Not entirely. The expansion fee is specific to MLS and is supposed to compensate for the short-term hit to the existing teams' cut of the shares revenues. The req is for a D1 league in general and is meant to ensure financial security.
It's more a case of rating a league based on the ability of its various owners to ensure the financial security of its clubs.
Or.. pro-competitive because it ensures a competitive environment when owners can afford to absorb the losses that running a soccer club generally entails.
So if a division 2 owner with less than $40m in net worth saw his team promoted to division 1 based on performances on the field of play, how would that work out?
Find a new investor? Again, you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of regulations, particularly in sports.. They are not always anti-competitive, they can create an environment that is more competive. In the case of setting owner net worth minimums, the goal is to ensure that the owners can afford to field a team that is competitive with the rest of the teams in their league without driving themselves into debt and, ultimately, out of business.
They wouldn't necessarily be promoted. I'm sure the USSF is not unique in demanding that teams have sufficient resources to finish the season. Eibar would have been denied promotion had they failed to raise an extra $2.3 million by August 6th, 2014. But teams and entire leagues have been given waivers before.
Then the requirements should be changed to a bond that ensures a team finishes the season. Really, the bottom line is that these requirements have been written to facilitate closed leagues and don't take into account the possibility of pro/rel leagues existing.
Well, it means it is impossible for a European style club like Borussia, Feyenoord, Ajax, Real Madrid or Barcelona or Bayern to emerge. In it's foundation it is fixated as a business in the first place and a soccer club at the back bench. The sport/soccer is just a vehicle to generate profit. It can be swapped for any other when wanted.
But it's not. $40 million isn't a lot of money these days when it comes to investing in sports, especially in the richest country on earth. By 2021 there'll be 30 independent USL year's all of which will have a primary owner worth more than $20 million. Taking one of those teams completely at random, Reno's owner is worth $3.2 billion! And USSF standards permit competing D1 leagues. What are the chances of that happening in Europe?
Not what I was saying. I was pointing out how out of touch the PLS is in 2018 when the minimum net worth isn't even a quarter of what it takes to buy a team. I know that MLS is not USSF, but it is the precedent for D1 (not to mention the only option) in the present day. Simply put, that $40 million figure has no basis in reality anymore.
It opens the door for a competitor to MLS. Let's say ambitious owners in Louisville, San Antonio, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Sacramento, North Carolina and Las Vegas decide they're being held back in USL. 6 of them made a MLS expansion bids, and all will have soccer specific stadiums in the next couple of years. It's quite possible that we could see the start of a second USSF sanctioned D1 within the next ten years.
This seems more than a little academic though. If MLS is league spending at the levels it is and can, a league of $50 millionaires is going to have a hard time competing with that. I mean maybe there's some kind of alternative future where massive amounts of money don't make a... Hahaha, almost was able to keep a straight face. No, any alternative D1 league is going to have to spend at least in the neighborhood of MLS at this point. I mean, yes, could the scenario you give theoretically happen? Sure, but it's hard to imagine such a league lasting very long.
Such a league would be sanctioned at D1 level, as per USSF rules. Of course that league would end up being a de facto D2. But as a practical matter, the USSF league standards make it far easier in the US than anywhere else in the world to create a competing D1. And if they were willing to spend some money... again, the NHL salary floor, the minimum level of spending in the lowest-paying of the four leading US leagues, is well over double the payroll of the highest-spending MLS team. A league of owners spending like the cheapest NHL teams could sweep MLS aside in MLS cities. Also, what does it say that the NASL not only couldn't meet the D1 standards, but never met the D2 standards at any time in its existence despite essentially writing those standards?
Yeah, I was kind of angling towards that de facto D2 point. And if Blank and friends aren't spending NHL money, $50 millionaires aren't going to either. At least not for long.
But it would still be D1. And D designation is ultra-important Important enough to close down an entire league. Ask R Silva or RD Commisso.
The number of slots is determined by CCL, how the US ones are distributed is determined by MLS... I mean, USSF.
So, you admit you're wrong about the likelihood of folding/relocating is higher in closed league than in open systems since MLS essentially folded all its teams, then re-folded Tampa and Miami? Here's a better idea... SUM is dissolved due to profound conflicts of interest and MLS negotiates for TV deals based on the league's own merits rather than piggybacking off the USMNT, USWNT, Mexican Nats and World Cup, etc etc etc... then maybe that offer from Silva looks better and better...
Right, I have a hard time imagining USSF taking away one of the two MLS berths for some other league unless MLS falls off of a cliff. I wonder if this hypothetical D1.1.0-beta could qualify via the Nations League, although that seems crappy too.
They'd have been relegated actually. And had a midtable La Liga team not ran afoul of a similar requirement the following season, Eibar would gone straight back down. #SportingMerit