MLS launches new professional league

It would definitely give some of the pay to pay clubs a bit more of a case for Solidarity or Training Compensation funds if they actually had a professional club for players to transition to.

Though I haven't heard anything about such clubs doing anything like that.

 

It would also give players who want to go to Europe, rather than sign with a MLS club, somewhere to play between 16 and 18.

 

I did a quick count and between USL-C & USL-1, there what I consider 13 "MLS" second teams. Sounds to me many more MLS need to get there second team up and running and soon. Not sure how many other independent teams could fill out this league or if MLS is going to be serious/strict about all MLS teams having a team in this new league.

I am torn on what MLS is doing. I understand the need to develop players and bring them all up internally, but this league is simply just going to add another league in another division of our already screwed up pyramid.

What are the "antitrust" rules that keep soccer from being an integrated pyramid from top to bottom? Why can't we have 2 clearly defined pyramids?
One purely professional. (Academy > MLS u23 > MLS reserve > MLS)
and one purely amateur?
(youth soccer> high school > college (NCAA/NAIA/JC) > UPSL/NPSL)

 

Pro leagues are sanctioned by USSF.

Amateur leagues are governed by the US Adult Soccer Association.

College soccer is governed by NCAA, which is bigger than just soccer so that's not going to change.

NPSL Pro was an attempt to launch a professional league under the governance of USASA but it failed due to the complexity of insurance requirements when amateur and professional players play together (despite the fact they do it in the Open Cup).

MLS is owned by MLS. USL is owned by NuRock holdings. NISA is an attempt to launch a league run independently by its teams.

I believe the reserve team is just that but it apparently needs sanctioning. The benefits are that it provides a stepping stone from academies to the first team, gives injured players an opportunity to rehab and allows those players who barely feature in the first team to get done minutes in their legs. Some teams will operate USL and reserve teams, others will operate neither.

We have "competing" leagues because I guess we're a free country and we can't compel different leagues to merge. But we're at an early stage of our development. Other countries had similar situations a century ago.

It would be nice to have combined top level amateur leagues but that would involve people talking together and agreeing a common strategy and business objectives.

 

Yeah but if they sign a MLS contract they have to break into the first team then go through the transfer process.

Pulisic, Reyna, Sargent, Weah, Wood, Hoppe, Wright, McKennie, Horvath, Parks, Hyndman etc all chose to cut out the middle men.

 

Looks to me to be similar to minor league affiliates in MLB.

 

Everything that everyone thinks is true about legal aspects of sports leagues and antitrust laws may be changing in the near future. The opinions issued in the rulings against the NCAA at the US Supreme Court should have everyone running sports leagues thinking very carefully about how they proceed so their investments are protected.

 

How so? One of the big differences between the NCAA and the pro leagues are the player unions and the CBAs between them and the leagues. That would seem to cover a lot of what the Court commented on. But I am in no way a lawyer so I may be way off base with that understanding.

 

Actually I think it’s probably more the opposite. It’s unlikely that (most) college soccer teams would ever pay their players (not that the ruling allows for that), but it does become conceivable that soccer clubs might at some point (and they maintain eligibility).

 

In the opinion, it was clear the court was telling the NCAA that it simply couldn't continue to operate in such ways. The basic idea that exceptions of antitrust laws for sports leagues seemed to be strongly questioned. While the top line of the story is paying players can't be ruled out. The language was all about applicability of antitrust laws.
June 21, 2021 story in NY Times on the ruling.

 

Isn't MLB the only one of the pro leagues with an actual antitrust exemption? The others get around it because the players have agreed to it (through the CBA).

