Why Isn't The MLS Rivalling Europe's Biggest Leagues Yet?

there is a lot to admire and a lot to be positive about when it comes to major league soccer since reaching a deer in terms of its popularity shortly after the turn of the millennium as the league lost 250 million dollars over the first five years of its existence and actually briefly went bust unbeknownst to most people the popularity of the top flight of association football in the united states and canada has been on the rise ever since at the start of this season new mls franchise charlotte fc set a league attendance record as 74 479 spectators packed into the bank of america stadium to witness the team's mls debut against la galaxy that is higher than the premier league's record attempts this season which is held by manchester united meanwhile the mls albeit we are only a few games into the current campaign is currently on course for its highest ever average attendance figure this season of 22 628 which is higher than the average attendance in la liga it is undeniable that the quality of football youth coaching youth development and with all of those factors following have all increased greatly in the mls over recent years and that is great three chairs for major league soccer but what is also undeniable is that whilst the mls might be able to rival the world's best leagues and by that we basically mean europe's best leagues these days in terms of match day attendances they cannot yet rival the likes of la liga and the premier league when it comes to interest revenue or talent the mls is highly competitive wildly unpredictable and there is a big emphasis on youth in many respects it is everything that a lot of european football fans including myself in increasingly predictable and top heavy league systems would love for their leagues to be so why does there appear to be a glass ceiling that is preventing the mls from really kicking on and knocking the likes of the premier league la liga and syria off their perch well that is what i wanted to investigate in this video and it led me down a lot of interesting and unusual paths along with a healthy dose of conclusions that i would love to share with you all here are my views on just what exactly is holding major league soccer back from becoming an elite level football league i must start for obvious reasons by addressing the elephant in the room which some people will consider to be the beginning middle and end of this discussion and that is the fact that football or soccer which is the word that i'll probably tend to use in this video is not the most popular sport in the united states of america or in canada now that is so obvious that i have basically taken it as a given that everyone knows that and of course it is a contributing factor that may be alluded to at other times but it is not a point that i am going to dwell on i'm not going to get into why it is the case that soccer hasn't historically been the biggest sport in the united states i've talked about that too many times on this channel in the past and the reality is that most of that context isn't actually relevant to the question posed in the title of this video we have established that the mls has made huge strides since its foundation and in recent years so clearly it is capable of becoming a more popular and higher quality league without the need to monster every other major league sport in the united states and reigns supreme much like association football does in a number of other countries the united states is the richest country in the world and has a sports mad population so it is definitely possible that the mls could become an elite level league without soccer having to overtake american football and baseball as america's favorite pastime look i'm not saying that it is not an issue clearly it is i'm just saying that it is the big obvious issue that may be interspersed throughout whilst being far from the only or even a decisive factor but i wanted to get it out in the open to begin with since i suspect it is the one that will have been on many of your minds particularly for non-american viewers to whom the nation's lack of unrivaled obsession with association football is almost the country's defining feature almost one theory as to why major league soccer hasn't yet been able to compete with europe's biggest leagues is because the mls still imposes some fairly strict wage caps now salary caps are fairly common in u.s sports ironically i suppose given america's obsession with the idea of the free market it is interesting in some respects that europe which broadly speaking tends to have more regulation around things like anti-competition laws has football leagues that operate almost like wild west's where teams are able to establish monopolistic levels of control buying up all of the best players and hoovering up all of the biggest trophies meanwhile in the united states where the so-called invisible hand of the market is the only thing more sacred than the right of a three-year-old to own their own gun major league sports are very heavily regulated with far-reaching oversight at the league level this is a slightly unusual phenomenon that has resulted in major us sports leagues including the mls being much more open and competitive than most of and certainly all of europe's leading football leagues the premier league has had five different title winners over the last 10 seasons lee gunn has had four la liga has had three syria has also had three and the bundesliga has only had two and most are as uncompetitive as they have ever been at this moment in time the mls on the other hand has been won by eight different teams over the last 10 seasons one of mine and a lot of other people's biggest gripes about football in england and elsewhere is that the idea of the football league pyramid where anyone can beat anyone and where manchester united could theoretically one day play in the national league and halifax town could reach the dizzying heights of the premier league has been gradually eroded over time accelerated by the breakaway of the premier league in 1992 reaching a point at which now we can basically say that it just isn't true so there are definite benefits to the american system but it does limit the amount of money that a team can spend and therefore in theory at least and i would argue in practice the caliber of player that they are able