Best not start banging on about customers. Bad form.
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imagine the wages
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
I dont think he likes Carlo THAT much ffs!
HokieToffee
Player Valuation: £5m
I'm excited to finally see them stateside. It's a bucket list thing for sure.
Toff33Blues99
Player Valuation: £15m
Oh we are trying this market..... Again..
Dont believe there is profit to be made for a top 8 team who haven't won anything for ages. The term flogging a dead horse springs to mind.
MLS in its current format, roughly 10 to 15 yrs, has any euro team aside from the likes of Madrid and Barca, made the slightest dent in the U. S. market?
Dont believe there is profit to be made for a top 8 team who haven't won anything for ages. The term flogging a dead horse springs to mind.
MLS in its current format, roughly 10 to 15 yrs, has any euro team aside from the likes of Madrid and Barca, made the slightest dent in the U. S. market?
Bob Elstone
Player Valuation: £35m
Is Jeff winking in that photo? Might be something in it
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
Could try winning games playing attractive football. That usually helps expand the brand.
TimHowardsBeardJuice
Player Valuation: £35m
Yes. Very common to see PL gear in the US at least in the larger cities, and not always the big clubs ( I did a double take the other day when a woman jogged by me with a Leeds shirt). English and other European sides sell out American college football stadiums for summer friendlies which seat 100,000+. PL ratings on US TV are decent especially given the time difference. Most US cities have bars which open at 6 am on Saturday for the games snd draw a healthy crowd. Most American sports sections snd general interest sports Websites cover the PL and CL and will follow Americans at European clubs.
MLS is now 25 years old and is growing steadily. Ironically it’s relatively weaker in some of the charter cities like NY Boston Dallas Houston Chicago. In some cities it’s as popular as the old school American sports teams. The Pacific Northwest of Vancouver Seattle Portland has very strong support. Atlanta sells 70k seats/game. The quality of play is nowhere near a top European league but it’s steadily improving, there used to be a huge gap between MLS and Liga MX but it’s getting narrower. MLS has finally figured out that it’s good for the league snd the sport in the US generally to sell good young homegrown talent to European sides.
The Chicago Fire club just sold for $400M, nowhere near the recent valuations of NBA teams ($2B+) but not bad for a team with historically poor support in a terrible stadium in a bad location, in a league that nearly died i its youth several times.
Ftom a football business and management standpoint it leaves a lot to be desired- as in so many things it’s stuck between a traditional US sports model ( franchises granted by the league office in exchange for expansion fees, no promotion/relegation ) and the way clubs are run in other parts of the world). The management clique is old school US soccer management types (dinosaurs) with some disinterested NFL owners mixed in, but that’s changing. Soccer is the best upside growth proposition in the fragmented US sports scene right now and sponsors are jumping on board.
A massive opportunity was missed by not deploying Donovan and Howard to greater effect , which Donovan wondered about on an interview I heard recently. That USA national side was known to casual fans and non-fans. Many of us found Everton through them, I did. But there is a chance to be grabbed here. It won’t be as easy without an American player but givers us room to grow from the current base of numerous and fanatical but small supporters clubs.
TimHowardsBeardJuice
Player Valuation: £35m
As I was typing this ESPN just showed a commercial for its Bundesliga coverage.
Great post. One of the most interesting takeaways for me from it was the fact that Chicago Fire sold for $400m. Shows the level of growth in the MLS that a team of that level has been bought for that much. I guess one of the big things that helps that is another point you make about there being no relegation. You can draw a parallel with what some European clubs are hoping for with a European Super League. If the competition is closed then all the extra money coming in just benefits the existing teams.
As for our missed opportunity with Howard and Donovan, I completely agree but we were a very different outfit then from a commercial point of view. We were clueless. That seems to be changing now and we are reacting to it. There are also a lot of very good young American players coming through so the potential for leveraging that is much higher than it was just those few years ago.
Canuck Darryl
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Football ( soccer over here, because football is an entirely different creature ) is a tough sell in North America. In the USA it’s football ( pro and college), baseball, basketball and golf. In Canada, hockey rules. Soccer has a foothold in Mexico alone. The MLS is growing, but it’s a ways behind the major sports. To most NA sports fans, accustomed to hard hitting in football and hockey, the sight Neymar rolling down the field because someone kicked him in the shin, was hilarious.
I wish the new fella all the best. Who knows, maybe he can work miracles.
I wish the new fella all the best. Who knows, maybe he can work miracles.
Dublin blue 75
Player Valuation: £50m
If an European League comes about, I would suggest those planning it have already factored in MLS participation in some form of ‘Cup’ with two legged ties and mega sponsorship.
Some form of competition of that ilk is coming. Beckham and co didn’t invest in Miami for MLS alone.
Some form of competition of that ilk is coming. Beckham and co didn’t invest in Miami for MLS alone.
Maybe even cascading ice hockey organ music
It'll end up like T20...or whatever is worse than that.
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