The New Working Poor: Players in MLS?

It's a great model for the club operators! The franchise values have appreciated quite a bit the last few years, which is one of the payoffs from operating as a single-entity -- it has allowed them to keep their costs in line with their revenues. That is really the only reason that league has survived as long as it has, right?

On an operating basis, the league is pretty much break even, from what I understand. Half the clubs make a modest profit (up to a few miillion), half lose modestly (up to a few million). The problem is that the players earning those low salaries don't have much leverage. They are the guys who want to hold onto the dream, and if they leave it, there are others who will happily take it. Aren't they basically the infantry soldiers of MLS?

If you look at some of the rosters, you have a few guys earning those low salaries and a bunch of guys earning anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand up to multimillions per year -- some of those players they attracted away from European leagues (or aging stars) to give the league a few headline stars.

I'm not sure how the players could collectively bargain away that disparity -- with that single-entity structure in place, that is. If they decide to split up revenues with the team operators through a CBA, they'd still be largely working with the same pot of money they have now (right now, the league is pretty much break even, right?). And if they decide to give more of the total revenue the players could negotiate to the lesser players, it has to come from somewhere -- it would likely mean losing the handful of star players, which help drive revenues in the first place.

Still, I agree with what I would guess you think -- that IS what most of the players should be thinking. They should be fighting to be able to negotiate across teams, which would very likely drive up what at least some of the players can get on an individual basis. For those guys earning $30K, though, it might not have much impact (if they are pretty much the infantry soldiers of MLS, the way I think), without some kind of cap that shifts money from what higher-paid players might negotiate to those lower-paid guys (and again, would that mean losing what star power there is?).

Either way, the paradox is if they just did away with the single-entity structure (which I believe they should, for what it is worth -- if the owners want to control costs, they should have to do it through discipline, not collusion), without some kind of salary cap structure, they'd probably cause the league's demise. My guess is you would get a couple of Harlem Globtrotters out of it, and a dozen or two Washington Generals. And who knows how popular that kind of league would be? It was that kind of disparity that has done in past attempts at pro soccer here, right?

 

Just a guess, because I have never thought about it before. But I am wondering if a well-capitalized rival soccer league could take away what MLS has managed to slowly build -- and do it in just a few years. Two things that make me believe at least someone has to have had the idea: 1) the average MLS franchise value is more than $100 million and it has been growing at a fast clip.2) more than a third of the MLS fan base is hispanic, which has gotten to be a sizable, and growing, demographic in the U.S. I know you'd need FIFA to do it, but I am assuming if you were capitalized well enough they could be bought.