 teams could be made into two conference of 17, but 17 is a prime number so divisions couldn't have equal amounts of teams. 36 teams could be put into 9 divisions of 4, but that would destroy having two conferences with the same amount of teams. There could be 6 divisions of 6, but if you played every division opponent twice and the season remained 16 games, there would only be 6 games against teams in other divisions, for an average of 0.2 per opponent in another division. The NFL currently has 10/28 = 0.357 games per opponent in another division.
The NFL made 29 teams work in 1999, 2000, and 2001. They could have figured out a schedule for 33 or 34 teams if they wanted to.
That's the point that I'm making. The NFL closed expansion while simultaneously guaranteeing a move into LA which basically enforced a mandatory move of one of their teams in the near future, despite the fact that none of their team's fanbases deserved to lose their team.
You can make any number work if you're not particular about being pretty about it; MLB made uneven conferences and weirdly allocated divisions work for decades. AL West and the NL Central I think were odd since you look at it and wonder why they didn't just move one team to the AL to even it out. But that's how they made the scheduling work. It wasn't fair, but once you start divvying up into divisions, nothing's fair. I just hope that MLS keeps it all simple without trying to perfect everything by using divisions, because divisions have always ruined my enjoyment of regular season sports. MLS could always go with playing all conference foes twice and make up the difference with a random assortment of non-conference foes without going to divisions, but everyone wants it to be "fair" and "perfect", so we'll likely go with the crazy division route...
MLB had 6 teams in the NL Central and 4 teams in the AL West because all teams used to have interleague play at the same time. With 5 teams in each division like there are now, each league has 15 teams, and there's at least one interleague series all the time. There's a big difference between making a schedule format for a season with 162 games per team compared to the NFL with 16 games per team.
I understand why it was once you work out the math, but competitively it cheapened the AL West. When the Rangers finally won that division way back when... it wasn't like you were winning much. And the first time it wasn't with the greatest record if I remember correctly.
The first time the Rangers won the AL West while it had four teams was when they went 52-62 in 1994 when there was a strike. The first time the Rangers won the AL West while it had four teams that played 162 games was when they won 90 games in 1996. They won the AL West five times while it had four teams, and they had at least 88 wins every time. They had the fewest wins of any division winner in three of those five years (1998, 1999, and 2010). In 1996, 1998, and 1999, they won 1 playoff game combined. In 2010 and 2011 they lost the World Series.
Yep, that's what I remember. They also had the fewest wins in that 94 season as well, by virtue of being the only division winner with a losing record. It wasn't until the 1999 season that they finally broke the 90 win plateau. I'm sure that a normal sized division would not have had such a sub-par record. The division as a whole was also relatively uncompetitive in the playoffs as well.
Part of the reason the big four leagues limit their teams to their current amount is because it leaves good markets open to be moved to meaning teams can use it as leverage to get a stadium built with minimal to no private funding and sweetheart rental deals. The business model of sports doesn't work in most markets if you are spending $1 billion on a new NFL stadium. Stadiums would definitely be built much cheaper, without all the nice features, and used much longer if teams in smaller markets had to use their own private funds to build them.
This is more of a tool that the NFL uses than MLB and the NBA. MLB especially is very conservative about stadiums. Only recently have the Yankees built a new ground and there is little movement in this regards for the Cubs or Red Sox. Many of the stadiums built in the last two decades were moves away from the cookie-cutter or domed stadiums used in the 80s and early 90s towards grounds with more character and aesthetic designs. With these stadiums in place, it seems that most are willing to stand pat for the long term. No, I think that this has more to do with revenue sharing than anything else for most leagues that aren't the NFL. The NFL is probably the league that could most afford to split their revenues amongst more teams and still doesn't because their existing footprint covers the nation pretty efficiently. But NFL teams are more in demand than ever and the prospect of moving is more active in this league than any other. Fans of the NFL are more used to the transitory nature of it's franchises. The NFL can gain value by expanding internationally in a way that they cannot by expanding internally.