to sign and retain this isn't really a problem with a lot of us sports such as american football where the nfl is just about the only show in town but association football is global and if players can get better deals elsewhere oftentimes they will simply go there if the nfl's 182.5 million dollar salary cap meant that jerome baker wasn't happy with the contract extension offered to him by the miami dolphins he is hardly likely to up sticks move to slovakia and join the bratislava monarchs in the austria football league but if daryl dyke can earn more money at west bromwich albion than he can with orlando city he might just go and join the baggies just as he did in january 2022 to counteract this the mls has had the designated player rule since 2007 which allows each of the league's franchises to have up to three players in their squad or roster at any one time who operates outside of their salary cap it was the designated player rule that brought david beckham to los angeles in 2007 thierry on rita new york in 2010 and gonzalo higuain to miami in 2020 this has helped the mls attracts a handful of star players such as those who i just mentioned but obviously by its very nature they are limited in number which presents another dilemma for clubs as to whether they recruit designated players based primarily on their ability and what the team needs or on their fame profile and likely profitability in terms of things like selling shirts and getting fans through the turnstiles basically do you sign steven gerrard or miguel almeron that is a question that has troubled mls teams pretty much since the league and certainly since the designated player rules inception with a definite shift towards talent and team requirements in recent years it is worth noting that you do sometimes get the best of both worlds with a signing like zlatan ibrahimovic or carlos mayer but more often than not there is a conflict between those two sets of ambitions it should also be said that commercial considerations are taken into account when european team signed players and in contract negotiations it has just historically been less of a consideration than in america going all the way back to the nasl days however because the mls cannot outcompete the biggest spending european teams even with designated player status nor can it offer the highest standard of football the leaguers tended to attract big-name players once they are in the autumn of their careers hence the need for compromise between status and more soccer-orientated considerations now the mls is keen to rid itself of its status outside of the us at least as a retirement league and i think the steps that have been taken in that direction are mostly laudable salary caps could easily be considered a secondary issue though since they are designed to ensure sustainability an open competition meaning that if league revenues were to increase so too would those salary caps if the mls brought in the same amount of revenue as the nfl they too would have a salary cap closer to 180 million dollars than 4.24 million dollars here we enter into a bit of a catch-22 scenario which is one that i will circle back around to in just a minute but in terms of increasing mls revenue the biggest barrier has long been tv audiences and therefore the value of the mls's broadcast deals there was a similar problem with the north american soccer league in the 1970s and 80s u.s soccer has no problem selling out arenas in a handful of cities but drawing super bowl or nba final like television viewing figures or even just putting up consistently decent numbers is a whole different ballgame quite literally of course if you will pardon the pun one of the leading ways in which the nfl and the nba market themselves and are marketed is around their star players it doesn't matter if you follow the nfl or the nba or not most americans know that tom brady was a pretty good quarterback who was synonymous with the new england patriots prior to his last two nfl seasons and most know that lebron james is quite good at throwing the round thing into the hoop and that currently the lakers are very grateful that he is so good at it they are less likely however to know that carlos hill plays for new england revolution or even to have the faintest idea of who he is in all truth despite the fact that he was the 2021 mls mvp that is partly because tom brady and lebron james are all-time greats in their respective sports and carlos hill isn't indeed he was playing in spain's second division before moving to the united states and was previously relegated from the premier league at aston villa and that is an ongoing issue that the mls faces unlike every other major league sport in the united states the mls cannot market itself as being the best league in the world or as having the best players that it's sport has to offer major league baseball calling its annual championship the world series and the nfl crowning the super bowl winners as world champions is often ridiculed by europeans since those competitions are exclusive to the us and it does seem a little bit silly if nothing else but even if it is factually incorrect they are at least legitimately probably the best baseball and american football teams on the planet if the mls were to rebrand its playoffs as being the club world cup or started crowning the mls cup winners as football's world champions that would seem obviously even more absurd even to the most insular of american soccer fans this is undoubtedly an issue that the mls has to grapple with in a land that is sometimes obsessed with being and having the biggest and best of everything and the catch-22 scenario that i alluded to earlier on is the paradoxical idea that in order to sign better players and pay higher wages the mls must bring in more revenue but that in order to bring in more revenue the mls must first sign better players and pay higher wages in reality the mls salary cap is unlikely to be removed anytime soon not only is it an ingrained part of major league sports in the united states it is also a hangover in some respects from the nasl era of american soccer along with the near collapse of the league at the beginning of the 2000s and a constant perfectly legitimate fear that it now lives with of going out of business and having to live within its means there are those who feel that the mls doesn't need to be able to