Actually, you're bullshitting the numbers. The NHL is at 3.3 billion US: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=397249 It appears that rather slim edge for the EPL is due to the new broadcast deal that started in 10/11. That's new information for me (the total revenues). I highly doubt there's anything more drastic than this: to this: Actually the game is based on moving the ball across the goal line.
Well I am sure a canadian sportzine is more accurate than the NHL...NOT.... and either way you were still wrong. You show some retro clip of american football to prove that players are not bigger facter and stronger, to the point they have reached the body's ability to absorb those blows? How is that even relevant with modren training practices now enjoyed by all NFL clubs? You can try and separate violence from the game of football, but it is what sells in american pop culture. The fact that the object is to try and outscore the other opponent by putting the pointy ball across the line more than them is merely the justification for the violence. The hits are aq big part of the game and to deny that is like denying the sun does not give light. It make you feel better but it doesn't reduce the number of lumens outside at all.
Most of the hits in football aren't really a problem. Certainly, they can lead to long-term physical ailments, like bad knees and the like, but that is part of the deal for pretty much any professional athlete in any sport involving a decent amount of contact. The issue in the NFL are the head injuries, and it appears the league is moving in the direction of dealing with that. The NHL has had similar issues, and new rules regarding hits to the head are changing the culture of the league. There's no reason to believe the NFL can't do something similar.
Wow, I can see why you chose the handle you did. Your reading/reasoning ability come from ACME as well ? TSN isn't a Canadian sportzine. It is the ESPN of Canada (in fact, 20% owned by ESPN). The number for the revenue came from Gary Bettman ... you know, the commissioner of the NHL. I'm pretty sure he's got a good grasp of the numbers. Holy crap. I can see your reasoning ability, and apparently grammar/writing/literacy also came from ACME Corp. No, the pictures were a direct response to your "drastic equipment changes" line. Nothing will be more dramatic from the shift in equipment from where the game started to where it is now. The game was not arbitrarily given rules in order to condone violence. That's flat out false. In fact, violence has continually been removed from the game. Sure, big hits are all the rage and bring highlights. I have yet though, see a team or fanbase judge their season on those rather than wins/scoring more points than the other team.
Then why has football been getting progressively less violent for its entire history? The Harvard-Yale game of 1982 makes the NFL look like pattycake, and as late as 1905, with only a few dozen schools playing, there were 18 students killed playing college football. Contact is part of football, just as it is in soccer, but the rules have been changed many times to reduce the level of violence in the game. If necessary, they will be again. And it's hardly an American-only thing, by the way. Soccer is the most popular game in London, but the NFL still sells 70,000-80,000 for the one game a year it plays there, and there's been talk of moving a franchise there full-time.
Anything is possible but I am one American who likes soccer alot but doesn't want it ever to be the #1 sport here. I don't want to be a carbon copy of the rest of the world. Why shouldn't our football or baseball be the top sport in the USA?
Uh...too late to edit, but that should be 1892, obviously (the infamous Harvard "Flying Wedge"). The 1982 game was mostly memorable for this:
seriously? More fans, more clubs. A 3-tier pyramid with 68 clubs means more interest throughout the pyramid.
No, no it doesn't. It doesn't mean that people in Dayton will stop watching Arsenal and go out and support the local third division team. Where are all these new teams going to come from? Who will own them? How will they get stadiums built? How quickly is this going to happen?
I'll compare clubs in Association Football vs franchises in MLS. Here's a good example of the difference. The Portland Timbers first played in 1975 then dissolved in 1982. They were founded again and have played continuously since 2001. When they joined MLS they didn't just move up a league like a club would. They dissolved in 2010 and then were founded again in 2011 to become an MLS franchise. So there is a difference between clubs and franchises than just the name. But I'll agree that most of it is just branding. Personally I loathe the term franchise for a sports club. When I was a kid you never heard sports teams being called franchises. My local McDonalds and Burger King are franchises.
