https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/889564054204944386

Major League Soccer rejected a $4 billion global media rights deal from international media company MP & Silva, as reported by the Sports Business Journal.

The offer, which would have quadrupled the annual rate of MLS's current deal, comes with the significant contingency that MLS would have to institute a system of promotion and relegation.

The proposed deal would have run for 10 years starting in 2023, after the current deal with ESPN, Fox, and Univision expires.

Those broadcasters have "exclusive negotiating windows and renewal rights," MLS said in a statement on Monday, and thus the league would be unable to consider Silva's offer, no matter the terms.

"As was stated to Silva both in person and in a subsequent letter, Major League Soccer is prohibited contractually from engaging in discussions about our media rights with other distributors," said Dan Courtemanche, MLS executive vice president of communications.

"We are not in a position, nor are we interested, in engaging with Mr. Silva on his proposal."

Silva, as the co-owner of Miami FC of the second-tier NASL, has a vested interest in seeing promotion and relegation added to the United States, since MLS is taking steps toward officially awarding a new team in Miami to a group led by David Beckham.

Without promotion and relegation, Silva's Miami FC has no route to join MLS in the top flight. An attempt to reach Silva through Miami FC was unsuccessful.

According to the SBJ, Silva made a presentation to MLS executives and owners on June 26. At that meeting, Silva offered to pay $4 billion for MLS's worldwide media rights, including the U.S. and Canada, at which point MP & Silva would sell on those rights around the world.

Courtemanche also rejected the concept of a third-party intermediary in media deals.

"It is also important to note that since its inception, MLS, like the other North American leagues, has dealt directly with its domestic broadcast partners, rather than through agents and brokers," the statement continued. "This ensures that the league and its partners can structure an agreement that addresses all elements, such as scheduling, marketing and digital distribution, that are required for a successful partnership."

Given that the U.S. Soccer Federation has sanctioned two leagues -- the NASL and the USL -- with Division II status, it's unclear exactly how a system of promotion and relegation would work, but generally speaking, if the proposal was accepted, then after every season, the worst teams in MLS would be relegated to either the NASL or the USL while the best teams from those leagues would move up to MLS.

The insistence on instituting a system of promotion and relegation is also a non-starter with MLS. Commissioner Don Garber has long stated that such a system would not be considered.

MLS is currently engaged in its latest round of expansion, and is asking for expansion fees of $150 million. It's almost certain that either demand would dry up or the fee would be significantly reduced if an expansion candidate were told that it could be relegated to a lower league, be it the NASL or the USL.

Beyond Beckham's Miami team, MLS's current expansion plans call for two expansion teams to be awarded this year, with two more to follow, bringing the league to an eventual 28 teams, which would be the largest top division in the world.

Beckham exercised his MLS option for an expansion team in 2014, more than a year before Silva founded Miami FC, and the former star player is finally making progress on building a stadium after years of delays. Miami FC plays at Florida International's football stadium, which in April was renamed after Silva.

<--- Big Baller World Order

I feel like a savvy negotiator could've smoothed over the relegation thing. And why was that such a sticking point in the first place?

That's a boatload of money to pass on, but I also get not accepting the relegation part.

No need to jump at it. $400 million a year is nice but not exactly WOW ZOMG money, especially with a fundamental change to the structure of the league involved.

The NHL's North American contracts add up to about $700M a year, and that's not exactly a high bar for popularity (plus their U.S. contract is fucking trash).

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

expansion teams generally suck. If you've gotta pay $150 million for the right to start an MLS team, you're not gonna do that if you get relegated to NASL after the first year.

They'd have to do some kind of 10-year relegation-free period for expansion teams to get people to still pay the fee.

Or, they'd have to stop expanding, which isn't seeming to happen.

*Jews you*

"this is okp tho, reading is completely optional" (c) desus

Proceed with caution. I am overtly racist.

<-- In Pigpen we trust

Holy shit, it wasn't THAT long ago that the NBA and NHL were charging that or close to it. Obviously it's higher today--500M and up--but wow.

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

I think NYCFC and Orlando were the last teams to get in under $100M. They're shopping their last expansion slot across America to see which city is going to give them the most and there's these wannabe ownership groups in every city stabbing each other in the back to try to get a spot at the table. It's seen as the last round of expansion for a period here, so people are eager to get in.

Hence this pro/rel stunt by a guy that can't get a stake in any of these owner-speculators trying to generate press to pressure the league to work with the minors to build a way for him to compete into MLS.

