The day pro/rel becomes a reality, that's the day that teams stop getting any public assistance in building or improving stadiums. You want a U.S. Hillsborough Disaster? Because that's how you get it. Teams pouring every dollar into the on-field team because the financial hit of the drop is so painful. So things like stadium maintenance takes a back seat. And getting public buy-in to help with a BMO Field or Rio Tinto or CMP... and on down the line is one thing if you're guaranteeing first division play with first division attendance and ancillary revenues and the promised (though rarely realized) boon to the area around the stadium. Government buy-in is based on certain assurances. It's no shock that MLS stadium construction has accelerated as the league has become stable. It was a lot harder for Lamar Hunt to get support for Crew Stadium when nobody knew if the league was going to last, much less the Columbus Crew. Getting public buy-in to build that 20-30k palace and $50 million training center when you might find yourself playing Chattanooga FC in the third division in front of 3,500 fans in a few years of poor management and luck, is a lot harder. Additionally - for the top division at least, those ESPN/Fox contracts and adidas sponsorships at the league level are going to be a lot harder to negotiate when you can't guarantee that major markets like New York and Los Angeles will be in the league drawing attention to their TV channels or branding. There are, what, ten or more pro clubs in London? London is always going to have multiple teams in the EPL. There's no threat to sponsors and broadcasters. They don't really care if Chelsea survives. Because if Chelsea goes down, well maybe Millwall will go up. They'll get their eyeballs. We can't say that in the United States and Canada. We have as many million-pop markets in these two countries as all of Europe (approximately 60 in each). But 2 million Raleigh-Durham's NCFC isn't a good substitute for having the Chicago Fire and Chicago's market potential. I don't see "real" pro-rel, even at just the D2/D3 level, ever being a fully realized thing. D2 leagues have been promising pro/rel for at least 20 years. The vast majority of teams going up and down have been team-choices having to do with finances and/or travel, and not anything at all to do with on the field results. I just don't see that changing in my lifetime. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong.
Their also uniquely set up. Their in a market that’s just lost a team. That has a strong immigrant population that loves the sport but hasn’t been reached by the current professional organizations there. They’ve built strong community ties and have incorporated those ties into their project. Their marketing is on point. Within 2 years of existing they’ve outshone several organizations that have been around longer. There’s a boatload of money in their area. MLS has interest in the Bay Area market. They may never get there but I would bet most that they will if they pull of a stadium deal. The Bay Area is too tempting of a market for the MLS to ignore.
Don Garber, is that you? I mean, fine, but let’s get them actually through a full season first. They already are going to have to take on a major investor to get in USL-C, which who knows what will do to the brand they’ve cultivated thus far.
I’m not saying it’s gonna be tomorrow. Just that I think their well positioned if they can build a stadium. I’m not sure that they do need to bring in new money tho I suspect they will. How that effects the dynamics will certainly be interesting. It won’t affect the brand tho. What it will potentially affect is the power dynamics. New money may want to run things their way. I suspect the current ownership wouldn’t bring in new money with its own plans. Whether it’s new money or old money they’d be wise to ride the people that got them there.
Good point. That would be a subject of negotiation. By a holding company run by an English guy, which specializes in sports promotion and revenue generation. An alignment with USL would be perfect. Unfortunately I think NISA is doomed. Let's leave MLS out of this discussion. We know it's not going to happen anytime soon. As for England and mainland Europe, the gap between the top league, or top two leagues and the rest tends to be huge but the gap between the lower divisions isn't all that great.
Their brand is their community involvement, though. Obviously it can still work, it's just an unanswered question at this point. It was in either the USL press release or one of the accompanying tweets about them finding an investor that meets D2 standards. Again, I don't feel comfortable enough in my powers of prognostication to bet the mortgage against this, but it feels like a very unlikely pairing, culturally. We're all doomed, eventually. I would say that NISA could carve out a really good niche as a D3 league in the Eastern and Central time zones, with perhaps a steady amount of turnover and an overall uneven level of professionalism. I'm not entirely sure that fans of teams in the league that have fans would really see a difference between that and L1, do you? I feel pretty confident that D3 soccer is extremely local. Well, sure, but the Roots wouldn't just be looking for any available multimillionaire. Their social justice/community engagement philosophy would filter out a lot of the sorts of people that have D2 principal investor sort of cash.
