The All-Encompassing Pro/Rel Thread on Soccer in the USA

I watched the 1st half of Bayern/Düsseldorf last weekend (surprise! My wife had apparently ordered Hulu with live TV) and it looked identical to an NPSL or PDL team getting drawn with a mid-season Atlanta United.

 

There are some tasty relegation six pointers coming up soon in the Premier League. You know, games that actually mean something.

 

Norwich, Villa and Brighton have blocks of games against tough opponents. West Ham don't have it much better.

Bournemouth and Watford have slightly easier run-ins.

 

This just shows that you and I have a fundamental difference here. You see that as MORE ... I see that as DIFFERENT. Perhaps the money issues that run rampant now don't allow me to see it as MORE. Were I old enough to truly remember being invested BEFORE the money got big I'd see it differently. While I've been involved and invested for 20-25yrs in global football, as we know now that's at the advent of today's $$$$ game. At the time it wasn't obvious for a kid watching from the US but we all now what the truth of the matter is today.

More examples? They're all over our sporting leagues.
Hell the complete reversal of the Patriots franchise, same with the Mavericks, the Tigers from 06-14, and the St Louis Blues just went from last in their division to winning the Stanley Cup in 17-18 to 18-19.

Pretty well in all honesty, I believe. Hell just in TX both Austin Bold and El Paso are straight USL/non MLS level investments/plans. Out in San Diego your new club is on the heels of a crashed/burned MLS bid for the city which, says quite a bit actually. Reno/NMU/Hartford ? Yeah that's USL/non MLS affiliated operations from the go.

Des Moines and Rhode Island aren't expansion teams hoping to hop on the MLS train eventually. I don't see how South Georgia, Omaha, or Chattanooga Red Wolves aren't anything but USL aimed.

Sure, the initial "surge" you can tie to the leaping pad. That's well and gone. Proof? The two newest clubs ST LOUIS/CHARLOTTE went right over that step. They simply bought in. SAC is a legacy "usl surge" team that finally got let in ... and then there's Snake Oil Rubber Tree FC that's just a pile of #@%.

No, but there's a big problem with selectively applying principles in this discussion. There's also the flat out denial of a certain way of thinking in regards to "proper" soccer/set ups VS ours.

What you described is very logical and very likely the type of approach that'd be taken in that hypothetical. I was illustrating the underlying point in it by stating it was very American-esque. You aren't one of the "labeled" folks in this discussion as being "against pro/rel" etc. Yet still, your thought process on the matter ...

For soccer ... but other sports it's fine, yeah?

It won't be worse than the Bundesliga matches in empty cavernous stadiums. The most important thing for the league is to play, if they can.

 

They’re already paying the players, so they might as well get some use out of them.

 

Well and Arlo specifically since he is a Leicester Supporter

 

I think we are seeing how much the crowd helps create the "on any given day" scenario. In a sterile environment the teams with better players are just steam rolling.

But it does bring up some genuine concerns for the future. I am all in favor trying to finish the European seasons behind closed doors because they were so far along. I don't think it's fair to supporters to say "hey you know that last 7 months, yeah they didn't happen". But I think there needs to be a genuine discussion over whether we should start a new season behind closed doors.

 

I am sure this played no role in Karren Brady's outspoken opposition to continuing the season. It was only about saving lives of course (although she seems to now be in favor since the conservatives decided a spot of Association Football might be good for distracting the masses).

To me still fundamentally different guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Will Austin Bold still be around once there is an MLS team there?

While Uncle Warren and Brother Landon have said publicly that their focus "RIGHT NOW" is on USL there is a wide expectation within the community that they are looking to towards MLS eventually. But they want to build from the ground up to be the opposite of "Soccer City" which was a land grab hoping to use Soccer Fans to build pressure.

I've noticed you've left off the "biggest" clubs in USL.

