Big Business & MLS 3.0
Soccer Business Abroad
Soccer, known internationally as football, in the most popular sport in the world. From Patagonia to Shanghai to the Great Outback, people enjoy participating in the sport as a player or spectator. In fact, four billion people, over half the world’s population, consider themselves fans of the sport.
However, for many Americans, soccer isn’t a regular part of sports life, and many would be hard-pressed to name a single American soccer player. While some may be familiar with the World Cup occurs every four years, they may choose to root for other countries, especially given the US team didn’t even qualify for the 2018 tournament. The words Major League Soccer may not even ring a bell despite being North America’s main league for competitive soccer.
European leagues tend to dominate the global soccer industry. La Liga, the domestic league for Spanish soccer, as well as the Premier League, the domestic league for British soccer, are followed by huge scores of soccer’s four-billion-person fanbase. In fact, it’s estimated that 650 million homes across the world watch Premier League games, and La Liga has up to 80 million viewers in Spain alone.
The Champions League is the pan-European league that draws top clubs from each country’s domestic league, like the Premier League and La Liga. The championship match alone can draw in over 20 million viewers, while the average audience for an MLS game doesn’t draw in over 250,000 viewers.
Sure, the MLS is growing: between 2000 and 2016, its game attendance skyrocketed from just over 2 million to nearly 7.5 million. However, it’s still far from the pervasiveness soccer has reached in Europe. In a place like London or Madrid, fans will often check the Champions League odds during their lunch break or even during a pause in conversation. Meanwhile, the only team worth betting on in the MLS is Atlanta United, the league’s most valuable and successful team since their 2018 MLS Cup win.
Failed Attempts at an MLS Startup
Before there was a faltering MLS league, there was the North American Soccer League (NASL), formed in 1968 and ended in 1984 between the US and Canada. However, during the first years of NASL, many players kept side jobs to support themselves, and led the league to be considered by many as semi-pro.
The NASL was able to garner crowds that numbered up to 10,000 for bigger matches, but these numbers were reserved four teams with the most dedicated fans, such as the Los Angeles Aztecs and the Miami Toros. It wasn’t until the mid 1970s that real public interest was garnered. Most of this interest came from star teams, like the New York Cosmos, who were able to recruit the biggest names in soccer worldwide, such as Pelé, Eusébio, and Peter Bonetti.
These players, from Brazil, Portugal, and England respectively, were the earliest international superstars to transition to the North American soccer league as a form of retirement. Players with impressive careers in European leagues will move to less competitive leagues that can provide comparable salaries.
The MLS continues to attract players like David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, and Henry Thierry, leading to the nickname the ‘retirement league’. However, there are other emerging leagues, such as China’s Chinese Super League (CSL) and Japan’s Japan Football League (JFL), that are also beginning to attract Europe’s biggest players, such as Andres Iniesta of FC Barcelona.
MLS 3.0
The Major League Soccer league was formed in 1995 with 10 teams, largely thanks to an agreement with FIFA that allowed the US men’s team to enter the 1994 World Cup. This agreement led to the official North American soccer competition. Unfortunately, the MLS faltered in its first decade, losing $350 million before 2005.
Aside from a brief resurgence in 2002 following the US men’s team making the World Cup quarterfinals, there was some interest in the league. However, the league has made a bit of a comeback with a 27% rise in interest since 2012, leading to the name ‘MLS 3.0’. The MLS has expanded to include more teams and has also garnered interest of major investors that want to help propel the league to European standards.
In fact, on April 18, the league made plans to expand the league to 30 teams, which it seems on schedule to accomplish. Since it began with 10 teams, the MLS has expanded to include 26 teams, with another two cities, St. Louis and Sacramento, set to join the league as soon as they have bids prepared.
In 2018, when the newly-added Atlanta FC won the MLS Cup, the franchise’s net worth ballooned to $330 million. This number put Atlanta FC on par with global powerhouse teams like the Premier League’s Manchester United, the German Bundesliga’s Bayern Munich, and Spain’s powerhouse clubs Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Additionally, New York City FC was able to more than double its fan base in less than ten years to 7.3 million fans.
However, the MLS still has quite a bit of expanding and franchising to do before its able to attract fans like EU leagues do, or star players like Lionel Messi or Neymar Junior. Though, to be fair, the MLS began in 1996, while some EU clubs got their start in the 1800s.
Many Americans would love to see the growing MLS league take shape similar to NFL, where 30 teams could be divided between East, Central, and West Divisions. Not only would this make the league similar to America’s most popular sport, it would also help organize game play to extend and regulate a season for optimal viewership and a tiered advance to the championship, the MLS Cup.
Others would prefer to see the MLS league look more like its European counterparts. This may be difficult, as the EU has ample domestic minor league teams and North America has only the MLS, and the MLS currently requires hundreds of millions of dollars in expansion fees from franchise owners. However, given that the MLS continues to expand and attract franchises from around North America, dividing the league into two separate divisions and relegating the bottom teams would essentially double the MLS’s presence and viability in North America.
What seems most crucial at this time during the MLS’s expansion period is the ongoing investment into each franchise. It isn’t enough to contract big-name players from Europe who are at the end of their career and hope that fans are attracted on that big name alone—especially considering their play won’t look like a reel of career highlights.
Instead, teams should follow the example set by superstar team Atlanta FC: hire a worthwhile coach, invest in younger players at the start of their career, invest in proper training facilities and equipment, and give fans a stadium to cheer in and a team worth cheering for.
