You're correct. Granted the league could explain it better it goes like this. Canada Soccer Business (CSB) has a 10 year contract with the CSA and acts as the marketing arm of the CPL. It handles: All corporate partnerships and broadcast rights for the CSA & CPL About the structure CSB was founded by the CPL owners who owns an equal stake in it. Profits are then shared with CPL clubs and the CSA Expansion fees are to buy into CSB, not CPL nor does CPL owns a share of each clubs CPL is run by the Commissioner's office and board of governors Each clubs are independant and owns the players contracts - not the league I'm curious about how USL works. Can someone sheds some light? Same for NISA?
The reason MLS player contacts are owned by the league is to get around anti- trust laws. Clubs sign who the hell they want as long as it conforms with the convoluted acquisition rules.
NHL and NBA levers wish they were part of a single-entity. ROTHENBERG: [Single-entity ownership] had been rattling around in my head since the 1970’s when I was a young lawyer for the NBA. I remember kicking it around with some other lawyers, saying, “Boy, it would’ve been smart if [the NBA] was originally structured as a single entity. https://www.si.com/longform/2015/mls/index.html Fraser v. Major League Soccer, 284 F.3d 47 (1st Cir. 2002), was an antitrust suit filed by eight Major League Soccer players against MLS, the league's investors, and the United States Soccer Federation. The Court found that Major League Soccer was a single entity and therefore legally incapable of conspiring with itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_v._Major_League_Soccer?wprov=sfla1 So basically NBA and NHL players can accuse their owners of conspiring to act like a monopoly but that doesn't apply in the case of a single-entity.
USL is a pure franchise system, like McDonalds. So independently financed and operated, but you’re working as an outlet of USL and purchasing from them, using the deals the central office makes, etc., but the clubs sign and pay the players, etc. It gives you the standardization and uniformity of single entity, but distributes the costs/risks among the franchisees. With NISA the clubs are completely independent and own/run the league. There are some deals negotiated by the league (kits, broadcasting), but the clubs aren’t required to use them. You’ll see much wilder variations of professionalism and quality from top to bottom, although NISA will eventually begin tightening up minimum standards once they’re in a position to do so (they may wind up leaving D3 as a free for all and raise the bar when they open up D2).
Yes, but the salary floor is still provided by MLS. Regional bank branches can hire whoever they want, too, but they’re still working for BoA or whatever. Banks are really the best analogy I can think of to describe MLS.
Fun fact, the normal culprit continues to subpost me because he simply cannot directly engage. - still hasn't followed up with the actual clubs he's referring to with his "4" but says I post without an iota of facts to back them up. Status quo for said poster. Nothing I stated was non-factual. Prove me wrong. and in a poster example of a point I've made ..... here's M doing his best with "SELECTIVE APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLE!" .... in the ongoing discourse of this thread citing lower leagues/clubs or "non big or significant" etc have been waived of as examples or proof or points for those of us on "this" side of the discussion. But sure, totally valid for the other side eh?
If among other things banks competed for the same employees, had a common salary floor, short-term contracts, a minimum wage, no more than 28-30 staff, a draft, up to 3 designated highly paid employees and traded skilled foreign worker visas I might agree.
More fun facts .... on that list ^ Eastern Ontario SHL actually MERGED with another league in 2008, and then restarted in its original form in 2019 and is active today. It never ceased operations, if you will. At least that's what we're told about club mergers etc in pro/rel set ups. The NEHL was a semi-pro league ... but we're goffed at for non-league and Sunday league examples. The CHL was absorbed by the ECHL before it could dissolve. I mean, since this poster is so concerned with TRUTH in posting and such. Oh, and this is all the while DISMISSING the most damning piece of evidence in this portion of the "debate" .... we've got an example of a pro/rel model switching to a franchise/closed model with the resulting switch being not just a savior, but boon for the league (KHL replacing the RSL).
