Yesterday, Steve Goff of The Washington Post reported that Major League Soccer players overwhelmingly voted to strike if a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is not in place by the start of the season. He cites a close source saying the vote was 350-2 in favor of striking.
I think that many people have underestimated the cards that the players are holding in this negotiation, and I am not at all surprised to see this happen. The reason that the NBA or the NFL can lock out its players and wear them down is because of the monopoly on labor that the league has and the lifestyle of the players is such that they tend not to have the resources to stay together over the long run. In the situation with MLS, the capital investments of ownership seem to me to be at far greater risk than the players ability to earn wages. Some key points to consider.
- If MLS is scuttled, the best players can find work in other countries at competitive prices. For example, wages in the Coca-Cola Championship average around 200,000 pounds in 2006. There are by my rather cursory count of this player wage table, only 9 players in all of MLS who earn more than that. Many of whom (Angel, Beckham, Schelotto, Kasey Keller, McBride) are aging stars who can move on or retire into business or management abroad if not in the States.
- There is a staggering number of players who make less than 35,000 a year. How many of them could move to USL/NASL (particularly if they do not compete with MLS or could take its TV deal?) and not feel a pinch?
- There are massive discrepancies in the value of franchises. Forbes had the LA Galaxy at over $100 million and the average at only $37 million in 2008. Since then, we of course had the Seattle experience. The Galaxy, Toronto, Seattle, and Philadelphia have to represent a huge chunk of the leagues value by themselves. Red Bulls and Colorado have ownership involved in foreign clubs. If the players union pushes this to the point where these clubs could meet the player’s demands and the other ones do not, are they going to risk their profits for the smaller clubs and the current league structure? Is there a breaking point where the bigger clubs go Premiership on US Soccer?
- It is ownership that has to fear the potential that the Seattle and Toronto momentum ruined by a strike. It is ownership that has collected massive expansion fees from clubs that have yet to play a game.
- Red Bulls, Kansas City and Philadelphia have built new stadiums and have not used them. I doubt not generating revenue is part of the loan repayment process.
- While revenues may be shared by the league, the league’s biggest assets are the stadiums. The stadiums are owned either privately or in public-private partnerships. Are those clubs more invested in the league or their own assets, which MLS encouraged them to build and are now taking a course of action which may depreciate their value?
If the players put enough pressure on the league, it seems to me that the league would be as likely to cave as the players. Players and the wealthier clubs could end up using this as an opportunity for greater independence against the smaller clubs.
While this is not the sort of excitement most MLS fans crave, from a negotiation standpoint, this might be one of the all-time great labor stare-downs in terms of the balance of power.
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
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