An nyiforlife.com EDITORIAL: How Professional Sports Leagues Can Learn from MLS

It's funny to me to read about how other leagues are interested in the MLS model now that the recession has hit. It wasn't that long ago that the media was mocking them for how they do business (here I am thinking of PTI) and now MLS is the only league growing when others are hurting.

The main thrust (if you can call just shouting a thrust) of the argument on PTI was that all of the teams under one umbrella of management negates the competitive nature of team vs. team in the marketplace for players and results. Noted soccer expert Tony Kornheiser even called the league a joke to operate in this manner; and he is on the record so very, very many times as being a soccer detractor. And we all know that he does not think before he speaks.

Michael Wilbon is not without blame here, even though he sort of endorsed DC United signing Freddy Adu to a contract even though Adu wasn't yet able to drive himself to the games or practice.

Now comes word that the Arena Football League has ratified a new business model with it's players' union and that the league expects to be fully functional for the 2010 season.

And guess what? The new business model is described as a whole heck of a lot like the MLS model.

For those who aren't familiar, the MLS model is essentially that the leaders meet and decide what it is going to cost to run a team before each season. A salary cap is decided and given to the MLSPA to ratify. Each of the teams pay into a pool and the league manages that money. Traditional ownership does not exist in the league; instead the teams own shares in the league to run and team and are called operators. Each operator runs a business with a specific team in a specific market like a traditional owner would. If one of the operators wishes to divest from the league, the opportunity to be the operator of that team would be sold to another bidder by the league and the outgoing operator would be compensated with the proceeds of the sale equal to their "stock" in the league.

Okay, so I have over-simplified, but that is pretty much how it goes. The salary cap works in a similar manner to the NBA salary cap in that there are roster exceptions and exemptions for certain players.

Say a player is signed to a MLS contract worth 300K but the salary limit per player is 100K. Well, that means that the 200K that is over the cap becomes the responsibility of the team operator who wants to add this player to his squad. Each team gets a limited amount of these Exceptional Player exceptions so that one crazy renegade operator doesn't tilt the apple cart too much.

(David Beckham is the big exception here. The league reportedly paid a major part of his salary from a general fund and he had all sorts of licensing deals through the league that inflated his salary to much higher than the "average" MLS superstar.)

The AFL was humming along similarly for a long while until the new money infiltrated the league in the early part of the decade. Once the players formed a union, all salaries had to be made public and therefore, all salaries went up as players and agents could compare one player to another statistically and salary-wise. Free agency and the promise of big-time NBC money that never materialized also drove up salaries.

(That's why it was a lazy argument back in the day when the media liked saying that the AFL on NBC was out-drawing the NHL TV-wise because anyone with half a brain could look at the numbers for both leagues and figure out that the AFL was the new kid in town and that the ratings would slide whereas the NHL was an established entity with over 90 years of credibility behind it. You're noticing the new car smell is off NASCAR now, aren't you?)

Of course, there were other issues that lead to the rapid decent of the AFL. First off, they seemed to go out of their way to upset the hardcores by allowing unlimited substitutions on both sides of the ball. One of the most intriguing aspects of the traditional Arena game was that many of the players on the field were Ironmen who had to play both offense and defense. Linebackers became running backs and receivers became defenders, etc. John Elway, part owner of the Colorado franchise, pushed for this change and once it passed, it took away a lot of what made Arena Football "special" and different in the eyes of their most ardent fans.

Crazy expansion would be another issue; as the league went to different cities where the style of play was not understood by the average person who would attend the game. Many of the newbies expected outdoor football in a pinball machine and the nuances of playing winning arena football is much different indoors than the strategy is outdoors.

As an outsider, it seems to me that you should be able to make money with an AFL team. You market it as an alternative (and go back to the summer schedule when rinks are empty) and not as a little version of what you see outdoors in the fall and winter. Of course, everything seems easy when it isn't your money.

Marketing MLS is a bit of a different road because you have to get credibility with the ex-pats in America who follow their leagues from back home. You need to build up your game as real sport and not just a grown up version of the game every little kid plays in the suburbs...which is the unfortunate way many in this country see the world's game.

So, this MLS business model...could it work for the NHL? Probably not.

If the league were in true peril, then perhaps it could. But what we have seen is that the NHL and the NBA are funded by some very serious dudes with some very serious coin. In the AFL, and to a lesser extent, MLS, you're dealing with owners who don't have the capital that the ownership in other leagues has. And what makes that dangerous is that when you get eager and competitive owners with a little bit of money who want to roll the dice with the big boys, you'll find a much slimmer margin of error. In a business where losses simply have to be expected and absorbed, those losses are compounded by the fact that the teams often are paying rent on the arena.

