Do not bring a promotion/relegation system into US soccer

By: Robert | July 28th, 2007

It’s the biggest difference between soccer here and football there, the lack of a promotion/relegation system in America. The good teams go up, the bad ones go down, it’s a part of seemingly every soccer league in the world except MLS and if top-flight soccer is going to continue to grow in the United States it had better not become a part of the game anytime soon.

Soccer purists across the country want it. A promotion/relegation system, they argue, fosters competition at not only the top, but also the bottom of the league table as teams’ fight all season for the precious points to keep them in the top-flight. Their idea boils down to a soccer version of “natural selection;” the best rise to the top and those teams and those players whom will have proven themselves in the most pressure filled environments possible will be best equipped to help team USA on an international level. And they might be right, but implementing such a system would break MLS and possibly push US soccer all the way back to 1980s levels.

Anytime people debate “natural selection” the counter-argument can be summarized by saying an all-knowing power made things the way they are for a reason and even though I’m not going to call US Soccer Federation (USSF) President Sunil Gulati, an all-knowing power, the analogy is apt. And before someone jumps down my throat with “But they do it in (wherever)” let’s look at the differences between the US and other major soccer regions across the globe. First, the largest countries in Europe, by land mass, pale in comparison to the state of Texas alone (267,000 sq. mi for Texas, 210,000 for France, 137,000 Germany, 195,000 Spain,) which means there are going to be many different travel and accommodation issues (go look at the price of gas to remind yourself how much) involved in operating a league on such a large geographic scale that don’t need to be addressed anywhere else in the world. In Brazil, a nation of comparable size, their league is broken down into states that are akin to the conference system of American collegiate sports, while in Argentina, another large country in size and soccer stature, almost every team is located within the greater metro Buenos Aires region thus negating many financial burdens of travel and lodging.

Another major difference between soccer here and football there is sociological in origin. We are a pluralistic sports society, in the metro Dallas area alone there is FC Dallas (MLS), the Texas Rangers (MLB), the Dallas Mavericks (NBA), the Dallas Stars (NHL), Terrell Owens (his own league) and the Dallas Cowboys (NFL). The comparative lack of enthusiasm for soccer in America is not because people don’t love the sport as many national sports columnists would have you believe, it’s because unlike other countries our attention is divided among multiple major sports and while you and your neighbor may be mortal enemies in one league, you can be best friends in another. It is this breadth of our sporting spectrum that makes the United States of America the pre-eminent sporting nation in the world and our fan experiences quite unique.

At the center of it all though soccer is just a different sport psychologically, and not because of the tactics or continuous run of play but because of the way we view the game in America. Football, Basketball and Baseball are games of adults watched by a room full of kids, but soccer is a game of kids played to a room filled with adults. And if sports truly allow us to recapture the days of our youth, then those “American” sports allow us to reclaim a collective memory of something we saw together, while soccer brings with it individualistic memories of something we did by ourselves. I remember less of being robbed of a game-winning grand slam in the district championship at age 13 than I do of Francisco Cabrera driving in Sid Bream in the ’92 NLCS. Yet with soccer I can still recount the red card given to Winston instead of me because the ref thought he said “I’ve seen better calls in golf” or almost fighting with some kids’ dad after scoring my sixth goal in a game when he called me a poor sport and I responded with “you can’t stop me, they can’t stop me, so sit down” or scoring a goal and celebrating by pretending to snort the goal line like it was coke and Brian rushing over to pick me up yelling “you can’t do that!” Add all those things up and I think it’s fair to say that what the USSF is trying to accomplish in America with MLS is quite unique.

But let me not forget the point at hand, a wise man once said the answers to all your questions is money; and that ability to not only create revenue but to hold on to already gained financial resources goes to the heart of reason why there is no promotion/relegation system in America. At a little over a decade old MLS is still a young sports league, a league in which only two teams have ever made a profit (FC Dallas, LA Galaxy.) The markets that have franchises have been selected (sometimes through trial and error) because of their size, importance, growth prospects and number of other local sports teams in the area. Many millions of television dollars ($7-8 million from ESPN/ABC, $5 from Fox Soccer Channel, $2-3 from HDNet) are going into making these markets successful. If for some reason South Carolina, for example, moved up to MLS after a successful campaign at a lower level, the TV people would immediately ask to renegotiate their contract for less money, money MLS is counting on to operate their business. I know TV deals aren’t renegotiated like that anywhere else in the world, but those leagues have a long history of success behind them, while the only history of soccer in America is the NASL, WSL, NPSL, ISL, NAFBL…(you get where I’m going with this, they all failed.) Those television companies have paid for those specific markets and MLS must deliver them those specific markets. This is not Europe where many teams exist in the same area. Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to have our English cash cow, David Beckham, playing a game, for instance, in Wilmington, Delaware? Our league would be considered a joke and the lost revenue would run easily be into multiple tens of thousands of dollars just for one game.

What also needs to be remembered is that United Soccer League (USL) teams are not prepared to move up to MLS; just about every USL team loses money and unlike MLS the prospects of turning that around anytime soon aren’t good as they continue to promote the game instead of the event (if you want me to explain that point further just ask but I’m trying to shorten this post, it’s getting long.) It’s not a rare occurrence for a USL team to fold, go on hiatus or drop down to a lower level of play because of lower operational costs. This happens because the average USL game draws only 4,600 fans per game and while I’m sure I could turn this into a profit, competing against MLS teams would be out of the question (I don’t want to hear about the US Open Cup, winning one game does not mean you can compete on a regular basis.) The average USL stadium holds 5,000-10,000 people which might be enough to house the Kansas City Wizard fans (9,200) but that’s about it as the average MLS attendance is above 14,000 and while someone could argue that a move up to MLS would mean new revenue, most of these teams have built or are building soccer-specific “stadiums” already so there would be no new stadium revenue, only bigger deficits as they attempt deal with life in the top flight. By placing financially ill equipped teams into MLS based on record you ensure they suffer on the bottom line as they fail to meet the higher financial demands of a higher level of play. Combine that with what would happen to a MLS team that dropped down and you have a serious problem, one that would affect the long-term stability of the league.

If you ask yourself, what is the overarching purpose of MLS and the answer should be to raise the talent and profile of soccer in America. Now does showing a MLS game in a half-filled 5,000-person stadium really reflect well on the state of the American game? Would another David Beckham really cross the pond if he knew that’s where he’d play? Maybe one day in the future we can institute a promotion/relegation system but until then we need to remember that in Dallas we may want the FC to stand for “fierce competition,” but it needs to stand for “fiscal considerations.”

HOOPS PRIDE!

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