1. Germans won't accept kickoff times being moved for TV. 2. They're too cheap to pay for subscriptions.
I think 1 of the clubs he mentioned is a regular participant in Champions league or Uefa cup and they certainly aren't transferring out high volumes of players. Finally, and this isn't just meant to pick on you in particular as it is an argument I read here a lot and am compelled to begin correcting: TV revenue MOST clubs in MOST countries in Europe are making relatively poor money from TV contracts. The EPL was creaming their jeans and the rest of Europe gasped in awe when they announced worldwide contracts for 1 billion USD over 3 years. This is the most watched league on earth far and away. It is making roughly $330M/year from TV. No other league in Europe comes close to that number. To put it in perspective, NFL makes over $1B/year (and will be about $1.5B per year very shortly) for a league about 90 million people at best actively follow if you take the ratings at face value. If they had the popularity of the EPL the contract would EASILY be over $4B/year. Europe simply doesn't utilize TV and marketing the way we do in the US. The UK does more than most (as evidenced by the EPL contract) but they are still behind the US in putting together TV packages. I've worked in TV and Film Distribution for a few years and it never ceases to amaze me to see how much less sophisticated TV/Film packages are overseas. So to suggest that clubs in Europe are all making massive money off of TV is simply false.
Calling German TV "free" is a bit misleading. German's have to pay the Government every month for the "privilege" of owning TV's and Radios. So that goes a long to cooling their desire to pay for pay per view TV. They do have far more "cheap" seats in Germany compared to England's "you want to pay 200 pounds for nosebleed seats don't you" See my post above about the lack of TV/Film contracts in Europe as well re: German TV not being all that lucrative.
Are all the bundesliga games in germany on free-TV? I know in some countries maybe 2-3 matches every week are on free-TV and the rest are on digital pay-channels. What do german supporters do if their team plays away and are not shown on free-TV? Do they have Pay-Tv packages so they can see all the matches? I know they have to pay a TV-tax(lisence) in England as well.
I thought the NFL had a tv contract that gives them about $3biilion a year(around $100M pr team). And the new premier league contracts (international and domestic) are worth over $5billion over 3 years ($1.2billion international and the rest is domestic). I believe your numbers are wrong .
Look, even the french league (4-5 best in europe) has a tv-deal that gives them 1.8 billion euro over three years. http://www.newsfox.com/pte.mc?pte=041213018
No, there are only two games a year on free-tv , the first game of the season, and the first game of the second half of he season. The point is that they have a lot of pretty good tv for free ( movies, series ) that don’t leave a lot of room for a pay tv channel. And there is not enough people who will buy a pay tv package just for football, The dedicated football fans will rather go to the stadium to watch their team and then watch the highlight show on free tv which starts an hour after the games finish and shows abou 10-12 minutes of every game. Germans have also never accepted the ethos of football as high priced entertainment. All German clubs are citizens associations, controlled by their members. And those members don’t want higher ticket prices, no highlights on free tv until late evening , 6 different kick of times etc, even if that means that the very best players in the world won’t play in Germany.
as well as the other points already covered, I think you are grossly overestimating the value of overseas TV rights. Despite being watched around the world, the domestic rights in England still dwarf the international rights. The premiership may be shown overseas, but the viewing figures just aren't high enough to bring in much money comparitively. You would need a portion of the world as affluent as the US, with a population of 1 billion, with a passion for the game that's the equal of the US, to quadruple the NFL's TV income in the way you expect.
As a Canadian, I find it almost impossible at times to predict why some sports excell in the States while others don't. I can understand the hockey issue as it really is a regional sport, it should be popular in the North but there's no reason why it would be supported in the South. Its not cold enough to be able to play outdoors in the winter, there's no real connection - it's a limited sport market really that for some reason the NHL has tried to ignore and spread everywhere anyways. Lacrosse has always perplexed me as well, but I guess it kind of goes hand in hand with hockey, even though unlike hockey it can be played anywhere. But I digress... Because of the view American have towards hockey MLS should surpass the NHL, and that is where the league should be aiming right now - #4 sport in the country. There is no way they should be aiming for #1, that'll lead to some hastily made decisions! There are many ways the league could market itself to improve its strength and standing in the eyes of the American public, however from my standpoint it seems the country as a whole has looked down on soccer (in terms of widespread opinion anyways) for some time now, so it's gonna take a lot of work to change that image. A few more teams in carefully place markets should held bolster the league and interest, but they can't make the mistake of expanding too fast either - once again, take a look at the NHL for an example of what not to do. I do see a brighter future for the league but it needs to make the right moves, and not just rush into anything.
