City launch MLS Franchise

ksf42001 said:
Even if promotion/relegation is an actual goal of MLS (which it isn't), it would never occur through the acquisition of either the NASL or USL, but rather through continued organic expansion of one/two new teams at a time until there was enough to break the league into two. I actually think the single-entity model makes it more likely rather than less, since sharing revenue eliminates the main downside of relegation. Obviously the lose of prestige is still a big negative of relegation, but I think most owners would deal with it as long as the money keeps coming in.
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Fair point, but I'd argue that attendances would plummet in the US for a relegated team. After all, as has been quoted in the various press analysis over NYCFC's announcement: Americans love a winner. The obvious unwritten corollary is: Americans hate (or rather, quickly get bored of) a loser.
 
We don't really do promotion/relegation in American sports. Sheikh Mansour didn't spunk $100m to be pushed into a lower league, and neither do the other owners.

Until soccer gets as big as the other big 3, it must remain a smaller group of teams and probably never adopt relegation.
 
Promotion and relegation will never happen in American sports.
Emigrating from England, I hated this about American sports at first.
But it's just the way they structure their professional sports, everything is geared to getting into the play offs at the end of the season and winning a handful of games and being called "World Champions" regardless of the sport.
 
Agree on all those points. Just a guess on my part on how it would be approached. As for the "Americans love a winner. Don't love a loser." bit...one of the reasons losing teams fail in the marketplace in American professional sports is that they have nothing to play for except draft position. There would be a lot more interest in those teams if they were fighting for something/meaningful games.

I would not be surprised to see a package expansion (up to 4 teams) however, with the next round.
 
Blue Haze said:
We don't really do promotion/relegation in American sports. Sheikh Mansour didn't spunk $100m to be pushed into a lower league, and neither do the other owners.

Until soccer gets as big as the other big 3, it must remain a smaller group of teams and probably never adopt relegation.
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American sports don't really "do" team-based academies, but MLS teams have started to successfully implement those to acquire talent outside of the normal draft-based system. Something tells me that a solid percentage of MLS fans (not general US sports fans) would support the adoption of pro/relegation down the line. Also, I realize Sheikh Mansour didn't invest to play in the lower league, but that didn't stop him from investing even more money in City were relegation is already a possibility.

All that said, I don't think MLS will ever adopt pro/rel. The only possible chance is if football grows far more than expected over the coming decades, and there are enough sustainable markets to house teams. That's unlikely though, as the best MLS can hope for for the foreseeable future to is become the clear 4th most popular sport in the country over hockey...
 
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