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So Beckham getting the rate he got seems like a crazy discount now (and it was already lower by 2007 standards I think.)

Outside of Sacramento, I have no clue where else they're going to go. San Antonio seems like it should be a no brainer, since they've already got the stadium in place. Cincy could work but I don't know what's going on with their stadium situation. Beyond that, Detroit could at least be a strong market and if it's got a roof Phoenix would at least serve an area of the country without any kind of real pro soccer presence. But those seem like longshots, too.

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The current rights holders have to be allowed to bid. So this was never actually on the table.

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XBL: trkc21
Twitter: @tyrcasey

But I hardly ever watch MLS, so I guess it really doesn't matter Haha.

It's the same problem that happens overseas that everyone mostly glosses over. The lower level teams just won't have the financial means to be competitive. Unfortunately that just gives you a lack of parity and a really top-heavy league, as most european leagues are.

Relegation just isn't a good idea here in the United States. I think a playoff system works better here.

You're such pests...now, what is it you want? In your depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Well, whatever it is you want, I can't deliver because I just don't see it. - Orson Welles


Never Tired, Always Sleepy

The NASL also tried some weird shit trying to get the NY Cosmos into the league -- squatting on the name and trying to extract a fee, so MLS just went with the City group. And there's these weird pro/rel truthers in the soccerverse make hay out of stuff like this from time to time. If the $4B offer was real, MLS would take a look at it, but this is just a stunt to generate headlines and get people 'blaming' MLS for NASL's failures.

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It's gotta suck to invest and try to build a franchise from the ground up
while at the same time a celebrity gets a sweetheart deal, all the publicity, and leaves your work in the dust

As a Miami native, the sad but true fact is that MLS will fail in Miami for the same reason it failed the first time around:
there's no homegrown soccer culture there
Miami soccer fans are into their teams and national squads from back home, and in Spanish
(see the problem? they don't consider Miami "home")
MLS is seen as the gringo retirement league
edit: and the fact that it doesn't have pro/rel is the kiss of death
if there's one thing Latino audiences love it's drama. Pro/rel is the Latino soccer fan's soap opera

Sure, the first few games will be sold out, brand new stadium (to be built in the middle of the hood with no parking), VIPs, etc
but as opposed to Orlando City, which spent years building a fanbase and brand in NASL
the Miami Beckhams are being conjured out of thin air
not going to end well

>It's gotta suck to invest and try to build a franchise from
>the ground up
>while at the same time a celebrity gets a sweetheart deal, all
>the publicity, and leaves your work in the dust


your explanation makes sense regarding miami soccer culture, but regarding the quoted part, i thought the article said beckham exercised his right for an mls expansion team before this dude started his own team

but this is Miami, all (private) billionaires get (public funds) sweetheart deals for their stadiums

yeah, the Miami thing seems off-base -- Beckham just wants to live in the sexy Florida city and finally 'solve' soccer there, but like you said it's a bit dicey. The league can't stop him, though, because they gave him an ownership clause to come to LA way back when and that was good business by Beckham and his team. There's like four or five other minor league outfits totally further along than David right now that would kill to step into an expansion spot, but David got that clause and he's using it.

This dude with the NASL team bought into the minor leagues thinking all soccer is good soccer in the US, but he's finding out that MLS is the big show, smart about how they're protecting the league identity at this point, and the minor leagues are exactly that -- very minor. NASL/USL has been nearly going out of business year after year and trying to manufacture some kind of pro/rel hail mary the whole time. The only reason the USL has stabilized a bit right now is because the league let MLS teams run minor league operations inside the USL. NASL is like the old ABA or WHL or something, only it doesn't have any stars. They want to force a merger like those leagues did, but MLS is way too beyond them at this point for that to work.

So sucks for that dude, but Beckham got the contract to beat him like a decade ago. It was a bad investment on his part to go up against Team Becks.

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<--- Big Baller World Order

No one should be taking this seriously.

You're such pests...now, what is it you want? In your depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Well, whatever it is you want, I can't deliver because I just don't see it. - Orson Welles


Never Tired, Always Sleepy

the whole deal just sounds shady. pretty sure i've never heard of any media deals that require the league to make some changes to the way they operate. they just want to control things and MLS shouldn't fall for it. if they really had $4B to throw around like that, they could have bought into MLS long ago.

the whole pro/rel thing is just so stupid. it gets romanticized so much like it's this great thing and at the end of the day it's pretty irrelevant in most parts of the world with the lone exception of England. it's not gonna happen here so we need to just move on to more pressing issues that actually matter.

