I've been thinking. Single entity is a necessary evil for MLS as it begins and I hope that someday(sooner rather than later) that MLS will go away from that allow owners of MLS clubs to buy and sell players as they deem fit to make their club a better squad as other clubs do, worldwide. I think that in a way, the single entity rule is holding back investor/operator interest. If I were a billionaire, I would want to know that I could make a profit, transfer fees is how clubs make money and with single entity all transfer fees go the the league and not the individual clubs/owners so that would make me hesistant to invest in MLS. I think that once we expand to 16 teams and hopefully 14-15 individual owners than at that time, we should eliminate the necessary evil........What do you guys think?
Clubs need to have control of their foreign slots, under the current system MLS signs the player and then MLS decides who get its, MLB,NBA,NFL do not operate under the single entity rule, WNBA does and look at the problems they are having. If not for the simple reason that clubs should be allowed to decide their own fate by signing and selling who they want, I can't think of a better one and suppose Columbus would have gotten the trasnfer fee for McBride, they could have use that money to buy another player or for the team but MLS got the $ so where is the profit for the team who in some cases have developed these young talents?
that's not entirely true. clubs often arrange foreign signings on their own nowadays. part of transfer fees do go back to the club
What not entirely true? That is the point I was trying to make, that clubs get the transfer fee, now how much of the fee they receive, I do not know, but they still get something as oppose to now, MLS clubs get nothing
If I was a billionaire potential owner-investor, the first thing I would be interested in is to make sure that there was a secure limit on my costs, such as a salary cap. Sports in the US do not operate like sports in the rest of the world, and this is probably not going to change. Even if MLS was able to do away with Single Entity, the league would still not operate like leagues in other countries. If anything, it's looking more and more like leagues in Europe are moving toward the US model so it would be good for you to understand it.