1. No. That's just not correct. It's probably true of 2019 MLS where 24 teams were playing for 14 playoff spots, but not the big four. 2. That leaves aside the fact that it's just jockeying for entry into the actual meaningful games to be played in the future. It's not just fewer teams, it's fewer teams playing for less. Reasonable people can disagree on the aesthetics of it (I love watching the desperation of a relegation scrap), but it is undeniable that it is proven to drive viewership and ticket sales to the bottom of the table. It gives more people a reason to watch more games. That's the business.
Leaving aside the aesthetics of it (I would agree to each their own on that one), combining Champions League, Europa League, and relegation spots gets you 9 of 20 spots. MLS is 14 out of 26ish, MLB is 10 out of 30, NFL is 12 out of 32, NBA is 16 out of 30, and NHL is 16 out of 31, soon to be 32. It's dead center of the range for percentage of spots.
Yes, but you said the playoff race. The Lakers are not in the playoff race. They play their next game that matters in April. The meaninglessness problem takes on different forms in the different sports (in baseball there are a ton of teams totally out of it pretty early, in hockey the playoffs are so long and so random that good teams don't have much to play for in the regular season, etc) but it all ends up in the same place when you have that many teams with only one thing to play for in a year. There's no secret sauce, no "right" way to do it. It's just too little importance split up among too many franchises. You do that with no draft to give the losers hope, a sport that's not as well followed or culturally bedrock and a bunch of franchises without well-anchored traditions in their markets, you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt, no matter how good the product on the field is in an aesthetic soccer context. (And let's be clear, from an aesthetic soccer perspective, MLS is not going to be competitive with the best of what's available on TV for the foreseeable future, least of all if the structure is hampering revenue growth)
Eh, this is where I have to disagree. As a Bucks fan, the game against the Pelicans I'm watching now doesn't seem meaningless. The nice thing about the playoffs is that the title isn't decided 2/3 of the way through the season. Some of these coronations that we've seen are just as dull.
1. MLS has only recently started to face this problem with expansion. 2. 20 of those 25 years brought a level of fan interest that would be catastrophic if they were to return. Consistent growth remains a necessity. Competitively, vis a vis the NBA Championship, it pretty well is. That doesn't mean it's not an entertaining spectacle, or not worth your time. But it is not competitively meaningful in the way Leicester-Norwich is this weekend.
For most MLS fans, I’m not sure this is true... The amount of emphasis certain people place on playing every team is significantly overblown. For most MLS fans, they care about their team doing well and besting their rivals. Whether their team plays a random team in another conference really isn’t that important.
MLS has expanded every single year since 2007, so I don’t know what you’re talking about with your first point. As to your second, of course they need to continue to build. The fact that the past two finals have sold out 70,000 seat football stadiums says the importance of the cup is growing to me, but whatever. As for the playoff format vs pro rel, I’ll say this. The gap in points from first place teams to last place teams from year to year is as small as any league in the world. The vast majority of teams are routinely playing for a playoff spot pretty much to the end and the fact that the draft has lost most of its importance from a talent procurement standpoint means teams have little to no motivation to tank, unlike the NBA and NFL. You can point to how cool a relegation battle is and it is. It is also financially disastrous as evidenced by the enormous number of clubs who end up in administration throughout Europe. You know what else happens in Europe. The pro/rel format means mid and lower table clubs are basically always on the brink of financial disaster and being forced to dump talent year to year. That and all that sweet, sweet Champions League money that goes to basically the same teams every year results in huge gaps in the financial capacity between the top teams and the bottom feeders. In England the top spending teams routinely shell out 8 plus times more than the relegation fodder at the bottom of the table. In Germany, Italy, Francs and Spain it is 15 times or more. Holland, Belgium, Scotland, etc? 20 times or more. Those leagues look great when Ajax, Brugge, or Celtic are on TV, but most of their games are played in small aging stadiums in front of fans who know their teams are just there to get the shit kicked out of them. You’re right that this league needs to grow, it needs money to grow and 25 years ago this country was completely devoid of any infrastructure in this country. We’re now at a point where teams building $35 mln training facilities barely registers. You can talk about the proletariat and big money and extoll the virtues of college football (which is the dirtiest money grab going in sports BTW), but without providing a framework that at least guarantees some financial stability the vast majority of these expansion sides wouldn’t exist and those that did would still be playing in minor league baseball stadiums and training @ high schools with orange peels on the sidelines. As for the multiple competition thing. The league should absolutely strive to grow the CCL and Open Cup. Work on that.