you set an economic trigger for each league and then it happens when the league meets the economic benchmarks. Have a 15 year plan to be conservative. So with NASL you set the benchmark at 18 clubs with 3/4 of them having their own SSS and youth academies. The league must also average 8k attendance for pro/rel to be triggered. Then you make requirements for USL clubs to be promoted to NASL. They must have a suitable ground etc. With this system pro/rel only triggers once D2 is economically viable. Now you have economic certainty and you have the potential for lower tier clubs to increase their value and brand. Your argument is that even if you set these benchmarks and the economic trigger with the certainty baked into it that fans still won't show up, owners won't want to buy these lower tier clubs, and NASL will never meet the standard. My response is then why be against it? According to you it will never happen so you might as well let give it the old college try.But the reality is you know it would work and that's why you throw out these vague red herrings like "where are these mythical owners/investors?" The fact that NASL is getting investment now without the guarantee of promotion is enough to counter this argument. So lets get back to the question. Would a 3 tier pro/rel pyramid with 68 clubs make soccer more popular in the US or not? There's only one answer. Of course it would. If you answer no then you're either a)an anti-pro/rel zealot or b) you have half a brain. To have 68 clubs jockeying their way to get up to the top tier would bring excitement to American soccer and it would differentiate it from other American sports. Something soccer desperately needs to do.
What you are not taking into account is your 'globalization' argument. To get to any multi tier system you are talking about adding 30 expansion teams in 15 years (or whatever). But American soccer is already loosing market share to international clubs and 15 years from now it looks like that will continue to happen because the rich clubs in Europe are becoming richer and technology is allowing more and more people to experience those games. Because the game is global and technology is growing, any pro soccer league is going to loose massive market share to international clubs. The question does become for new first generation soccer fans...should I watch Arsenal (or pick a big club) or should I watch Dayton Dutch Lions in D3. Even if Dayton can move up there is going to be a lot if not most fans who just want to watch the best in the world. And when those people watch EPL and not American clubs it makes EPL richer and helps EPL widen the gap even more because they are obtaining global revenues. Now this benchmarks/trigger scenario is fine as long as you have the proper mechanisms in place. And for MLS franchise holders who bought a slot in the league, they need to be compensated for them to loose that slot. The same way if some club like Crystal Palace wants to move into the Emirates stadium and take it over, Arsenal is going to want to be paid. They bought that stadium under the assumption that they can never loose it. It is the exact same thing with MLS club they bought their spot so you need to buy them out. So if you want to create some hypothetical scenario in which a pro/rel could be triggered you need to account for the buy out. NASL/USL teams would need to pay these guys off or else MLS clubs would never accept it. Its not about being some zealot or thinking your scenario wouldn't be good for lower division soccer, the point is that MLS will never allow it (just as Arsenal wouldn't ever give up the stadium they built) just because some fans would like to see it. So if we want to have a realistic conversation about HOW to make it happen, then you have to first think of a way to pay off MLS teams for their loss. After you figure that out we could talk about just how much benefit it would have and if MLS/NASL/USL would actually obtain all of the pro soccer market share in the US. If fans of the Liga MX or EPL are going to stop watching those leagues simply because their local D2 or D3 team can be promoted into a league that they don't value. Personally I think pro/rel into MLS would be great for D2 and D3 because they would get a free ticket to something MLS owners spent billions to build. But I don't think its going to stop us from loosing fans to international leagues.
all good points and I can't really get to them right now as I'm out the door. I will just say this though. I would argue that MLS does not have the final say. It is that USSF does. And also..I would say that the franchise fee MLS teams paid does not entitle them to take our domestic soccer hostage. They got value for that franchise fee. It gave them a head start in forming their brand and developing a fan base. Also..just because I watch the EPL doesn't mean I don't want a local club to support. They aren't mutually exclusive.
