Salary Cap Discussion

it was also about creating scarcity. I know, back during 1.0 there were false cielings put on the larger, football stadiums, but they were clearly false. I remember a friend moving to KC ran out and bought season tickets when he moved back to KC, because his kids wanted to attend Wiz games and his experiece with game tickets in KC had been the Chiefs and Royals, who at the time were both tough tickets to find. For year two, he decided he'd just buy game seats when he wanted to attend. I bought a couple season tickets of game coupons, meaning I could show up for one game with 33 other people, or see every game with one other person, etc.
When SKC opened their park, there were few enough seats that everyone who had an inkling that they'd like to attend bought season tickets, and every match since has been a sell out.
Didn't work that way everywhere.

 

this chart is getting older and out of date, but still useful, but talking about market potential.



https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-some-us-cities-may-have-too-many-pro-sports-teams-2013-11

 

This article is also inaccurate.
It says Cbus has 1 pro sports team.

Even if we don't count MLL (pry shouldn't honestly) Cbus has 2 teams. Crew and Jackets. Not saying it's a truly flawed Idea in the post, but take it with a grain of salt. Especially since it also doesn't count NCAA sports.

Because with that in mind Cbus has 4. Crew, Jackets, OSU Football and Basketball, which eat up as much of peoples recreation dollars as an NBA and NFL club.

 

The article uses the big 4, remember it is from 2013.

There was another one that used disposable dollars per market, I think that one included MLS.

 

I'm also not sure what numbers they're using to some up with their populations. Looking at census numbers, it's clearly not households, or metro population, or city population. greater Denver right now has 2.88m people, according to the census, with an average household size of 2.31, so that gives us 1.2m households. Where the hell did they come up with 1.5m?
Also, look at NY and London, NY is a bit bigger and a ton more compact. London has six premiership clubs, 12 clubs who would meet or exceed the norm for MLS stadium capacity and the city puts 21 professional teams on it's football page, though that counts places like my old home, which is a commuter community for London (was for us) but isn't London. Still, 13 in London city limits. But those are just football clubs. There are other sport clubs, and these clubs are doing well enough, though some are struggling. London has 2 major rugby clubs, 3 if you count the London Irish. I have no idea how cricket works, but there are a bunch of grounds and I think at least six teams? they've also got a basketball team.
My point? 1. I like the chart. I like charts in general. But I'm a caveman and it confuses me. 2. Also I'm not sure about the conclusion within it regarding ideal numbers of clubs. I would think that the sport saturation point is different for each sport, success of each club, etc.

 

Neilson
https://www.lyonspr.com/latest-nielsen-dma-rankings/

 

London has two cricket teams, Middlesex and Surrey.

But that doesn't affect soccer. It's played at a different time of year and different times of the day. Also the same cricket teams play in different leagues and cup competitions, all incorporating slightly different rules and very different durations, 20/20 matches lasting 3 hours and County Championship games lasting 4 days.

 

Anyone who pushes for rules changes that allow X team's potential to be unleashed, that they happen to support, I'd rather they self-examine and swap it so that their big team is now devoid of funds to compete while, say, San Jose has all the brains and bucks to compete beyond anything you could ever hope to match.

If you're still cool with that, let's talk and let me try to convince you that's a shitty way to enjoy a sport and there's a more equitable solution. Where both teams can win trophies in any given year.

 

You might. Based on evidence not enough others would.

 

That pretty much goes for anywhere but England and Germany. Attendances drop off dramatically when teams aren't competing at the highest level.

 

All the more reason to not repeat it here

 

Again, England and Germany are exceptions when it comes to fans sticking with their teams.

AC Milan were struggling to break 30,000 towards the end of the season when they finished tenth and Real Madrid have had attendances of well under 60,000 recently.

We all know NFL tickets distributed numbers don't reflect thousands of empty seats. ST holders don't show up when teams are doing badly.

 

Fascinating, that list. In 2018, the little 3 MLS clubs were Columbus, KC and Salt Lake. This year, Cinci bounces Columbus into the big boy table. Austin will make look KC look big by comparison.
Yet Sacramento is just about 2x the size of Auston on that list and keeps getting pushed back. With Sac, Phoenix Detroit, Tampa, Cleveland (huh), St Louis, Pitt, North Carolina (either market) are the largest remaining markets but clearly are not all destined for MLS. I guess pro team saturation makes Austin make sense (only UT) but Cinci over Sac is interesting.

 

Perhaps a tangent, but perhaps dead on topic. Unless i don't read the numbers correctly, both Atlanta and LAG have 4 DPs right now. I realize the talk is each club looking to move one, but if this lasts through the end of the euro transfer window, and Almiron and GDS are not getting acceptable offers, does the league want to force a cut rate move? Okay, maybe for one, but for Almiron?
This is where single entity gets really weird for me, because the league unit is better off if Almiron sells for Blank's desired $30m, rather than say $16m. It's both a bit more cash but also a statement and sets the market for sales higher than it has been. He could probablly fetch more in the summer, with more time and suitors who aren't simply broke ass men. MLS stands to gain from Atlanta standing firm.
But MLS also would need to fudge their rules, again. Perhaps adding a fourth DP or some sort of mechanism that would allow clubs to retain the DP they can't shift for proper value after they've brought in the replacement DP. In the old days, we would have assumed that LAG have a problem, so the league rules will soon change to fix it. Now it's both the old cool and the new cool.

