I think the teams American fans really want to pay inflated ticket prices to watch are getting fewer. Barca, Madrid, Juventus, Bayern, Dortmund and the top 6 EPL teams are the big drawers. Pretty much any match not involving those teams could be played in a MLS stadium.
Nike will market their players. They won't market anything else. SUM is on record saying the USWNT doesn't need any marketing. So they don't get any. SUM is a horrible marketing partner and it is nuts you would defend them with Nike marketing. In other words, a company not getting $millions from USSF is doing better at marketing than the company that is. MetLife can have grass too, not like SUM doesn't know how to lay sod over turf. They just had the women in a baseball stadium.
I get what you're saying but that is precisely Relevent's modus operandi (and it drives me nuts to have a misspelled name). They promote ICC which is essentially exactly that market. And from there they could edge over into let's promote a La Liga league game. Maybe the idea being that fans might give a little on the name brand requirement if it is league play. And if you get league games you could in theory build to an empire of parallel scheduling, where every week (or "often enough") there is MLS and then there is some expeditionary foreign league contest. As it is people don't seem to acknowledge what it means when ICC is playing while MLS is going, and maybe even the same week in the same town. A little of that, particularly involving our teams, I tolerate. When it becomes come watch Europe and Mexico I feel like we are being milked and implicitly put down. "Let me give you a real game." And I am sure some snobs have precisely that reaction. I am not sure that reaction works in our long term interests, though. I already think we are losing some of the domestic soccer quality value from changed payroll and roster rules. The product is better and perhaps incrementally more snob friendly. We can probably afford it. But the league is less beneficial to the national soccer scene. My Dynamo had 4 calls to GC. 3 are Hondurans and one Salvadoran. None are US players. These ICC type games only seem to result in more NASL style snob pressure to open the checkbooks and bring in foreign players. Initially the impact would be this NT concern I have. But over time I think you would also introduce European levels of financial instability into the pro league. The response is generally that pro/rel would resolve it by flushing the bad and rewarding the good, but the league is already financially tiered as is, and USL is not even on the same payroll/resources/attendance planet. I think you are leaving out Mexico's NT and clubs who sometimes play friendlies here and often draw well in the football stadia. That is one element at play here but they come here for either official tournaments or friendlies, they don't try and blur the lines. I think part of the game may have been using this Ecuadorian contest as a test case. Does USSF play ball or set down a hard line? And we see they threw down the gauntlet. If we win then this idea is over. If they win the court case (or CAS arbitration, or whatever it ends up being) then they can try the La Liga game and other stuff. I'd be curious if the Ecuadorians knew they were cannon fodder.
Reading the USSF charter and can't find the part about having to protect MLS. How are more soccer games bad for soccer in the country?
How many pro teams does Chelsea have here? How many Americans do they sign? How many first team Americans do they actually play? Do they generally loan out our players? Where does the money go when you buy a ticket to watch Chelsea play? Or buy a Chelsea shirt? If MLS is run out of business, how many games will Chelsea hold here per year? What facilities are they building here? How many official academies do they have? How many players are allowed to pursue the sport for free as a result? Do players actually graduate to the senior team? In comparison, what boxes of these would MLS teams tick? I think a distinction can be made between "supporting pro soccer" and "supporting MLS" -- one I start to feel when the Dynamo suck -- but the reality is at present the two align. Whether you like MLS or not, they invest in the domestic game in a way these foreign teams do not. To be fair, so do USL etc. To me MLS needs to be wary of giving away the store to foreign players just like USSF needs to watch out that it is promoting domestic soccer and not just soccer in general. If you undermine our pro players and pro teams/leagues by killing off the league, I don't think that is promoting the game here. The UK is not going to drop its work permit rules for us to get in their gold plated league people love. It will still be a handful of lucky people in the pyramid. At a point, the scheduling of a parallel schedule of foreign league games played at the same time as MLS would divert ticket buying and viewership and interest towards those teams. Those teams are not going to hire 15-20 Americans per team, build teams and stadia here, train youth, etc. They are here to make a buck and they encourage our youth in the same sense some kids decide to be vets after going to the circus. But most already knew what they wanted to see. If that team is Liverpool or Milan, those teams have either none or next to no Americans under signature. I am paying to watch nice soccer, yes. But they could give a f*ck about you on their team. Which is why as half cooked as MLS may be relatively speaking, I am going to be a fan of that first. The ones I respect are like City or Red Bull. Invest in our teams, yes, some of it is to cherry pick some coaches and players, but there is a domestic infrastructure and capital and set of players left here.
Let me give an example of what I see as a particularly American naivete. It is easier to watch EPL here than there. I can watch more than half my Dynamo games with rabbit ears, if I had to. There is literally no such availability of EPL in the UK. Ever wondered why people are down at the pub watching games? Hmmm. People are naive about who they are dealing with, the extent of the profit motives involved, and ignorant of the lack of lasting investment left after the circus leaves town. It is an exciting circus but I'd rather invest in my Zoo or animal cruelty protection society or wildlife refuge or whatnot. And I think when the other circus starts wanting to hold official events across the street from our local circus at the same time a line needs to be drawn.
