Probably because there's never been a shred of evidence provided that the league is staying afloat due to expansion fees?
I’m going to sustain this objection. Let’s not turn this into another debate about what will or won’t happen with the Canadian teams. Discuss Charlotte.
Monaco-France Wales-England New Zealand-Australia The English team Berwick Rangers play in the Scottish leagues. The Northern Irish team Derry City play in the League of Ireland
There is no "there" there in Charlotte. It's a five block downtown with several 60+ story buildings surrounded by miles and miles of endless and soulless suburban sprawl. How's that?
Unless it's football with only 8 home games on Sundays, the suburbs in Phoenix aren't practical for sports teams due to suburban sprawl. That's why the Phoenix Coyotes are always at the bottom of NHL attendance. The Rising don't have a stadium issue, they have an ownership issue. Namely, too many people, not enough cash. If Jeff Bezos, or even his ex-wife, bought the team outright, they could move the Rising to Yuma and Arizona would get an MLS franchise the next day. MLS will make exception after exception if the cash is right. Case in point, Charlotte offered to play in a football stadium, and was accepted; Detroit tried to land a soccer-specific stadium, but when it couldn't secure the jail site, the owners offered to put the team in a football stadium, and got rejected. Monaco isn't represented within FIFA so it's still one federation but good catch on the other two examples. You'd never know how reliant the league is on expansion fees since they don't disclose financial matters, but whether that's true or not is inconsequential, since perception is reality. You just have to look at politics to understand that. We live in a country where half the population thinks this is the most prosperous time in a generation and the other half thinks the sky is falling and we're doomed. The importance of expansion fees for the league comes down to speculation and analysis. There's an extreme urgency in bringing teams in and the timetables for picking expansion clubs keep moving up. Are they afraid of something? Originally the league wanted 20 teams, but changed plans to expand to 24 by 2020. It will have 26 in 2020. At the beginning of last year, the league announced that it was focusing on picking Team 28 and had no plans beyond that. By the end of the year, not only did MLS decide on Team 28, Garber announced the league would expand to 30 clubs and chose Sacramento and Charlotte as the next two teams, with an increase from $200M for Team 29 to $325M for Team 30. Despite those teams being announced less than two months apart! The league assured itself of $725M in expansion fees last year. How much TV revenue did it collect? $90M across three networks. Does Garber ever mention anything about the upcoming TV rights deal in 2022? Nope. How about the CBA that might cause a work stoppage at the end of this month? Nope, he prefers talking about expansion. He loves talking about expansion so much that he divulged the league will expand to 32 teams sometime in the future, which probably means expect an announcement by next year on Teams 31, 32, and 33. The target keeps moving and the optics don't look good. I don't think anyone on this board, including you, believes MLS will stop expanding anytime soon, so why would you believe Garber when he says that the pace of expansion is necessary due to some sort of spectacular growth? Considering attendance and TV ratings are stagnant or even declining the past few years, wouldn't financial stability seem a more reasonable explanation?
Wait, so you can’t offer evidence, but apparently your perception is reality because of political polarization? Next “Originally the league wanted 20 teams, but changed plans to expand to 24 by 2020. It will have 26 in 2020.” Here is Garber’s quote from that article: “We look forward to adding new partners with the same commitment to the sport and love of the game. "As MLS enters a period of accelerated growth, the addition of new teams will allow us to expand our geographic coverage, grow our fan base and help us achieve our vision of being among the best leagues in the world by 2022.” Sounds like they are simply ahead of schedule to me. Next “At the beginning of last year, the league announced that it was focusing on picking Team 28 and had no plans beyond that.” That actually isn’t what Garber said at all. In fact, he said the league was very open to expanding beyond 28. From the article you quoted: “In January, MLS awarded Austin, Texas, the league’s 27th team. Garber in December said MLS will award its 28th team within the next 12 months, adding “there’s no doubt in my mind that we can support having more than 28 teams.” “Ultimately, I think there are many cities in our country that have ambitious potential owners with great stadium plans that ultimately could help our league be bigger, more influential. And if that’s something that we think is going to make sense, to grow the league, then we’ll expand beyond 28,” Garber told Sports Illustrated.