To be fair, how are any minor league clubs making money, including NASL clubs? Without any TV revenue the only way these clubs survive is as a write-off expense for youth programs(Silverbacks and many USL clubs), or wealthy investors who are willing to throw money away (Cosmos).
Most NASL teams have local broadcast deals. Given ea. teams Independence, they can survive quite well expoliting their local market. Once they work out the kinks w/NASL Live, it will become a revenue source. TV continues to shrink & digital & mobil content continues to grow. This where NASL can grow (Subcribers + ad revenue is a great model, see ESPN & why they are so profitable for Disney). Like I have been saying NASL needs to worry about themselves & what they do. Big Risk, Big Reward, ie, the American way.
And my guess is that all of those deals are rather significant expenses for the clubs, not revenues. As for NASLlive, it would take one hell of of lot of subscribers to make any significant revenue.
Something I don't understand about NASLLive, and other sports streaming media like it, is the lack of advertisements during normal TV commercial breaks. Seems like a wasted opportunity to make money. The biggest draw of it is to watch road games that aren't on TV. Which is another thing. The NASL needs to do something about the lack of road games on TV. I'm not quite understanding why most teams only air home games on TV.
MLS, Sponsors and youth programs. I agree. It would be best for soccer if we had one big happy family from top to bottom, something we have never really had. PDL is an amateur league and the level of play is way to far behind MLS. It makes it less likely that players who are close to MLS level get the experience they need playing at such a low level. Players who are at MLS level but are recovering from injury or poor form would be wasting their time in PDL. USL Pro is an all-pro league with a level of play above college and only slightly behind the NASL. With the bad blood and differing business models, I do not think an allegiance was ever in the works for NASL and USL. Had they merged at some point, how exactly would that impact MLS? It would still be a D2 and D3 leagues, with just some teams shifted around. MLS needed an existing lower level structure willing to partner with them. They realized the reserve league thing they had going on was incredibly ineffective so they wanted an existing league with owners and established clubs who could handle much of the operational and cost burdens. Clearly, NASL was not interested in such a relationship for obvious reasons. USL was, for obvious reasons. IMO, I highly doubt NASL even had any impact on the MLS/USL partnership.
Because it is a marketing expense. They want to promote the club and the idea of going to see the club live AND get more exposure for the local sponsors. Away games are more expensive to produce and you are giving exposure to the other clubs sponsors and you do not get to market the experience of going to a home match.
I'm not even sure where to start with this. Other than it costs more, the rest of this statement is honestly idiotic. You want to promote going to games live, by not airing the games people can't go to, but airing the games they can? How is that supposed to work? There is a reason why the NFL only blackout home games, they don't blackout road games. You get more exposure for local sponsors by airing fewer games? 29 games provide more exposure than 15 games. This is a simple math problem 30 > 15, no explanation should be needed. Giving exposure to the other club. Who cares, they are also giving your clubs sponsors more exposure. Seems like a win-win situation. Everyone gets more exposure, meaning teams can charge more for advertising. You do not get to market the experience of going to a home match? How is not airing a road game marketing going to home games? Why would the teams not be able to market going to home games? Every game on TV is advertisement for going to home games, no matter where the game is being played. More expensive, yes that is a good point. Although the way you are stating things it makes me think that you would expect them to just take the home teams feed and air it without local announcers, local advertising, or changing anything at all. In which case it would suddenly become super cheap to air the games.
Every team in the league has to have their own broadcast ability (not the YouTube or streaming version) in order to televise away games. No local network is going to bother with a hodgepodge broadcast schedule if only a few teams have the capability. The minor leagues (NASL and USL) are sketchy on televising home games too. Even in well attended markets, the ability to watch the game at home could reduce attendance. (All this from SRFC marketing- I asked a while back)
Company's pay the Cosmos (and other vlubs) American Dollars ($USD) to have their brand on the sideboards and other prominent locations in the stadium, partially for the 4k that attend games, but just as much for the presence on TV broadcasts. The Cosmos get no American Dollars from the companies who pay the San Antonio Scorpions for exposure. Now if clubs had a partnership to share production costs and share it in each market, that can work, but the logistics of having numerous productions companies can be a barrier to that. For the marketing the home game experience point, you can show your stadium and local fans enjoying matches..."you could be there too"... Cost/Benefit=broadcast home matches. It works this way for most minor league sports for a reason.
Although TV money would be the biggest chunk of revenue, it isn't the only chunk. I don't know the specifics but I would assume that local advertising, corporate sponsorship, ticket and concession revenue would get them close enough to breaking even that the write-offs they make aren't too outrageous.
