Smaller story but maybe you'll be interested.
The two newest clubs in America's top domestic soccer league, Major League Soccer, play their first ever games as it says up there. And the venue, Orlando's Citrus Bowl, is sold-out. 60,000 tickets purchased.
Soccer has never gotten a foot-hold in America, curious thing that. This is the 20th season for MLS, I think that is the longest any soccer league has lasted in America, and they are still barely a blip on the consciousness of Americans. Television ratings are very low but attendance isn't bad. The league last expanded to the Pacific Northwest and the Seattle and Portland franchises draw very well.
MLS is a single-owner entity, more like McDonald's than America's other sports leagues, an attempt to control costs and prevent an independent owner-operator from skewing things as happened with Time-Warner and the Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League and Donald Trump and the New Jersey "Generals" of the United States (tackle) Football League. MLS pays its players a comparatively modest salary and does not even compete for the world's elite players. (And MLS is facing a players strike now.) Name players "retire" there: David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard.
MLS has survived. They get that much and some clubs are making a little money.
MLS is never going to be more than a blip until they field world-class teams and I don't know how they do that with their pay restrictions. That's my opinion. Their business model is to grow the sport in America first. They see it as a chicken-or-egg issue, the chicken view having lost with the Cosmos. However I'm stickin' with chicken. "You gotta have money to make money" is another way of looking at it and the Cosmos were a world-class club and drew world-class crowds in America and around the world.
Look, this is America, we don't do second-class, you can't field name players past their prime and think we won't notice, that a Beckham is a Beckham is a Beckham. America is attracted to stars: movie stars, sports stars, we will pay anything to watch stars. Americans know money, we value everything by this here: $. And we know, we KNOW, that if one guy is making $2.4 million per year (the English Premier League average) and another is making $208,000 a year (the MLS average), there's a DIFFERENCE and you can't call both those guys stars. You can't just call a league "Major" and expect us to take your word for it, you can't paint an egg gold and call it a golden egg. Show us the money.
Soccer would have flourished in America on the backs of the Cosmos without NASL. Turn the Cosmos into a barnstorming team playing friendlies all over the country against other world-class clubs and they would have drawn the crowds and made the money that world-class friendlies draw and make in America. You could have built a new league around the Cosmos, incubated that egg in the womb of the chicken, as it were. That is my opinion.
MLS chose the egg and this has been the longest gestation period in history. In its 20th year MLS is no closer to the English Premier League, the Bundesliga, or La Liga, than it was in 1996. Its best clubs cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with Manchester City, Bayern Munich, or Barcelona. Those are not my opinions, those are facts.
Anyway, the egg is MLS's model and they're stickin' to it. MLS has survived, they get that.
Soccer has never gotten a foot-hold in America, curious thing that. This is the 20th season for MLS, I think that is the longest any soccer league has lasted in America, and they are still barely a blip on the consciousness of Americans. Television ratings are very low but attendance isn't bad. The league last expanded to the Pacific Northwest and the Seattle and Portland franchises draw very well.
MLS is a single-owner entity, more like McDonald's than America's other sports leagues, an attempt to control costs and prevent an independent owner-operator from skewing things as happened with Time-Warner and the Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League and Donald Trump and the New Jersey "Generals" of the United States (tackle) Football League. MLS pays its players a comparatively modest salary and does not even compete for the world's elite players. (And MLS is facing a players strike now.) Name players "retire" there: David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard.
MLS has survived. They get that much and some clubs are making a little money.
MLS is never going to be more than a blip until they field world-class teams and I don't know how they do that with their pay restrictions. That's my opinion. Their business model is to grow the sport in America first. They see it as a chicken-or-egg issue, the chicken view having lost with the Cosmos. However I'm stickin' with chicken. "You gotta have money to make money" is another way of looking at it and the Cosmos were a world-class club and drew world-class crowds in America and around the world.
Look, this is America, we don't do second-class, you can't field name players past their prime and think we won't notice, that a Beckham is a Beckham is a Beckham. America is attracted to stars: movie stars, sports stars, we will pay anything to watch stars. Americans know money, we value everything by this here: $. And we know, we KNOW, that if one guy is making $2.4 million per year (the English Premier League average) and another is making $208,000 a year (the MLS average), there's a DIFFERENCE and you can't call both those guys stars. You can't just call a league "Major" and expect us to take your word for it, you can't paint an egg gold and call it a golden egg. Show us the money.
Soccer would have flourished in America on the backs of the Cosmos without NASL. Turn the Cosmos into a barnstorming team playing friendlies all over the country against other world-class clubs and they would have drawn the crowds and made the money that world-class friendlies draw and make in America. You could have built a new league around the Cosmos, incubated that egg in the womb of the chicken, as it were. That is my opinion.
MLS chose the egg and this has been the longest gestation period in history. In its 20th year MLS is no closer to the English Premier League, the Bundesliga, or La Liga, than it was in 1996. Its best clubs cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with Manchester City, Bayern Munich, or Barcelona. Those are not my opinions, those are facts.
Anyway, the egg is MLS's model and they're stickin' to it. MLS has survived, they get that.
