MLS Single Entity Sends Handicapped Clubs to CCL. Do We Not Know, or Not Care?

MLS folds teams and if they are not viable financially they relocate teams. So what's the difference...MLS is probably in the top 10 of attendance as far as leagues go in the world. But are ranked 21st as far as quality of play due to the parity system.. So what are you talking about?

 

FAIL!

source?

 

Well, exactly.

You're the one who said that there was a difference, that if promotion and relegation existed the promotion and relegation fairies would wave their magic wands and save the City Stars. My point all along has been that promotion and relegation doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

The difference is MLS has the resources to hold on to teams for a few years to try to save them. No MLS team has gone bankrupt since 2001, which in terms of world soccer is a pretty good record.

According to Wikipedia, for what it's worth, MLS is 13th in attendance among soccer leagues.

As for quality of play, I'm not sure whose opinion you're quoting, but it's both subjective and very difficult to measure across leagues. Is the quality of play in MLS better or worse than the Scottish Premier League, for example? Depends a lot on whether you're comparing Los Angeles to Rangers or comparing D.C. United to Falkirk. There's no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of a 16-team league with parity versus what is functionally a 2-team league.

 

Attendance = 13th in world

Quality = 18th in the world

1. England/Premier League
2. Spain/La Liga
3. Italy/Serie A
4. Germany/Bundesliga
5. France/Ligue 1
6. Netherlands/Eredivisie
7. Greece/Super League
8. Russia/Premier League
9. Scotland/Scottish Premier League
10.Argentina/Primera A
11.Mexico/1a Division
12.Brasil/Serie A
13.Portugal/Liga Sagres
14.Turkey/Turkcell Super Lig
15.Belgium/Pro League
16.Ukraine/UPL
17.Austria/Bundesliga
18.USA/MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER

So I wasn't far off. Last year they were 21st.

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-34048-MLS-Examiner~y2009m12d22-Where-Does-MLS-Rank-Among-the-Worlds-Top-Leagues


Yea championship is 4th in attendance...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues

 

Here is what I got from wiki:
Attendance total

Premier 13.5 Million
Bundesliga 12.8
La Liga 11.0
Championship (ENG) 9.8
Serie A 9.5
Ligue 1 8.0
Argentina 7.9
FMF 7.7
Brazil 6.5
Eurodivision 6.0
J-League 5.9
Bundesliga 4.7
League 1 (ENG) 4.5
Turkish 4.3
China 3.9
Indonesia 3.8
Iran 3.7
Argelia 3.7
Segunda (ESP) 3.7
MLS 3.6
Belgium 3.5
Scotish 3.4
Russia 3.2
Ligue 3.2



MLS 20th in attendance, that is not to bad (if you trust wiki)
Also England top 3 leagues on the top 13 in the world, that is very good.

Argentina higher than Mexico and Brazil. wow!

 

I don't know according to wiki.. I got 13th in attendance I counted.

 

Wow. Really? Your "source," that you initially wanted us to just accept as some sort of objective authority, is...an Examiner.com blogger?

You know how Examiner works, right? It's a guy who writes something on the Internet. That's it. It's exactly as credible as linking to a thread on BigSoccer that says "I think MLS is the BEST league in the WORLDZ!!!"

In other words, citing an Examiner article and pretending it's an actual source is just as credible as making things up and then pretending you have an actual source for it. If you had any credibility, it would now be shot.

As for the actual list...it's pretty silly in my book, even if the guy explained his methodology in some meaningful way. Is the Turkish super league better than MLS? Is the Greece Super League? The SPL? Again, it depends on how you look at it. The top two, three or four teams in those leagues are better than any MLS team. But just about any MLS team is better than the worst teams in those leagues. It's a question of parity versus superclubs.

You are counting average attendance, ceezmad is counting total attendance. MLS is lower in total than average attendance because it doesn't have as many teams as most leagues. Average attendance is probably a better model.

If you don't understand this simple statistical distinction, you should probably not be trying to use statistics in your arguments.

 

Cities over 100,000 that I know don't have minor leagues teams include:
Springfield, Illinois
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

There's probably bigger examples, but these are ones I know.

More importantly:

I don't see how a pyramid could reduce the number of professional teams, mostly because what I've seen in Europe tells me something far different.
What I've seen is that the English Football League Championship & German 2nd Bundesliga get about triple the attendance of AAA Baseball despite generally being in smaller cities. Even League One has attendance that AAA baseball could only dream of. AAA Cities that have top flight teams in other sports show the dramatic difference that being in the top flight makes. Also, only 60 minor league teams exist in the second or third division. All the rest have to operate somewhere lower.

