Re: World Cup Soccer XVII: There can only be ONE!!!11!!!
Yes, soccer has a more global talent pool. Still, that's no guarantee MLS would actually be able to sign those players.
Not to be too curt, but yes, there is. MLS won't have trouble filling rosters. One of the big concerns with MLB expansion was that the talent level went down, particularly for pitching. Well, that may be the case when you're the top baseball league in the world. MLS isn't the top soccer league in the world, there is both a much broader talent pool to draw from and much deeper one - expansion means more players, but asserting that they will only be worse players is false.
That said, MLS doesn't get enough credit for the quality that's already here. Even so, the league isn't the most talented, nobody disputes that - so what is there to degrade?
MLB's talent pool (and the NHL's) had nowhere to go but down. That's not the case here.
You can sell soccer just about anywhere? Really? Try telling that to FC Dallas and their 10,000 or so fans in a 22,000 seat stadium. Or to Miami, who already failed to support an MLS franchise once, yet are somehow in the running for another one. Markets totally do matter.
FC Dallas' attendance sucks, yes - but they were also profitable not too long ago. Miami's franchise failed due to an owner without enough capital.
And of course markets matter - I said as much in my expansion criteria. But are you seriously going to argue that selling soccer in, say, Toronto is the same as selling ice hockey in a place that never sees natural ice? That's my point - the sport has more of an natural entry point to every market.
MLS undoubtedly has a closer eye on their finances than the NHL did in the 80s and 90s. But it's still a cause of concern to see rapid expansion, even in the cost-contained atmosphere that exists in MLS. How much of MLS's healthy bottom line is due to the fact that there are currently six teams that have come into the league in the last seven seasons, with three more on the way in the next two years? That's a lot of new money being thrown around the league, and we haven't seen anyone pause to see if these teams are strong enough to maintain that stability on their own.
The expansion fees might have helped cover the losses suffered in the early years, but there is absolutely no evidence that MLS is using expansion fees to cover current operating expenses.
The salary budget is only 2.5 million per team. MLS alone gets 15 million a year from Adidas - that sponsorship covers the full salaries of 6 teams.
If the league were expanding for the sake of expanding, you wouldn't see new teams ponying up for brand new stadiums (Toronto, Philly, Portland's renovation, SLC, etc).