boast lionel messi cristiano ronaldo and muhammad salla within its ranks and have teams that could put real madrid and manchester city to bed by the first half in order to market itself and its star men more effectively though and who feel that the league has fundamentally failed to do nearly enough when it comes to shouting about what they have already got when la galaxy signed david beckham in 2007 the media coverage was unlike anything us soccer had ever seen the result was a 23 uptick in tv audiences whenever beckham played compared to the average mls television viewership showing the importance of star power in u.s sport admittedly up 23 from what was then a very low base beckham's arrival in the states ultimately proved to be a bit of a damp squib owing to a persistent ankle injury that prevented him from making a real hollywood entrance but the mls has failed to drum up that kind of interest for any of its subsequent star men sebastian was an italian international and two-time syria title winner when he joined toronto fc at the age of only 28 and if his dazzling performances in canada didn't give the mls and american and canadian broadcasters enough to shout about it is difficult to know what will similarly david villa whilst passed his best by the time that he signed for new york city fc was a world cup european championship and champions league winning forward and one of the finest forwards of his generation no less who was lethal in the mls bagging 80 goals in 126 games giovinco ought to become a household name in toronto and likewise via in new york just as beckham was in los angeles whilst the debate around the impact of beckham's arrival in major league soccer is one that still rumbles onto this day in some quarters it would be foolish to claim that it had no impact at all however one of the consequences of soccer's uptick in popularity was that for the first time european football began to be broadcast routinely on american televisions and much of the sport's new interest in america was diverted towards the premier league or la liga rather than the mls this is a problem that still plagues the mls there are many fans of mls teams unlike most fans of english teams for example who might watch their own team's games and even follow them religiously but they are far less likely to set aside a couple of hours to watch portland timbers vs lafc vancouver whitecaps vs minnesota united or any of the other fixtures involving their divisional rivals english football fans on the other hand might support arsenal accrington stanley or older shot town but will still watch manchester united versus liverpool on super sunday or monday night football a great many fans of mls teams will also watch manchester united versus liverpool or alternatively just watch another sport like hockey or basketball when other mls teams are playing live on television it must be said that the mls could seemingly do more to circumvent the latter problem by working to avoid fixture clashes with other sports particularly the really obvious ones such as clashes with big games involving local teams the issue of people being colorado rapids or toronto fc fans but not necessarily mls fans or in some instances not even soccer fans is one which is not unique to the mls i know plenty of irish people who have a league of ireland team that they support but if you give them the choice of watching two league of island teams that they don't support versus any random premier league game they will watch the premier league game nine times out of ten and the exception is only because they sometimes televise burnley games i'm only joking burnley fans i actually enjoy watching burnley mix things up a bit they are quite a unique team to watch in the premier league these days i'm backtracking i know because i don't want any hassle in the comments or on twitter but i really do mean it it would be remiss of me in this video not to mention the eternal debate over whether american soccer needs to implement promotion and relegation that is a topic that could well be an entire video all on its own and i have almost made exactly that video a couple of times in the past but in the context of this video and whilst i think that not having promotion and relegation as a european is basically tantamount a treason i don't think that it would actually solve most of the problems at hand there is a chance that it would actively make things quite a lot worse and it is a non-starter that is to say it's never going to happen or at least it's not going to happen for decades hence why i haven't actually got around to making an entire video about it yet there is an argument to say i think that if every american's local soccer team regardless of their standing or status were capable of one day competing in the mls and by winning promotion enough times i mean rather than simply purchasing a spot in the league perhaps they would feel greater attachment and engagement to the league particularly from those who are without a local mls team i don't think most non-league football fans expect to see their team compete in the premier league anytime soon in england but it is at least theoretically possible and football fans in bournemouth blackpool and bristol whilst they may not have a premier league team for miles around certainly do feel as though the league is attainable for their teams in a way that it simply isn't for a soccer fan who lives and supports a team based in say tucson arizona even the example of a non-league football fan in england where the connection to the premier league may feel much more remote it is worth noting that luton town were playing fifth tier football as recently as 2014 now they are battling for a playoff spot in the championship which would put them within three games of reaching the premier league these things can happen when you have promotion and relegation they can't without it but as i say i still don't think that it is a silver bullet in the context of today's video nor is it a realistic prospect in the mls anytime soon exactly a year ago perhaps even to this day i made a video talking about why mls teams are obsessed with rebranding give it a watch if you haven't already it is totally rad as an american might say or at least as the american that i have just invented in my head might say it's possible that i'm getting confused between americans and the turtle out of