The difference is that MLS is a single entity -- which means it is a single corporation. The owners do not own teams, they own shares in the corporation and the corporation owns the teams. We've already seen a run up in the value of the shares of SUM. In 2012, Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm, bought 25% of SUM for what was reported to be $125M - $150M. MLS just bought the shares back for reportedly three times that amount, meaning PEP made $250M to $300M on the sale of its shares in just five years. https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2017/06/20/Finance/Providence.aspx
I agree for reasons you outline. To those I would add that while the US may be behind to way behind in most things about playing the sport, I think US owners are held in great respect for those interest in making money off the sport. I suspect that the large majority of the soccer world owners are envious of the MLS model. MLS has used it to great advantage in rapidly building a powerful league. Controlling domestic player salaries (one of the biggest costs), is just one example SUM is yet another. My guess is the US would have more than half the teams with the balance made up of the Canadian and Mexican teams. While some of the big Mexican teams may have more followers (for now), the followers of US teams likely can be monetized at a much higher value, The other thing is that you are looking at followers now. In a decade of DP's (including many Mexican stars), the end of LigaMx dominance over MLS on the field, and native Hispanic kids playing in MLS I suspect the difference social media knows will be much different. As an aside, success will not hinge purely on quality - EPL has demonstrated quite decisively that you do not need the highest quality league to win eyeballs, but instead a level of quality that is close enough. I think you will more US venues for the reason FIFA wants more US venues.
When Wenger said the European Super League is inevitable, he was thinking as an economist. To an economist, free trade and open markets are inevitable, too. But, in a reality with borders and politicians, when there are a lot of people with vested interests in putting up barriers, it doesn't always happen. That's how you get Brexit and trade wars. Given that UEFA/FIFA are at least somewhat democratic, and there are a lot more countries that have a piece of the Champion's league pie than there are who would gain from a Super League, how is the Super League inevitable? I think they have to keep giving the small countries something to keep their votes. As far as the North American Super League, it seems more likely that it would be a new, improved version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_SuperLiga than a complete merger of the two leagues.
The Super League only works if each federation involved, members of Uefa, FIFA, and the teams all agree. There is enough money to bribe away Uefa and FIFA, the hard part is going to be the FAs. Last week Chelsea Chairman basically ripped Financial Fair Play as he said it prevented teams from coming to the premier league from lower divisions and/or winning the title when they do so. He pointed out Chelsea in 2003 and Man City in 2008 as examples of clubs in the past who would be harmed had FFP existed back in the day. Funnily, those are the two clubs whose owners spent money like they had to get rid of it, but unlike other owners at Portsmouth, they still had the money if/when collapse happened. I think it will interesting to see how Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal react if the Super League starts to become a reality. Their owners are also owners in US Salary Capped Leagues. They would probably support a separate league, but would likely insist on financial regulations. Other teams like Chelsea, may not.
Or they just change the rules. I agree its all about the money, but I think the powerful clubs are able to force the others to give them ever more of it until the smaller clubs really will have nothing left to offer. A breakaway has been mooted for many years, but I think the various institutions have "bought" peace with the Big Clubs by generating a series of ever larger, huge broadcast deals, both for the EPL and the UEFA Champions League. I think Wenger correctly is seeing that engine start to sputter, which calls into question whether that model will continue to work. Wenger bluntly says in the interview, "the Champions League doesn’t sell well anymore. Look at the audiences of the Champions League. There’s a contrast there because if you look at the audiences of the Champions League, it is not fantastic. But if you have Real v Barca or Real v Arsenal or Manchester United v Bayern Munich every week, the audiences will be good." Keep in mind the timetable too. In October, 2017, it had been widely reported that the so called "Big Six" EPL clubs were pushing for a greater share of the foreign TV money, which was projected to grow far more in the next decade, and, even more than the domestic audience, was driven by "big name" clubs. As the Daily Telegraph reported, "The ‘Big Six’ argue that their popularity drives most of the overseas interest in Premier League football but their fellow clubs are vehemently against the plan as they believe it will give the big clubs a greater competitive disadvantage while significantly harming their own income. The ‘Big Six’ say the present method of splitting the overseas money is out-dated – it is currently divided equally – but the subtext of their proposal is an understanding that those rights, regarded as less significant when the Premier League was launched 25 years ago, will become increasingly important and valuable." