These are mostly estimates. I know LAG have a nice TV contract, but I would be interested in seeing the math that gets them making $5 million more in revenue than a team that averages 15k more people. I am not saying it is wrong, but I am curious. Those secondary market stats are kind of a joke. In second place is Houston with secondary market prices of $90+. Anyone who saw any parts of a Houston home game this would be forgiven for not realizing there is a huge demand for secondary market tickets. Seattle Season tickets can be purchased for roughly $500 and top out at $1000 per ticket. (https://oss.ticketmaster.com/aps/seattlemls/EN/buy/details/17FC_ ) If tickets could be resold for $129 then all season tickets would be purchased and resold at a significant profit.
Secondary market prices are always at a big markup. The Houston Dynamo's average price on the secondary market is almost double the face value of the most expensive single-game ticket in the stadium, outside of luxury boxes and VIP club seats. I can't find single-game ticket prices for VIP club seats, but the season ticket price is about double the next highest, so extrapolate and you have the average secondary market price probably being around the same price the club is charging for luxury seating. And the club isn't getting that extra money.
I guess we'll have to wait until the season starts before we know the single game prices. My NYC season ticket averaged out at about $37 a game last season though in reality it was a bit more as I couldn't sell my seat for the 3 or 4 matches I had to miss.
Maybe MLS should increase the $ against the amount charged against the salary cap for DPs over 31, or tier the $ against the salary cap based on age - $150k for players signed under 23 years old, $400k for players 24 to 31 and $500k+ for players over 31. The amount would be based on the age when a player signed a MLS contract, rather than their current age, otherwise teams maybe tempted to dump players on their next birthday. Galaxy probably get a commission for selling on their sponsorship on to other teams. Herbalife, geddit?
There are three All-NBA teams that are 5 players deep each, so 15 total. I believe NBA All-star teams have 12 players for each conference, which is 24 total. For whatever reason the phrase "world class" is used less often in american sports than soccer, but I think if you referred to a non-NBA all-star as a "world class" player it would sound kind of weird. I think the equivalent would be "super-star" and I think of that as like the 5-10 best players at any given time. This is an interesting idea. They do charge less for young DPs, but if they had a sliding scale from like zero dollars at 18 to the full DP cap hit at 30 it would make DPs gradually more expensive as they got older, (hopefully) giving clubs enough wiggle room to keep them if they want. I don't know if DPs from transfer fees would complicate this, but pushing teams towards younger players seems like a good move for a developing league. I bet the sponsorship parties are all sorts of fun.
The reason is that Americans are used to having the top professional league in the world in their favorite sports and not having to compare the best players in an American league to the best players in foreign leagues. If fans take for granted that every season the NBA First Team has the five best players in the world, there's no need to call the top players "world class."
Sounds about right. In the NHL I have never heard of the word world class being thrown around probably because soccer football is being played with every country while other sports are a niche.
And when they do decide to compare American players to the best players in the world and lose, they make excuses and decide those games don't really count, which reminds me the World Baseball Classic "pitches-off" on March 6th.
I don't want to get political...but Trump really wants to go back to the era 100 years ago when tariffs were the norm and free trade did not have the worldwide consensus support it has had since WW II. If economists are correct, that's going to have severe negative effects on the US, and the world. And then there's Brexit. Point being, the chances of relative economic power changing dramatically is pretty high, sort of like that NHL era when the Canadian dollar was very weak. Whether it will change in a way that helps MLS or hurts it, we'll see. But if I were an MLS front office executive, I wouldn't be making any plans premised on the assumption that the US is going to have the same relative economic strength in 2019 that it has today. The ones in bold surprise me. In particular, SJE's revenue is really high considering the size of their venue. If that can keep ticket prices high and add a few thousand seats, they could really become a player in the 2nd tier behind the Gals and Sounders. The secondary market, BY DEFINITION, isn't revenue for the club. Not sure why you're citing this.
You can get a decent estimate by looking at the season ticket prices and single game ticket prices. For many MLS teams, the average price on the secondary market is above the highest single-handed ticket price outside of VIP seating.
These are the supporters' section season ticket prices. Are there still going to be 17 home games per team in 2017? Toronto - 453 Portland - 450 NY City - 391 Vancouver - 371 San Jose - 360 Philly - 360 Atlanta - 360 Orlando - 342 Columbus - 342 Houston - 310 Colorado - 289 Salt Lake - 280 Chicago - 255 NY RB Dallas Minnesota
$129 for secondary pricing for the Sounders is not even close to reality. I have first level seats on the midfield stripe and resale in my section is on average $60-80. Sometimes only face value. You can list them for $129, but they most likely will not sell.
Wait a sec, that Median can't be right. A Median is the number where half the values are Higher than the Median and half the values are lower than the median.... Ooohhhh, they're talking about the total team salary. What would be a better indicator of league quality is the average or median salary per player in MLS.
We already have that data. Now we have a different piece of data. This latest data shows that most clubs are investing money way above and beyond the salary budget. This is very significant for league health and quality. Second, I disagree on median salary per player. With rosters of 25 to 28 per team, IMO the median players doesn't tell us much by itself. It would be more interesting to see all three quartiles.