“ Next “By the end of the year, not only did MLS decide on Team 28, Garber announced the league would expand to 30 clubs and chose Sacramento and Charlotte as the next two teams, with an increase from $200M for Team 29 to $325M for Team 30. Despite those teams being announced less than two months apart! The league assured itself of $725M in expansion fees last year.” I’m waiting for the bad news and exactly how does this differ from the statement Garber made in the article you quoted? Next “How much TV revenue did it collect? $90M across three networks. Does Garber ever mention anything about the upcoming TV rights deal in 2022? Nope.” The league has entered into a strategy. I get that you don’t think it will work. I happen to like it. However, there were a ton of articles written about it. Beyond that, the current national contracts run through 2022, so now that they’ve set a clear strategy, what do you want them to do? There is a clear understanding on their part of the deal’s importance. I also don’t think it is an accident that they worked to get to 30 by the 2022 season. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bi...-package-local-and-national-tv-deals.amp.html Next “How about the CBA that might cause a work stoppage at the end of this month? Nope, he prefers talking about expansion. He loves talking about expansion so much that he divulged the league will expand to 32 teams sometime in the future, which probably means expect an announcement in 2020 on Teams 31, 32, and 33. The target keeps moving and the optics don't look good. I don't think anyone on this board, including you, believes MLS will stop expanding anytime soon, so why would you believe Garber when he says that the pace of expansion is necessary due to some sort of spectacular growth? Considering attendance and TV ratings are stagnant or even declining the past few years, wouldn't financial stability seem a more reasonable explanation?” For not saying anything about the CBA he says quite a bit. However, I think it’s a positive that the two sides seem to be working this next deal out primarily behind closed doors. That said, a comment like this from the article you linked; “All CBA negotiations are difficult, but with us, it’s not about taking things away,” Garber said. “It’s how do we manage collectively, as a league and as a player group, to be able to provide more resources in a wide variety of areas that are manageable for ownership and acceptable to the players.” Is a lot better to me than the sabre rattling going on right now in MLB. I’d also say that MLS teams (like Columbus and SKC) going out and paying record transfer fees for players this offseason is a positive sign. Keep on hating though.
And have you ever noticed that literally no one is originally from Charlotte? Anyone you meet, your first question can safely be " So where are you from?" I personally don't think the place even existed before 1971
This. Having recently moved from NC to Rochester, NY, the contrast couldn't be bigger. Feels like everyone you meet in Western NY grew up here (as I'm sure you well know).
So you've surely noticed by now that people in NC don't know how to pronounce "Charlotte". It's how people know you're not a local. Get down there for some Schallers burgers and rings. Wash them down with Jenny Cream. A meal fit for a king. Really no good place around the pier or Crescent Beach to get a decent garbage platter, sadly. But you can get white hots almost anyplace along there.
Yes, just like one's beliefs and opinions shape their political thoughts, the way that you perceive or interpret news about the state of MLS is what shapes your reality about the league. You're simply using the same articles I cited to come to a different conclusion. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. How transparent is the league with financial disclosures to the general public? Do you know what percentage of total revenue is made up of expansion fees? There's no way I could definitively prove any of this short of the commissioner admitting it. We can only make estimations, and the places that do follow the financial side of MLS, like Forbes, explain that soaring valuations are more about the value of SUM than they are about the fiscal health of the actual teams: In fact, we estimate that, of the 23 teams that played in 2018, just seven turned a profit (and half of those were just barely in the black). Altogether, the league’s teams lost more than $100 million last year. And MLS is losing even more money at the league level—as a single-entity operation, player salaries are paid through the league office—which means team owners are on the hook for a sizable capital call in addition to the red ink in their local markets. So what do you do when the actual teams are losing money and you want to appease your investors? You quickly find new revenue streams. Also, what does it say about the actual league when the value is primarily driven by commercial rights for the USMNT, USWNT, and the Mexican National Team? What would league losses be if SUM was taken out of the equation? And what's a great way to bring more investors in? Make spectacular promises about the future, which is all speculative: Put simply, Major League Soccer’s surging expansion fees and sales prices are not being driven by financial performance. In fact, although revenues are broadly on the rise, the league and most of its teams continue to operate at a significant loss. But MLS investors are still spending big to secure a share of the U.S. soccer market because their eyes are set on potential goldmines down the road: a new national TV deal in 2023, a stateside World Cup in 2026 and, if everything goes just right, a future American sports landscape wherein domestic soccer can hold its own against the likes of the NFL and the NBA. Pointing out facts doesn't make me anti-MLS. I actually wish the league could connect with soccer fans better, but many of the things the league has done has actually limited its potential.