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...big-six-want-greater-share-overseas-tv-money/ Wenger gave that interview several months later and it was published on May 10, 2018 where he said the super league had become inevitable. The disappointing EPL rights auction numbers for the new domestic television contracts were reported in February, 2018, and a couple weeks after that interview was published it was clear the EPL was looking at a significant decline in the value of it's domestic broadcast deals: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-set-sell-rights-unwanted-40-games-cheap.html The Big Six EPL clubs responded by forcing changes in the distribution of the foreign broadcast rights a couple of weeks later, in early June. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...big-six-win-battle-overseas-television-rights Again, Wenger saw that coming and talked about it -- it's the same argument the Big Clubs are using for more of the Champions League money: especially for foreign audiences, "the big clubs will say that if two smaller clubs are playing each other nobody wants to watch it." With that background, I think the MLS and Liga MX press release reads a bit differently than is being interpreted by some posters -- the idea that there's not much new to see here and it's just warmed over SuperLiga. I think Enrique Bonilla is clearly referencing what is going on with the Big Clubs in Europe when he talks about the need for MLS and Liga MX to work together, "The main idea is that we have to grow together to compete. If not, there is only going to be the rich guys in Europe and the rest of the world." Yes, how that all works will almost certainly evolve, but it's not going to stop with a Superliga revival IMO.
Agreed. Another report that caused a stir this summer was the 3rd edition of the vysyble annual football finance report last July. Here's the press release, although the report is behind a paywall: http://vysyble.com/22nd-july-2018-wsriu3rd The report went beyond FFP and looked at the "economic performance of Premier League clubs over the most recent 9-year period by the calculation of economic profit (where all the costs of doing business including tax, interest and capital charges are considered) for each club and for each statement of accounts." The result? "Based on the "economic profit" concept – a much more demanding metric of performance that includes all of the costs of doing business – the report found EPL clubs generated a collective revenue of £26.1billion over the past nine years. However, they still managed to achieve economic losses of £1.9billion." Even the big clubs aren't doing as well as you would expect. The report concludes, "despite record revenues, the top six clubs as a group are still spending beyond their means on transfer fees and wages with no sign of this slowing in the face of a significantly reduced 2019-2022 EPL domestic TV deal. This is what has motivated the top 6 clubs to seek additional revenue streams including a greater share of international TV rights." The cure, as you suggest, is both a greater share of the revenue and tighter financial regulations with an NFL style league that does not relegate clubs. Roger Bell of vysyble is quoted in the press release saying: “The EPL retains the gambler’s main enemy – risk. The top six clubs are dominating proceedings in a way that points towards a desire to further reduce their risk, to the point of dispensing with the current EPL altogether. Clubs hope they will be able to recover the shortfall in domestic TV money from international media revenues and it is the top six clubs, who have not made a collective economic profit in years, that just negotiated to receive a bigger share. It is the increasing ambition of the Top 6 and their different fiscal approach that leads us to believe that the EPL is already on the road towards an end-game that will result in its ultimate demise and replacement by an NFL-style European Super League . . . We can clearly see a two-tier division with obvious implications regarding a potential breakaway group comprising of the top six clubs." But the press release buries the lead. If people question why the Big Six EPL clubs would join a breakaway, vysyble concludes on this ominous note: "The current EPL structure as we know it is, in our view, unsustainable given the operating practices deployed by the clubs.”