I was just reading through some of this thread and it seems to me that we will be competitive with Liga MX a lot sooner than I would have predicted when this thread started. Some very positive developments this year since the thread died: ATL's huge runaway success very strong expansion bids from a number of cities the huge jump in revenue from the new Adidas deal All of these things point toward even faster growth in salaries, in my opinion However, I fear that we will still face a major decision point. In spite of the great attendance numbers in many cities, the tv ratings aren't going up much. As someone without a home MLS team, this isn't difficult for me to explain. There are a plethora of soccer viewing options every weekend, plus champion’s league during the week. I've been to a few MLS games in person, and it's very entertaining, but if I have a choice between watching an MLS game on TV and a decent Premier League or La Liga or Bundesliga game on DVR, I'm probably not going to watch much MLS other than the playoffs. My guess is the typical MLS fan feels the same way, with the exception that they will watch their home team. At some point, I think the revenue growth is going to plateau unless it finds a way to increase the number of eyeballs that watch on screens. Eventually, getting the Liga MX fans to start watching MLS instead may be possible if the soccer gets better, but that could take 20 or more years for a new generation of Mexican-American fans to grow up. Getting the Euro league fans to switch, or at least start to follow both, is going to be a lot more expensive, and in my opinion will require taking the shackles off the ambitious teams and forcing the old guard to keep up, or get out of the way. I think with the number of very viable expansion candidates on the horizon, there is a way to do this that keeps most parties happy. - let the teams spend what they want, but put a progressive luxury tax on them for payroll over, let’s say, $20 million. Put a hard cap on salary plus luxury tax at 60% of revenue, so that teams cannot bankrupt themselves, and they can’t bankroll championships with oil money, or whatever, but they can be rewarded on the field for success off the field. - keep the 3 DP’s per team. You will still need star players to sell the game on tv. But these players should be bona fide stars making over $3 million, not Matt Besler and Graham Zusi types. All of the starters would probably be making over $1 million anyway, so you wouldn’t need to use your DP slots to keep those types of players. If the league gets big enough, you could eventually phase out the DP slots altogether. - keep the playoffs; American sports fans have too many options to expect large audiences every week, but if you can schedule the playoffs at the right time, with a great product on the field, including some of the best US and MEX players, I think you could get some big numbers. Have those teams play in the CCL and the Copa Libertadores, and you could get some even bigger numbers internationally. If MLS teams start winning those tournaments, you could see some of the very best young South American players coming to MLS as a jumping off point to Europe, or staying here their whole career. - 20 team 1st division and 20 team 2nd division with sort of a soft pro/rel. To be eligible for promotion, teams would need to have a full youth academy and control over revenue of a stadium of at least 20,000. To be eligible for the 2nd division, you would need an academy and a 12000 seat stadium. Obviously, we can’t implement this right away, but eventually, if MLS gets to 30 teams and still has 10 more solid expansion candidates, they could have a transition period until eventually there are two divisions of 20, or some variation thereof. Once you have 2 divisions, start pro/rel of one team every year with a 4-team playoff for promotion from 2.MLS and the winner plays the worst team from 1.MLS. Many years you could end up with the same teams in each division for consecutive years, but every team in the 2nd division that meets the requirements for 1st division would have a chance to get promoted, and every team in the 1st division would have a small chance to get relegated. National TV contracts would be shared among both divisions, with 1st division getting a much larger share. The money from the luxury tax would go toward parachute payments and promotion payments for the winners and losers from pro/rel. The level of the luxury tax and the amount of the parachute payments would have to be adjusted periodically. I think this could satisfy most of the parties. The big, ambitious teams like SEA, ATL, TOR, LAG, etc., would be able to build their MLS superclubs and they would have very little chance of ever getting relegated. The stingy, old guard MLS teams like NE, COL, etc., would be happy because they would likely make more money than they are now. The tv contract would be much larger. With a large tv contract, and a hard cap on salaries as a percentage of revenue, you can get the revenue sharing level to a point where every team is profitable. They probably wouldn’t win many MLS cups, but Kraft and Kroenke don’t care about that, anyway. The expansion wanna be’s would be happy because they would have a chance to play their way into the 1st division. The well-run, mid market teams like POR, KC, RSL would rarely get relegated, and they would always have a puncher’s chance of winning MLS Cup, or qualifying for a more competitive future CCL. Perhaps most importantly for the fans, teams like Columbus would never have to worry about their team getting moved. I haven’t read this whole thread, so please forgive me if my ideas aren’t new. I’m sure it’s not exactly what the eurosnobs want, and some diehard MLS fans probably stopped reading when they saw pro/rel, but I think it strikes a happy medium which could keep the fans and the owners happy, and grow the sport to another level in this country. p.s. Don G. if you’re reading this and you use my ideas, please make sure any leftover luxury tax money goes toward a MLS stadium for the St. Louis group, and the team is called the Missouri Compromise
You know, you had me reading until Pro-Rel was brought up, which I was ready to dismiss out of hand. But that got me to thinking: Most of the big leagues make their money from the TV revenue more than in-game sales. Maybe if TV revenue was split evenly between MLS1 and MLS2 (or at worst 55-45) in your scenario instead of MLS1 getting the majority, owners might find that more palatable? Of course, some may complain then where is the incentive for MLS2 clubs to fight to get into MLS1? The drive to be champions would be the prime mover. Then we would know who really want's it and who is just there to cash the royalty cheques.
"They'll have playoffs in England before we have promotion & relegation in the US" Garth Lagerway to ESPN