MLS: Current clubs and the New York Cosmos NASL: Rochester Rhinos Miami FC Crystal Palace Baltimore Cincinnati Kings Cleveland City Stars Pittsburgh Riverhounds Indiana Invaders Central Florida Kraze Nashville Metros San Diego Flash Michigan Bucks Milwaukee Bavarians NSC Minnesota Stars Atlanta Blackhawks Carolina RailHawks FC New Orleans Jesters FC Tampa Bay Arizona Sahuaros AC St. Louis FC Edmonton
Here is my shot at trying to 'fix' a non existent business model operating companies who have been failing and going bankrupt for decades. 1. Rationalize. Combine USL/NASL/NPSL/CSL/PRSL/PDL into regional leagues. Maybe 8 of them. With about 6-10 clubs in each conference. No franchise fees, no relegation, clubs have a choice of professional and amateur. Play half season NASL Regional and take the 8 winners of the leagues and play a national league of NASL Premier for the 2nd half. If a amateur club does not have the money to play the 2nd half national schedule, they can continue to play regionally and sell their spot in NASL Premier season to any other team in the league. So if a 'bigger' NASL club fails to make it out of their regional league, there would still be a market for buying the rights to play in the national league in the 2nd half for ambitious teams and smaller clubs will never be faced to carry a salary base or a travel schedule they can't afford yet. a Southwest b Southeast c Midwest d Atlantic Coast e Pacific Coast f Canada East g Canada West h Caribbean 2. AGE. The entire league is 23 and under. This is a league of development, or future stars, think NCAA but with paid salaries. A hot prospect heading to Akron or Wake Forest can now choose a local NASL club to get paid a decent wage (50k) and be guaranteed playing time in a pro team instead of wasting away on a bench in MLS or not getting enough games in NCAA. It becomes a new alternative and gives the league a nitche. It also gives fans a reason to watch, this is the FUTURE of US soccer not a minor league. Teams have veteran designated players, maybe 2-3 over 23 guys per team for leadership reasons. Have connections with local universities allowing players to go to school part time if they are interested, so they no longer need to choose between college or pro soccer. 3. SELLING. The league pays for a traveling All-Star team to Europe during the summer to play UEFA clubs youth teams. The league has paid agents who do nothing but try to get players connected to teams in Europe. Check how many PDL guys ended up going to europe. There is talent there, and a professional can see that and sell it. This traveling youth all-star team buys the player from the club, but the league gets a kick back to pay for the traveling team and agents. MLS teams are also welcome to bid on these youth players. 4. Sponsorship. Sell sponsorship in bulk. No one cares bout these little clubs except little local companies. But if you had a coalition of teams throughout N. America who not only have pro teams but each one has established large youth system, then a shirt sponsor for 100+ clubs becomes something a larger company might be interested in. Offer a shirt sponsor for every club (with their youth) and a naming sponsor 'Company' NASL and divided that profit up among the clubs. Clubs can sell 2nd (local) sponsorships on the back of the jersey. 5. Forget about competing with MLS. Forget about trying to build national brands when teams are leaving or dying so often it makes no sense. Build local commitment, build solid clubs and good soccer with the best youth players in the country (just below Gen Adidas quality) and focus on selling players. Make sure the entire team is nothing but prospects, develop D1 quality guys and make money off them.
1. 8 seems too many. Maybe 4 divisions 2. No reason what so ever to limit age. 5. Even most of the MLS clubs are local except maybe LAG? This actually applies to MLS, too.
You're just not going to get large numbers of adult pro teams playing amateur college summer teams. Additionally the amateur college summer leagues end in late July early August so that the players can get back to school - the D2/D3 pro teams play into the fall. You're never going to get them all together. There will always be at least one level of long season minor league professional soccer. Nobody is well served by a professional team playing one 3 month season per year. It's a big country. Frankly , four divisions isn't regional enough to build in any savings. It's a 16 hour drive (give or take) at speed from Raleigh-Durham to Miami. Once you get on a plane, it doesn't matter too much whether you're going from Raleigh to Cleveland or Raleigh to Portland. The amateur (so-called D4) college summer leagues are already in more than 8 different divisions. But there will never be enough fully professional D2/D3 teams to create real regional leagues. Now, MLS putting reserve sides into the mix would definitely help, but I'm not holding my breath.
