A Question of Survival

It has become quite a fashionable thing in the United States to reform Major League Soccer via the keyboard. And why not? It is a fun to speculate and it stirs up some interesting discussion. I must confess that I do this when I go to National Hockey League games, where I imagine life without franchises in places where people do not actually play hockey. It makes me smile, but I know that I am not being realistic.

Which brings me back to MLS. Here is how I suspect the league measures success:

Are you bankrupt? No = “Good Season”
Are you going to be bankrupt next season? No = “Great Season”

These two goals drive everything that MLS does… and so they should. Without hitting those two goals every year, there is no serious professional league in the United States. We have all-too-quickly forgotten the NASL, ironically because as the MLS model has eclipsed NASL’s longevity by so much. Critics argue the times are different and soccer is more viable in America today. However, this ignores that the times have been made different in large part by the successful existence of Major League Soccer for a decade and a half.

For right now, if you are Major League Soccer, the product has to be just good enough that enough people continue to support the league in numbers that retain corporate sponsorships. For those of us who spend our weekends watching the top leagues from around the world, this means enduring large doses of unwatchable summer football state-side… but it is unwatchable football that will be back next season, and it will only get better next year if it is back at all next year.

Major League Soccer’s goals for the near-term, as far as I can tell, are:

Expand to 20 teams
Facilities capable of revenue generation for all clubs (the league will have 12 Soccer-Specific stadia plus Qwest field by 2012, and DC United and Kansas City’s situations appear to be heating up.
Develop 20 years of positive television affiliate and corporate sponsorship relationships.

In short, the plan is to continue to exist. The three bullet points are the means by which they can continue existing, and every move the league has made has been consistent with this very simple goal. The league is expanding its assets, its credit, and the strength of its most important business relationships. All three of these goals happen more slowly with many more challenges than when you play Championship Manager. If these are your goals, than here are some samples of your behaviors:

If your sponsors want clocks that count down and bizarre hockey-style shootouts, you do that, because without the sponsors, you have no league.
If your sponsors realize soccer hatred is waning and want to change those things, than you change them.
Do you sign David Beckham? Only if you like money.
Do you loan David Beckham to Milan? Do you still like money?
Do you broadcast SuperLiga on a Spanish language channel only? Only if you want to raise the price point of televising your matches.
Do you demand more for your league’s top players in transfer requests because of their financial worth to you is higher than their worth as a player on the world market? Only if you care more about the bottom line than your image.
How many matches do you play? How many do you need to pay the rent on the more expensive stadiums? There’s your answer.
Do you strictly regulate the moves of all players and clubs so that you avoid boom and bust cycles of having independent franchises act as market participants and independent players as free agents in a player market? Only if you want to avoid being Scotland.

Freddie Ljungberg said he thinks MLS is already on par with the Dutch League. Imagine someone watching the USA in Italia ‘90, leaning over to the person next to them and saying, you know, in twenty years, the United States top flight will be just as good as Holland’s. The accuracy of such a prediction reflects a meteoric rise of American soccer as well as the precipitous decline of the giants of the Eredivisie. Both have happened because of the economics of the game.

A simpler schedule, cutting restrictions on clubs, raising salaries, keeping America’s stronger players here rather than sending them to Denmark, larger rosters, participation in South American club competitions… there is nothing but time in front of Major League Soccer to make these things happen. Time enough to wait to make absolutely sure that MLS can afford to do those things before they do them.

In terms of professional club leagues, Major League Soccer is moving up the table, but we are still far closer to the drop than the top. For the next few years at least, the MLS season remains primarily a question of survival.

Steven Maloney is a contributing writer for Glorious Football and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He can be reached for comment at steven.maloney@gmail.com.

Written By Steven Maloney (80 Posts)

Steven Maloney is a regular contributor for Glorious Football. You can follow him on Twitter @stevenmaloney. Like Albert Camus, he fancies himself as having learned his morals "on the football pitch and in the theater." His football writing interests are in the institutional structures and strategies of world football, as well as the ways in which contemporary politics enters into the world of football and vice-versa. His most cherished memories of the game are of being in Holland for Euro 2000. In the interests of full disclosure, he supports Arsenal, the United States and DC United.