Explain sketchy. 8 of 10 NASL clubs had local TV deals for this year. How many D3 USL Pro teams had local tv deals if any?
My friend, just explaining that the Galaxy, has a second team playing in USLPro, eventually the words young players, USLPro & development will come up. How then would one not think USLPro is a developmental league? It's not like explaining loan deals which in a way are done mostly for development. One just don't say its for development. I know, some would love it if USLPro become MLS2, in which case it will still be cast as a developmental League
How so, explain this new model of Broadcasting? How are these local broadcast tv deals costly for the teams? NASL Live is a 2 yr service, takes a while for business to tur a profit. after all is has been almost 20yrs & I don't believe MLS is yet in the black. Anytime you have a service tht is subscriber base w/ ad revenues like NASL Live profit potential is there. MLS did not just get that new tv contract $$$ for over the air broadcast, a huge part of that deal is the digital content both Networks ESPN & Fox get for their web-broadcast platform. If I'm not mistaken ESPN got a bigger part of the digital (Internet) right as MLS Live is moving to ESPN. Reality is the hotter MLS property becomes the more valuable NASL becomes. That's just a fact. For every ESPN, there's a Fox, NBC CBS, Google, Apple, etc....
Based off of my assumptions, the clubs pay not only to produce the matches, but also for the air time on the networks. It's very expensive. I doubt even the Cosmos get paid for the rights. Even most MLS clubs still pay for airtime and production. As for NASL live, well, multiply $29 by whatever number of subscribers you think they may have, and subtract some costs. Then divide that by 10 (by 18 in 18 months lol) and you have a very small number going to each club.
so yo u honestly believe the teams are not only leasing brodcast time, they are paying for Production, Satellite link & truck, crew, then they go out & spent for a sale staff so sell ad space? That's you belief? You've heard of YouTube correct? My friend, I'm in the media business, your assunption makes zero sense. you are stating that these businessmen who've made millions, would make such a risky undertaking. Nonsense!
And? What does that have to do with anything? Are you saying away teams shouldn't wear jersey's with advertisements? Why would that be a reason to prevent airing road games? It doesn't prevent any other sport in any other league. So you are saying they would have to do it just like any other major sports league...that is kind of obvious. It doesn't make sense to do it any other way. Ok, and they can do that during away games too just instead of it being live it is a pre-recorded clip from a previous game. As well as I already pointed out, the simple act of having the team on TV easily accessible to anyone with a TV is marketing for home games. It doesn't matter if it is a road game. Seriously, do you not watch any league on TV other than NASL? All of these "problems" you brought up are not problems, they are excuses for a bad business plan. Leagues have been doing this for years, we know how to do things. In today's age, any game that is not on TV is loss for your team and loss for your league, especially when the game is not a home game where you aren't making money through tickets, concessions, etc. Right now road games are a guaranteed loss for teams. If those games are aired at home, suddenly teams are making money off of those games. If teams are unwilling to do the things necessary to make road games possible, then the league needs to take over, and if not completely control TV at least mandate certain things. Yes the NASL is losing out by teams only airing a limited amount of games on TV.
You are not in the media business, unless you write for some blog and consider that media. I did not say they cover ALL of those costs, but I assure you NASL clubs, and most MLS clubs as well, lose money on local TV deals. What does YouTube have to do with local broadcast deals?
The majority of broadcast sports has one feed, w/maybe different technical Directors who picks camera shots & angles from feed or even bigger savings is achieve by going w/over air broadcast feed that the other is broadcasting w/ your anouncers. Most games on TV, ie, Fox anouncers are in a studio in LA. This is a league now, they function as a unit. Si
http://dccouncil.us/DC_Soccer_Cost-Benefit_Analysis_FINAL.pdf Here is some data from the above report ========== http://www.stumptownfooty.com/2014/11/6/7170221/mls-team-income-streams Broadcasting: MLS average net: -$0.3 million (a loss, due to production costs) MLS average net for top-third teams: +$0.6 million Youth development: DCU estimate: $0.77 million (not clear if this is gross or net) That number is likely much worse for some teams, considering the Galaxy are known to have a multi-million dollar deal. One would assume that MLS clubs command a better deal than an NASL club.
Yes I do, because in 1984 ZERO NASL clubs had a local TV deal. Now some do. Why don't all NASL clubs have local tv deals? Is it because they cost too much or are they just lazy?