So wait, is MLS broken or isn't it? To answer the question though, I think the success the league is having with expansion where it has a market, ownership group, and venue that meet its criteria means they would be fools to stop at some arbitrary number. The only problem you're hitting is that there are just too many teams competing for too few competitive stakes. How do you break down that barrier to minting new Charlotte's and Nashville's? That's the place my proposal is coming from. The reflexive tic to see everything as "HUR DUR if it's not pro/rel it's not a real league" is something the MLS fanbase would do well to get over. That argument is over and y'all won.
No? It's not broke. Like all middle tier leagues, MLS can't compete with the top tier leagues on the player quality level. It's not something that is unique to MLS and changing format isn't going to change that. You have no evidence that this is a problem. Every expansion has brought in more fans. The league is making more money that it has in the past, player quality is improving, etc, etc. By most metrics, (aside from TV ratings) MLS is improving while it is expanding. It's not MLS's fan base saying that. It largely originates in US soccer fans that aren't MLS fans.
Let's stop dancing around here. Do you think in 20 years MLS should be 36-40 teams playing in a single annual regular season then playoffs type format?
I'm not going to make predictions about MLS's size or format, but if we were to treat your question as a hypothetical, I don't see why MLS couldn't be a league with 36-40 team with a playoff type format.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. I'll wait for your factual evidence of that format succeeding. (I don't mean to be a jerk, but seriously, I am rubber and you are glue here)
There is no evidence that MLS’s format is harming its growth.. My sole position is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Your proposal is literally “I don’t like the current format, let’s just throw something at the wall and see if it sticks”. The burden of proof here lies on you. You have to provide evidence (actual evidence, not your opinion) that your format is superior to the current format.
*looks at Liga MX, the most popular soccer league in this country* *looks at the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB, collectively the most successful sports leagues on the planet financially* I don't know man, guess we'll just have to wait and see...
LigaMX/FMF does seem to be working hard to destroy that tho. It really does seem that ending pro/rel really hurt Mexican soccer... And that's not because pro/rel is superior, it's just the format Mexican fans are used to and, all of a sudden, having the lower divisions cut off from the top division didn't improve things in the top division and hurt things in the lower divisions. I can't help but think that, at this point, a lot of the popularity of LigaMX in the US comes down to a failure of MLS to penetrate the Spanish language market and tradition.. Kind of like how Rangers and Celtic were very popular in the US well into the 2000s despite them being a significant step down from the Premier League.. And yes, I'm aware I just made a backhanded comment to Scotland's primary language. Hehe.
I am literally saying "do not do this until you reach a league size that would be uncharted territory for the structure as it exists". It's also obviously incompatible with the Messi moment. We're peering deeper over the horizon here. See above. Also, the real inspiration here is college sports conferences, which have bred a localism that allowed second rate minor league sports to flourish to enormous levels of popularity and wealth for decades. That now also being destroyed by the zombie-brained notion that because NFL franchise values can't stop escalating they must have the secret formula.
I'll agree the lower divisions are in bad shape, but they cut them off because they weren't financially stable. So is it worse or is it just a different kind of bad? And is the top league hurting at all? I don't follow it closely but it doesn't seem like it.
From what I understand, while the lower divisions of Mexican soccer were in disarray, the knowledge that their teams were cut off from the top division sent fans away from their home clubs and sent them even further into disarray. That was only in the immediate aftermath tho. As with many fan protests, those fans very well could have come back. Like you. I don't follow it THAT closely. Other than seeing Mexican soccer fans pointing at that decision as one of the reasons the MexMNT has fallen off in the last few years and why MLS seems to be catching LigaMX faster. The impression I'm getting from that specific complaint is that FMF/LigaMX cut off the pipeline from lower division players to upper level teams and they are paying the consequences for that.
I also can't help but say, this huffy attitude of "you morons don't understand anything with your halfwitted new ideas, the way things are is the ONLY way there could ever be pro soccer in this country" has been the absolute religious commitment of MLS fans for decades, again, beating back the zombie army of Eurosnobs. It's perfectly understandable why that has become the default reaction to everything. But then in the last decade the league has nearly doubled in size, started using NFL stadia as permanent venues again, TAM, the U22 Initiative, killed off local broadcasting and put the whole league on a streaming platform, created a pause in its season to do a giant World Cup style competition as a joint venture with LigaMX. The MLS has proven it has a model that works to grow and bed in pro soccer in the United States. The thing you ought to wake up to is that "the MLS model" is taking wild, bold swings and embracing new and different things. You know who has won the argument against people in the mid '00s proclaiming that MLS development had to be slow and conservative? Don Garber!
