James Briggs: "An
MLS team would be good for Indianapolis. Ozdemir was not the right person to
lead that effort, so the city is moving on. It's harsh, yes, but real estate
development is a grownup business. No one should be weeping for Ozdemir.”
Provincial.
Gregg Doyel: “The
city of Indianapolis considers letting this golden opportunity we call Major
League Soccer — MLS, going forward — slip away.”
Myopic.
Here’s the
thing: from a provincial, myopic point of view, Doyel and Briggs are exactly
right. It’s a win-win situation: take some rich clown with some working capital
to use, hand him several million dollars of taxpayer money to build a new
stadium, and everyone gets something they want. The rich clown wins because he gets to join the MLS
gravy train and start raking in money hand over fist; Indianapolis government
wins because they get to say they were instrumental in bringing MLS to Indy,
and citizens, if they care at all, win because they get to feel good about
living in a “Major League Soccer Town”.
But most of
all, Major League Soccer wins. The overriding factor that defines major league
sports in the USA is that they have an absolute monopoly on the talent that
exists in that sport. This is how they assure that the fans are watching their
games and not the games of smaller leagues. Major League Baseball, for example,
has their farm system where the teams own a series of lower-level teams, and
any talent the proves itself is immediately, usually in the middle of the
season, plucked from those teams and put in the majors. The NFL and NBA have a
similar thing going where second-tier and rising talent are forced to pretend
to be college students for a few years while they hone their craft in
preparation for the big time.
But Major
League Soccer doesn’t quite have that monopoly. There’s a second-tier league,
the United Soccer League, that consists of teams that are not beholden to the
majors, and those teams have the chance to accrue talent and become competitive
without any buy-in from the big-league owners. The owners hate that. The
USL also represents the major league owners’ worst nightmare: European style
promotion/relegation. If you’ve gone to the trouble to get into the MLS
monopoly, jumping on the gravy train, getting a city to give you taxpayer millions,
the last thing you want to do is suddenly find yourself in a second-tier league
just because you’re losing. That is not what having a monopoly is all
about! This is why owners were so excited about the European Super League, a monopoly
league of top-tier soccer teams making easy money with no chance of being relegated
to a lower league no matter how much they lose.
So, the
owners are going to do everything they can to get rid of these independent USL teams.
For example, they’ve set up a farm team system like MLB. There were several
farm teams that used to play in the USL, but, finding that league too
competitive, the owners created a brand new one, MLS Next, to make sure their
players were focused on getting to the major leagues and not unimportant things
like winning championships.
The other
thing MLS can do to destroy the USL is to employ a “If you can’t beat them, let
them join you” strategy. It’s easy enough to see which teams are popular and
successful in the USL, and MLS is happy to court those cities by dangling the “Major
League” label in front of them. So they’ll consider “expansion” in cities like
Sacramento, Detroit, or Indianapolis, including them in their Major League
Monopoly in exchange for keeping them out of this upstart, uncontrollable
second-tier league. This is a perfectly acceptable solution from the MLS point
of view – a win-win, one might say. The owners make significant inroads in
getting rid of the USL; the expansion cities get that warm glow of calling themselves
Major League, some rich clown gets added to the big-league gravy train, and the
new stadiums will probably have fancy new luxury boxes where the politicians
can entertain their buddies.
It’s not so
great for the fans, of course. MLS teams mean jacked-up ticket prices that
might well be out of the reach of any but the wealthiest, and the fans of any
smaller teams don’t get the dream that if their team plays well enough, they
might get to compete with the big boys someday. (Ever wonder why no one’s
pushing for an Indianapolis Major League Baseball team? That monopoly is solid,
no chance). But MLS has never been about the fans. The MLS is about harnessing
the fans’ love for soccer to make money. Indianapolis is at a crossroads: attempt
to join the MLS gravy train for some rich clown and his politician friends? Or
go with the USL and the team the small-dollar fans have been supporting for
years? Put like that, I suppose there isn’t really any question about which way
this is going to go.