I'm not too sure the "average" fan cares all that much about playing every team to maintain the "integrity" of the league. Sure, people like us do, but if you sit in a non-supporters section and ask the person next to you, they might not even know 3 players on the other team. Remember back in the day when almost every visiting team (other than Columbus) looked almost exactly the same? All-white kits with black numbers, even the teams that didn't have black as a color. Watching MLS highlights, you never could tell who one of the teams was. Ideally, you'd want to play everyone, but once the league gets past a certain size, the only way to do that would be to play too many games. I think most fans would be OK with skipping a few teams once a year, as long as they play them the following year. Of course, people who are there only to see this year's Beckham, Zlatan, Flavor of the Month are going to be disappointed if it doesn't pan out, but chances are you're not going to see the Big Star anyway. In all the years Thierry Henry played in the league, he played exactly one game in Foxboro, and that was the last game of his career.
Spot on. Thus, knowing that our MLS is not going to be competitive with the best of what's available on TV, this way of being for MLS falls in line with exactly how college gridiron co-exists with the NFL product on display each weekend in the Fall. College gridiron, at a base level is what an NFL purist would say, is an inferior product. However, college gridiron does very well even if this statement is true and arrives via the mouth of a long time fan of the sport at all levels. MLS HQ can learn greatly from this in that, if some fans of soccer are going to say that MLS is some inferior version of the sport, ok. We, well MLS marketing HQ, we all hear this same thing about college gridiron. Garber and his HQ suits need to cultivate the type of soccer fan that is like the college gridiron fan in that they both don't care about the product being inferior when stacked side by side with some higher watched league. The young players down on the field might not be as good, might mess up more often, the older player might have lost a step and so but there is the fact this team is ours, from our city and State. Certainly the young players that are from this very same city! The civic pride and passion, the cultural tribalism that that permeates any fan of the inferior product of college gridiron is what Garber needs to champion for new fans to MLS. Certainly take this angle with its know precedent towards new fans to soccer in general. While true on some level for some MLS casual fans I think we can all agree, this is the opposite of the mindset for college gridiron fans in that the entire schedule is reviewed, nearly memorized and each home game greatly anticipated. Even the casual fan looks forward to seeing the modest teams and of course looks forward to the elite teams coming to town. Now that we know for certain that MLS is here to stay, thinking of where MLS can grow, MLS needs more fans that do care about what other teams are on the schedule. Who is the elite club coming to town this month. If this type of fan attachment is there to be grown for pro soccer in our nation than keeping a long standing soccer tradition like playing all clubs might be worth its weight for the very reason that it does ask the fan to be engaged more than just caring about the local rivals to beat. This is where the knockout competitions come into play for pro soccer over the generations. The Cup concept that runs congruent to the league schedule. So that when indeed the league title is decided 2/3rd of the season through, the rest of the league can still look forward to playing for another trophy. Same for the fans and supporters. They are still engaged over the long pro soccer season. Correct!
The Sounders are a random team in another conference? The fans of three Eastern clubs won't get the chance to see their squad go toe-to-toe with the champs next year. Not the end of the world, but it's not an insignificant matter, either.
That's a really good analogy. MLS needs to be to the soccer fan in Chicago or New York what college football is to the football fan in Lubbock, TX or Birmingham, AL. Local pride is part of it, but competitive variety is part of it as well.
Even college football fans only care about the games against teams in their conference tho. The non-conference games are, by and large, a nice to have and, in some cases, fans will be upset if their team plays ranked teams in their non-conference games. Very few non-SEC fans are pissed off that their team isn't playing Alabama this season, but, if for some reason, their team wasn't going to play their biggest rival(s), they'd be annoyed. For the most part, I'd expect the same to be true for MLS fans as the league grows.
