The comment about people here seeing the sport as communist was an ignorant statement to be made to someone who isn't used to his posts. What people do see it as is non american and foreign to them. Arena football is US football played on artificial turf in a hockey rink Hockey was created in Canada, but the NHL has had mainly US teams for the last 80 years. It is generally noted as the 4th sport in the US, after football, baseball, and basketball. To make it economically viable, stadiums between 20 and 30 thousand are needed. MLS is the top league in the US. To garner attention we need to generate more revenue, and hopefully grab a few bigger players. There are many euro snobs, and SA snobs, who won't come out to view what they consider inferior soccer. I know not everyone feels this way, some say go rot to the euros, but time will tell. As you say 285 million, so that is one reason you hope we could generate a fan base of 30,000 for a team 10 miles away from a city of 10,000,000 It isn't communism as much as socialism. Each team is given the same resources and then they have to make the best of it. I don't like it either at this point. Might have been a good idea the first few years, but not now.
Congressman Jack Kemp called it a communist sport on the floor of the Congress. He was opposed to the US world cup bid. But agreed, the average person thinks of it as foreign, not communist necessarily.
Ah, but America has a good history of major business owners joining together to make sure they all stay rich (at least in the late 1800s and early 1900s). As in Monopolies, trusts, etc. So a few owners get together to form a league. they make the rules. they elect one of their own or an appointee to be "commissioner" to set league rules. they also want to make sure they split the profits in a "fair" manner - owning the NY Yankees would be worth nothing if all their opponents went bankrupt and died This is more applicable to baseball/football, but slightly applicable to our soccer. And many owners who get mad by feeling they are being victims of success (Steinbrenner) get extra perks from the league in one way or another.
That will be a huge step forward for MLS. Or backward, depending on your take of such things. But in any case, getting gamblers interested in MLS would be boffo, IMO.