Sure the last two weren't USL but the two before that were. So two of the last 4 expansion spots have gone to USL sides. I believe it's a little to early to say definitively that USL won't be a route to MLS anymore.

go talk to someone who cares about proper vs not proper because I sure as hell don't.

You realize that my original hypothetical was that the Prem went with an American style system when they broke away, so yeah there would be some American thinking in that Hypothetical.

It's the same for other sports. Soccer is not being singled out. I have said I would love pro/rel in college football and would be more likely to have season tickets to the Aztecs if there were (plus there is a good chance they would currently be in the Pac-12 ).

It could be. The Empty stadiums are bad but I think playing on television in a youth tournament complex could be worse, especially when you are still trying to convince a lot of American soccer fans to take this league seriously.

Plus the Bundesliga games have context to them since they are finishing the regular season. While MLS will be playing games with really no context, they are essentially exhibition games right?

And this is without pointing out the obvious which is Bundesliga players on average are ummm better.

I am not saying it WILL be worse, but it definitely COULD be.

 

How does that relate to the point on investment in USL?

Either way it isn't an obvious or clear intent on being an MLS club

No, I included examples that are very clear in terms of investment in the USL (and pointing to the fact that there's a level below USLC being invested in). But ok, the biggest clubs in USL.
- Indy Eleven is a coin toss. Sure, there's been the talk after the fact but in reality I don't know if anyone actually knows what that was all about. They weren't started explicitly as an MLS try hard.
- Louisville. Not founded on an MLS try hard premise despite recent talk. The investment in the stadium is very clearly for what they are (USL) with the ability to do more should it be a thing later.
- Memphis ... nope.
- Miami FC ... LOL and nope.
- NCFC ... the MLS bluster has been very recent and certainly not from the founding of the club.
- Pittsburgh ... eh, yeah they've stated intentions but were around well before them. Also the intent has fallen on pretty much deaf ears as they've never been acknowledged by the league.
- STLFC ... nope.
- Las Vegas ... nope.
- Phoenix ... wasn't founded chasing MLS.
- San Antonio ... Originally yes. Since being ********ed over and MLS efforts effectively shut down by the league itself. Well the academy speaks for itself. Investment is still full on.

Not saying it isn't a route especially as several current USL sides are fringe expansion candidates and have been. I do think that it's telling that the last two sides though, were a "straight to it" endeavor.

... so you've always thought this way in terms of your sports fan dom? Or did it change at some point?

What major league teams are you fan of?

Sure, but again context. The MLS season only technically kicked off this year. The league wants to have some sort of competition for this season but has to abide by the best practices for their players/staff.

The context of "finishing" a season doesn't really make the MOSTLY dreadful soccer being played in empty arenas any better than a make shift tournament in the safest/most controlled environment possible in order to have a competition for the season.

Sure, it could. I still think not having anything would be the worst case scenario ... and uuuum there's plenty of Bundes players that don't look any better LOL

 

It changed in the mid 90's when I started following European Club Soccer and learned about a system called pro/rel.

As I have said I used to be a huge Charger and wider NFL fan but then they abandoned me so I completely stopped following the league. It was actually much easier to give it up than I thought once that emotional connection was lost (a warning to all sports leagues out there). Last season I did watch a few games as a casual fan including the Super Bowl which will probably be how I follow it going forwards.

I really like watching college football in the fall. Just the chaos of so many games so many teams with all the pageantry and traditions, but I don't really have a school (my Alma mater doesn't have a team). Like I said above I follow San Diego State and go to a game or two a season but don't live or die with them.

I like the Padres but not a huge baseball fan in general and the Padres are currently the worst franchise in MLB. I would probably like the Padres more if there was pro/rel because they would actually have something to play for. But the owners I know wouldn't because they like the big revenue series when they can pack Petco full of the other teams fans.

So basically I don't follow any Major American teams at the moment, not since MINE left and became dead to me.