You raise an interesting point here that I didn't really respond to in my previous reply. Soccer is the most global of games, but it is also a very tribal one, and I agree with you that is certainly an issue here. Just as we are seeing this tension politically in Europe and the United States as countries struggle with the impact of globalization, we are going to see it in soccer too IMO. I have no doubt that fans -- a lot of them -- are going to dislike (to put it mildly) what the game is evolving into with European and North American super leagues filled with super teams built for a global audiance. That said, I think technology and a market economy will demand this result. Manchester United fans aren't just from the red side of Manchester anymore, or even from throughout the UK, but rather they are scattered across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They have a global fan base, as do a number of "super clubs", and soon, very soon, the needs of the global fan base will override the needs of the local, domestic one because that's where the majority of the money will come from. That's why the shift in the perceived value of the EPL broadcast rights and the Big Six clubs' demand to get more of that money is such an important marker IMO -- it's an acknowledgement of the game's globalization. Yes, the governing bodies may slow it down, but they can't stop it.
The idea is that the big ~20 clubs would essentially say F U to FIFA. They would decide "we're going to build our own league, you can either back us, or you can see your cash cow leave FIFA. And good luck selling the World Cup when the players on the top 20 teams in the world are no longer eligible since we're no longer part of FIFA". If they ever laid down that ultimatum FIFA and the FAs would fold like a cheap suit. Now I know the response would be "how would the players stand for losing their chance of playing in the World Cup?". There are million$ of reasons why they would be ok with it. Certainly some players would object and move to FIFA approved clubs but a whole lot of them would stay for the payday. At the same time though, that's the nuclear option for everyone involved and everyone knows if that trigger is ever pulled it becomes a new era of pro soccer and while everyone thinks they know what will happen, they all realize that nobody knows for sure what the dominoes falling might trigger, so nobody is yet ready to do it. But the threat is there.
Wouldn't telling an owner/shareholder that his club won't be in the combined league be like telling a common person that he has to give up his stock in McDonald's in exchange for the same amount of shares of a smaller competitor like Arby's? People have said that MLS won't have relegation because owners/shareholders won't pay the expansion fee if they could be relegated. Doesn't that apply to being included in or excluded from a combined league? It's not just about the World Cup. It also includes World Cup qualifying, confederational tournaments, and youth tournaments. I think USA will be mad if World Cup 2026 is missing top players who play in a Super League and are banned by FIFA. Somebody said that if a player plays in an unsanctioned league (this was not said in reference to a Super League, just in general), FIFA can give him a lifetime ban from playing in any sanctioned competition. That means that if a player on a Super League club declines and no Super League club wants him any more, FIFA can end his career rather than him being able to play for another club. Imagine if players on Super League clubs could never play in another league. Players like Beckham, Dempsey (returning after Tottenham), Rooney, Villa, Henry, Howard (returning after his time in Europe included Manchester United), Giovinco, and Ibrahimovic couldn't have come to MLS. Bradley played for AS Roma who could be a Super League club.
Imagine what effect it will have on a players capability to score personal sponsor deals, if he's out of international play.
Well, it's the experience of being at it live and literally feel the excitement that matters. Years, well..decades ago a collegue of mine who was a big fan of the Stones told me he rather spend his money on a record than on a concert. For him the live experience didnot matter. But even in the times of being able to watch pop stars via internet the live concerts are still there and popular, even so that the Stones can see in their audience grandfather, son and grandson enjoying together. Even for todays media tied generation the live experience is there to be.
Probably that's inherent to the streaming service. I can and sometimes watch mls matches on Eurosport over the cable and I get Dutch comments with it with info that suggests knowledge about the teams and players..
Zero, even though in fact the leagues they watch are de facto conferences of the European continent. But they donot perceive it like that as their perception isnot Europe wide, but restricted to their bordres. The Atlantic League proposals didnot/donot generate much support among the respective supporters in the countries.