Nike has a sponsoring a license agreement with the USSF (they are the other half of the SUM agreement essentially, with a contract that brought in . They will promote the team to maximize eyes on their products, as they main benefit for Nike is people tuning into matches to watch. The revenues for the last financial disclosure from USSF for this portion was $22,177,000. That said, even if there was limited promotion, the USWNT was just under a sellout at Red Bull Arena, and will have significant ratings this summer. It might be true they don't need as much promotion. That aside, I expect we wills tart to see it in full force over the next month.
And if I had to put it in terms of the bylaws, promoting soccer in the US should mean soccer that is still here a week later and not back on a plane to Europe.
For me personally, I feel divided about the Relevent case. Because on the face of it - no, I'm not really a major fan of holding Ecuadorian games in the USA. I'm not really that bothered by it - I don't see the presence of two foreign teams playing in the USA as posing an automatic threat to MLS or American soccer. It's not like two Ecuadorian teams playing a game in Miami means an MLS match has to be canceled. It's hardly a zero-sum equation. Neither do I believe that we shouldn't allow it if it "doesn't promote American soccer". It'd be one thing if the USSF or MLS was paying for the game - but if it doesn't cost us anything, and it doesn't hurt the sport ... ? The USSF isn't being asked to pay for or endorse the match. Nothing is lost by this match going forwards. I don't think there's much benefit for US soccer, but I don't think it hurts any. And I'm sure some Ecuadorian immigrants would be happy to watch those teams live - they might even fill out a quarter of the stadium. Fine, let it go ahead. So it doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is that USSF is operating like SUM and MLS's associate, rather than independent organizations with some shared priorities, but ultimately divergent mission statements. I understand why USSF wants to block foreign competitors from playing in the US - but that's not part of their mandate. They are the governing body of the sport - not the guardian of the national league. These three organizations are already too informal, insular, and incestuous - USSF's behavior in this instance suggests they may have actively lost sight of the purpose of their organization and the distinction between their groups. And that kind of degradation of roles can lead to and perpetuate dysfunction. USSF needs tension. They need outside perspectives, diversity of views and interests, incentives to strengthen and grow. Not the current arrangement, where they sit around in a close-knit huddle, repeatedly congratulating each other.
Why? If it is a success, I'm sure there will be more games. USSF is supposed to promote soccer. Not men's only or not beach or futsal, all of it equally. Not only teams that are pro, but amateur. An Ecuadorian or Spanish league game is the same as an ICC match or Mexican NT game. Should USSF not sanction Mexico games because they might not play here again?
Just curious, does it actually say “equally” in the charter. I see equal opportunity for amateur clubs, but that is more of an EEo type thing. Also, which affiliate members of USSF are supporting the Ecuador match? Just curious who within the USSF affiliates would Be benefitting and therefore could actually petition the USSF from inside.
This is the lawsuit, so we will see. Like a previous poster, I wouldn't buy tickets to an Ecuadorian league game. I might to a La Liga game though. But otherwise, USSF shouldn't stand in the way of more soccer. They knew they were on murky ground, which is why they delayed rather than decide. I'm starting to get the feeling all these lawsuits are connected. Not just connected by the SUM Achilles heel that USSF has, but by the parties and lawyers coordinating their discovery and legal attack.
There are more people involved than Stephen Ross. I think when I was researching this before, the other key soccer players of RSE actually had ties to MLS at one time (Charlie Stillitano and then a couple of guys that were responsible for the MLS Hispanic outreach early on).
He also seems to be quite bitter towards/jealous of MLS/SUM as well...........of course when you want what someone else has (and frankly does better) some people tend to get that way. Plus seems like Charlie actually is more interested in growing his bank account than growing the game in the US.
C’mon. MLS is focused on its owners bank account and isn’t benevolently trying to grow the game in the US unless it helps them financially. I’m fine with this but it’s deceptive for you to consistently claim that MLS has US soccer’s growth as one of its aims rather than a by product of MLS making money.
Oh they don't huh? Then why are MLS owners sinking 10's of millions of dollars every year in youth development academies?? Which, btw, all but two are FREE to play..... Weston McKennie, Chris Richards, Zac Steffen, Will Trapp, Sebastian Soto, Ledesma, Tyler Adams, Haji Wright, Tim Weah, CJ Dos Santos, to name a few, all played and developed in MLS academies...............
Well it's not out of benevolence, look at Alphonso Davies. Olympique Lyonnaise turned themselves from a regional team into a powerhouse through player development (think Michael Essien, Florent Malouda, Sidney Govou, Juninho, Cris, Eric Abidal, Mahamadou Diarra, Patrick Müller and Karim Benzema) and I think that's the model MLS is trying to follow. However the side-effect of their program is that more kids get the opportunity to play soccer and train professionally, which works out for everyone (well everyone except lower division teams, thanks to the lack of a transfer system).
Lol! They are doing it because they think they’re getting value out of the costs of the system. Look at how MLS has changed its position on S/TC now that it’s developing players instead of being big buyers. As Paul Berry states above, US players being developed are a (welcomed) by product of MLS trying to make money - They definitely want to “grow their bank account more than to grow the game”.