Yes it does, there is a fundamental difference between watching a game that will help determine the Bundesliga Champion vs a game that will determine a winner of a one off tournament that will never be played again. And this isn't to single out MLS, I would be making the same point if it were the Prem, and vice a versa wouldn't be if these tournament games were going towards the MLS Cup (I haven't read anything that they are but correct me if I am wrong).

Again this is not Europe =Good/ MLS = Bad. Just trying to share my perspective as a very casual MLS fan who does actually want it to succeed, with an open or closed system. Clearly MLS believes this is best so I guess I'll trust them, just pointing out it's not risk free.

Apparently I am not alone. (3rd article when I googled "MLS Orlando Tournament", so no I wasn't selectively content fishing)

" Perhaps Garber is right. But there’s a flipside here. MLS’s most compelling aspects won’t be on display – not at what Alejandro Bedoya called a “luxurious prison” – and newcomers will be sampling a degraded product."
https://sports.yahoo.com/why-the-mls-summer-tournament-plan-may-not-be-a-good-idea-231310146.html

 

It essentially seems to have removed "home field advantage", not only in terms of the way players play, but also, according to an article I saw somewhere, in that referees are being less influenced by the crowd too.

So not good news for those teams that have garnered a lop-sided amount of their points from home games.

 

I'm going to break this down a little bit to provide a little context to the teams you just named. And I want to state upfront, I don't think you're wrong about their MLS aspirations (or lack thereof as the case may be), but I also think there are some cynical explanations that can be made for the existence of some of these teams.

• Reno
• El Paso
• Omaha
• Memphis

All of these are owned by the same ownership groups as the local MiLB team (until last offseason, Tulsa was also in this crowd as well as Lansing) and play in the baseball stadium. None of them have any intention of leaving said stadium, either. It's totally possible that the ownership groups really love soccer and wanted a team in their community, but it's also a possibility that the soccer team is a means of diversifying their portfolio and reducing the number of dark nights at their stadium. Keep your eye on the Rowdies with regards to this, as well.

Even the latter scenario isn't awful: it just depends on whether they're going be more Blank or Kraft.

Austin Bold fits into the exact same category, but replace MiLB stadium with CotA.

Now, this doesn't apply at all to:

• Birmingham
• Hartford
• New Mexico

but I'll get to them in a minute.

League One is a somewhat different kettle of fish, but you're absolutely right that there is no MLS speculative bubble going on there. I also don't think there is a enough history at this point to really understand how attractive it is to investors yet. Omaha will (eventually, when they finally get on the field) be the test case for MiLB owners; CRW and Tormenta are case studies in whether or not the path forward is through real estate development. Regardless of the model, the economics of League One are way up in the air at this point.

Back to the Championship and, in particular, the teams with no MLS aspirations. While Birmingham or whoever might not have any intention of bigger things, they're still the beneficiaries of the speculation around those that are. If MLS expands to Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego and makes a big show of pulling up the drawbridge and declaring no more new teams, we might see the end of interest in USL (or, at the very least, USL will need to find some other way to keep investment coming in, like launching their own D1 league or something). The expectation may be less Indy XI, more Switchbacks. It's really hard to tell what is actual investment in USL at this point and what is speculation for MLS. Until MLS stops expanding, I'm not sure we'll actually know. I suppose one thing to keep an eye on is if we see stratification between haves and have nots in USL and the Venn diagram between them and MLS hopefuls.

I'm not sure how much "proof" of anything that is except it may be a sign of being near the end of the USL speculative bubble but only because we're running out of realistic openings in MLS. It's highly possible that Phoenix and other USL-C teams could find their way into MLS.

Starting with Seattle, of the 16 teams that have been accepted into the league, 9 of them came from USL/NASL. Pretty much every other team. And your assertion is off, anyway - Sacramento was accepted after St. Louis (keeping the pattern alive!). There is definitely not any proof that the MLS expansion path has completely veered away from being established in USL first.

 

FWIW, not one of these teams paid the current USL-C expansion fee.

 

It would be pretty crazy if they did.

