Not sure I'd see them as the 2nd richest anymore. They have been shifting to a much more self-sustaining model over the last few years. The reasoning from the club has been to comply with FFP, but I suspect it has more to do with Roman's close ties to Putin which has already put him on the periphary of the Russia investigation. Also keen eyes noticed that he was not at Wembley on Saturday because his UK Visa has yet to be renewed hummm.... https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/europe/roman-abramovich-visa-intl/index.html
That's not been historically true though. Typically, relegation has started out by only going down so many tiers. In England there as one tier initially. In France there were two. After a time, as the teams below prove viable, the structure opens up to new tiers. The second tier doesn't have parity rules AFAIK. NASL absolutely didn't. That was the whole reason why the NY Cosmos joined the league. They didn't want to have their spending restricted. I'm not sure why the current parity measures would create a gap. If anything, it should make MLS easier to catch in terms of talent. Any ownership group that can't compete with the lowest MLS salaries, wouldn't likely be viable in D1 anyway. That's because those leagues were slowly expanded and opened over generations as the lower tiers became stronger. What killed the Australian NSL was having pro/rel when those gaps did indeed exist. That's why most US soccer fans (according to polls that actually ask the question) are wary of just opening the thing up.
Except that they did, in the historical European context. Pro/rel was opened to lower levels only when there was a critical mass of clubs that had the finances and infrastructure to be promoted. Incremental stadium upgrades have been happening in the USL. The clubs are simply too young to have upgraded their stadiums very much. Only three outside MLS are more than 20 years old. And as recently as 2014 only a handful owned a stadium at all. To upgrade "incrementally" to MLS level in that timeframe would take the same kind of spending as has been necessary to go straight into MLS. You simply can't compare USL clubs with 5 years of history to Championship clubs that have had decades to build up.
Charging a large cartel membership fee seems to fly in the face of "doing things incrementally". So perhaps it's the combination of closed league and cartel membership fee that is the issue as compared to extending a pro/rel? Those European teams didn't have to contend with that obstacle.
Stupid auto-correct! An example of not introducing pro/rel until there is an overlap is the Football League and non-league soccer. Automatic promotion and relegation was introduced only after clubs in the amateur leagues started to professionalize. As far as Garber maximizing profits for the "cartel", isn't that his job? Isn't that the job of any CEO? Have you heard of a CEO announcing at a shareholders meeting that "we've decided not to maximize profits this season"? Isn't maximizing profits the goal of the Premier League, La Liga and Champions' League cartels?
There were plenty of good professional non-league teams way before 1985. But let's say that the Football League charged a large cartel admission fee, it's hard to see how the vibrant pyramid we have today would have come into existence. The difference being that in a single entity closed league, "league" is the operative word. If the Premier League truly wanted to "maximize profits", it would run as an effective cartel.
How so? It's a lot less money than the team in 17th place will receive the following season from tv money.
@USRufnex "Critical to moving forward was the owners’ decision in January, 2002 to contract Miami and Tampa, create Soccer United Marketing and adjust the team and League revenue sharing. The clincher was MLS’ court victory March 20, 2002 against the players union. These were the decisions that provided the necessary environment for the owners to begin building purpose-built stadia, grow interest in expansion and increase attendance, television viewership and team value. I don’t believe MLS would be alive today without the courage, vision and leadership shown by Commissioner Garber and owners Phil Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and Bob Kraft." - Peter Wilt during a presentation to A-League officials
Can't help but notice that @USRufnex has not been forthcoming with what Peter Wilt actually said to make him think that SUM was created specifically to "cock block" Ken Horowitz.
Given the existence of multiple owners willing to pay, the fee isn't the main obstacle. Getting MLS to accept it is. And yes, I know what you're going to say to that: you think clubs should be spending on the on-field product rather than on "getting MLS to accept their cartel membership fee." But I have a few responses to that: 1) How is that different from the election system the Football League used? Even after winning the Conference, clubs had to convince the Football League to accept them. 2) Isn't the vast majority of the spending that it takes to get MLS to accept a club's franchise fee... infrastructure spending? Isn't that exactly what is needed to bridge the gap? 3) I would argue that it's extremely short sighted to promote based on results on the field of play at this stage in the development of American soccer. The American player pool is what it is. Improving the quality of the team in the short term -- and pro/rel based on results is very much a short-term proposition -- means spending money acquiring foreign players who will be gone in a few years. The way to improve the player pool in the long term is to build academy programs and other infrastructure. It makes more sense to reward clubs for making long term investments rather than pursuing short term results.