>of the day it's pretty irrelevant in most parts of the world
>with the lone exception of England. it's not gonna happen
>here so we need to just move on to more pressing issues that
>actually matter.

you aint gotta lie to kick it. just say you don't want it for the mls and kim.

<--- Big Baller World Order

people act like everyone cares about relegation battles, but you honestly only hear about it in England. you never hear much about relegation battles and how great they are outside of that one nation. if you google relegation battle, pretty much the only thing that comes up is the Premier League and The Championship.

and the idea that it would improve the quality of play is far fetched. the big leagues in the world aren't better because teams are playing hard to avoid relegation. those teams are good because they are rich and can afford to stack their squads. the big clubs aren't even remotely close to being in danger of being relegated.

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> it's pretty irrelevant in most parts of the world
>with the lone exception of England.

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what other legit reason is there? no one cares about the relegation battles in La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A or anywhere else other than England. does anyone really even follow or watch lower league clubs and matches outside of England? i really don't ever hear anything about it.

i'm not saying i doesn't exist, it's just not nearly as big a deal as everyone is trying to make it seem.

...doesn't mean it doesn't matter to the fans of those leagues. And matter even more to the lower league fans tryna come up.

Talk about a lack of parity. The Tampa Bay Rowdies don't ever get a shot at success?

Seems like you're basing relevance on 'what does Bleacher Report talk about?' I can assure you relegation/promotion matters in just about every football-playing nation. Germany. Brazil. Kazakhstan. Liberia. Martinique. America and Australia (and a handful of others probably) are the outliers.

So it's nowhere close to irrelevant. It contributes to the passion behind the sport around the world. Unless your only measure for what matters in football is media profile.

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the Tampa Bay Rowdies suck, so no, they never get a shot at MLS. Without looking it up, I'm guessing they play in a local college stadium and draw around 3k per game. Ain't no such thing as a 'multi-generational' Rowdie fan. Ain't no kind of Rowdie history anyone is actually trying to remember.

The GOOD USL franchises? They already made it to MLS (Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, Orlando, Minnesota). The groups left behind are mad, sure, but they had their chance and didn't take it. Fuck 'em, I don't want them back.

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obviously it's important to those clubs and fans involved. that's about where it ends though honestly. my point is that those small clubs moving up and down at the bottom of the table have little relevance on the league itself. are Real Madrid and Barcelona affected by the clubs getting promoted into their league? are those types of clubs signing big name international players? are they really having an effect on the quality of the league overall? if tomorrow the Bundesliga said they'd stop promotion and relegation are they seriously going to suffer a drop off in quality? it's basically just a tradition that's been going on for a very long time.

if you know ANYTHING about the sport.

<--- Big Baller World Order

who got relegated and promoted in Spain last season? if you can honestly tell me two of the teams with out looking it up, then maybe i'll believe you that it's relevant.

levante and getafe are up. girona is in la liga for the first time.

idk who the 3rd relegated team is off the top. but if you are a real fan you follow these things.

now dont ask me about serie a cause i dont watch that league

<--- Big Baller World Order

you are indeed a true fan.

a lot of the other leagues or teams in the world have history spanning decades, if not centuries. it makes sense that in a previous time, league administration would set up a pro/rel system to insure the best competition at the top level.

in the MODERN world of soccer, it's just an artifact from a simpler time, a time before oil money was buying and selling teenagers for hundreds of millions of dollars and revenue streams were in media and marketing. now it makes a lot LESS sense to have a handful of teams go through financial calamity on a yearly basis, while a handful of others go through a sudden wealth event and have to cope.

ADD ON

it just doesn't make sense for a league that is still struggling for relevancy in 20+ markets. sure, it's great for those places that have it, but just because they have it doesn't mean it needs to be that way around the world.

pro/rel is an artifact from archaic league administration, not some kind of essential component of soccer. probably why pro/rel structures are created by the local FAs, FIFA has nothing to do with it. it is in no way shape or form 'essential' to soccer.

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that doesn't involve spectacle

i can't see how it helps businesswise or skill wise

buy-in just seems like a more stable move both ways with shared revenue. I don't see what incentive MLS investors and MLS club owners would have.

speaking for myself, I'd be a lot more interested in MLS.

Matter in what way?

what's the point to watching them? What's the point of them competing hard?

with relegation, the answer is YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET RELEGATED! There's (without data) a belief that a team in the relegation battle is actually a harder comeptition than a mid-table team that's not competing for a european slot because the relegation team will battle hard for any points, the mid table team is kinda whatever.

i really dont see what is hard to grasp about this. it keeps the entire competition honest.