USSF does have the final say as far as giving leagues a sanctioning, but that is it. If USSF gave NASL D1 sanctioning tomorrow it would do nothing. MLS power comes from the stadiums, the long term sponsorship deals, and the billionaires investing in MLS. Think about it this way, US soccer fans are choosing to watch leagues 1000 miles away in languages they don't even speak. They care less about US tier sanctioning. You have millions of people ignoring our D1, even with hundreds of millions of dollars invested it isn't enough for them. USSF has no power to create domestic club fans and that is the point. As far as the franchise fee goes, what kind of 'head start' did MLS get? No one else stepped up and formed a D1, we didn't have one for a decade. These guys not only lose a quarter billion dollars propping up the league but these guys were doing things like paying to get games on TV. They were the ones who created the market for SSS and convinced gov't to build these projects. These guys created what you want D2 teams to be able to promote into. These guys have a right to be paid for the millions they lost making the thing that you want to be promoted into. This isn't an open league that existed before, this is a franchise league that was formed with start up money. It is exactly the same thing as a stadium. Do you agree that it would be unfair to just kick Arsenal out of their stadium and hand it to someone else for free because they won a league? Would you say that Arsenal already got a 'head start' and was able to make their money with the stadium already so its fair to kick them out of something they bought? Now if you created that rule on day 1, and Arsenal or MLS teams knew they could loose something and they invested anyways, then I agree it is fair game. But you want to change the rules after something is bought. Its like paying off your mortgage and then having your bank come and take away your house because they decided to change the rules. Its not fair, and if you want to create scenarios where the guys who invested the most money in US club soccer is screwed over in favor of guys on the bottom who has invested far less money I personally believe that in the long run will be a very bad thing for the longevity of club soccer in the US. If you want pro/rel you need a way to pay off the people who built this league. Now your point about supporting local and international clubs is true but not for everyone. We have evidence right now in every MLS city in the country. I would argue that even here in Chicago, the Fire is not the most popular team in this city and we are D1. We just can't compete with the fact that people want to see the best in the world, and when international clubs are spending 150M a year on budgets and can bring in global revenue, how can even a D1 local side compare? Even with pro/rel, Dayton Dutch Lions is still going to be a very small club in a small league with a small chance to move up to another small league. And Barca will still be Barca and Messi will still be Messi. And in 10 years, the gap from the superclubs to local clubs will probably be even greater. That is the problem. US club soccer can never obtain all fans because they will continue to loose more and more market share to superclubs. I would agree that pro/rel would have a positive impact on lower divisions but I doubt it would be significant. I think all indications show that the era of the local community club is dying. Technology 10-20 years from now is going to be so amazing it will look like science fiction today. It will be so easy and so immersive to watch the best in the world it will make starting community clubs harder and harder. Older clubs will survive because they have deep cultural ties to communities the same way our HS teams do in communities around the country, but I don't think that pro/rel and community clubs are going to be able to create a revolution in fan support in the US when it is quite obvious that the majority of American fans want to see big superclubs not local minor league expansion teams.
Like most pro/rel zealots, you're putting the cart before the horse. The existence of multi-tiered soccer pyramids in other countries is a result of the existence of a large number of clubs, not the cause of the existence of such clubs.
And one thing that pro/rel supporters have never explained is how relegating a last-place team in a major market like DC or Toronto and replacing them with a team from a smaller market like Rochester or Harrisonburg would be good for soccer in the US/Canada. If your concern is that MLS doesn't have enough of a footprint, I agree. But, the answer to that is not to relegate teams from top markets. Rather, it makes more sense to keep growing MLS to the 30 or so teams that is common in the other professional leagues here.
The idea is that the teams from the big markets end up with a lot more money and can buy the winning players. That's the European model, anyways. It's the small markets that cycle in and back out, primarily.
So for argument's sake TB Rowdies would be in MLS and that's the south-east slot Graber has been talking about every expansion discussion and Toronto would be in NASL and they would have rivalries against Cosmos and Edmonton.
So for arguments sake, TFC now in NASL with drastically lower revenue and no way to offset the $30M loss of an expansion fee, MLSE decides to sell their drastically lower valued NASL franchise to another ownership group in a different city. BMO field becomes empty. Other cities and local politicians take notice that MLS teams that are relegated can go under thus making SSS a much more risky public venture. After seeing the death of TFC from relegation and the death of BMO, MLS franchises loose value due to the added risk. Cities begin to stop supporting publicly financed stadium projects or privately funded stadium projects on public land and/or favorable tax deals for MLS clubs fearing they could go bankrupt in the future. But yea, it would be pretty sweet for Tampa Bay. They didn't have to pay any money, they didn't have to sit through a decade of loosing hundred of millions of dollars to prop up the league. They just had to win a 6 team playoff with a bunch of teams with 300-400k budgets. They can then begin to obtain huge sponsorship/tv revenues for a league they didn't buy into or have anything to do with building and get to kick out a team that paid 30M to help build the league.