The simple answer is no. The explanation, like MLS itself, is complicated. Even more so because over the years, MLS has adopted the terminology common to a "franchise league" like the NFL. But look under the hood, and it's legally very different. From the court opinion in the case Fraser v. MLS: "MLS has, to say the least, a unique structure, even for a sports league. MLS retains significant centralized control over both league and individual team operations. MLS owns all of the teams that play in the league (a total of 12 prior to the start of 2002), as well as all intellectual property rights, tickets, supplied equipment, and broadcast rights. MLS sets the teams' schedules; negotiates all stadium leases and assumes all related liabilities; pays the salaries of referees and other league personnel; and supplies certain equipment." https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-1st-circuit/1441684.html Again, because the league structure is unusual and MLS is not the most transparent of organizations, I think US fans tend to "fill in" gaps with what we know of other more common league structures, but the corporation that is MLS not only owns the teams, it owns the tickets and the player contracts. These aren't "team owners" in the conventional way fans understand them to be. What we call "owners" are in fact people who both own shares in MLS and SUM and also operate a league owned team under a management contract. To be sure, it's heavily incentivized. The operators must fund the cost of the stadium, hire the local staff, and fund some of the DP costs. In exchange, they get to keep certain revenue under the terms of their contract with the league. But make no mistake, they are operating the equivalent of a company owned store. A store owned by MLS. (As an aside, that made the league's protests about Columbus all the more pathetic IMO -- MLS always had the power to stop that, which it seems they now have done). What is typically called an "expansion fee" is more accurately the cost of buying stock in MLS, SUM and the contractual right to operate a team. It most certainly is not a fee to buy a franchise. Despite the criticism of pro rel zelots and critics from abroad, MLS does not have "franchises." Now, it's entirely possible, likely even, that the operating rights of a team left out of the super league will be worth less which will certainly hurt individual operators, but -- and this is the key -- all of these operators also own shares in the league, which means they all have an ownership interest the corporation that owns the MLS teams that will be included in the super league. As long as an operator of an excluded team can make more on his shares of the league (which owns the teams in the super league) than they make on the operating rights, they are ahead. And as a single corporate entity that owns everything, MLS is better positioned than any other league on the planet to make that happen. Put simply, if the money is good enough, they can more than make it up to those with teams that are excluded.
Neither UEFA nor the big clubs want to select the nuclear option. If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that, ever so slowly, the Champions League has been morphing into a Super League since day one. The last major decision to go in favor of the big clubs was to give 4 automatic slots to the top 4 ranked leagues by coefficient. Only problem is, the major clubs could argue that these changes haven't gone far enough, and that it's unfolding too slowly. Despite that, if you listen to the CEOs of the big clubs, you'll see that none of them are keen to completely break away from the national league structures. They want a far more prominent European competition, without resetting everything. Here is what both UEFA head Ceferin and Juventus' Agnelli, who is also head of the European Club Association, said this week: Read between the lines. Agnelli knows change is coming with or without UEFA. And Ceferin, who has to pander to small clubs as well, knows this as well, but can't come out and say it. So what are UEFA doing? They're doing things like creating a third European cup competition, and moving Europa League to 32 teams, down from 48. In my view, UEFA and the big clubs are preparing for a major restructuring of European competition for 2024. The way they'll appease smaller clubs and nations is to expand the inclusion of teams into European competition. But the very top of that structure is going to change drastically. The Champions League isn't going away. And a Super League isn't coming. That's because the Champions League is a Super League. It's just taking a very long time to get to that point. But we're now past the point of pretending it's a competition for all of Europe. Over the next 5 years, in time for the 2024 timeline Agnelli refers to, I suspect there will be major changes to the Champions League, and they'll be offset by the restructuring of the Europa League and the introduction of the third pan-European competition. What might this change look like? Exactly what you'd expect. As Agnelli says: We’re looking for more inclusion, but with a focus on quality. Translation: We want more European competitions (which UEFA has confirmed), but we want the top clubs to play against top clubs regularly, and not have to water down Champions League with teams whose quality doesn't match up with the elite, and who bring very little to the table financially. Again, to me it's very obvious that UEFA, at least behind the scenes, understands what needs to happen, and where the Champions League is going (a mostly closed league for super clubs), but as the representative of 54 member nations, it can't be forthright about this. Yet it's action, as evidenced by the changes to the Champions League since its inception, show that to be the case. Yet we're now at a point where these changes will need to ramp up fast. And to me there's no doubt that the Champions League will, in the next several years prior to that 2024 date, change dramatically. And the most obvious change to the format of Champions League has to do with maximizing the number of times big clubs play against each other.