It's less to do with 'underutilising', and more to do with the fact that America has 300 million people (five times more than England), and the NFL had an ad-break every two minutes (as opposed to four ad-breaks per game in the Premiership). If the Premiership had those things going for it, each team would be making about £500 million a year. Not all clubs, but enough clubs are making enough money to make it incredibly difficult for foreign leagues to muscle in.
I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I don't see the use of highlights 30 minutes after full-time, as I'm usually in a traffic jam at that time.
In all I think the game of soccer will grow in the US. MLS would be the Ligue 1 of America, where it brings up great and future players from all over America. Who in turned will be sold to European teams, and it will going like this for many years. Though that won't happen for sometime now.
You are 100% correct, relying on great international players in the llong term won't help the status of soccer in the US. And History proves this with various soccer league failures for the past 80 years or so. The problem here is getting youth to be attracted to the game more than basketball, baseball, and american football. While I agree that we won't be in the same ranks as England, Spain, Italy unless all of sudden Americans lost interest in the other competing big sports when compared to soccer and even then it would take decades to catch up. Realistically, we need to get our own american Zidane or Maradona that performs well on the international level, A charismatic leader in the presence of big media. Because in the US people idolize "star" players over "star" teams, and if this player can lead the US to a world cup final. A perfect example in american terms of this is the overly compared "Michael Jordan" of basketball, to a lesser extent Wayne Gretzky of Hockey. Both of the players weather you liked them or not ultimately contributed to raising the level of play, attendence, sponserships, and finally revenue for their respective leagues. American overtly adore and American does loves them more....so soccer needs its hero. If we can find develop a player to fit this role, Then you create the domino affect of school youth walking off the basketball court and on to the soccer pitch after school, and competing by the droves to join youth academies. Edit: I'm just hoping the MLS can reach the level of the 1st division of the Mexican futball league, which is extremely successful being in the top 6 highest revenue leagues in the world. This would be amazing, would probably take a decade or two. But I believe the Mexican league acknowledges a tremendous opportunity in exposure by investing into the MLS as well, case in point Chivas USA, The Super Liga tournament between MLS and MFL. I look at the mexican league as a perfect role model for the MLS to follow, and those teams would be looked at as to how they implement their youth system, along the English, Germans, Spanish, Italians etc..
I think you are on to something here. The next superstars could come from anywhere, also the US. If the US ever produced a Maradona i would be surprised if the interest didnt pick up.
I agree that the long term answer for MLS becoming an elite league lies in Youth teams. If we develop them well we have a good chance. A country doesn't just happen to produce a Maradona. Soccer had been like a religion in Argentina for almost a century before it produced Maradona. He joined the Boca Juniors (i believe) when he he was 12 or 13 and in that academy he got better training than you could get in the U.S at this moment. We will never create a player of this caliber until MLS teams have comparable youth development systems. This process could take a while and I don't know how much MLS teams are adhering to this necessity. The core of the league will always be American players, thus the better you can develop American players the higher quality of foreign players we can attract creating a snowballing effect of talent development. If we do not improve this aspect of MLS we will never get beyond attracting marginally over the hill/washed up South American players or marketing enigmas such as Beckham (though it is true these players will improve MLS in the short run). I can imagine a league where teams have successful youth development and thus much of the players on each team are local products. This could give a team a true sense of local pride and connection with their community that could not be matched by other U.S. sports (i.e. majority of NFL players are not actually from the areas they play in). Imagine fans who once played in their teams youth systems. This devlopment has obstacles in the U.S. that are not present in Europe. College soccer would have to accept being second fiddle and ODP teams in cities with MLS teams may become dinosaurs. Since these two inefficient areas of player development are already established they will be hard to budge. But changes need to be made if you want to see MLS improve or Maradona-caliber players developed in the United States
It would take more than just one player like Maradona to do that, you'd need at least 5-10 players that are or near the elite level (think Maldini, Kaka, Gerrard) and a solid complement of very good players (think M. Salas, Lampard, Laurent, or even the likes of JPA) so that every team has a star in order to really pull the fans in. Look at the NBA as an example, nearly every team has at least one "star" and a few solid players who are just below the star level to complement the handful of superstars in the league.