You have no evidence for any of this.. MLS is making hay out of the Messi announcement. Seriously, go check out InterMiami's socials. They freaking blew up over Messi's announcement. Go look at the price of tickets for InterMiami's games on the secondary market, they are freaking huge.. Hell, pretty much everything Messi is touching is gold for MLS right now and he isn't even officially signed to a contract yet. Chicken or the egg scenario tho. College football's popularity is largely driven from the fact that college football was THE sport back before the NFL started. There was legit questions about why the NFL was even being created because college football was so popular. The localism of college sports is largely a result of those colleges having generational support from the locals.. I'd also be curious what second rate, minor league sports flourish to enormous levels under the college system. The only college sport that are huge is Football. Don't get me wrong. March Madness is huge and the College World Series was huge, but regular season college basketball and baseball is pretty regional outside of the top basketball teams. Outside of those three sports, what second rate, minor league sports have flourished? Yes.. The most successful league in the world shouldn't be emulated. Heh. Seriously, for the US, the current format has worked for all of the top professional sports. MLB is hurting, for sure, but that's largely because they are failing to attract new fans. But NHL, NBA, and NFL are all doing pretty well.
The areas MLS takes big swings at are in areas that matter. Players, player development, and revenue. I'm including stadiums in revenue as owner controlled stadiums has had a large impact in the revenue coming into MLS teams and ownership groups. Paying players more, spending more money on player development, and increasing revenue has all had a proven record of improving the overall quality and popularity of a league. So far, drastic changes to a league's format has not. J league is really the only league that I can think of that has had a degree of success in changing league formats, but that was more a return to their previous format than a change to a drastically new and unproven format.
You misunderstood me. I'm saying exactly that, right now strike while the iron is hot with Messi, it is not the time to say "hey, 3/4 of the league, you play in a different competition than Inter Miami now" The Regional Leagues thing is strictly "break glass when you reach 36 teams" (I don't think it generates enough games short of 36). Don't add 6 USL teams just because, trust the expansion process that is proving to work. Completely lazy circular reasoning that ignores the Leagues Cup completely.
except, much like Beckham’s arrival, Messi’s arrival is increasing the popularity of the league as a whole. Yes, most teams in the Western Conference aren’t getting a visit from Messi, but they are still benefitting from the increased attention the league as a whole is getting. SuperLiga says Hi! The only thing Leagues Cup is doing is capitalizing on the proven history that LigaMX teams playing in MLS stadiums CAN have higher attendance than MLS vs MLS games.
SuperLiga was a total failure! I was there in 2009 for Fire v San Luis, 8,421 the attendance per Wikipedia. So repeating failures, great, that's okay because there's "evidence". I just think this attitude sucks. The MLS reddit deletes posts about any kind of league changes, here it's ghettoized into You Be The Don, the Eurosnob PTSD has left the MLS fan totally out of step with MLS ITSELF in thinking creatively about the league.
SuperLiga failed only after it achieved its main objective of waking CONCACAF up to beef up the Champions Cup/League to be bigger than a quick 8-team tournament and to have more MLS/MX matches. Once the CCL had more of the top teams, the SuperLiga ended up with a second-tier field and there really wasn't much point in continuing.
Fair enough, and there's a bit of that under the table arm wrestling with the Leagues Cup too. But it's a much bigger, bolder thing than SuperLiga was, in any event.
Its always a question of what problem is pro/rel trying to solve.. Is it picking up the euro fans? meh the eurosnobs will just shift to hating MLS for a different reason… it could be a simple matter of the word “Soccer” being in the leagues name (though I always argued MLF would play well with the search engines).. Is it to pick up the Hispanic audience… or more specifically the Mexican audience? the chunk you want view futbol in a Nationalistic sense.. they wouldnt “lower” themselves to MLS and mock those who would lower themselves to it....Sure some may tune in to watch for certain players sure, but they do so with preconceived biases..If Messi is great then it shows MLS sucks because a 37 year old “washed up” player dominates.. if he doesnt it shows it really is a “retirement league”… expand the audience sure, but dont overexert yourself trying to win over those who will always spit in your eye The only reason I would buy into pro/rel is because the league is healthy and continues to balloon up in many more markets… putting pro/rel as a result of a healthy league is much better than the illusion that it will be the magic bullet that validates/elevates it… should that day come all owners will see it as a natural progression and not a desperate gambit as such will be more willing to cooperate and take whatever inherent risk there is… I mean by all means experiment away (MLS sure does)… but as always time always has a way of resolving these things
A regional professional league is a great idea and should be included in the PLS. Call it D4 or DReg or whatever. I don't think anyone would be willing to invest significant money in it though.
I wish incorporating bits and pieces of broad concepts like pro/rel and regionalized leagues didn't cause people to stop reading and just trot out the canned answers about those concepts in a totalized way. But that's as it ever was. The thing that really bugs me is the way going past 30-32 under the Big Four structure is just slowly being accepted as an inevitability when 20 years ago that would have been a silly, radical notion rejected out of hand in the same breath as pro/rel. You were right back then! It's a bad idea! And worse still would be rejecting golden expansion opportunities for lack of ideas about how to manage a league that big.
The Football League started as a regional league. The German leagues were regional until 1963. The ASLs were regional until the last one expanded nationally and broke itself. The APSL/USISL/USL was a merger of regional leagues was it not?
Brazil didn't have a national league until 1971 having already won three world cups. The NFL and the English Premier League are not the only or even necessarily the best models for a sporting competition.
The D3 standards have no geographic coverage or market size requirements, so a league could be established and get sanctioning in one region or even one state. It just needs eight teams, stadiums with 1,000 capacity, and owners who meet the financial requirements.