The All-Encompassing Pro/Rel Thread on Soccer in the USA

This is what they are probably doing. Might even have the parking lot of the stadium as its own company/entity separate from the team which will make money. But as you say only losses for the team are reported. Which honestly doesn't make sense at all when investors are paying $500M for a franchise. That's just the franchise. It doesn't include players, academy etc. No way in hell will any sane person invest in a business that supposedly is losing money EVERY year but "might" make money on the future (which going on 30 years it supposedly still isn't making any money).

Most of the stadiums in any US league are subsidized by the tax payers too.

 

Yeah but the subsidies are nothing like they used to be and probably nothing compared to the subsidies companies like Amazon are getting.

 

You live in NY so you ought to be aware that NY taxpayers are giving the Buffalo Bills $850m of corporate welfare. Not MLS,obviously, but still indicative of how taxpayers end up subsidizing wealthy closed league team owners.

 

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Exactly. Nothing to do with MLS. And NY taxpayers are pissed.

NYCFC are having to include 1,400 low cost apartments to appease the locals and they want more.

Not that NYCFC 's owners are anything but dipshots.

I'll also point out that English teams have received £100 millions of government lottery money for stadium improvements.

 

Hard to puit all together but it looks like some financial shenanigans occurred at the time they were becoming a fan-owned team. This resulted in a suspended points deduction from the Football League and also cost the club money to defend themselves in a lawsuit from a different potential buyer.

 

Over a ton of clubs and 30+ years. The Buffalo Bills will probably get a nice arming lot for that kind of money.

 

.@thegoalkeeper had a great line yesterday, which was “when the Premier League sneezes everyone catches a cold.”

On Open Cup it’s important to note MLS only pushed its agenda of destroying the cup AFTER the Prem had pushed the FA into changes which were disadvantageous for…

— Kartik Krishnaiyer 🇺🇦🌻⚽️ (@kkfla737) February 29, 2024

 

Oh, now 500 miles from Carson? Holy crap that's WAY MORE than 92

330M ? Oh, so the entire population of the US for baseball? Then that means the entire population of England for soccer, right ...

LOL wow

Which effectively subsidizes the clubs to an extent.
Hell, Arsenal capped off it's stadium financing by getting some subsidizing directly from fans through a bond scheme on long term ticket season ticket sales.

 

So the Premier League pushing for the scrapping of replays in later rounds and playing the fifth round in midweek is somehow to blame for MLS wanting to withdraw its first teams from the US Open Cup? That's an hilarious take.

What next... MLS agreeing to institute pro/rel next season because the Premier League has it??

 

If that is what you got from reading that post....

 

Of course not because within 250 miles of L.A. you have the highest and lowest points in the contiguous USA. Nobody lives there.

There are no football clubs in the High Sierras or Death Valley. Southern California is literally mountains and deserts, where humans only survive by stealing other people's water.

It's not temperate rolling hills like in England where you can build a town just about anywhere and have everything you need to live on.

 

I guess the sarcasm went straight over your head.

 

Given the overwhelming percentage of CA residents live south of Sacramento, you can certainly pick a spot in the southern Central Valley where ~40m people are within 250 to 275 miles.

 

Improve the quality of players. We live in a world where the most talented people broadly respond to money. If MLS wants to be viewed as a a top 10 league in the world, and I believe more importantly, the best league outside of Europe. Than they need to have squads, not just individual players, that back this up. And the way you do that is to offer money.

Now I agree you could double the salary cap tomorrow and you wouldn't see an appreciable difference this season. But in ten years you would.

They were starting from such a low bar that it's probably impossible for them to move as fast as I'd like. Again my short answer is be inline in percentage terms with the NFL, NBA, NHL.

 

There are NOT 92 MLS clubs within a 500 mile radius of LA, that's simply a lie!!! In fact I don't think LA Galaxy even has 92 'other' MLS clubs in total in the whole bloody country that it has to contend with! Meanwhile there are 92 other English league clubs within a 500 mile radius of Blackburn..........in fact its more like a 300 mile radius!! For there to be the same density of pro football clubs in the USA as there is in England ALL the clubs would have to be situated in 1/3rd of California!!

 

Whether they are are not 330million IS the target audience!!!! Thats about SEVEN times the target audience that Blackburn Rovers has!!

 

Well EXACTLY!!!! Unfortunately for Blackburn Rovers that's NOT the case - so they have 92 'other' English league football teams all within local travel distance to compete with for 'eyeballs'! Not only that they only have about 50 million people as a target audience!! That's less than a million people per English league club! With both the Manchester giants and both the Liverpool giants 30 or so miles away 'hoovering' up all the glory hunters it means that Rovers are doing rather well at 15'000 wouldn't you say.

 

The 80+ teams that Hail to the King cited aren't all MLS teams. They aren't even all association football teams. They are, however, all professional sports teams that are competing with the LA Galaxy for fans' money.

 

The last time I checked, England doesn't have 92 Premier League clubs.

Also, considering the relative popularity of soccer in the US, currently the total number of people in the US who would watch soccer at all is similar to the total number in England -- but they're spread out across a continent, and many of them don't watch any domestic soccer.

 

Yes but the 92 clubs I'm talking about ARE all English league clubs, I'm not even counting the rugby League, rugby union, cricket clubs etc. Blackburn rovers have 92 other FOOTBALL clubs to compete with LET ALONE the rugby league etc clubs.

 

It DOES have 92 pro league clubs though! They're all in the same competition.......which is why for example Blackburn Rovers have played Manchester United 113 times.

 

The equivalent to 92 MLS clubs is 92 Premier League clubs, is it not?

 

No its equivalent to the equivalent league and thats my point - the English league is a 'big' league (in comparison to the US) and it operates in a very tiny area (in comparison to the US) and it has a small domestic market (in comparison to the US).

Which is why Blackburn pull in impressive numbers for a town that is tiny (compared to the size of the cities that most 'other top pro' clubs in the world operate out of).

Apples to Oranges.

 

I believe it is a top ten league in the world in every metric, except that it lacks the mega clubs, the top 2 or 3 teams in the secondary leagues around the world, like Benfica, Ajax (not this season) and Flamengo.

MLS payrolls are roughly on parity with the bottom half of Ligue Un, but to compete with the top clubs in Ligue Un you'd have to triple or quadruple them.

So I don't see how even doubling payrolls is going to move the bar. Personally I prefer watching a league full of home-grown players and exciting young South-Americans than I would watching one full of Shaqiris and Jordan Hendersons.

But without access to the UEFA competitions all comparisons are pretty pointless.

 

Go ahead genius. The population of the whole state is 39 million and the distance between the two biggest population centers is nearly 400 miles.