Great response and your right many countries with over a century of soccer culture ,i won't list them as i might offend others , having tried.. but failed to produce a Diego Maradona, so expectations to achieve this may be abit high , wishful thinking aside my point was that unfortunately it's almost like you have a super high calibre player, playing for a succesful USmnt to be able catch the attention of millions 10 - 12 year olds boys that are leaving soccer practice to go play basketball, football, baseball instead. But what you are saying is right on having local orientated Pro youth development leagues is the right step and i think a majority of the teams are starting this currently at u-14 but there is definitely room for expansion, Eventually drastic measures where the leagues somehow overide odp and the NCAA, is so spot on,,,, because the global nature of the game. Our country is left in the dust in youth development because of our amateur focus versus world class professional development. Right as far the performance, consistency level goes. But what I'm referring to is a fifa player of the year type. For the purpose of exposure and marketing alone. NBA has tons star quality players but where is the new Jordan? Of course it's very debatable, but i argue that there is no one in this league the impacted that game individually as he did. The history of sports in this country has always been leader orientated, in some respects i think the approach is flawed on technical level but in sheer marketing terms this is what fans react too, A perfect example would be France vs Italy, Italy all around team..A group bonded together by mutual respect, Elite players and a few leaders like Del Piero, Totti, Cannavaro but not dominant focal forces within the team. Which along with teams like a traditional German powerhouse squad produce results and ultimately the final win. But when you analyse what Zidane was to France and how it seem to be if he was up to par France was up to par. When he brought his A-game he just had this perfect awareness on the field, of the ball, where his team mates where, and the potential gaps of the opposing side. Theiry Henry, and maybe Patrick Veiri, arguably more athletically gifted then Zidane any many respects, but Zidane when on the field was the king of France. Of course that king lost his glory as did Mardona, and that happens but no one can take away the spectacle that was the 98 world cup, and the 86 world cup respectively. That is honestly what drives youth around the world, let alone America...to "Be like mike". But a player like this might not ever come out of this country, but striving to create a culture, knowledge base,investment and infrastructure to produce one may just give us few of those elite players your referring to. Aside from this it also took Mexico hosting the 1970, and 1986 world cups to get to the level where they are at. Now Look what 1994 did for us, maybe the US hosting another one here in 2018 might be something to ponder...
I know what you're trying to get at with Jordan, but I think he is a bad example to use. Jordan was the greatest player in NBA history, no doubt, but he also played during the NBA's golden era and it wasn't just him that was wowing crowds from coast to coast. You had Bird and Magic, Hakeem Olajuwan, Patrick Ewing, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Chuck Barkley, Stockton and Malone, James Worthy, Dominique "the human highlight real" Wilkins, Moses Malone and Bernard King dropping 40 on opponents seemingly every 5th game. Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas and Bill Lambier were beating people into submission in Detriot, Reggie Miller was knocking down killer threes in Indy, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish helping Larry Legend take 3 titles, Clyde "the glide" Drexler in Portland, Chris Mullin in Golden State and the Admiral David Robinson in SA. And that's not even including stalwarts Alex English, Drazen Petrovich or Mitch Richmond who were stars in their own right. Even Jordan himself wasn't good enough to win the title until he had Scottie Pippen. Of the 50 greatest NBA players half of them played with or against Jordan, and it is no coincidence that the meteoric rise of the NBA in the late 1980s and 1990s occurred while all those greats played at the same time. That's why I say even the next Maradona or Pele or media superstar like Beckham isn't enough, you need a host of great players to really have the league take off. Every team needs a world class star, and at least a few very good players.