MLS was smart from the beginning and have been smart under the leadership of commissioner Don Garber to stick to the model and develop ancillary income around the game and the league. They've resisted the urge to grow too fast like the AFL did with the false promise of NBC money and they've had to reorganize into (or, back into) a more prudent model.

Anyway, just an editorial on a slow week for the Islanders. We'll be running a series of these over the summer involving all sorts of topics so if you have an idea or would like to write for the site, contact me at the address above.

David Beckham

Let's start this off by getting one thing straight: David Beckham is not going to 'save' soccer in the United States. He's not going to make Major League Soccer the fifth national sport and he isn't going to have the kind of impact Pele did in the 1970s because everything looks better in the rear view mirror. David Beckham is not going to do anything more than sell some tickets (for a while) and some jerseys to the People Magazine crowd. The man's mere presence in this country is not going to change the perception of soccer in this country from what it is as the ideal non-competitive sport for all children when they are super young. It just ain't gonna happen and it doesn't matter who shows up here to play in the league.

What will David Beckham mean in America? Well, his wife will have a whole new crowd of reporters to talk to. The couple will have ample opportunity to stop and pose on red carpets. They can enjoy being the new kids in town and all of that for a while before the whole thing peters out. And that is how it is going to go. Anyone who thinks differently is kidding themselves.

I am a soccer fan. What's more, I am a Major League Soccer fan. I don't care one bit about what goes on in those so-called better leagues in Europe. I don't care at all. Major League Soccer is in my country and I support it. I'm a fan of the New England Revolution and the United States Men's National Team. Those are the only two teams I want to see win. Do I want the sport (in this country) to get more (ahem) mainstream coverage? Yes. Do I want to see more games on TV? Yes, I most certainly do. I just don't want the games to be about David Beckham and not about the game itself.

Case in point: the one game Becks has even played in, the friendly the Galaxy played against Chelsea. ESPN treated the game as a backdrop for the man himself. Bonnie Bernstein was plopped on a red freaking carpet to dish about "celebrities" as they entered the Home Depot Center. The cameras were focused on Posh and all of her celebrity "friends" in her skybox--who never seemed to be bothered to watch the game itself. Commentator (and US Soccer legend) Eric Wynalda begged Posh over and over to actually take off her sunglasses and smile every time they showed her and she did neither. The whole embarrassing exercise was another example of the "US Magazine-ification" of ESPN where the stars are king and the actual game is secondary.

Which brings us to this past Sunday, the game that Becks was rumored to actually be playing in. ESPN2 changed their schedule around to feature Beckham in his first league game and although I am sure they tried to bully their "partner" MLS into getting him to play, Becks instead sat on the bench in Toronto sporting what looked to be a very expensive suit. The contrast was amazing to see: young, hungry guys who make like no money wearing the new Galaxy jersey that Beckham designed intently watching the game and Beckham fiddling like a little kid, checking out the crowd, nursing a bum ankle. No one asked why the ankle was fine for Beckham to play on two weeks prior when Chelsea was in LA but not now in a league game the team needed to take to make the postseason. Could it be that in this instant information age that we live in that film and pictures of Beckham playing against an English team were more important back home than film and pictures of a Sunday night league game in Toronto? Does anyone in MLS want to field that question? Mr. Garber, do I see your hand up?

The talk that bringing Becks into MLS is going to open up some sort of pipeline for other European football stars to make their way to the league is premature at best. The league was doing fine operating as a single-entity that owned all player contracts before the league adopted The Beckham Rule that allowed for one player to be paid by an individual team and not have that contract count against the salary cap. Dalliances with players such as Figo; Zidane; and Ronaldo have been limited and played up in the press at times; but none of these so-called courtships have been anything more than fodder for the player to use in negotiations with their European teams. It's actually been pretty transparent at times--especially with the retired Zidane. I think he might just be enjoying the flattering proposals.

Bottom line is that this whole deal is more about celebrity and the "Beckham Brand" than it is about some deep-seeded, philanthropic desire to grow the world's game in the one country that soccer doesn't mean life or death. That's why you see Becks and Posh posing outside of restaurants in Los Angeles. It's why he hangs out with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. It's why Becks throws out the first pitch at a baseball game in Toronto and has his picture taken with Derek Jeter and Joe Torre. Call me cynical, but that is all it is. America is the one "market" in which David Beckham isn't a well-known brand--and that is what he's about when you do the math. David Beckham wants the Beckham name to be as well known as Wal-Mart, Pepsi, and McDonald's. And if he has to play a few soccer games here and there to do it, he may as well do so. It's not like it's stipulated in his contract or anything.