How many decent pro football clubs can you get within driving distance in US? 4-5? so you are going to have a league with 5 teams paying each other like 6-7 times? MLS got two conferences. 4 divisions seem right for D2.
A regional setup would be great but right now NASL just needs to get the league going nice and stable for a few season before worrying about any big alignment issues. Regardless of how the specific teams shake out for next year it is a mostly Eastern/Midwest league right now. I think if they can get up to 12 teams they could break into North/South Conferences. Then start adding western teams to those conferences and when they have enough maybe go East/West conferences with Southwest/Southeast/Northwest/Northeast divisions. I think by the 2022 World Cup 24 teams is a good number to shoot for for D2. 4 divisions with 6 teams each, 2 divisions per conference. Play 2 home/2 away versus your division for 10 games, play 1 home/1 away versus the other division in your conference for 12 more games, and play 1 game versus each team in the opposing conference for 12 more. That's a reasonable 34 games, 22 of which are geographically sensible. Division winners plus the next best 4 make the playoffs. Now that would require at least 14 new teams in the next 12 years, but it's not totally unreasonable to imagine.
Even if you create more division, how you going to schedule? playing same teams 4-6 times in the same division? that sounds boring. This is more like what I'm imagining. Except that I think there's little math mistake. 2 home/2 away versus your division = 5+5+5+5 = 20 already?
I miss the old Carolina League Durham Bulls. 8 teams, 140 games. We had 10 home games against every opponent. At the end of the season everybody knew everybody - including the regular fans. It rocked. The level of hate that comes with that kind of intimacy is never matched in soccer. One thing, in my mind that sports like soccer and American football lack is that kind of thing. They have nothing that remotely matches up to the epic-ness of the best of 7 series that MLB, NHL, and NBA all have in the post season. When you don't see a team for three months, grudges fade, controversies are replaced by new controversies. When you play the same team regularly, the rivalry only grows. ----- That said, I'm not calling for that kind of schedule, I'm just saying it's anything but "boring"
Depends on where. It'll probably exceed in England or Argentina, but they don't play same teams 10 times, and we are not in English environment that you can have like 5-6 teams in a city. I noticed you say 'old', so if that was such a great thing, why it became old? IMO, 7 games final thing is the lamest thing in NBA MLB etc. It's a joke to me. They created that to bring in as much cash. It'll be absolutely terrible if they create 7 games final for say the World Cup final or UEFA final or MLS Cup final. I don't like to see DC United playing Philiadelphia 4 times just because they are physically close while playing LAG or Seattle, etc 1 time. The other side to it is that if they are real rivalries, the one time them visiting will be a huge huge event. If they visit 4 times, the novelty diminishes. Anyways going back, creating more and more divisions doesn't really serve the point. You have to make a decent trip anyways for away games in this country.
Not if the divisions would have for instance 10 teams. (This is of course easier said than done). I only stated that with more teams, you can create more regional divisions and lower the travel costs
What I propose is a NASL West with 10 or 12 teams and a NASL East with also 10 or 12 teams so that untill the playoffs for instance Rochester would not have to travel to San Diego or San Antonio Something like the WSA and the APSL in the eighties Travel costs are killing the franchises
ok, so how rationalized the league needs to be can be debated, but from a business point of view other than limiting your traveling costs how did the business model of NASL improve? For my money, transitioning from a 'minor league' to a 'development league' is the key. These teams need to focus their money on young prospects not 30 year olds who couldn't make MLS rosters. There is no value in those guys. But an 18 year old who has potential to be a D1 or european player has value. Focusing all resources in that direction would be an improvement to the business model.
