Sorry if this has been hashed out before, and I realize the arcane nature of MLS' ownership structure may make this hard to figure out. But I posted in a New England thread that as long as Kraft continued to see big Expansion Fee checks coming his way from new teams, he would continue to see value in owning the team, and not worry that much about the quality of the product on the field.... The point of THIS thread post is to ask if someone actually knows and can tell how much of those $200 million checks actually makes it back to each 'owner/operator', and is it an equal share (i.e. older teams get more, maybe, I have NO idea.)? Clearly MLS keeps a lot of the money to put back into the game, etc...but some of that must get back to the owner operators, or else why are they diluting their voting capital by allowing other people to the table? Obviously, the bigger the game, the bigger the broadcast rights, etc...but I would imagine that some of that check is going into the owner/operators' pockets. Anyone know for sure?
Divide that number by the total number of teams in the league at the time the expansion franchise is awarded. Example: FCC paid $150M to get into MLS. At that time there were 23 teams. So: 150/23 = $6.5M per team. That is to compensate the teams for among other things: the reduction of the shares in SUM with the added investors, the reduction in their cut of the TV contract/Adidas/Fanatics/league wide sponsorship contracts. Many of the owners in MLS are Multi-BILLIONAIRES.............$6.5M can be found between their couch cushions and between the seats in their Bentley's and Gulfstreams.