I am a business student and am doing a research project on MLS and was wondering if someone could give me some concrete costs as to starting an MLS team. This should include a cost of a soccer specific stadium, player wages and so on. Plus it would be good for discussion on this board since finances are rarely discussed in a detailed fashion.
espansion fee (cost to bring a team to your city) used to be $25,000,000 it seems that price has now been lowered to $10 million.
I think MLS's official amount is "How much you got?" Seriously, I don't know MLS's costs since they tend to hide them. But you can get a hold of a USL expansion packet ( I did a few years ago on a lark). Go to http://www.uslsoccer.com/index.html and find the contact info, they've been quite nice, and you might be able to extrapolate data.
A lot of your questions have come up before but probably a few crashes ago. Expansion fee is probably in the neighborhood of 10 million. A stadium would run you anywhere from 28 million (Columbus) to 65 million (LA) I think i've read that a teams operating budget is something like 6-10 million per year. Salary caps for players is 2.75 million per team but then again that is technically paid by the league so I guess you wouldn't count that against a teams budget. With all the single-entity problems out there it might be easier for you to do this project on an A-league team.
Hey, I just noticed I am now a bigsoccer member and no longer a newbie...how many posts does it take for that to happen???
The Board of Directors for Big Soccer meets and reads all your posts then advises the moderators on their decision. If the moderator doesn't agree with the decision for some reason, he or she may file a BS 201C form to have the matter reviewed by the President of Big Soccer for a final decision. Some have had to wait for a long time while others have been approved in short order.
Cool, the board of directors likes me, they really like me!!! And Segroves corrected one of my posts...this is all to good to be true. I might as well leave work and go have a drink to celebrate.
Actually I think it's 25 posts. I don't really think the Board likes you but they may. I know they don't like me!!
I tried to rescue the situation. I forgot you have to be careful with things here sometimes but then again maybe he is joking too. It's so hard to know! Now back to the topic.. What is it anyway? Oh stadiums.. I feel there should be no further expansions unless they comes with a SSS!
MLS expansion fee? You just have to 1) rich enough, and 2) interested in losing millions a year over the next 10 to 15 years.
If only I could figure out those smiley faces...but then again I would still have to explain I'm joking. Actually, to find out the finances of teams you might try e-mailing some of the teams general managers. I'm sure they wouldn't give you any earth shattering numbers or anything specific but they might give you a little insight. Most of the teams websites will tell you who to email.
To put a smiley face in your post, you get the url of the image by right clicking on it the highlighting the image url in "properties". Then you put that url after the letters img which are put between brackets with no spaces [ ] I can't actually do it or it would just disapear. Then after the URL, you put /img inside brackets also. Be sure to include the http:// It works for image URLs too such as pictures of Heather Mitts and stuff. Don't use any spaces or it won't work. Like this but with brackets (img)http://awebsite/pix/image.jpg(/img)
Player wages are not a concern for individual clubs. Wages are paid by the league. Stadium costs are, more or less, split between the league and the owner/operator, and the same goes for ticket revenue. Local sponsorships are kept by the team, as are ancillary revenues like parking, concessions, etc. I have no idea about merchandising, but it isn't a hugely significant figure for any of the teams. A soccer-specific stadium can safely be pencilled in for $50 million, over 25 years or so with the appropriate interest. I've heard rumors in the past of the league giving rebates for these expenses, in lieu of the money they'd be shelling out for their half of stadium rental. Buying into MLS is more than whatever "expansion fee" they slap on (which is probably $10 million or so). It also involves an investment in the league as a whole, responsibility for responding to cash calls, blah, blah, blah.
Re: Re: Expansion Costs while the contracts are owned by the league, I'm pretty sure salaries do go to the individual club's pnl.
I did some research on the cost of NHL expansion a while back... This is the amounts I'd put in for the profitability... Establishing Costs $10.0 million - MLS Franchise Fee Other misc start-up expendatures Yearly Costs Wage Cap + Staff Soccer Operations (misc expenses) Advertising/Merchandising Stadium Deal Yearly Incomes Advertising (account for TV/Radio deals in CPM) Income from Gate Merchandising/Concessions TV Deal (probably to MLS, not franchise) Just as an estimation, I'd put startup around $15-20 million... Yearly costs could range from as low as $4 million to a few dozen millions, depending on location and control of the stadium. Yearly income is the hardest to measure. Ticket prices, interest and overall fanbase all play roles into this equation. From here, the amount of people viewing the advertising changes, causing that amount to fluctuate. Each franchise would depend on the market... Hope this helps at least a little... its not concrete, but if you want a copy of the NHL table I made, e-mail me. Oh yeah, expand in OKC (Express Sports would probably run with an insanely small budget)