Photo: Howie Pollard
Last week, The Athletic’s Sam Stejskal suggested the barrier between MLS’s success as an elite American and global league was its archaic and limiting wage structure.
He argued the league’s framework toward parity actually leads closer to bland homogeneity than it does genuine, “anyone can make it” interest. Homogeneity is boring he continued, and nobody watches boring things on TV (and he’s right about that, as truly no one watches MLS on TV), and thus his conclusion was this: let teams open up their wallets so that the ambitious ones can be become the country’s Manchester Whicheveronesyousupport, and the lesser ones can try their best to be Leicester City while mostly being every other version of anonymous fodder.
Parity hasn’t equalled eye balls in any other soccer league in the world, so parity be darned.
His isn’t a new argument – but is salient today because of the league’s new TV deal, itself both a significant step forward and a major reality check – but it’s also not a correct one for a specific reason.
The reason no one watches MLS is not because of limited spending.
The reason no one watches MLS is because no one is watching MLS.
The data and the noise
Read that sentence again.
Does it make sense?
If not, there’s a corollary in current events that might shed some light: inflation.
Inflation exists for a number of reasons, depending on who is making the argument. At its most simplistic, inflation a function of one thing people talk about a lot and one thing people don’t. The one they talk about is the supply and velocity of money: when there is too much money (supply), and that money ends up in the actual economy and not on the balance sheet of some bank (velocity), the value of that money goes down (inflation).
The one they don’t talk about is that the idea that there might be inflation actually creates inflation.
When consumers believe the thing they want to buy will cost more when they need to buy it again in the short term, they’ll often buy more of it than normal – think about the toilet paper shortage at the beginning of COVID. There were certainly supply chain issues, but there was also a significant belief by consumers that there might not be toilet paper at all the next time they needed it. So they bought more than they normally would at the price they knew, worried about a future price they believed would be higher.
That meant there was less toilet paper to be found, which meant stores could charge more for what they already had, which meant if a consumer found toilet paper at all, they often bought more than necessary, which simply served to exacerbate these problems even further.
Just thinking about something manifested it into the world.
The reason no one watches MLS is because no one is watching MLS.
Slow and steady wins the race
MLS is trying to avoid this spiral.
They’re doing so by purposefully restricting supply of their product even as they expand (by way of franchise limits and fees, in addition to roster restrictions), in hopes of not over-extending themselves without enough reliable revenue to support such a move.
This is smart – if possibly boring – business because the graveyard of failed American sports leagues is big, long, and wide.
Is the reader still watching Slam Ball? Why not? More people watched that league’s second season than watched MLS Cup last year!
How about the X Games? A pretty reliable highlight reel of fun for mostly younger viewers, tailor-made for the digital age, and completely irrelevant in American sports.
Watched any Foosball on TV lately – once the 8th most watched sport in America?
Even the list of all-time professional football leagues – America’s absolute opiate – is a worrisome tale: the XFL, the USFL, the AAF, and more. All either folded or simply became an afterthought in the sports landscape.
There were or are buckets of money in every single one of these sports, money that didn’t solve their nascent problems, but simply meant each lost more of it more quickly when the going got tough.
MLS isn’t racing to be big, though they’ve grown in leaps and bounds since nearly folding earlier this century. No, MLS is still racing to survive – and that’s normal.
For reference, the 25-year-old New York Yankees only averaged 15,020 fans in 1927, when arguably the greatest baseball team of all time won the World Series in a sweep during one of the nation’s greatest economic booms – when the sport was unquestionably the nation’s pastime.
Money and time are the same thing, just inverted
There’s no question that more money, more quickly can create moments of success.
Leagues like the NASL can attest to that. The NASL’s Cosmos had Pele and Beckenbauer together at one point and were setting attendance records at nearly every stadium they played in the late 1970s. The team spent money in a league that was already a decade old and seemingly flourishing.
By 1985, the entire thing folded.
Adding in the examples above, more money won’t make a league more successful, there’s plenty of data on that regardless of the sport. It also won’t make a league interesting unfortunately, not in any long-lasting way anyway – and that’s really why people aren’t watching yet. They’re simply not interested.
Only time will change that.