"Here's our expansion fee and here's an extra $2 million as a token of our respect".

I've been through the eastern teams.

Birmingham, Charleston, Hartford, Memphis, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay have owners who are not expressing MLS ambitions. Malik at NCFC has built one of the best women's teams in the world.

Memphis are the only team that will be playing in a baseball stadium after 2020.

Indy could be MLS team 33 or 34. In the meantime they've cut the planned capacity of Eleven Stadium to 12,000 with the possibility of further expansion.

Louisville put in a speculative bid but probably aren't in the top 36. Their downtown stadium will hold 11,000 to 14,000 dependent on configuration and is expandable to 20,000.

St Louis, Charlotte and Miami intend to stay in business after local MLS teams launch but I doubt they'll survive.

 

Sorry. What I meant by that was that ambitions might have evolved once there was more of sense of success: I don’t think Sacramento set out with MLS ambitions, for example, but once the potential was shown, it changes the calculus. Same with FCC.

Not that it’s chump change, of course, but there’s a big difference between 5 and 10 million dollars.

NCFC absolutely has MLS ambitions. It remains to be seen what effect Charlotte has on the stadium plans. I think it will still happen (again, mainly a real estate development) but possibly more modest.

Cincinnati could probably have fit this profile as well, but billionaires gonna billionaire.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
And you forgot Austin. Also doomed.
The Miami FC’s best hope is that Inter Miami stays in Ft. Lauderdale, but...

 

Austin are in the Western Conference. I haven't been through them all yet.

Btw, USL expansion fees are paid in annual installments, so the recent expansion boom should keep the league itself in the black for several years.

I though Malik had given up on MLS but maybe I'm wrong.

 

They are saying that the group stage in Orlando will also count toward the regular season and that they intend to have some sort of continuation of the season and then MLS Cup playoffs after Orlando, though details are vague. The Orlando tournament winner also qualifies directly to CCL, if there is a CCL next year.

 

Are all the pro leagues charging entrance fees?

 

Yes and it's been that way in the US since WW1.

However, NISA (soccer) is not charging expansion fees. They're trying to run a league of independent clubs with promotion and relegation.

They have 8 teams nationally.

 

I mean, they haven't gotten through a full season. Let's not act like it's some testimonial to the failure of the approach just yet.

 

Have they even played a part of a season yet? How many teams/groups are joining? I mean, if there isn't an expansion fee....one would think there would be lots of groups lining up to get in on the ground floor.

 

They played the fall showcase last fall and the spring season got to the 2nd weekend before COVID-19 hit.

2 are joining in the fall, and one may or may not be dropping out (NY Cosmos & New Amsterdam FC joining, Stumptown Athletic is questionable right now).

PLS still exists, so you're not going to see the expansion of, say, NPSL.

There's another club that is either joining next spring or fall, NJ Teamsters.

For comparison, USL-1, which has played a full season, only has 6 independent teams.

They're also trying to organize this Independent Cup idea where select amateur sides play NISA clubs as a sort of promotional incubator thing. I assume this is sort of hard to get strong commitments on right now, though.

It's basically been the worst 12 months possible to try to get a risky, lower division league off the ground.

 

A break-down of Blackburn's reported finances that some here may find interesting. It also shows that Championship as a whole is fairly financially unhealthy.

Blackburn Rovers’ financial results for 2018/19 covered “a season of consolidation for Tony Mowbray’s men”, as the club finished 15th in the Championship, having secured automatic promotion from League One the previous year. Some thoughts in the following thread #Rovers

— Swiss Ramble (@SwissRamble) June 5, 2020

 

Honestly who cares? Some people on here seem to think football is a lot like the financial markets. This is about football not the cost of a tin of beans! The champions are the team that wins the most points not the one that amassed the most ten pound notes. Who cares if Chelsea owe a hundred billion milion pounds as long as they win the league next year! . Honestly if the bank balance is the most exciting thing about a sport then it can't be very enthralling.