How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent Clubs

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C


Whee!

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

The marketplace works. The invisible hand works. If your beloved "open" club system were meant to attain big success in the United States, it would have done so. It would have done so naturally and organically and efficiently. If there's a market for soda pop, then soda pop gets produced. If there's a market for personal computers, computers get produced. And if there's a market for an independent-club soccer system with promotion/relegation, that soccer system gets produced.

It had a century to do it -- to emerge and attain the great success you assert is a given -- and it didn't happen. Yet despite that century of evidence, you remain convinced that such success is just sitting there waiting to be had.

If it were inevitable, the way you think it is, then it would have happened. That's what you keep missing with your quixotic campaign: The "closed model" of MLS et al. is a RESULT of the market environment, not its cause.

You're basically a freeloader: You want to piggyback off soccer's success -- taking it and forcing your favored system onto it -- all while ignoring HOW it achieved that success in the first place.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

1) You don't know what "disinterested" means.

2) It's worth repeating: Aww, geez, not this shit again.

3) Can the mods of this forum start an all-encompassing, stickied catch-all, similar to the Soccer-Basher thread in Business and Media, entitled something like "The All Encompassing Catch-All Thread for Myopic Europoseurs Who Think MLS Needs Their Half-baked Ideas in Order To Really Take Fire Thread"?

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

there is one already in one of the other US forums. He's generally made himself about as welcome as a genital discharge in that one too, by his distillation of enthusiam, vitriol and inability to address any counter-arguments put his way.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

hmmm, this hasn't been brought up before. I think you're on to something.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Um really, the marketplace works? Then why has MLS struggled so much (outside of the Northwest)? LOL at everybody mocking this system which works in pretty much every single country on earth. Why do people feel such a need to Americanize everything and insist anything foreign couldn't possibly work?

Oh, and it's not like it's ever been tried in this country so how on earth do you know it would not work here? Sports are not soda with a free market setup - they are closed-shop monopolies that vary significantly from other aspects of American business (i.e. soda, computers, etc.). Just because the people who run MLS don't think that the OP's idea would work (i.e. make more money than the current setup) does not mean they are right. It simply means they happen to have the power to keep it from being tried.

Why do people groan at these threads? Don't read it and don't post in it and it will quickly drop off on to page 2 and into oblivion. Pretty simple, to be honest.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

What you see as MLS "struggling" is simply soccer existing at more or less its equilibrium in the United States.

When I wrote that the marketplace works, I was painting in broad macro strokes: Over the course of more than a century, this is the system of professional soccer that has developed, because it is the system that -- BY DEFINITION -- has proved capable of arising and surviving.

Look at it like a century-long experiment. A Darwinian process of sorts. Nothing artificial stood in the way of the "open club" system favored by the poster. If it were meant to blossom and grow into the success the poster presumes it could be, it would have done that -- just like it did in England, Europe and elsewhere.

Yet it didn't. That tells us there is something about this marketplace that kept it from happening (e.g., soccer isn't organically popular, etc.). Indeed, the existence of a completely different system (MLS) shows us what does work in this marketplace.

The mistake you and soccerreform guy are making is ignoring historical evidence. You're looking at what has been achieved by MLS and presuming it could be yours -- all yours, bwaahahaa! -- while overlooking why MLS has this achievement and you don't. That's why I said soccerreform dude is basically looking to "freeload" off the current system in his effort to reshape it to his vision.

Of course, he's apparently decided to gracelessly ignore good-faith responses to a thread he started, so whatever.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C


Whee.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Your posts are at odds with reality.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

While I completely agree that the very idea of someone "Americanizing" something is cause for alarm, even panic - God forbid we should do something our own way or, even worse, be proud of it - but allow me to interject if I may:

MLS has struggled because:

SOCCER IS NOT A POPULAR SPORT IN THE USA

People aren't sitting at home watching NCIS reruns instead of going to MLS games simply because they don't like the business structure of the league.

"You know, if they'd just get rid of that dreadful single entity structure and let the teams be "independent", why then I'd suddenly get very excited about watching 11 foreign guys in short pants kicking a ball around.

And this promotion/relegation thing which I know nothing about, why that just sounds delightful and makes me want to pay $30 to sit in a seat and think about it""

Indeed, I'll bet the vast majority of Americans don't have the first goddam clue what the business structure of the league even is.

Rather, people are sitting at home because they'd rather clean out the garage or masturbate than go pay money to watch a soccer game.

You remind me of the people who used to run around proclaiming that the only problem with MLS is that it's not "marketed correctly"

Except that theory only works if you have a product that people want and you're not telling them how to get it.

Because if you're selling, say, french fried dog shit on a stick, you can market the living bejeezus out of it and people aren't going to buy it. Oh, you may get them to try it once out of curiosity, but when they do they'll discover that they honestly just don't like french fried dog shit on a stick and they won't buy it again.

Well, I hate to have to be the one to break it to you but to an awful lot of Americans soccer is french fried dog shit on a stick. In fact, given a choice, they might prefer french fried dog shit on a stick over soccer.

You can promote and relegate all the french fried dog shit you want, and you can make each french fried dog shit dealer as "independent" as hell and it just isn't going to matter.

The main problem is still getting people to like french fried dog shit. Everything else is a detail.

Now, we're all working on it, and it's slowly changing. I truly believe that sometime in the future soccer will be a co-equal sport with the other US majors. But that time is long, long into the future.

And trying to circumvent the process by spending $20 million per team to bring in big stars - assuming that you can find a new bunch of owners, because the current ones sure as hell aren't going to do it - will only guarantee that the league dies. Quickly.

Because when all is said and done, what you still need is for hundreds of thousands of people to line up and shell out their money for a batch of french fried dog shit.