This is why the league’s deal with Apple is important – one of the largest companies in the history of the world will be talking about soccer, for the next 10 years, during a World Cup in the United States, while the league is as successful as it has ever been, in reliable windows of time, every single week – like clockwork.
The reason no one watches MLS is because no one is watching MLS… except when MLS is on billions of screens every day for a decade.
There will be people watching soccer, people talking about soccer, people manifesting the game into the national sports conversation more than ever before. There will be supply, there will be demand, but most of all, there will be a belief in a product from one of the most reliable revenue producing companies that has ever existed.
And it will still take time after that.
Spending more money won’t speed that process up, but it might just end it altogether.
It’s almost like you knew a thing or two about financial planning
First off, the Athletic article is Sam whining that the salary mechanisms are over the top and that’s true. What he fails to mention is that the league and the players have a CBA that is negotiated with those mechanisms in place until 2027. Yes TAM and GAM are a thing that most fans don’t understand, especially for fans who follow other leagues but they were negotiated in the current CBA. When it comes to ratings technically at this point they are a thing of the past going forward as the new catch phrase will be paid subscribers. Something that is also negotiated into the last CBA in terms of TV money.
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Parity is the basis of every league in the U.S. whether you like it or not. Nobody is watching MLS is a talking point for Twitter conversations but the last two games on ABC both had over 500K watching. In fact the league has had slow steady growth year after year when it comes to eyeballs on the league. Does it do as well as Liga MX or the EPL, no and it might never catch them. The thing is that those leagues were never the competition when it comes to a TV contract, it was all the other domestic sports leagues and college sports. Those are the fans that MLS had to go after and anyone who knows the phrase 4 for 4 can understand why 5 for 5 is significant.
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What the deal with Apple offers is the chance to make more revenue as they have a floor of 2.5 billion over the next decade. They can still sell a linear TV contract but the day of the blackout is over. Apple also opens up more revenue after they surpass a set amount of subscribers that they can draw for around the globe. At some point in the future do you think some folks in England who support Leeds might subscribe? Major Leeds Soccer is a thing now. Parity isn’t a bad thing it’s just our thing and it can create plenty of storylines going forward.
MLS as a television product has one problem that no other American sports entity has. The simple fact that superior versions of the game are readily available on television at all times.
The fact that MLS local attendance is so strong and local TV consumption of many franchises games are quite healthy, is a success story too often ignored by the mainstream US Sports media. That MLS has done this as a 2nd (or arguably 3rd ) tier league in a nation where all of its other major sports leagues are the worlds best and soccer was looked down upon for decades is remarkable.
If you look at both MLB and NHL consumption over the last 20 years, both sports have had steadily declining National numbers while remaining healthy on the local level. One can’t be surprised to see this trend magnified in MLS.
Right now, only the NFL and NBA with their unique combinations of star power and culturally zeitgeist are really driving national interest in their product outside of one’s favored team.
MLS is what it is. It can always be improved, but making it to where it is today should be celebrated and studied.
(I’m not smart enough to understand the article so all I can do is comment on the comments) regarding your first line, NCAA football and NCAA basketball would like a word.
Regarding your second paragraph, I would like to amplify, as I agree, but I’d put it like this: the most remarkable thing about MLS is that in 15 years it has gone from a 3rd-4th division league to a legit 2nd division league, comparable to any 2nd division in Europe except England’s Championship. It’s amazing.
One could also argue that parity is required in a league without Pro / Rel. Parity theoretically giving all teams a real shot at the title / trophy replaces 3 different races in the European leagues (Title, Continental competitions, and avoidance of relegation).
As a soccer nut, like everyone else here, I have enjoyed watching the Union in person and on TV for the decade+ that it has been around. I have to admit though to almost never watching a MLS game that does not either include the Union or is crucial for the Union in some way.
My DVR is full of EPL, which is just more fun to watch.
That said, aside from the high level of the EPL, I like there is a lot of competitiveness in the league. Any given day one team in the top half of the table can get a result off another. That is less true with Ligue 1, Bundesliga and LaLiga. Some level of parity is a very good thing.