 

There are other federal cases and laws that have essentially given the other leagues similar protections. The NFL still operates under the conditions set by the act of Congress that permitted the AFL-NFL merger, for example, though the lawsuit by Al Davis that allowed him to move the Raiders to Los Angeles did have some effect on how much control a league has over its individual teams. This despite the NHL, which is structured similarly as an organization, having been ruled to be not fully subject to antitrust in the 1974 ruling of San Francisco Seals Ltd. v. National Hockey League. Basically the teams were held to be not fully separate economic competitors and that the league can be considered a single entity (yes, that was the exact wording) when it comes to deciding where to place teams. (The lawsuit was filed by the owners of the California Golden Seals after the league refused to let the team move to Vancouver despite the franchise being an infamous dud; the other league owners were worried that losing a Bay Area team would jeopardize their national TV contract that in part rested on adding west coast teams). However, the ruling in a lawsuit a few years prior by the WHA and its teams held that attempting to undermine a competing league would be considered an antitrust violation. Notably the decision rejected the underlying rationale of the MLB antitrust exemption that operating a sports league does not constitute interstate commerce, which, frankly, was always an absurd claim in the first place.

Of course, of particular interest here on Big Soccer is the Fraser decision, which recognized that MLS is something of a hybrid as well. In other words, both the Seals and Fraser decisions recognize that member clubs of sports leagues are not purely competitors but also partners, and cooperation between the teams is needed for the league to function, so such cooperation is not illegal collusion under antitrust laws. However, it's also been recognized that that applies only to internal league matters and doesn't extend to relations outside the league to the sport as a whole, which is the one thing that MLB has that the other major leagues don't.

 

ROTHENBERG: [Single-entity ownership] had been rattling around in my head since the 1970’s when I was a young lawyer for the NBA. I remember kicking it around with some other lawyers, saying, “Boy, it would’ve been smart if [the NBA] was originally structured as a single entity."

https://www.si.com/longform/2015/mls/index.html

 

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We need to stop relying on NCAA soccer as source of players.
I would make an exception to some degree if NCAA started playing the game with rules that ARE the soccer rules around the world or if NCAA ran soccer more like football where the NCAA is nothing more than the NFL farm teams.
If they won't do that for soccer, then we need to look elsewhere.
This one thing I fully agree with MLS on- develop your own from Academy to first team.

 

We already have, but it is a handy backup for kids that didn't make the grade at MLS academies.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't say MLS "relies" on college soccer. They will take players from there if they were late bloomers or somehow slipped past notice, but it's not the main source of young player, the academies are these days. The SuperDraft just gets a bit of hype because all the drafts get hype as they're a way to promote the league during the off season.

 

You can't complain that NCAA soccer doesn't use 'rules' and not refer to them as Laws. (personal gripe)

NCAA is just one source. The NFL, as much as they've tried, have no other development leagues really. All other major leagues have either domestic and/or international leagues for players to develop and play in. An MLS Academy helps find young local talent. There is a pipeline of players otherwise. MLS doesn't get to control that pipeline which I'm quite certain is part of their motivation here.

 

The Athletic has an article about proposed changes to the format and schedule of the USL. It also has some information about the MLS2 teams currently in USL.

https://theathletic.com/2720583/2021/07/21/usl-promotion-relegation-calendar/

So MLS2 teams will be completely out of the USL by 2023.

 

It makes sense since most MLS teams in USL-C have very little in terms of fan support. I want USL-C to be a true second division with lots of fans and having a few hundred MLS teams with hardly any fans definitely holds that back IMO.

 

Those 4 aren't affiliates, so I'm guessing it's the MLS owned clubs that will leave while the affiliates will stay and run independently.

By 2023, if the proposed expansion teams happen, that leaves USL-C with 29 teams and League One with 10 teams for 2022 and 12 for 2023. Currently they're at 31 and 12 respectively.

 

Yeah, USL teams that have affiliations with MLS teams aren't going anywhere. Affiliation is just an agreement to loan players in most cases. The affiliations will probably also end.

The Dynamo, for example, had a hybrid arrangement with RGV but even though the agreement still exists the Dynamo stopped funding the entire roster and hiring the coach this year. Houston isn't even loaning them players any more. That will completely end next year.

 

Right, and there are only four affiliates in USL C anyway.

Looking forward to when MLS goes public with this, and fil sin the details. Columbus is one of the markets that never jumped on the USL bandwagon desperately needs this league for player development.