Zavagnin looking at Europe......

Yes, there were a couple years of slump in the NBA, but for more than a decade before that, the NBA was on US television. The NBA was already a fixture in the US sport scene. MLS is not yet. Euro football was fully mature and established when along came television money. Television doesn't build a struggling league or a sport, it enhances an established one, IMO.
I think the slow, stable growth strategy focusing on SSS first is working. But in that mold, teams will lose their plaeyrs whose values exceed the slow, stable growth mode.
Still, as you point out, with 10 million players, there should be plenty of replacements for KZ level players.

 

But we do have Team Handball and skiing which take up just as much of the sport on TV! (You have Cross-country skiing, downhill, ski jumping, biathlon ++++) It's EVERYWHERE!

 

I'm done arguing about what might happen 20 years from now.

 

Go back and look on the Mistakes made by the NHL thread https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3847463&postcount=133 and look at the breakdown of revenues for FC Copenhagen. IIRC only a 1/3 of the revenues were drawn from soccer (tickets, concessions, television broadcasts). And this was a case for the biggest club in Scandinavia - with a 20,000k average attendence, regular European football, etc.

Most of the revenues - by far - were generated from commercial ventures by the club (concerts, facility rental, hotel and convention center, etc). The profits from all of these ventures were re-invested in the club. Merchendising and sponsorships were also a huge part of the budget. Just because MLS has sponsors doesn't mean MLS has big sponsors. Teams like Rosenborg or FC Copenhagen are the Dallas Cowboys of their nations. Or maybe a better analogy would be the Redskins in their catchment area. These teams are also not run as businesses.

Also, many of them are run as sports clubs. Go to their websites and you see that they are sort of like athletic-themed country clubs with a host of facilities for families. They have handball teams, basketball teams, fitness facilities, social rooms, hotels, spas, shops, event venues, etc connected to them. Many of them are not-for-profit entities.

When we analyzed the turnover for the medium-sized clubs in Norway and Sweden, MLS had bigger salaries than a few and comparable salaries to many. When you consider the extremely high operating cost of the most expensive MLS teams, I am not surprised that MLS pulls a couple of million bucks out of the salary pool.

If the teams in DC and NY/NJ were not so expensive - I am sure MLS could afford higher salaries. Maybe they still can (they have in the past, as we all know that the salary cap has not represented true spending on salaries and transfer fees for hardly any of the teams in MLS). But it really should not surprise us that smaller clubs with much better infrastructure and commercial development out-earn (in raw revenues) MLS clubs.

Someday someone will hack into MLS HQ (or SUM or AEG or HSG) and we will get a true picture of the actual revenues of MLS clubs. But until that day . . .

 

In England or Spain maybe, but in Norway or Greece?

You seem to heading in some direction I never went in. My argument has nothing to do with TV money and everything to do with being more efficient with the money we do spend on payrolls, and using that money in an effort to grow the product. My argument is about putting the incentives in an area which can generate increased revenues rather than in wasteful areas of dubious value like "parity." I'm not arguing MLS should spend more on players, I'm arguing that MLS should set up a structure where investing in players is in a team's financial interests.

People talk about continuing with the "slow, steady growth" of MLS without actually checking to see whether any growth is happening at all. MLS policies restrict growth by de-emphasizing revenue generation in favor of an emphasis on cost-control. The end result has been a league where attendance among the existing 9 original teams has been stagnant, and where they lose quality players to European leagues with half the attendance of MLS because of a pay scale where no one has any financial incentives to pay increased player salaries, nor would they have the ability to even if those incentives existed.

 

That's not true. It does not work that way. The cost of rent at Giants Stadium has next to nothing to do with what the Metrostars can pay out in salaries. This is similar to the false argument that's used to argue that increased salaries in Baseball has resulted in increased ticket prices. Not the case.

MLS can afford to pay players whatever the hell it wants to pay them. The money is there. So whatever the Metrostars pay in rent matters not one whit as to how much they can spend on payroll.

What matters is what MLS' return is on that payroll. If MLS thought it could make more money spending more on payroll, it would whether they were paying $250,000 a game rent at Giants Stadium or were playing there for free. If they don't think they can, playing at Giants Stadium for free is unlikely to loosen the purse strings much.

Similarly, whatever a team in Norway makes on concerts has little bearing on what they're willing to pay Adin Brown other than capitalizing which may otherwise be an under-capitalized entity (which only puts them on level ground with MLS). What allows them to pay Brown more is that they believe that doing so will generate a return at least equal in value to that amount. The returns do not have to be monetary, but they are still, nonetheless, the determining factor in how much they pay Brown. Why would they pay Brown a bunch more money than MLS just because they have concerts there? Why would they give Brown specifically their concert money as opposed to donating it to the Salvation Army? The reason, of course is because they expect a return (of some sort) on their investment. Whether they're run as a business or not (I have no idea what that means) is irrelevant because in a real sense, everything and everyone is run as a business of some sort. Buying a can of Kayo for 85 cents from the White Hen Pantry is me investing 85 cents in order to generate a return on that investment of at least 85 cents worth of chilled chocolatey goodness.

