NHL 2016/MLS 2017 Team Valuations (Forbes) Team Value - Revenue New York Rangers $1.25 B - $219 M Montreal Canadiens $1.12 B - $202 M Toronto Maple Leafs $1.1 B - $186 M Chicago Blackhawks $925 M - $173 M Boston Bruins $800 M - $169 M Philadelphia Flyers $720 M - $160 M Vancouver Canucks $700 M - $146 M Detroit Red Wings $625 M - $137 M Los Angeles Kings $600 M - $142 M Washington Capitals $575 M - $136 M Pittsburgh Penguins $570 M - $178 M Dallas Stars $500 M - $144 M San Jose Sharks $470 M - $141 M Edmonton Oilers $445 M - $117 M Anaheim Ducks $415 M - $121 M Calgary Flames $410 M - $121 M Minnesota Wild $400 M - $136 M New York Islanders $385 M - $114 M Colorado Avalanche $360 M - $115 M Ottawa Senators $355 M - $118 M Winnipeg Jets $340 M - $112 M New Jersey Devils $320 M - $126 M LA Galaxy $315 M - $63 M St Louis Blues $310 M - $129 M Tampa Bay Lightning $305 M - $127 M Buffalo Sabres $300 M - $116 M Seattle Sounders $295 M - $53 M Toronto FC $280 M - $46 M NYC FC $275 M - $34 M Orlando City SC $272 M - $33 M Portland Timbers $268 M - $44 M Sporting Kansas City $260 M - $36 M Columbus Blue Jackets $245 M - $100 M New York Red Bulls $245 M - $32 M Arizona Coyotes $240 M - $101 M Chicago Fire $240 M - $25 M Florida Panthers $235 M - $100 M San Jose Earthquakes $235 M - $34 M Carolina Hurricanes $230 M - $99 M DC United $230 M - $25 M New England Revolution $225 M - $27 M etc
The overall numbers look good, and it clearly shows that MLS is catching up as a league and not just a single team. However revenue streams are still pretty different even if the values are close.
The Blues posted the fourth-highest local television ratings in the NHL during 2015-16 on their way to making it to the Western Conference Finals. Yet the team's 3.69 rating on FS Midwest were off 24% from the previous season. The team's fortunes could soon improve dramatically though. The Blues currently have one of the league's least valuable cable deals, but that deal expires in 2018 and should give the team an opportunity to double their cable television revenue. At a Glance Owner: Tom Stillman Championships: 0 Price Paid: $180 M (+211%) Year Purchased: 2012 Revenue: $129 M Operating Income: $3.2 M Debt/Value: 21% Player Expenses: $74 M Gate Receipts6: $49 M Wins-to-player cost ratio:138 Revenue per Fan: $33 Metro Area Population: 2.8 M Share of US national TV revenue - $6,451,612.90 (unless you know different) Average Ticket Price $55 (2016) No such breakdown for LA Galaxy, not surprisingly but guaranteed salaries were $12,117,892.11 in April. Value is up 85% since 2011 (I couldn't find 2012).
Wow, great data. MLS still has a long way to go, but this shows that it's already comparable to the bottom-half of the NHL, at least in overall franchise value. The key is driving up the value of the TV contracts and I think expansion will help with that, especially if they pick big markets for teams #25-28. Meanwhile, it's note-worthy that MLS already has higher per-game attendance than either the NBA or the NHL, but both leagues draw more fans in total because they play 41 home games per year. MLS attendance should exceed 8 million this year and eventually well over 9 million when the league expands to 28 teams, but the NHL draws over 21 million. The total NFL attendance is about 17 million per year, which is only about double MLS, but their revenue is light years ahead due to the enormous value of the TV contracts.
Also just to put things into perspective, the current MLS TV deal with ESPN, Fox, and Univision is worth $90 million per year. That's far less than any of the big 4 sports leagues. By comparison, the NHL deal is worth $436 million per year. The broadcast rights for the NFL, MLB, and NBA are all worth multi-billions per year. That said, when it was re-negotiated in 2015, the value of the current MLS contract tripled over the prior deal and I don't think we've even scratched the surface on the true potential yet. The deal runs through 2022, but I suspect it could be re-negotiated sooner due to the accelerated pace of league expansion. And with MLS expanding to bigger markets and filling the gaps in its national footprint, I'd be shocked if they don't at least double the annual revenue in the next contract. If so, they'll still lag the big 4 pro sports leagues, but once MLS is in the $150-$200 million range for broadcast rights, they'll be on-par with Power 5 NCAA athletic conferences like the SEC or Big Ten. At that point, MLS creates enough critical mass to become a major player.