The "rating" is the percent of all households with a TV who watched a show. The "share" is the percentage of all households watching TV who watched a show. For the last game of the NBA Finals, the rating was 10.9, while the share was 18. The '94 World Cup Final got a 9.5 rating and a 24 share.
Just because big market clubs are supposed to be better doesn't mean it will happen. If MLS had relegation the Galaxy would have been relegated after 2008 and the Red Bulls would have been relegated after 2009 so maybe Thierry Henry wouldn't have played in MLS.
Seriously ? Just saying it doesn't make it so. First of all, you didn't answer the question. You purposely didn't respond to the Premier League portion of the question because it flies in the face of your beliefs. The Premier League is a completely separate entity from the FA, they merely have a working agreement with the FA. THAT is the answer. THAT is the only difference between the Premier League and the MLS clubs. Secondly, how is that any different than Wimbledon FC ? And you wish your sports teams were that big/successful/profitable. That's great an all, until Minnesota and their 4K attendance and city park type stadium gets promoted. This should be done regardless. Any pro sports franchise should aim for this, period. Really, it's not quite the argument you think it is. It's actually showing that there is a CLEAR CUT LINE between "pro" markets and "minor" markets. This is what we've been telling you all along. Why is it pointless to go with some elaborate economic benchmark plan ? Because it won't make "pro" markets out of places that will always be "minor" markets. If this type of thing worked, MLB would have 100 teams. The overall malaise this country has with the MLS proves your entire theory to be nothing but pissing upwind. Relatively speaking, nobody gives a crap about the top tier. How do you suggest that people will give a crap about clubs below the top level trying to get into it, when they don't give a shit about the top level ? I'm not anti pro/rel one bit. I love the system in of itself. I also though, know that this country as no need/want for the system. It answers problems we don't have. Soccer being "different" failed miserably in this country and almost killed off the MLS before it even got going. No, being different isn't the answer at all. Sure it does. That doesn't mean it's the reality of the situation. In reality, the MLS calls the shots. The USSF doesn't have any real choice when it comes to 1st division soccer in this country. In fact, the USSF is lucky that the MLS has done what it has. Because of our unique way that soccer has developed here it is the MLS that empowers the USSF, not the other way around. Easy to say when it wasn't you that poured in the millions upon millions of dollars. It isn't just about value, it's about the fact that they build an organization/met requirements to enter the top division of the sport in this country. There is nothing about forming their brand or developing a fan base that that franchise fee did for them. That's something else entirely and it wasn't bought with that fee. The original Sounders/Whitecaps/Timbers had that before they paid a fee to be in the MLS. That also shows that the fee actually is buying them something and that there is much more to things than your magic jelly bean theory.
The better idea is to just bring in the Rowdies as an MLS expansion team, once they're ready. That seems like a win-win for everyone.
Once you strip away the fairy tail of promotion, you would be left with something quite difficult for a young expansion soccer team. Tampa Bay would be greatly outmatched when promoted as their entire budget is about 1/10th what our lowest budget is in MLS. So there would be this quick rush of media attention in Tampa Bay about the 'return of MLS' and you would probably get a nice bump in attendance and they would probably sell out their little minor league baseball stadium with a lot of new fans. But then reality sets in. Tampa Bay would be by far the worst team in MLS history. They would make the original CUSA look like Barca over the course of a 34 game season. They would be out of the playoffs probably by June and all but relegated by the All-Star break. And then you have to explain to the media/sponsors/new fans that they are going to be a minor league team again and they have no idea when or if they will be back. Forget about getting a city to build you a stadium as a yo-yo club. Pro/rel is a beautiful thing if you already have a lot of clubs, but we are building clubs and building leagues that is why implementing it is so tricky. I like the idea that we have expansion teams that are permanent league members. I would never want that for another league, but we've had 100 years of clubs dying. If the lack of relegation protects these clubs and allows them to only build up and never downsize, then I'm all for it. Our 'promotion' is financial in that you move up when you have the money to compete at the higher level. In the end this is the same thing that happens everywhere else. There is no real cinderella stories anymore, at least not in the big leagues. Clubs with big investors move up and clubs without funds move down, it is the reality. We just have a more clear cut example of this. And because it is so clear cut it allows our clubs and system to be more stable. And after a century of failures, I'm all for stable growth.