I hope though that the MLS CBA and salary caps have some automatic mechanism to increase – i.e. when league revenue goes up 10%, salary caps go up 8% or 12%, based on the relevant math.
Chris makes a great point about over-extending, but I am sure that we all also want to see the talent pool continue to improve to the point that other MLS matches are interesting to watch “neutrals”.
When Bedoya was signed, I think he may have been the Unions only player worth over $1M.
Today these are our starters:
Blake $3M
Wagner $3M
Elliott $2M
Glesnes $2M
Mbaizo $1.5M
Martinez $1.5M
Flach $2M
Bedoya $400K
Gazdag $2M
Uhre $3M
Caranza $3M
It has been a fun ride, but I also look forward to the day when half the starters are $10m+, growing at the same pace that MLS as a whole does…a day when I might flip around on the tv to look for an interesting MLS match to watch as a neutral.
I put collegiate sports in a separate category, but I guess these days its as professional as anything else. Even so, despite the enormous popularity of NCAA Football, the corresponding ratings for NFL Football are significantly higher. 14 million viewers for the college championship game, 19 million on any given Sunday night for NFL. NBA ratings during the regular season and playoffs are much higher than the NCAA, however the Men’s Championship game garners much higher h numbers than the NBA finals. Likely due to both the winner take all nature of the game and the phenomenon of bracket mania which is the ultimate in a cultural phenomenon giving everyone a vested interest in the outcome.
Messi is 6 months away from making the move and the MLS will grow worldwide viewership numbers in ‘23.
One huge difference between MLS and leagues around the world is the soccer is the 5th most watched team sport in this country while it is undisputed #1 in most of the rest of the world.
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I’ve been a season ticket holder since day one (literally, I put my deposit down within 15 minutes of the announcement of the team) and have enjoyed watching the Union grow from a new team to a contender over the last 13 seasons. Would I continue if I knew that 5 or 6 other teams were spending the money to assemble Cosmos like teams with the lower budget teams having virtually no chance? Probably not, I’d find better ways to spend my time/money.
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In the current world, even when a team like LAFC has 3 or 4 superstars, they still need to find a way to occupy the other positions on the field and that’s where someone like Tanner can excel on a limited budget.
Soccer may now be the 4th most watched team sport in the USA. When you add up the audience for all the soccer product available on American TV it is larger than the total for hockey product. Yes the NHL is bigger than MLS, but 2.5 million people watched the Stanley Cup Finals. 3 million viewers watched the Liga MX final on Univision. 2.76 million watched the UEFA Champions League Final. NHL regular season national game ratings were 486,000 viewers per event, NBC averaged 508,000 viewers per event for the EPL. You can definitely make the case that soccer is 4th.
Still, it is a far cry from number 1 like it is in the rest of the world.
That’s an interesting question: would I keep watching if I knew the Union had no chance of winning? Could I be a Burnley fan, basically? I don’t know the answer. As they say in England though, “It’s the hope that kills you.”
I have my doubts that moving to Apple TV is a good move long term. This reeks of an advertising move by Apple and a short term money grab by MLS at the cost of local viewership. I will not pay to see a game on Apple.
The Apple deal is not ideal by any means. The overall per team payout is not much better than what MLS gets currently. Maybe the more annoying issue is the lack of tv time MLS will be getting out in public. Looking up to see the random MLS game on a tv in a bar is no longer going to be a thing (or in any case no where near as frequent).
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The bigger issue is that we are going to be stuck at this income level for MLS for a decade. We aren’t even going to be able to take full advantage of the ’26 WC bump. TV rights are what made the EPL what it is today, and it accounts for close to half the roster cost for most of that league’s teams.
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The Apple deal comes close to this for MLS teams, but that is for current roster costs. One would have hoped that the tv deal was going to be able to propel MLS to the next level, and give teams a lot more money to spend on their rosters. Sigh… maybe next decade
The point that I’ve seen made is that this is a test case for sports subscriptions. You’d never see the more established leagues signing up to be the first ones. Apple is going to push it hard, because once it’s proven it opens up the big leagues. However much it seems like a middling deal, I think the potential for Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc. will result in a lot of attention over the next 2-3 years. Apple wants this to succeed, and on a large scale.