Sorry Bud, but you're just wrong.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Hey, Soccerreform. I love the idea of promotion, relegation and independant clubs. I don't really follow MLS because of that reason ( love the open cup though ). I follow the US MNT to games around the country and the following is getting bigger and bigger as we all know. It will just take time for this format to take place. I feel that at sometime there will be those that appeal to FIFA for change. Lets hope it happens.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Translated for the good of all.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast?...

I don't know how to take this kind of thread. While I see that it could become the funniest read in a while, I can't help but say "God Bless the Souls of the SoccerReform's of the World" for actually fighting the good fight for what they beleive.

I do disagree with the premise, though. I recognize the basic point that athletics in America and Europe grew up in different philosophies. One system is not better than the other; they're just different. In America, we wanted athletics tied closely to the education system, and the professional system came in after that. In Europe, the "club" system is mostly made up of independent teams, and while there is a smattering of collegiate teams, it is in no way at an "elite ameteur" level like the American college / high school system.

SoccerReform seems to think that MLS is one business with 16 branch offices, and each branch creates their form of a company softball team, to play other in-house company softball teams. But when our softball team plays more highly-paid, hardball-level, teams, is when all the warts get exposed. But is that all we really should be worried about?

What I still don't get of the pro-rel indep-club people, is are they promoting this as a busniess model, or a sporting model? If they want this for sporting purposes, then they should accept any business model (even central-ownership) that keeps teams alive ("minimize risk" in SR's terms). If they want this for a business model, then they must accept that teams will always risk of folding.

Just look at England now. There are several teams (all divisions of the Football League) that are at risk of going into "Administration" (which I think is the equivalent of American "bankruptcy protection"). Man United has more debt than the GDP of some countries. This is because the "independent club" model allowed the team to be bought by outside (non-sporting) ownership, who considered the team to be their own high-priced-toy, and spent to astronomical amounts. (Yes, Man City, also, to some extent.) Thankfully there are very few American team owners like that (Yankees, Dallas Maverics basketball, Oakland Raiders), but as far as I know, they are not close to going into the red.

Maybe I could have included the Los Angeles Sol women's team in that list, a team in the "independent franchise" model, who did fold. Same MO: high-priced talent, ran away with the league regular season, now in the scrapyard. (But I'm not sure how players had "guaranteed contracts," that needed them to be re-distributed to other franchies.) Part of a completely-independent model is that the players must also take a risk, that their team could go out from under them.

And all of soccer in Europe is in danger of becoming controlled by four teams in England, a couple in Italy, a couple in Spain, a handfull in Germany, and a scant few others. Is that what you want, in the end?

So, when all is said, SoccerReform, I'm not part of your cult. Neither system is perfect (but I think that you believe the pro-rel-independent model is).

And one more point: MLS talking about being in their 15th year... The first 5 years were meant to be loss-leaders, just to get the league in the ground. Whether you agree that they lost $250 million, or a lesser number, there was no way they could have seen a profit. As far as I see it, MLS became a "business," hoping to eventually make money, in the Garber era. I consider MLS, as a businees, to be a pre-teenager, still needing a good bit of hand-holding, but also looking as a proud daddy/mommy and saying, "Gee, little Junior might actually make it." No reason to change anything now.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Forget whether pro/rel is a good idea in the USA for a second. I want you to prove to me that it is working in England and elsewhere in Europe. Just because they have had it for 100 years isn't a good enough answer. I want proof that it is actually working as a business model. Because the evidence of a plethora of clubs going insolvent, into administration, living beyond the means of their fan base, and being thoroughly uncompetitive in higher divisions, and then going bankrupt and starting the whole circle of hell of insolvency and administration again...that evidence shows that pro/rel isn't working there particularly well either.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast?...

As it happens, that's not true. They are in debt because Glazer bought them through a leveraged buy-out, transferring his entire personal debt on the deal to the club. Rather than spending a fortune on the team, they are now at the "selling the family silver" stage in an effort to service the debt.

He's an asset-stripper, treating the club as a cash cow, which is exactly what fans here feared when he launched his take-over bid.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Hey Timon19. I'm sorry, Ive changed my mind. You've made me see the light. Ive changed my mind because of you. Of course I'll love it the only way an elitist prick can. MLS ELITIST PRICK FAN. Got a ring to it.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Pro/rel isn't a business model. It's a sporting competition. It wasn't designed as a way of making money, nor to keep clubs from folding.

The simple fact is, if you are bringing in £50 million a year, but spending £60 million, you are going to be in the crap sooner rather than later.

The booming finances in the game over the last 20 years (tv money has risen 100 fold, gate receipts are up nearly 20 fold) seems to have created an environment where club chairman believe debts now will be paid of by increased revenue in the future, and they've become increasingly reckless as a result.

The money has also raised the spectre of the infamous "dodgy chairman" lining his pockets through underhand business practices - selling stadiums to a holding company, than charging the club rent is a fine example, with the chairman now earning rent, while having a multiple million pound asset transferred to his name for a nominal fee - although those sort tend to be lower down.

Then you have cases like Notts County, which just leave everyone baffled. An apparently rich owner comes in declaring County will be in the premier within five years. They then bring in expensive players and staff, then it seems there was never any money there at all and they are left with a huge bill they can't pay. Nobody at all seems able to explain the reasoning behind that episode.


In the past, when clubs have been in trouble, there's been a huge amount of sympathy for them, but with a large number of these latter day cases, it's just not there as they've brought it upon themselves.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

And RichardL just showed the difference between here and the rest of the world. In the US, sports are viewed as a business and the setup as the league is a business model. A closed league with single entity is the best business model for soccer in the United States.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Huzzah¿