Let’s See Big Changes for MLS 3.0
As MLS enters the 2015 season, a lot of hardcore fans like to refer to this upcoming season as MLS 3.0. With the launch of MLS in 1996, the league kicked off the inaugural season in San Jose’s Spartan stadium in front of 31,000 fans for a game between the San Jose Clash and D.C. United. MLS 1.0 was born and for the next ten years MLS would see teams come and go and come again. Columbus would build the league’s first soccer specific stadium in 1999 and by 2006 three more stadiums would be added in Los Angeles, Dallas & Chicago. This strategy of moving teams out of American Football stadiums and into their own Soccer Specific Stadiums was part of the new strategy for moving the league to what a lot of fans called MLS 2.0.
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In the next decade of MLS 2.0, expansion would grow the league and every team but Houston would have their own operator running a franchise. The league would adopt the Designated Player Rule in 2007, which would result in the signing of David Beckham by the Los Angeles Galaxy. In the next few years the DP rule would change to three players per team and MLS would add more star players from Europe and South America. In the past few season USMNT players have returned and are now some of the highest paid players in the league. The league also started investing in youth development and mandated every team to have an academy. After the players lost a law suit in 2003 Fraser v. Major League Soccer case, the players formed a union in 2004. The first two collective bargaining agreements help establish minimum salaries, health care for players and their families and a 401(k) with guaranteed contributions from MLS. Finally, the league had negotiated a huge jump in broadcast right with Univision, Fox & ESPN.
This coming season will see dedicated nights for MLS national TV games. Univision will broadcast on Friday night’s and offer English language by hitting the SAP button and ESPN and Fox will have a game each on Sunday. The league will welcome NYCFC and Orlando City this year bringing the number of teams to twenty after the folding of Chivas USA. Atlanta and LAFC will join in 2017 and two more teams after that, before 2022. Two teams will be moving into brand new SSS with San Jose this year and D.C. United finally getting approval for their stadium which might be ready by 2017-18 season. I’m a little surprised that these two teams aren’t kicking off the Twentieth Season; assuming the league and players come to an agreement for the new CBA. After all these are the two cities that started it all off.
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Like most, I think MLS 3.0 will start with a dramatic shift in the salary cap and maybe the addition of a DP or two. That should be nice but now I think it’s time to shift the focus away from expansion and infrastructure and to the actual competition and how to improve it. I think it was a mistake to expand the playoff field to twelve teams as I was hoping they would stay at ten with the league expanding to 24 teams. Although this year’s playoffs showed improvement with rating and attendance, the first round games still lacked interest. With the season ending and the one-off playoff game starting mid-week, crowds and ratings weren’t that great. Adding two more teams for those midweek games should only make things worse. Unless they had something to play for and the games had a little meaning.
This would be some of the changes I would like to see for MLS 3.0.
This past season the Philadelphia Union was able to compete for the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup at PPL Park in front of 15,256 fans. The game was on a Tuesday night and having a crowd this size is quite impressive as the Union play in Chester, PA. It’s not that easy to get to a game at 7:00 during the week as fans heading to the game have to deal with rush hour just ending at that time of day. Sadly I had to work till 8:00 but luckily I was able to catch the second half of the game as Comcast Sports Net made it available in Philadelphia. The game was one of the loudest I’ve ever heard at PPL Park as the Sons of Ben were leading the cheers and the whole stadium was taking part with them. It’s the first time I heard PPL with everybody in attendance taking part in the chants. Although the Cup final itself is exciting, the game’s leading up to that are sometimes looked at as a burden by some teams. Most MLS teams will field a reserve team in the early round games as they navigate the extra mid-week games during the season. It really shows disrespect for the oldest ongoing national soccer competition in the U.S. and the world’s third-longest-running open soccer tournament. Once again the same problem is repeating itself as fans show little interest in opening round games. It needs to be fixed and it would only take a little tweak.
I think you can use the killing two birds with one stone approach to fix this problem. Before NASL had started, only eight MLS teams took place in the cup and each league below them decided how they would qualify their teams for the competition. For MLS I think you could use the results of the playoffs to decide who gets into next year’s Cup. With twelve teams in the playoffs, first round games would have a chance to decide the final spots depending on how many Canadian teams are in the playoffs. If no team’s from Canada made it into the playoffs, the first midweek playoff games would be the decider for the remaining two of eight spots. These games would be a little more meaningful for the home fans and might add to the excitement of the first round playoff game.
One of the problems with the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup is that it has a lot of history but most of the teams playing in it don’t. Fans of those teams might know very little about the Cup and its history. The Union last year had introduced a third jersey, in tribute to Bethlehem Steel Soccer Club, who won the Cup a record five times in 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919, and 1926. If you’re interested in the history of the Cup here is a link with an overview. http://thecup.us/history/
This is where I would like to see a change for MLS 3.0 as they should try to grow the sport and tournament in this country. The new television rights contract that MLS just signed starting this year is tied to the USMNT games and the USSF. Right now they do very little to promote the tournament, so it’s an afterthought for a lot of teams as there is very little to play for. The Sounders after winning the Cup walked away with $250,000 and the Union took $60,000 as the runner-up. The highest placing lower division team received $15,000 for their efforts. I think I found the place where the USSF can start to spend that new-found TV money. After listening to Carlos Alvarado Jr. on the Roar of the Lions Podcast talking about increasing the prize money for the Cup, the final piece of the puzzle came to me. Adding two million dollars to the pot would do wonders for the competition. How you break it up, I’ll let USSF figure that out; but a good bump should go to the players.
The other thing I would like to do is make the Supporters’ Shield much more important by making it the only way a MLS team can automatically qualify for next seasons CONCACAF Champions League. The other two spots I would give to the US Open Cup, bringing the total to three and adding a new third place game to decide the last spot in CCL. It would give the Cup much more meaning, showing it its proper respect. Teams in NASL would have more chances at CCL spot’s and the prize money would help them grow their club. The one thing I would change is that any MLS team that started their own USL Pro team wouldn’t be able to have their second team compete. You could fill in the spots with more amateur teams or cut the field down to round out the field.
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Now with a more meaningful Cup competition, hopefully the USSF can market the tournament and get more games on TV or even YouTube. By MLS cutting back the number of teams, they could help grow the tournament as early round games should be a good draw for small clubs if they’re the home team. With the new CBA, MLS should be in the position to get all three teams to qualify for CCL as they should have the more superior teams. NASL would benefit as we saw last year games between them and MLS teams were quite chippy. I could imagine if any of the New York teams faced each other in a Cup game, it would peak some interest in that market. Also if NASL was to get a team to qualify for CCL it would help the league as they try to seek more investors. Some might say why would MLS want to give up valuable CCL qualifying spots? But I’ll answer that with Don Garber’s catch phrase, “A high tide lifts all boats”. Besides, creating more interest in this tournament creates a revenue stream for MLS teams as well as every club below them.
I’m not a fan of Pro/Rel because I think it’s trying to be forced on MLS and there aren’t enough teams in NASL yet to justify it. But if they could grow the league to the point that they kept grabbing one, two or all three of these CCL spots, well? It would definitely help the pro/rel argument and give the NASL reason to build stadiums and academies. Once again most people want to see teams in the second division that are worthy and will have a chance in the first division before the United States introduces Pro/Rel. Myself I’m not one, but it would be harder for me to argue against it if NASL kept winning CCL spots.
In the end, MLS 3.0 might be remembered best for building the pyramid in the United States, increasing the popularity of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup and making the teams going to CCL able to compete with the added revenue.