For an Eastern conference team, yes, yes they are. For the three teams that aren't going to face the Sounders this year, I highly doubt there will be significant complaints about it because, quite frankly, their interest is going to be who they are facing, not who they aren't facing.
Maybe people want to see the Sounders and will be disappointed that they won't see the reigning champ, but what if it was Vancouver or Colorado or Minnesota that you miss? Unless you have an affinity for one of those teams, it won't matter to most people.
Truthfully, this. The only interconference teams I would be disappointed about missing as a Fire fan are Sporting KC and Minnesota United. My neighbor is a huge KC fan, so there is always some smack talk there. Seattle just doesn't affect me much.
We must exist in two divergent college gridiron universes then. I can speak from a Texan's pov in that I watch almost all the Big XII conference games I can get and all the SEC conference games I can get, sprinkle in a good chunk of Big 10 games in there as well. This goes for all my buddies I know. And for most of the guys down at my local watering whole. By watching so much and following the sport so closely, there is so much discussion to be had. Which of course add this to the enjoyment of the sport itself and it is this culture behind college gridiron in our nation that I would like MLS to mimic. I can see what you are pointing out, however on top of us the fan and the supporter, I like to as well include the business side of the coin of MLS league teams playing every other team in the league season after season. For it is a tremendous selling point for a Front Office sales staff from a modest MLS club to have the MLS Cup champions come to town. Or the team that has the most iconic star in the league, when this team comes to town. These events allow even a suffering at the gate, low on points, outta the playoffs by July MLS club and specifically their sales and marketing staff to circle these big home dates each season way in advance. Take this away from these FO's and it puts a dent in their plans to sell the few home dates that they think will be home dates they can go long on. Invite potential new sponsors in to witness what their MLS club can offer on a good night. Have home dates that even when the team is not covered so much in their local media, when the star of the league comes to town, the local media perk their ears up and come out to the stadium. This grows the MLS brand in that market with free coverage. Again, I am not saying that Garber's move away from the tradition of a pro soccer league having its teams play all other teams as some Frank Dux "dim-mak" death punch to our booming league. I am just pointing out a few of the traditions that will be lost and what fallout can and most likely occurs with this transition in 2020 and looking beyond. How this concerns me and my buddies as supporters in the stands and down at the pub and the business side of the coin.
But the point remains, if the Sounders sign someone famous, I want to see that player. As a Rapids fan, I want to see Eastern conference teams (Toronto, with the US national team players is an example) or at least see the Rapids match up against them away on TV. I don't want to see us play Dallas 3 times, or even the Sounders a 3rd time. The biggest draw this year for Colorado football was the Nebraska game. It was a new opponenent, but a good one; and everybody wanted to see it. Also they new they would not get another chance for 5 years. The Pac-12 games? Fun, but not as special.
I think we're talking about 2 different things. My point is that a fan of a college in the Big XII isn't going to be pissed off if their team isn't facing Alabama that year (they may actually be pissed off they are facing Alabama). I wasn't talking about a general college football fan that you're describing.
Well and let's take it a step further. As a season ticket holder, I want to see that player LIVE. That horse already left the barn years ago and is impossible to put back in at 30 teams.
Gotcha! I as well am more specifically talking about my team that used to play Alabama at home once every two years for the past 24 seaons in a row. Then the Conference commish added so many new teams recently that I am now being told that the way the schedule is going to pan out, my team won't play Alabama until 2025, and this in Tuscaloosa. My team won't get to play Alabama at home until 2026! But I get Kansas every year so my buddies and I got that. Sheet...
Honestly, what do you mean? The Nebraska game was the hottest ticket this season. I know we played them back in the Big12 days, I was just trying to be succinct. It was an opponent we had not played at home since 2010, and won't play at home again for 5 years (about). I accept that you can't see every team at home every year, but I still want to see a variety of teams and have a chance of seeing a given team every 2 to 3 years. And, I'm not a season ticket hold but an attemd 5 to 10 games a season fan. I look for good games to go to. Sure, RSL, our rivals, is one of them; but the others are intriguing teams to watch. Famous players, or good teams with young stars like Atlanta. And I know I'm not alone in this thinking- good opponents or star opponent players put more fans in seats.