finding nemo but that's not important in that video i talked a little bit about the desire from certain sections of the mls to replicate the european model 280 with the europeanization of club badges names and so on it is inevitable that european football will influence american soccer but as i said in that video personally i think that it is important for american soccer and the mls to retain their own identity and its own subtle set of american charms some europeans will always sneer at the mls whatever they do but it is not them that the league needs to win over the focus first and foremost must be on their own domestic audience and there a combination of american quirks whilst retaining football's soul would seem to me to be the best formula whenever there is a discussion surrounding the success or failure of american soccer people always bring it back to the issue that i began this video talking about the lack of ingrained soccer culture in the united states compared to in europe africa and latin america however there is actually plenty of soccer culture certainly in large parts of the united states but far less i sense among the chief executives and decision makers a major u.s broadcasters that means that there is less appreciation among those networks for soccer's potential in america and less willingness to go big when it comes to broadcasting the mls and promoting it like they do with other sports it has been suggested that many of them simply don't get it so to speak and that could explain the lack of real narratives and story arcs that have been developed around teams managers players rivalries and the like in the premier league sky sports and bt sport will waste absolutely no time building a certain narrative around a player returning to a former club bad blood between former teammates or even the romance of certain scenarios part of that is made possible because of the amount of history within the english game that may be lacking with some american soccer teams but there is still a great deal more that could be done with regards to the mls whilst the nfl is enormous in america it is not just the games themselves that attract such great interest but everything that goes around them uk viewers might think that i am alluding to the halftime show the super bowl and the like but i mean even simpler things like fantasy football here in england fantasy premier league is a pretty big deal i've got a couple of mates who devote more time to it than they do to their full-time jobs but it is still fairly minor in comparison to the tremendous amount of interest in the nfl's fantasy football league which plays a huge role in the overall nfl experience and popularity particularly among young supporters there is a fantasy mls game which as far as i'm aware was growing gradually up until a few years ago when they completely altered the format of the game fantasy mls used to function pretty much the same as fantasy premier league for any of you play that just with an extra free transfer each game week since the mls has more blank game weeks than the premier league but in 2018 the format was changed so that managers could pick an entirely new team for every single game week if you have played any kind of fantasy sports game you will know how taxing that would become requiring you to research every game every week and update your entire team accordingly as such at the last count there were fewer than 50 000 fantasy mls teams compared to almost 10 million fantasy football teams and the vast majority of fantasy mls players are inactive by the end of the season whilst fantasy football players are so active on the game's app that it is estimated to cost american companies between 6.5 to 17 billion dollars a year in lost workplace productivity i have talked about many challenges questions and have even offered up perhaps one or two solutions to the issue of growing the mls and preventing the league from stagnating but whilst this is a topic that i've seen brought up in the past hence why i was keen to investigate it it is worth noting that it is far from being all doom and gloom for major league soccer the increase in youth participation and in youth development alone provide great cause for optimism meanwhile baseball's popularity particularly among young people is dwindling hockey is as well and american football is not free from its own trouble while soccer continues to grow in both the united states and canada there is a whole generation now of young americans and canadians who have grown up as soccer fans following the mls that has never previously been the case the 2026 world cup is also likely to be enormous in terms of giving soccer's popularity a further boost and cementing the sport further within the american psyche which can only be good news for the mls they say that patience is a virtue and that rome wasn't built in a day and by the same token the mls doesn't need to be bigger than the premier league in order to be deemed as a success and it certainly doesn't need to achieve that status overnight it just needs to keep on developing and there are plenty of reasons to believe that whilst far from perfect the league is heading in the right direction that is it for today's video which is one that i wasn't initially sure whether i should make at all but has ended up being really rather extensive i thoroughly hope that you enjoyed it regardless go ahead and hit the like button if that was the case that would be totally rad of you feel free to check out either of the videos that should currently be on your screen or just about to appear one of which is a documentary about the problems with youth development in soccer in the united states and the other being that video that i mentioned earlier on about mls rebrands thank you all very much as ever for watching go ahead and let me know your thoughts down below in the comments make sure that you are subscribed to hrtc7s and have notifications turned on and you can also find me on social media by the username at hrtc7s on both twitter and instagram

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 341,426

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, MLS, Major League Soccer, Documentary, Premier League, USA, USMNT, Atlanta United, Seattle Sounders, LA Galaxy, Champions League, Europe, Leagues

Id: oAi-pDldM2M

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022