--------------------- Then do we go the route of MLS owning the players and staff of at least USL-1, maybe USL-2 and who knows, USL-C and let the local owners put all then efforts into marketing, attendance etc? We seem to have a lot of people interesting in owning a soccer team at some level, would not having to staff a team be of interest? I had always felt a soccer version of MLB pyramid may have worked, but as we see the issues that Minor League is having and their relationship to MLB like noted above, soccer does have the deep pockets baseball does. A shorter version may be best for soccer- MLS academy > USL-1 > MLS It could also work fo USL-C, but USL-C has its hands full just keeping what it has going and getting better.
Close, but not quite accurate. In 1871-75, "major league" baseball was the National Association, which can be likened to the Articles of Confederation in U.S. history. NA teams paid players, but they didn't have stable schedules or organized championships or a way of enforcing any such thing. Many had roots in men's athletic clubs of that era and thus were player-run. Players jumped from team to team in search of more money. Clubs jumped to and from circuits in search of more (money!) competition. They played who they wanted based on availability and self-interest. There was no concept of lower leagues being in a dialogue or relationship with the NA. In general, like the U.S. colonies, they worked in their own little bubbles for the gratification of themselves, not for the growth of the league, the national game or the enrichment of non-playing owners. In 1876, the owner-led National League took over from the NA (the Constitution replacing the Articles) with many of the same clubs, and this chaos ended. A national schedule was imposed and teams were ejected for failing to meet professional league standards such as showing up for scheduled games. Financially struggling teams were allowed/told to move to bigger markets. If those teams balked, well, kick them out and invite a new owner into the club. It was instability with a purpose. Player 'jumping" was still a common practice, but in the early 1880s the NL imposed a uniform player contract system that bound a player to the contract he signed. Thus began a stable cartel system that became the standard in North American professional sports. For the rest of the 19th century the NL faced competitive baseball leagues, but those leagues all had the same basic structure, with all the power in the owner's hands. No one was foolish enough to propose a grassroots player-friendly "open system" because it had been proven that those systems didn't work, just as the Articles of Confederation didn't work.
I love the idea of Bud Selig lurking on random message boards everywhere, only appearing to correct the historical record, should a baseball reference get made.
Yet people believe it will magically work for soccer... It wouldn't even work for European soccer in the current era. The system that exists currently only does so because that's how it evolved decades ago. Which team is the last new "grassroots" team to reach the second division in England, Germany, Spain, or Italy?
The original Wimbledon FC, though they were never below the 6th level in decades. These days most smaller teams that breakthrough to the top leagues are bankrolled by ambitious owners. Can they really be called "grass roots"? I don't think so. Examples would be RB Leipzig and Burton Albion. A true grass roots team would be AFC Wimbledon, created by disaffected Wimbledon FC fans when their team was snatched and moved to Milton Keynes. But they haven't finished above 15th in League One (D3). Another grass roots team in League One is Accrington Stanley, another phoenix team.
I'm not really sure how you define "grassroots", but I think we're all probably agreed that RB Leipzig wouldn't meet that definition. Outside of a few notable exceptions, it seems like most German clubs would fit this definition, simply due to the 50+1 rule? " New" is a little tougher to meet. I'm not sure the English system is entirely fair for this question. The youngest a club could be in the Championship is a decade old and that assumes a straight shot up the pyramid, which would be unlikely to happen naturally. Segunda division has a club that's only 25 years old, but I don't know anything about them.
RB Leipzig is definitely not grass roots. They are close to an American style "expansion team" as European clubs can be. RB invested tons of cash and resources that anyone approximating grassroots never could. Even going back 25 years, true grassroots clubs ascending that high are few and far between because we live in a world in which money exists. Most newly established clubs that move that high have had major influence of cash from corporations like RB or Middle Eastern, American, Chinese, or Russian investment groups. That's hardly grassroots.
(I knew, and I was agreeing with you - but it points out that it's a lot easier to define what grassroots isn't rather than what is)
Given their margin of error for sanctioning, you can understand why fans of teams in that league might not be thrilled with Oakland's decision.
"the one giveth and the one taketh away" NISA will poach amateur turned professional trams from NPSL, UPSL, et al in return. The cycle continues. 8 clubs? No biggie.
You think the league will cover their payroll? ... I guess any club can join NISA without paying an expansion fee, and if 5,000 people show up they can jump to USL without penalty.
Meh, the league has been reaching out to other amateur leagues more than USASA ever bothered. They can't encourage those amateur teams to accept the risks if they jump to the professional ranks based by how the league is structured with independence in mind. NISA: "We can't promise or guarantee anything re: your club's survival" Some clubs like Oakland and Miami will use the league as a testing ground. I would find it sad if they can't manage to have 8 clubs around.