I think that's right. If you read what Wenger says both in this interview and previously, he envisions just this -- with a couple of tweaks. The Champions League takes over the prime slots, that is the weekends, with the league games moving to mid-week. The big clubs will remain in their domestic leagues, but with "b" rosters, while the "a" rosters play in the revamped Champions League. If that's right though, I suspect it will be transitional. It's a lot of work and cost. Eventually, I think Europe ends up with essentially a UEFA run super league, with promotion and relegation to that league from the domestic leagues run by the various FAs. Here, since Mexico and the US economically dominate CONCACAF, the super league will be even less inclusive IMO, and CONCACAF's role will be much smaller.
It would be good to know how Wenger envisions the Champions League to look like in the future. Even Wenger understands that the Premier League still has a broadcast contract valued in the billions. The idea that Manchester United and co are waiting excitedly to relegate the Premier League to secondary status in favor of European riches is simplistic. In fact, for English clubs, the Premier League revenue is a huge point of difference between them and other elite clubs in Europe. They won't want that to go away. So I think the Premier League will be treated very well by the big clubs for a long time to come, and they won't be fielding weakened sides. Same deal with other leagues. There's still way too much money in the domestic leagues for them to start treating it as a secondary interest. Of course, that's not really a problem when it comes to rosters. We know for a fact that players are used to playing twice a week. They may not all like it, but that's how it is right now as things stand. And squads are big, and rotations take place. Playing twice a week most weeks is something that's very manageable for the big clubs. But I don't necessarily think we need to have one extreme or the other when it comes to scheduling. I think they can find a halfway point for all parties to come away satisfied. There may be weeks in which the domestic leagues are played on weekends and others where they're played during the week. It's actually not too dissimilar from what happens now with domestic cups, which sometimes take place on weekends and league games during midweek. Of course, unless the Champions League becomes a competition with 16+ rounds, this may not actually even be a problem. A Premier League with 38 rounds and a Champions League with 6-16 group stage rounds still leaves a lot of weekends for Premier League action throughout the season. In such a scenario, then yeah Wenger's thinking wouldn't be too far off. When you consider that league games are already played during midweek across Europe, this idea of sharing weekends would become a relatively easy sell I imagine. It doesn't have to across the entire pyramid (we already see Championship/League One/Two games being played on Champions League nights), but just in the top division. But you're right in that it would probably be transitional in any case. A weekend, a weekend there at first.
Agreed to a point -- digital streaming is the wild card IMO. Again, the prospect of individual clubs selling broadcasts of games worldwide directly to fans, effectively bypassing the "bundling" of a league broadcast deal, could dramatically reduce the hold a domestic league has over its participants, even one as rich as the EPL. If the big clubs can cut out the middle man (i.e., the league), I think they will -- or at least they'll demand a much bigger cut than even now. For MLS, however, I think this continued concentration of wealth among the top clubs of Europe is clearly what is motivating the discussions with Liga MX. As you said in the thread in N&A, if they are going to do more than a warmed over Super Liga to keep pace.
I don't think a European Super League will ever happen, and for one reason: Someone has to lose. None of the teams being bandied about are used to losing more than they win, and I think they believe (rightly, in my opinion) that their brand will be damaged by being on the wrong end of the league, no matter how prestigious it is. Transferring that into MLS, with the discussed joining with the Mexican league, I actually think it would be easier here. Even the Galaxy miss the playoffs on occasion, so fans are more tolerant. I do think it would hurt the game in the US in the long run, excluding large swaths of the country based simply on market. To contribute further to the discussion, I do think we are going through a time of upheaval, but it has much more to do with the delivery method rather than what we watch. My best bet is that come two decades from now, we will be paying very similar amounts for what we watch, but to a different set of companies than what we do now. Moreover, we will be paying for more tailored content than what we have now. I think the same question will be asked of MLS then as now: How do we get more people to want to watch the game? I do think the strategy will be different, but not 180 degrees different. People still like their stars. As far as social media, I don't think they will power much of anything. It seems almost impossible to monetize them. What I like, as someone mentioned above, is what the NBA is doing with increasingly specific access to their product, but with escalating cost. What I don't know is if that's possible in soccer.