The problem with your rationale is that you seem to think the clubs are the only source of income for the owners... While the clubs themselves are losing money, the owners are likely making money off other revenue streams. Most of the clubs with SSS and/or practice facilities are making money off other, non-MLS uses of their facilities. you also quoted another explanation.. MLS is still in a growth phase and for many of the owners, their rationale is that they have to spend money now to make money later.
You weren’t perceiving or interpreting the news differently, you were flat out lying about what was said in the articles. Further, while I would like the league to be more transparent @ times. Very few clubs/leagues around the world put out the type of info you want and there is more information available publicly on MLS than just about any other league. All salaries are published by the the MLSPA, the CBA is available in its entirety, league rules are available online, typically most stadium deals are public record, etc, etc. I’ve found I can typically find out what I want to know if I dig a bit. Finally, while I respect Forbes, they aren’t the end all be all on evaluating MLS financials. Sporting Intelligence puts out a detailed summary each year on a number topics, including average wages, about top leagues around the world also did a detailed analysis of MLS following the 2017 season and found something quite different. “Major League Soccer (MLS) will imminently become one of the world’s top 10 soccer leagues by average revenue per team, according to an exclusive new Sportcal report. MLS teams were collectively losing $100m a year as recently as four years ago and remained in the red in 2015. But data obtained by Sportcal and detailed in ‘The Business of MLS’ (cover below, right), published on 12 June 2018, indicates the league has moved into profitability. Team revenues now average around $32m and rising. Crucially this includes a share of the annual surplus from the central funds of the now-profitable MLS – with substantial increases in the pipeline.” https://www.sportingintelligence.co...join-worlds-top-10-leagues-by-revenue-120601/
Every year that Forbes valuation has come out people who actually follow the league on a regular basis point out all the flaws in their methodology. But it still becomes "the bible" people quote when they want to assume MLS is on shaky financial ground. Yet Forbes has been putting out the same article with the same methodology mistakes for 10(?) years now and the league is stronger than ever.
SUM is putting pressure on Forbes to falsely exaggerate MLS valuations. Seriously though the interesting thing is that Forbes valuations seem modest compared to the money that has actually changed hands.
Does Forbes narrowly focus on "team" income while excluding mostly soccer related stuff that ownership splits off (entities owning the stadiums, SUM, etc)?
That appears to be one of the major flaws, yes. Its particularly noticeable to Rapids fans because the Rapids appear to have very little income due to the multi-layered corporate structure of KSE, where most of the "normal" income streams for a sports team are split off into different entities.
Truth. I have no clue how you could possibly evaluate a team’s financials without looking @ “real estate”. However, that is a much larger undertaking as each of the stadium deals is going to be unique and they will almost always be held in a related, but separate entity with one or more add’l entities formed to manage the stadium. It would be a time consuming and somewhat complex undertaking to put together an analysis of each deal, but it could be done with a degree of of accuracy by evaluating publicly available records. However, Forbes, has chosen instead to simply ignore that. Anyway, I’m not here to bag on the writer, but there are clear flaws in his methodology, which is not surprising since he appears to have no actual background in business or finance. What is more important to me are the things that are actually happening that should lead to growth in the sport. Investment is up, substantially and across the board. That is what is going to drive an improvement in play. That is going to drive growth IMO.
Exactly. IIRC, Kroenke controls 4 or 5 business affiliated with the Rapids. If the Rapids lost $2M, but those businesses collectively make $4M, he makes a profit even before SUM. Whichever Hunt boy owns Dallas has a similar situation. If the Galaxy lose $3M, how much does AEG make off of whatever their stadium is called now? I doubt few owners if any consistently lose money when it comes to the totality of their MLS businesses. Yeah, the big money is in SUM. But there's a reason franchise values are skyrocketing. Well, two reasons. 1. MLS is legitimately profitable with a potential for much bigger profits. 2. Owning a sports team is fun, and increasing income inequality means the supply of really rich people with money to spend on fun toys is increasing much faster than the supply of teams to own. Not to get political, but I expect the sports bubble to, maybe not burst, but develop a slow leak if the next president is someone like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. (The size of the leak will depend on how much of their agenda can pass Congress or be implemented via executive order.)
Now that it's obvious that the Miami Marlins stadium deal hasn't put anything close to the breaks on the rush of municipalities rushing to spend/give/forgive tens or hundreds of millions of tax dollars to major league sports owners, I've stopped predicting the end of anything related to the circus part of bread and circuses going on in this country right now.