In addition, I believe the uniqueness of big money & amateur athletics that you get in college football & basketball is the result of a closed system whereby teams cannot earn promotion to the next highest division (i.e. NBA or NFL). The Saint Louis Billikens are not even the most popular college team among St. Louis residents, yet have a $3,105,150 budget, average attendance of 7,149. Given NBA teams put about 60% of revenue into player salary this would translate to $1,863,090 total player payroll for a team that's not even the most popular college team among locals or in a big money conference. Surely, if St. Louis teams could win promotion to the NBA, there would be professional basketball in St. Louis. Philadelphia Division I teams with the budget to be professional include Saint Joseph's, Temple, La Salle, Drexel, Penn, & Villanova, increasing professional basketball teams in Philadelphia by six.

The British term instead is lower league. It's the same thing.

At least the closed pyramid point does seem to be backed up by the goings-on of the real world.

Not really. Especially because sports is different because it is usually more about keeping up with the Joneses than profitability. When some spend beyond there means it forces others to copy creating a vicious circle & teams will do so if they need to to compete. If the Cleveland City Stars had kept their spending within their means, they probably could have survived, but wouldn't have been able to compete on the field.
When sports teams go defunct the league looks systemically broken & may hurt the remaining clubs. When Circuit City goes defunct it doesn't make its competitors look systemically broken.

I see where you're coming from, although to be accurate it's more like because they are both on the political left & because Bill Maher & soccerreform.us rail against monied interests, while Beck if anything, stands up for them.

You really need a better source to make your MLS argument

Cogent. Indeed if pro/rel ceased in England you can bet the Football League would see dramatic declines in attendance, revenue, & public attention.

Ipswich is where they are because it's a zero sum game, one teams promotion is another's relegation. I get where he's coming from though it can be difficult to see how any one person can make a difference. That said some teams are systemically larger than others & have natural advantages that leagues, yes including the MLS, can work through.

He does need to be more realistic about top flight soccer & appears to underestimate the value of competitive balance or is offended by what it takes to achieve competitive balance in the top flghts.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteStar Warriors
Yea championship is 4th in attendance...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...sports_leagues

Quote: by Nicolassarkozy
Cogent. Indeed if pro/rel ceased in England you can bet the Football League would see dramatic declines in attendance, revenue, & public attention.


I agree that's why the future of soccer in the U.S. should be pro/rel, for D2 to build up the attendance. MLS will not lose fans.

 

The Springfield Sliders play in the Prospects League, which is basically a developmental league which is unpaid for NCAA reasons. Champaign-Urbana doesn't have a team I know of, although again the NCAA system (which certainly is hard to defend) has a role in that.

Comparing baseball and soccer attendances is a little silly, because AAA baseball plays six games a week, including weekday games. Of course their average attendance is going to be lower; I'm guessing if you just looked at Saturday games, they'd be a lot more comparable. If you look at their weekly attendances, the comparison is very different.

That said, promotion might well increase attendance, but what I was talking about were opportunities for players. The fact is, if you want to play soccer at the Championship level in England, you can play at one of 24 teams. If you want to play AAA baseball, you can play at any of the 30 official AAA teams or in an independent league, some of which are more or less at the AAA level. Those independent leagues don't exist in England, because there are no teams outside the "pyramid" except at the very lowest level, and this is what I mean by reducing opportunities for players. This is not as big a problem in England, where there are only around 20 cities. It would be a bigger deal in the United States.

This is especially a problem if you think that promotion/relegation requires a single table, because that limits not just your first division but your second division as well to around 20-25 teams at the absolute maximum. There are many more markets in the United States that would support first division or second division soccer, even today, much less if the game does grow.

 

That is it. Maybe soccerreform is "taking the piss"? I can't believe he actually thinks some owners benefit from a bad MLS product.

 

I used to think that, but I don't anymore. He's simply too persistent to be a joke.

 

No, I didn't. Because it wouldn't have increased the value or investment.

It's as simple as that. There is not some huge wealth of money waiting to be invested into an open soccer league. If there was, one would have already existed.

 

Not really I think that the Brits really like their clubs, their history and their leagues, they care about their National team but they care just as much about their local clubs.

In the USA (most of the world) it is different. I am in Mexico today, everyshow on TV has sections on the world cup, the newscarters / TV presenters paint their face or wear a green shirt, everyother commercial has a Mexican national team player, everyone (most) are into the world cup, but once it ends, most won't care about the local league!

Mexico has about 100 million people, yet they only get 8 mil attandence to their league compare that with the ratio for England (even Argentina).

England is a phenomenum when it comes to their love for soccer and their local club, no other country in the world can duplicate that, it would be like college football if there were no NFL!

 

I prefer the low-risk, low-reward MLS to that of the high-risk, high-reward NASL.

 

The whole "no dream is impossible" line is just foolish. Do you think Altrincham fans really think their team will ever be in the premier league?

No dream is impossible if you have a billionaire owner who decides he wants a new toy. If you don't have that, you're pretty much going to stay where you are.

 

This statement is entirely meaningless.