Not sure if this has already been posted, but I found it fascinating: http://the18.com/soccer-news/2017-mls-player-salaries-wages-team-salary-cap-contracts
Comparing MLS minimum, average and median salaries to the minimums of 'Big 4' over the last several seasons:
Good data. With the increase to the salary cap and especially the extra $2.8 million in discretionary TAM, the salary gap will shrink considerably over the next couple years. Meanwhile, MLS is already doing pretty well at the gate compared to the other big 4 leagues. The big remaining gap is in TV viewership and value of broadcast contracts.
Keep in mind, the other leagues is only showing the minimum salary, and the big jump in average for MLS is mostly due to DP's. If it showed median or average of each, it would be more enlightening about whether or not the gap is closing. Still, the fact that the average MLS salary will soon approach the minimum of the other big leagues in the US does say something about the growing status of MLS.
It's been awhile since we had anything new on this, but in a different forum, someone did an analysis comparing the transfer market value of Atlanta United's front 6 to the top leagues in Europe and it was very comparable to mid-table teams in Ligue 1, Serie A, and even La Liga. With the rate of revenue growth in MLS, the same will soon be true for the entire starting 11, not just the front 6 where most of the money is spent. MLS won't catch the super-clubs with $200-300 million payrolls anytime soon. But those teams are the exception, not the rule. The gap in spending for everyone else is massive. And over the next 5 years, MLS revenue should grow to a point where the starting 11 for the bigger-spending clubs like Toronto, Atlanta, NYCFC, Seattle, LA Galaxy, LAFC, etc. will indeed be comparable to mid-table teams Ligue 1, Serie A, and La Liga. To put it another way, we're about 5 years away from the top clubs in MLS becoming Europa League quality. Not too shabby.
http://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/ has the Premier League payrolls. The median (mean of the middle two numbers) converted to dollars is $93,567,851.84. That's over four times the payroll for MLS leader Toronto according to http://www.spotrac.com/mls/cap/ . http://www.totalsportek.com/money/italian-serie-a-wage-bill/ has 2015-2016 Serie A payrolls in millions, and the median is $33,199,173.62. Toronto is at 65.6% of that, so even if Toronto catches that within five years I wouldn't expect the mean of the seven highest payrolls in MLS to catch the Serie A median within five years.
Keep in mind that the median in other leagues is heavily skewed by the inclusion of super-clubs that outspend everyone else by a mile. In Serie A for example, just remove the 164 million Euros that Juventus spent on salaries this year and the average drops like a rock. In fact, the average wage bill for teams 10-20 is just 21 million Euros which is about $25 million USD. The numbers in Ligue 1 and La Liga aren't much different. In fact, in Ligue 1, payrolls are even lower. Lets assume that grows to $30 million or so in the next 5 years. Within 5 years, with the rapid growth of revenue and payrolls likely to more than double, the top 6 or so MLS clubs could very well have payrolls north of $30 million. Toronto is already at $22.5 mil. And let's also consider that we're comparing the entire senior roster. If you narrow the comparison to just the starting 11, I'll bet the gap between MLS and European leagues would be even smaller. Our league may never compete with the super-clubs, at least not in my lifetime. But the middle or lower-end of the table in Ligue 1, Serie A, and La Liga is a very attainable goal for MLS.
The Premier League is on a different planet. No way is MLS going to attract 9 figure TV contracts in the next decade. The leagues i think we should be comparing MLS with are Ligue 1 and Russian PL, both of which have average salaries of just over $1 million. The table people keep quoting I think is a couple of years old since when MLS has loosened the purse strings with TAM money while Russia has imposed a salary cap.
The mean is skewed. The median is not. The median is the middle number (or mean of the middle two numbers). It doesn't matter whether the top club pays double the median or ten times the median.
True regarding median vs. mean. My bad for responding without reading carefully. Still, my point remains that the gap between middle and lower-table teams in Ligue 1, Serie A, and La Liga vs. MLS is a gap that could drastically shrink or even completely disappear over the next 5 years. At the very least, I expect our top 6 or so teams to have club revenues north of $100 million which means payrolls could very easily grow to the $30-40 million range.
The "problem" with your point is that most of the salary for the top payroll teams is tied up in a couple of players. As an example, 80% of TFC's payroll is tied up 3 players, 77% of NYCFC's payroll is tied up in 3 players, Kaka is 54% of Orlando's payroll, etc. https://public.tableau.com/views/MLSPUApril2017/Salaries?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&:showVizHome=no There would need to be a pretty drastic increase in the non-DP salary budget (beyond the increases to TAM) to get up to a meaningful $30m-$40m payroll.
