American league setup vs. European League setup: Your preference?

[ChrisFC]

Because of how other US sports are structured (Geographical Divisions, a draft, playoffs etc.) the UEFA structure of Promotion/Relegation would be a hard sell in the US (right now). Relegation for a team in any US league would be catastrophic from a financial standpoint. Look at baseball, as an example. Teams like the Astros, the Cubs, the Marlins, the Royals (although they're improving) would all be relegated, for arguments sake. Apart from the Cubs who have a historically loyal fan base despite not winning anything in over 100 years, it's not far-fetched to think the other clubs would collapse without enormous investment from an owner. People just don't go to watch a losing side in the US when they can still support them from home. Its a philosophical difference between the European supporter and the American supporter.

Now, obviously that's painting with a broad brush and not everyone feels that way. There are die-hard fans of every team out there, despite poor performance. But the American sports fan - and I'm willing to bet this applies to exactly zero people on this forum - is fickle (not necessarily with allegiance, but with support for a regime or player). We live in a "What have you done for me lately?" society of fans. If the answer to that question is "Well, you got relegated," especially in an arena as fragile as MLS & American soccer in general (and I say fragile in light of expansion bringing in new fans) it would be disastrous for the fan base and possibly the sport.

This is not to say that promotion/relegation can never work in MLS. At the moment, most MLS fans are familiar with the process from following various club leagues in other countries, which eases the burden for the current teams and in the current structure. However, in the state of MLS now - even if we adopted one of the other American leagues - the expansion coming over the next 10 years makes the idea precarious at best. No one expects an expansion team to win the cup in their first year (except of course for NYCFC who will obviously win ;-)) but to adopt a second league as the relegation league, then continue to expand the league to however many teams and introduce promotion/relegation during that process would be such a mess of teams moving all over the place in the tables that new fans would come in and say "Huh?" MLS would have to wait until they (and their prospective relegation league) had a stable base of teams, a relatively stable income across the board and a good academy structure to keep the lower tiers competitive on some level.

TL;DR: Promotion/Relegation isn't impossible in the future, but it will have to wait for MLS to be a way more stable league with a fixed amount of teams, financial stability and more widely (and more importantly, in my opinion) - soccer academies to take hold and grow in the US to make it possible for lower-tier teams to cultivate talent and remain competitive.

 

[Falastur]

I disagree about the way it would need to be implemented. I don't think promotion/relegation could ever be successfully introduced if it were just stuck into MLS. I think it would have to be introduced from the ground up.

Start by introducing it at youth level, so that there are tangible rewards for youth set-ups achieving high standards, and so it becomes a factor in kids' growing up with the game. Then get some of the USASA leagues to restructure to have two or three divisions, again just so people get used to it. At those levels, there aren't enough people with enough money invested that it should cause too many stirs, and it would hopefully become recognised as a way of acknowledging successful clubs and penalising those who are continually poor.

Eventually roll it out into the USL and NASL, where people will actually start to properly take notice. Wait about five or ten years, and again hopefully promotion/relegation will become synonymous with rewarding success. Then, and only then, broach the prospect of a two-tier MLS system - still closed shop, because there's no way that the MLS owners will agree to potentially drop down to NASL level. Make it so that the fans recognise that a promotion campaign, or escaping relegation, is just as big an adrenalin rush as winning the league, because it is. Maybe 20-30 years later you'll finally be in a position where you can then think of merging MLS with NASL, and slowly linking all the leagues into one big football pyramid, just like in the UK.

 

[ChrisFC]

I agree with everything about your plan.

 

[MikeDatTiger]

I don't think that plan would work. I don't think the concept has to be gradually introduced; the problem is alleviating the financial blow relegation has for the owners who have invested in MLS and stadiums based off the assumption that the team would remain in the top USA league. You have a legal problem where people have paid tens of millions of dollars for one thing that you're not delivering. For example, how is MCFC going to react if they've spent $80 Million of a 100 M fee to get a team in the top flight only to see that team dropped?

The only way I can see it happening is if either A) Whether you're the top flight or the lower flight, you still get the same revenue sharing from the TV deals or B) the clubs that exist now get a guaranteed payment to buy them out of their franchise.

A is more likely, but neither makes sense. MLS wants to entice investors to invest in MLS, invest in player salaries, and invest in shiny SSS. Guaranteeing them top flight status is how you do that. Why on earth would the current owners ever agree to give that up?

The other issue is TV deals. People lauded Atlanta because it's a top TV market for MLS to promote to TV network folks when making a deal. What happens to that deal if Atlanta, Los Angeles 2 and DC get relegated? London is always going to have an EPL team; that won't be the case in the US unless baseball dies out and football and hockey are outlawed for being too violent and thus sports entertainment dollars are freed up to allow for the creation of many soccer clubs in the big cities.

 

[Falastur]

That's exactly my point. I don't see any way of alleviating the financial blow, so I see the only way this could plausibly happen is if a combination of forward-thinking MLS executives and fan pressure forced the move through. The only way that this, in turn, could happen is if the fans had grown up much of their lives with promotion/relegation at school/youth level, and if the system has been around long enough that even the franchise owners understand the appeal of the system. If promotion/relegation is not introduced into the US football culture first, the franchise owners will simply never, ever accept it.