 

Cricket could, though, just as tennis or Rugby or opera or vacations or whatever people go out and spend money on could affect soccer attendence. Most people have limited entertainment funds available. A season ticket purchased in July could mean waiting on movies to pop up on Netflix in December.
Thanks for the cricket info. I will never understand what is going on during a match, but I do try to watch and understand every now and then.

 

I'm not sure anyone is suggesting oranges at halftime and pizza for all after the game. Rather, I think many of us are far more worried about that a league that is completely unbalanced will lose the interest of just about everyone outside of a couple markets.
On this topic, an interesting piece from the Guardian today:
“Celtic have a budget of £60m,” Lennon said. “They have a £9m striker [Odsonne Édouard]. I’ve got free transfers and rejects from other clubs.”
Indeed, from revenue of £101.6m for the financial year of 2018 Celtic had labour costs of £59.3m. Hibs’ comparative figures were £9.6m and £5.3m.
“I don’t think there is a title race,” said the Aberdeen manager, Derek McInnes.
The piece is under the headline "Is there a title race in Scotland" and the answer is pretty much no, and there hasn't been much of one since before 1985.
There is no way US sports fans would support that sort of league. We were not all Yankees fans when baseball was failing and started trying to create some parity (lux taxes, etc). Sadly, for baseball, they were kind of stuck with one of the most boring sports ever created.
I think your case would have more merit if MLS were not, as a whole, improving at a very rapid pace. Atlanta has been a part of that, but not nearly all of that. The idea that a team as well drilled and talented as Toronto could spend 2018 getting curb stomped by all comers says something good about the overall level of play in MLS.
I'd argue that Colorado this off season has shown the criticism of their desire to win to be off base.I don't know that bringing in two new strikers, a new 10, a new 8, and a new RB back who are all expected to start will work. It might not result in a playoff type of season, but it does show both ambition and a willingness to spend money and try. The same can be said of San Jose and Almedya. There seems to be a definite plan at Vancouver with dos Santos, and, again, it may not work but it is clearly a huge undertaking. the Fire owners spent their own money (as I just learned what DTAM is) on Frankowski, who looks to be the sort of young up and comer MLS wants these days. I don't get what NE is doing, but making a lot of players unhappy appears to be a clear strategy.

 

The truth is that they were just as active last off season. They thought they were bringing in a winning combination of new players and manager. They just got it really wrong. It happens. Is Colorado by comparison to Atlanta really any worse than poor teams in any other league compared to the good ones? Every league has poor quality teams. The difference is that it was only a couple years ago when Colorado finished second in the west and we thought they'd figured out their way forward.
In their piece on Howard's pending retirement, the Guardian made a joke about how he used to play before massive crowds but now plays in front of crowds that average 15,000. This, to me, is similar to your argument. It's not quite hitting the target. First, with the Guardian, MLS average attendence is 24k and Everton's is 38k, and that's not a night and day difference. But it's also just not really the point. MLS hasn't produced enough data points to make a definitive statement about what it is going to be.
What it has shown is that it is rapidly improving. Teams are going to do better than the norm. I support one of those, SKC. But the very nature that there is such a thing as average means some clubs will fall below that line. I would say this, the Rapids teams that have sucked the last two years would have been pretty damn good back in the day. In 2003 or 04 we'd have marveled at their roster.
My point, in a decade or so your point may be valid. But they do get a chance to figure out how to get the academy and the USL work for them, and they are showing that they both understand and are willing to invest in the new MLS mode (which is still only a couple years old. I mean, SKC quickly hired someone who deals only in MLS capology, not everyone had that idea in 2014).

 

I'm not too familair with how the top European clubs build their rosters, but it seems as if the emphasis is at least as much on acquiring established stars as developing talent. I'm having a hard time seeing how an MLS club could become dominant purely through developing its own players, although that's certainly a factor. My concern is that MLS not unleash the "animal spirits" of the owners, wherein they recklessly spend on their rosters in the expectation that winning and big profits follow. It's been said before, but most believe that MLS owners as a whole, and even Mr. Blank, like that MLS protects them from their own worst instincts. MLS is doing better than ever financially, but there's still a speculative element to the recent massive increases in club valuations. I agree with the league's incremental approach to increasing roster spending. If in four-five years all the new clubs have been successfully integrated and attendance and revenues remain healthy, it's probably time to loosen the purse strings.

 

Just because I was curious about the point you raised, I checked out Barca's roster. I was thinking along your lines, that the top clubs buy what they want and that it's been since the ManU class of '92 since we've seen real difference makers come up through the system, but I was really wrong.
On the current Barca side, every Spaniard played for Barca B or came up through the academy. In addition, a couple auslanders, Messi and Rafinha, were academy/B products.
But then, clever thinker that i am, I thought that Barca is different. To see the real picture I should look at one of the big time mercenary clubs. So PSG, Johnny come lately etc. and superrich seemed a good pick. Their club was also built largely through their academy/B side. Every Frenchman on their roster, minus Mbappe, worked through the system (11 players on the rist team roster, plus Weah and others on loan but apparently in their plans).
Both sides obviously buy megastars, as well. But it's fair to say they build their core through a development system.
England might be different, but they certainly don't produce better teams than Barca. And its tough to spend more money than they or PSG have in the last couple years.

 

or (from the SKC website) ... "Sporting Kansas City earned multiple honors on Thursday during Major League Soccer’s 2018 Executive Awards Ceremony in Chicago, Sporting Executive of the Year: Peter Vermes ... Academy of the Year."
Officially, at least, SKC has the league's top academy at this point and it's showing in camp.