Peter said it on someone's webcast a few weeks ago. I was surprised by his frankness that SUM wasn't created for much reason other than shutting out Horowitz. Are you accusing me of lying? I mean, it's funny how many times you've been repping people who don't want to see Pro/Rel in America at all in the past few weeks.... speaks volumes from my POV.
Indeed, as the revenue is shared it ultimately does get spent on the on-field product, whether that's directly or indirectly.
When people make claims like that, it is usually good manners to provide a link to where others can verify for themselves.
MLS has as have other successful closed leagues like AFL, NRL, IPL and Formula 1. That's a massive presumption. Well forward this to him and ask him when he has changed his mind? "Critical to moving forward was the owners’ decision in January, 2002 to contract Miami and Tampa, create Soccer United Marketing and adjust the team and League revenue sharing. The clincher was MLS’ court victory March 20, 2002 against the players union." This is fairly typical of how the American mentality has changed over the years "either you're with us or you're against us". I've repped HTTK, I've repped M and I've repped you when you've made arguments that I've agreed with, not so much since you started to insult me. I mean I pretty much ********ing agree with many of your comments.
No, I'm not accusing you of lying. I just know from experience that you and I have different takes on things. You may have interpreted something Wilt said as "cock blocking" while I might see it as more innocuous. Without knowing specifically what he said, I can't really determine whether I agree with your position or not, can I? I happen to agree with a lot of their posts. To my knowledge, the only people on here that don't want pro/rel in any form AFAIK are @Dan Loney and @CrazyJ628. I've discussed Loney's position with him at length via PMs in the past. We disagree on whether it would ever be a good thing to implement here. I think it has merit if the landscape ever reaches that point, Dan doesn't. I don't see any difference between my repping those posts and you repping a large quantity of pro-pro/rel posts. You even repped @Ruben Rivas for basically saying he was a soccer coach and we should defer to his opinion. I've also repped you and many other pro/rel advocates in the past.
No. Amateur status was abolished in the mid 70's, but before that there were tons of semi pro teams who had been semi pro for a long time. Take a look at who entered the FA Amateur Cup:- the better teams were in the Northern League, Isthmian League and Athenian League. Such leagues as the Southern and Northern Premier were professional and their teams couldn't enter that cup.
I'm saying handing over $$$ to MLS gets in the way of clubs developing on and off the field in an incremental fashion outside of MLS. A system that I strenuously disagreed with at the time. And let's not forget that that system was after 92 teams were in the Football League. The money is handed over to MLS. However it's spent - infrastructure or players - it's spent by MLS teams. The discussion was whether cartel membership fees help increase the division between MLS and "minor" leagues. Here's an example of how they do.
Regardless, the timeframe has been far too short for anyone to develop in an incremental fashion. The gap exists because MLS has spent vast amounts of money creating infrastructure from scratch, building in about 15 years what other league systems took decades to develop. I happen to believe the lower leagues have every incentive to develop incrementally anyway... it's just that incremental development won't get to D1-level stadiums in the next 20 years no matter what, because the clubs are all so new. The three current USL clubs that existed in 2000 were all tenants then. To reach D1 standards by "incremental" development in 10 years after being founded, they'd have to spend several times their current annual budgets on facilities alone. Whether you agree with it or not is a moot point. It didn't prevent clubs below the Football League from developing incrementally and forcing pro/rel. I'm referring to the money it takes to get MLS to accept their bid, i.e. the front office and infrastructure upgrades. That's not money paid to MLS. This is completely separate from the expansion fee, which, as high as it is today, is still a fraction of the actual cost of going from the lower leagues to MLS.
MLS has existed for 22 years. The Football League had 18 teams each in D1 and D2 at that point. It took 32 years for the Football League to reach three tiers, even with a large volume of clubs and leagues already outside the Football League.
Actually, I think it did. No surprise that after pro/rel was introduced, many non league clubs started to develop their facilities or move to new stadia - think Wycombe, Yeovil, Crawley, for example. Whichever way you want to cut it, the cartel membership fee is money that goes to the cartel and money that isn't available to spend outside of MLS on players and infrastructure.
So by this stage the Football League had more teams than MLS claims it will end up with and had pro/rel.
It's not as if they were playing in public parks or on school fields before. It was more "next step up" development than building from scratch. The Football League opened up because there was first a critical mass of clubs at or near its standard. As recently as 2014, close to half of the USL was playing on high school fields.
Yes but MLS was pretty much starting from scratch on a barren landscape, whereas the Football League was the next evolutionary step in a game on the rise. The Football League for example, has never had to form completely new clubs to populate itself. MLS had to do that just to get out of the traps.