Unless we go to an American-style farm system with each MLS team having a second division feeder team (which I'd be fine with - even though my local team would be one of those feeder teams), I don't know that we'll ever see a D2 as big as 16 teams, much less 20 or 40 ever again. I don't think the markets and the investment are there. Every year or two, MLS is going to pick off one of the top D2 markets. I expect MLS to continue expanding just like the four big leagues as long as markets and owners willing to get stadiums done exist. The pace will slow, but continue for the foreseeable future. Honestly, at some point, I think that if you're going to survive and be involved in professional soccer in the United States, you're going to be affiliated in some way with MLS. I suspect we'll end up with a second division that is a mix of independent teams and MLS affiliated teams, but I can't imagine anyone that's watched the trends of the A-League, USL, and NASL pro teams since MLS started in 1996 believes that the current model is a "growth" model. ------- What's killing these teams isn't so much the travel costs, but the declining sponsorships. The economic downturn has really curtailed marketing budgets. Especially in the local businesses that are the lifeblood of minor league sports. With newspapers dying, local businesses are reassessing all of their marketing expenses, and frankly the knock-on affect of signage at the local minor league team has always been more of an ego thing than a financially justifiable thing. Sponsorship dollars are down across the board and way down in some locations.
I think there was talk last season of having a some sort or rule about a minimum of 5 U-23s on the field. Frankly, I'd be all for that.
You are totally right, limiting the travel costs is only 1 step. A lot more can and needs to be done. Like IMHO building 7-10 K SSS, good relationships both with MLS and also USL Pro, focussing on match day experiences, using the internet to maintain good contact with the fans, visiting schools and youth soccer tournements, etc... All easier said than done of course.
If you know nothing about major league pro sports in this country you should know this; you don't really need to make money day to day. It helps but lots of teams break even or loose money. But as long as the losses are manageable, no one cares. Why? There are 2 things all major league owners are looking for... 1. franchise value. It is like a stock. Buy some pro team in the 90s for 200M and sell it for 400M in the 00's and the new guy wants to sell it again for 800M in 10-20 years. They are thinking long term big sales more than selling every seat. 2. Real Estate. Wanna build a huge facility with no-interest gov't money and free infrastructure and maybe even a mix-use development on the side all worth about a billion dollars? Well buy a major league team and leverage the city to give you what you want (paid by tax payers) and if they don't give it threaten to move. You either get it or find another city willing to give it up. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Now as long as D2 or D3 stays influx with a 80% failure rate, the franchise value will remain meaningless. Owners need to realize they are a long way away from being able to sell their clubs for a profit. So this business plan doesn't work for NASL. The good people of Rochester can tell you about investing in a SSS for a minor league soccer team and how successful it is. There is almost zero market for gov't money for non-MLS SSS. Which means projects will be 100% private, which higher interest rates and any infrastructure costs being paid privately as well. And a 7-10k stadium could not hold as many events/concerts as a large 20-25k SSS can. So the SSS as a profit producing entity for the club exists in MLS, but does not exist yet in D2 or lower. Unless you have a Impact situation where he club knows they are going to one day go to MLS and they build a SSS just to expand, sure it works. But we need a D2 and D3 that can survive on its own. ------------------------------------------------------------------ For me the biggest solution would be to move to an all 23 and under league. This sounds radical, but if you want to talk business plan, it makes perfect sense. The only way these clubs have a chance of actually building is with player sales. PDL has had GREAT talent come through. If a lower division team can find great quality teenagers, convince them that a small 50k contract, a guarantee to play, and an international showcase tour is enough to bypass a big NCAA team and sign on to a NASL club, then that NASL club has a shot of making money off that kind. If an NASL club signs a 30 year old former MLS bench warmer, than the team has zero chance of making money off him. You want to change the business...first cut costs way down through regionalized leagues. And then increase the value of your players by focusing only on prospects and players that could one day be sold. I would also really question if spending 15-20M of private money is worth it to have a nice 7k SSS (Morrison stadium for example). If I ran the business, I would keep my team at a HS paying next to nothing for rent but just opt to pay for removing the gridiron lines. And I'd take my 20M and invest in a residency academy. My bet is that within the 20 years it would take to pay off that stadium, the academy could produce more than 15-20M worth of players sold if you brought in the right people.