I mean... USL franchises aren’t literally the same as McDonalds’. There aren’t many businesses that are similar to MLS’s model: banks, where the branches are legally and financially all part of the same company but independently managed at a local level, (as opposed to franchises) helps frame the mental modal. It doesn’t have to line up perfectly in every way.
NHL, NBA, NFL, and MLB are a little of everything. Technically, they’re like NISA, in that the teams are wholly independently owned and operated. The teams also run the league (their respective commissioners work for the team owners). We call them franchises, but they aren’t, however their memberships in their leagues is basically a franchise. The leagues don’t have any control over the member clubs, but they do have control over the league membership. NBA couldn’t legally make Donald Sterling sell the Clippers, but they could take away his league franchise if he didn’t. Since membership in the NBA is the only thing that constitutes value regarding the teams (e.g. if the Carolina Panthers aren’t in the NFL, they’re nothing but an extremely expensive Harlem Globetrotters of football), losing that would make Sterling’s team immediately worthless, which forces him to sell. However, many decades of cartel status has begun to blur the lines between teams and leagues making them look somewhat like single entity leagues.
It's actually more like the Premier League than a bank, except MLS contacts are administered centrally.
In terms of day to day operations there's little difference. Each club is a shareholder. Each club is operated independently. Each club negotiates its own transfers. MLS obviously has more control. It can step in and take over player negotiations and can take ownership of a club with the agreement of the other shareholders e.g. RSL. Imagine if the EPL could have stepped in to avoid the Portsmouth or Bolton debacles.
So just the first league on my Ice hockey list - "The All American Hockey League". It lasted three seasons and during that time nine - count 'em - nine teams went bust:- Detroit Dragons, Chicago Blaze, Evansville IceMen, Wooster Korn Kings, Indiana Blizzard, Queen City Storm, Troy Bruins, Madison Ice Muskies and Michigan Moose. It seems all this league was good for was hilariously crap team names. "But Bury and Macclesfield". Honestly, the posters who drone on about those two teams are the equivalent of the "But her emails" crowd.
This was debated pretty heavily, and it SEEMS that the NBA COULD ... https://www.pollardllc.com/legal-analysis-yes-the-nba-can-force-sterling-to-sell-the-clippers/ Just something interesting I found while digging into all of this.
I can’t tell if that post distinguishes the team from the league membership. Admittedly, at the end of the day it’s an angels on the head of a pin, exercise. Even if the team exists independently of its right to play in the NBA, that sort of feels like a distinction without a difference.
I believe NBA owns the trademarks including team names. https://www.isipo.is/about-us/news/swamp-dragons-lakers-without-any-lakes-and-trademarks-nba
That’s interesting and makes sense given the evolution of NBA (I’m sure it’s true of all of the American leagues). This highlights what I meant by the lines blurring between teams and the league.
This is equivalent of digging several tiers down into non-league football. And again, there is never an apples to apples comparison. In the US and Canada, geography and travel costs create an inherent instability. Look at where those teams were located: it was a semipro league covering an area similar to the entire British Isles, similarly divided by a large body of water. How many clubs in the Isthmian League would be solvent if half of their away matches were in Scotland and Ireland, and the level of play was unchanged?
It would line up with the agreement that was made around the Sonics when they moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. It appears that Clay Bennett doesn't own the Sonics trademarks despite owning the Sonics (now Thunder) organization. If/when the NBA returns to Seattle the team will be the Sonics, there's not even a consideration of them being anything else. Supposedly the team's NBA Champions banner and other such items are at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry waiting for a team to return, they're not in Oklahoma City despite that organization claiming the Sonics history in their team stats and such.
Will it be considered the same club and will they pretend to be adding to trophees won by the club that went awol? That would sound to me as appropriating legacy like they do with the new Wembley Stadium, that's a completely different and new stadium the sticked the same name on. Yet they pretend it's the same thing with adding played Finals there to the ones played in the old Wembley. Could you imagine a castle where a family with pedigree has lived for centuries, but died out and decades later someone with the same name, but no lineage to the old family, buys the place, moves in and pretends to be from the same family?