That's because, as I've argued in other threads about the SL topic, the big clubs damn well know they're screwed without their presence in a national league. In the national league they have a regular chance on winning silverware, which gives them, including a top 4 place, access to the prestige of competing for the CL Cup. Given that the last 10-15 seasons the clubs that will end in the top 5 of that SL are almost the same it makes those national league superclubs turn into the Newcastles of the SL, perennial underachievers. That will kill their attaction globaly. Those "fans" in Asia and the USA are for the most bandwagon/gloryhunter "fans". In the mean time the clubs that stayed behind will take advantage of the absence of those clubs by taking their place and popularity in the national leagues. The American and Asian investors in that SL really donot understand the tribalism that goes with soccer, as that concept in their sportsleagues is absent. The way their leagues are set up is for catering the entertainment need of those fans. There's talk about the (current) top six epl clubs going rogue into that SL. If one of them decides to stay that jeopardizes the other 5 as the fans are eager to punish those 5's Fahnenflucht and in the process give the one that stays the upper hand. I'm very certain that when the superclubs are being threatened with total isolation from the mainstream soccer community by the FA's and the UEFA, they count their blessings and stay. I would even go as far as to punish those clubs that made those threats by taking away their benefits over the normal clubs in the CL.
To be able to stream a match, even from your own grounds, you need permission of your opponent. Let's suppose the main interest from abroad is for matches between those six. That totals into per club max six matches to stream without problems. Let's suppose of the total epl package the value is for 60% in those inter 6 matches and for let's say 30% in the matches of the big six vs the "minnows". Would the minnows agree with a going back to 15% for them all (supposing 50/50 sharing) of the epl abroad revenues? Can the top six maintain their expenses with a loss of the total of 30% in case of non agreement? How about the sponsor deals of the top six, which are based on a minimum time on tv? Manchester United saved themselves financially by winning the EL. By doing so they secured the minimum 65 millio €€ for being in the CL, but also about a hundred million in sponsor money as these were linked to the level where the club plays.
You've given the rationale for why the Big Six break away. At some point, the amount shared with the small clubs gets so low they will vote as a block and refuse to go any lower. That's still likely to be a material amount of money, however -- money the Big Clubs will want and need. The logical outcome is for the Big Six to form something new with other Big Clubs that have similar economics where more of the matches generate more global interest.
I think this is way overblown personally. In the EPL, odds are that two of the Big Six will lose the league and fail to qualify for the Champions League. They'll lose. Yet that hasn't stopped those clubs from increasing their investment and quality. Only one club wins the Champions League, yet you don't see clubs like Bayern and PSG and Barca and Real Madrid that basically have had their way in their domestic leagues bypassing the tournament in protest because they only want to participate in competitions stacked in their favor. Closer to home, by sheer numbers, the odds of any one team winning a title in any given year in league that's twice as big aren't as good, yet MLS fans aren't protesting against expansion. You don't see many MLS teams seeking to drop down a level where they can dominate a lesser league and win titles more consistently. The reason is simple -- both economically and emotionally, the value of the prize matters IMO. Fans want to see their teams compete against the best, as long as the rules allow them the opportunity to compete, I don't think the outcome has to be guaranteed.
I still don't think this will happen. I am a Brewers fan, and this season has been awesome, but do you really think any of the teams involved would sign up to be the Milwaukee Brewers of the European Super League, where they are only intermittently competitive? I doubt it, because it would hurt their income. They need the Fulhams and Energie Cottbus and Rayo Vallecanos of the world to beat on to make them look like a "winner".
Well leagues are going to have to at least try to get top teams to share some of that streaming revenue. Big Clubs will fight against it and probably will win, but the leagues for the good of the smaller clubs will need to fight them on this. Same with MLS, but as they say putting the genie back in the bottle may be impossible, they should start now before it gets worse. This right here tells me that the EPL is trying to do the "right thing" not allowing Man U to sell their digital rights separately, but trying to bundle them into a package. I am sure twitter or Amazon do not want to buy rights for Wolves vs West Ham, they want the rights to all Man city games.