And that's exactly what MLS lacks in most cases (Freddy Adu being the exception). So my solution would be to restructure salaries so that individual teams can realize returns on the investment of player salaries and reinvest those returns into salaries to generate further returns. I'm not sure exactly sure what the disagreement with such a plan would be...

 

Right.

And to return this to Kerry, I don't see 1st or even 2nd division teams in Europe signing a 30 year old MLS journeyman whose claim to fame is a couple of solid recent MLS seasons + a handful of good international outings against El Salvador.

Whereas sure, he might show up and be the best midfielder on the field for a midlevel Norwegian team. However, as I wrote before, he wouldn't get rich on that arrangement. Because those guys have a salary structure that is closer to that of MLS than to the big-name European players who we typically see.

 

Is this Brown signing such a big deal? It's not even among the big signings in Norwegian football, or even the most expensive ones...Can he be making so much more money in Ålesund then in MLS?... Maybe he's thinking about other things then money...like, culture, the opportunity to live in a country far away....++++!

 

Right, but in baseball, something like the opposite happened. Teams were able to increase revenue, and players were like, thanks, we'll take that. The players had the negotiating power to force the owners to pass on most of their increased revenues to the players.

And so that Martin Fischer won't neg-rep me again for thread-jacking, allow me to point out the relevance...increased revenue leading to more pay for players is pretty much the same thing as lowered costs leading to more pay for players, which translates into a greater ability to retain your Kerry Zavagnins.

 

IMO, he will be able to find a place where he can make more than 66k.

 

Never mind that the game has grown exponentially in this country since those teams accomplished these feats.

 

This post takes an entirely simplistic view of the situation at hand and tottally ignore all the points made previously in this thread.

This post basically rehashes all the same tired excuses trotted out when people question MLS' structure.

Read the thread man.

 

What? Those two guys are two of the best 10 in the sport. There is no top 10 player anywhere in MLS. Be careful with your examples.

/shakes head.

 

Quit thread-jacking. If you want to talk about Zavagnin and a potential move abroad, please post about in the the Business and Media forum.

 

Nowhere is the football world do players have that kind of power. I have made this point dozens of times on these boards but it never seems to stick.

There is a big difference between the big 3 or 4 sports in america and the football world. That difference is talent availability. there is a deficit in the big 4 there is no deficit in football. When quality south americans start going to places off the beaten like Japan, China, Russia and Mexico we see there is no deficit.

When there is a shortage of talent you can extort large sums of money from owners that will not happen in football. The talent pool is getting bigger not smaller.

 

I was just showing that the baseball analogy shows that in that particular, when owners had the chance to make more profit, the players were able to force them to just pass the money along.

Really? OK, it can't happen by collective means, soccer is too global for that. But what about Leeds? Chelsea was a week from defaulting and an almost inevitable Fiorentina-esque descent when Abramovich saved them. The point being, soccer clubs compete with each other for talented players (sometimes beyond what they can afford), to the point that soccer wages have gone up commensurate with soccer revenues. QED.

 

Much of the discussion about player wages as rationale for fans to embrace talent evacuation is disingenuous anyways, considering most of the proponents in this thread enjoy that players like Zavagnin and Brown are going to Europe. Assuming the economics right now are not favorable (and other posters can argue that), if the economics suddenly became favorable the regulars on this board wouldn't favor our first- and second-tier players playing here anyways. These are not the biggest fans of the domestic league gracing this forum on a regular basis, so let's call it what it is, if you don't mind.

 

Both Leeds and Chelsea got where they are because of spectacular mismanagement. Overspending on players was simply a byproduct of that mismamnagement.

It was a very poor example.

 

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Roehl Sybing again.

 

Bless you John, bless you.

 

Well, I hadn't realized that Kerry was paid as little as $66K. So I must modify my statement a bit and admit that yes, Kerry might do somewhat better than that in Europe, although the central point that a big paycheck does not await him remains intact.

As for the blessing, it would sit better with me if you were at least a minor deity so that the blessing was more than cosmetic. Hmmm, I see that treeitaliano absolutely despises you. That's certainly a strong point in your favor. Perhaps you are indeed on a higher path. If so, remember me when you arrive.

 

First let me say that the MLS discussion has been quite enjoyable and interesting.

However, going a few pages back, it just absolutely amazes me that a couple of people (and mostly jri) on the one hand think that his age is no barrier to signing a contract in a tope euro league, but, on the other, can not name one single midfielder or striker who is 30 yrs old or older, never played in europe, and never played in a highprofile international tournament, then gets a contract from a team in a top euro league.

I like Kerry Zavagnin, but is he that special? I'm assuming there are a few players that fit the above profile, but again, is it realistic to think that he could be counted as one of the precious few? As I said before, I thought generously, possibly, but not likely. It simply boggles my mind that jri so emphatically disagrees with that.

 

Well, I'm convinced, I'll retract my previous statement, there are other reasons than a rising talent pool that MLS might be losing players overseas. However, while I'm sure economic concerns are a part of it, I still think that improved talent is the primary factor. So, while I can see why some people might be concerned, I'm not.