MLS owners already have the option to spend a lot more on player salaries but choose not to. As of April 2017 - the total comp for the top 5 spenders combined was more than the combined comp for the bottom 13 - 11 teams had lower total comp than Kaka at Orlando Premiership 206/17 comparisons - the combined comp of the top 7 teams was equal to that relegated Sunderland @ $99 million - at the bottom of the EPL payroll Hull spent $33 million on salaries, 50% more than Toronto, while Burnley spent twice as much as Toronto. So even if the salary budget Rank Club Compensation 1. Toronto $22,478,565.27 2. NYC FC $17,930,365.69 3. Orlando $13,219,199.70 4. Chicago $12,952,278.17 5. LA Galaxy $12,117,892.11 6. Portland $10,824,144.54 7. Seattle $10,372,300.48 8. Atlanta $8,930,754.26 9. Vancouver $8,079,371.07 10. Colorado $8,040,619.75 11. Salt Lake $7,734,355.44 Kaka $7,170,000 Giovinco $7,120,000 12. Philadelphia $7,117,010.10 13. San Jose $6,959,287.11 14. Red Bulls $6,895,186.17 15. Columbus $6,747,544.99 16. Kansas City $6,730,358.78 17. FC Dallas $6,510,760.94 Bradley $6,500,000 Pirlo $5,900,000 18. New England $5,800,118.33 Villa $5,600,000 Dos Santos (G) $5,500,000 Schweinsteiger $5,400,000 19. Minnesota $5,322,864.55 20. DC United $5,272,447.94 21. Montreal $5,215,855.89 22. Houston $5,025,066.65 Altidore $4,900,000
True, but MLS is clearly moving in that direction and you'll see a big shift in 2018 alone. TAM was just introduced in 2015 and discretionary TAM in 2018. We also increased the DP threshold to $1.5 million which allowed a number of teams to buy-down a current DP or two and essentially create a 4th or 5th DP slot. That kind of change will only accelerate in the coming years. Club revenues for teams like Atlanta, Toronto, NYCFC, Seattle, and the LA clubs will be above $100 million soon. Heck, Atlanta will probably get close to that mark THIS year. And that will create a lot of pressure within MLS to start allowing clubs to spend more on payroll. Plus, the gap is already smaller than people realize. The average player salary in Ligue 1 for teams 10-20 is only 500,000 Euros or approximately $620,000. The same is true at the bottom-end of the table in both Serie A and La Liga. Meanwhile, the top 6 clubs in MLS will match that THIS year and it won't all just be based on 3 DPs. For example, Atlanta will feature 8 players that will all make more than $620K (Almiron, Barco, Martinez, Villalba, Carmona, Nagbe, Garza, and Guzan). Heck, we have a bench player (McCann) who makes almost $600K. So, 2018 payrolls for the top 6 or so MLS clubs are already comparable to the bottom-half of Ligue 1 or the lower-quartile of Serie A and La Liga. By 2023, the top MLS clubs will have payrolls comparable to a mid-table team in any of those leagues. Yes, the gap between MLS and the top 20-30 in Europe is still massive. But the gap between MLS and everyone else is not and the top MLS clubs will close that gap over the next 5 years.
I wouldn't compare the averages to the bottom Premier League teams because the Prem is just in a league by itself really. What is it compared to the bottom teams in France or Italy?
The top 7 clubs combined spent more than Sunderland. Do you mean the top 7 players combined? If you took out the top 10 Ligue 1 clubs and had the best MLS club play the 11th best Ligue 1 club in two legs and continued down through clubs in both countries until all MLS clubs were paired (which would have the 11th and worse MLS clubs face Ligue 2 clubs), how would MLS clubs do?
I meant the top 7 payrolls in MLS = Sunderland's - ish Toronto $22,478,565.27 NYC FC $17,930,365.69 Orlando $13,219,199.70 Chicago $12,952,278.17 Los Angeles $12,117,892.11 Portland $10,824,144.54 Seattle $10,372,300.48 ----------------------------------- Sum $99,894,745.96 Sunderland £68,300,000 £1 = $1.42 ------------------------- Total $96,986,000 Sunderland's 2015/16 payroll was over $100,000,000 at today's exchange rate.
Yes Sunderland is the worst team in the C'ship right now but last year they were a Prem club and still probably have players on their payroll at Prem prices. It would be better to compare with a team like Leeds who has been a consistent team in the C'ship since '10.
The figures were from last season when Sunderland were the first team in the Prem. Leeds spend around $20 million on salaries but I don't know if that's just players or every employee. The average Championship player makes about $260k.
Sunderland is 22nd. They're ahead of Birmingham City and Burton Albion. The bottom six clubs are separated by 3 points, so the relegation battle could come down to the last day.