<--- Big Baller World Order

you're not selling out a relegation battle in America

that's not the culture. Most of these teams didn't come from people in the community. They're franchises. Businesses.

i care about the game being played as it's supposed to be.

<--- Big Baller World Order

lol

there is no financial reason for pro/rel, therefore it will not happen

that's what the playoff race is for. only instead of getting relegated, they get left out of the playoffs. it many times goes down to the last day of the season to see who made it in and who didn't.

last season, the last five games of the season, why watch Vancouver or San Jose or Houston or Chicago or Columbus?

right today, why watch DC United or New England or Minnesota or Colorado? yeah, they're not technically out of the playoffs, but there's little chance of it. The last day of the season, there's little reason to watch almost half of the teams in the MLS (baseball's a good example--september sucks unless you're in the playoff race). In a relegation system? the last day of competition can be damn near march madness level excitement with relegation battles as well as battles for spots in europe + for the league title.

but they'd be in some HEATED relegation battles.

a playoff battle for a sixth seed isn't that exciting to the casual fan and then a game between two teams out of the playoff race? zero interest. but a relegation battle? those games are LIT in europe. some of the best games and controversies are built around relegation battles.

but the leagues are wildly different in a lot of ways (including real small town teams, like Eibar, making the top tier in spain for example and teams with significant local political meanings like Atletico Bilbao) so maybe it shouldn't be imported. fine. but relegation is a lot of fun in europe.
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you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

because that's what MLS is looking at. MLS wants to keep the revenue inside MLS just like the NBA

performance is somewhat irrelevant.

Teams not doing well is a given because only 12 teams can contend, therefore that loss is obviously factored in already and likely any concern from MLS is alleviated through Playoff ticket sales and tv.

Relegation isn't gonna add money to the MLS pot. If anything, the Whitecaps going down is money leaving MLS

Playoffs give you a goal, excitement, and you get to keep all the money.

dunno if you checked, but Chicago has gone from worst to first and are in contention for the Supporter's Shield this year (best regular season record). So what was the point of last season?

Simply, it was a rebuilding year. They left their big money slots open and went to war with bench guys, young guys, and low cost guys to see how they performed while they worked on the plan of where to allocate their resources to improve. They tried Matt Polster at d-mid, realized he wasn't the answer, so they lined up two improvements at d-mid for the off season (Dax and Juninho). Now Polster is their RB. They watched Accam to see if he was worth the investment previous GM/coaches made. He was. He produced on a shitty team. They rotated a back line. They learned Michael De Leeuw isn't a forward in MLS. And they spent a season adjusting to a promising young coach's system that maybe they didn't have the talent to run, but they were committed to because they knew that talent was coming in the off season.

Now compare that to the possibility they're trapped in a relegation battle -- what do they do? They use every means available to sign veterans, closing the door for opportunity on youngsters like Brandon Vincent and Matt Polster. They also bunker and counter, so Paunovic can forget about teaching MLS about his possession oriented attacking system that plays out of the back, because he would be fired for playing the style that now has them top of the table a year later with a few upgrades in key spots. And after all that, they go down anyway and any decent players they had get picked off by more stable clubs, making the rich richer and cooking Chicaho to a long cycle of boom + bust coupled with short-term decision making.

So why would fans watch last year? Because it was a 'rebuilding' year, same as any other sport where teams go into downturns and have to build out of it. The interest is in the promise of what MAY come, not just the tooth + nail pragmatic tactics that are based on survival only.

So really, given what's happened in Chicago and what they've been able to accomplish with the security of knowing they can make long-term decisions, how would pro/rel benefit that fan base at all? It wouldn't and Chicago fans, and the league, are better off without it. Just because pro/rel is tradition in other places doesn't mean it has to be tradition here, ESPECIALLY when the net effect for the league can be tangibly negative. If you wanna run down other recent rebuilds, we can do that, too. I had season tickets to the rebuilding Timbers three years before they won a championship, thank fucking GOD I'm not watching USL soccer right now.

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thats what you get with buy-in

Solid team out of the gate in a market that NEEDED a franchise

One bad coach hire, a couple bad contracts, and next year you're playing Rochester and Charleston? No thank you. You can't plan money safely with risk like that.

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the leagues and histories and finances are different so it doesn't work, but we were asked a question and it was answered.

edit: "rebuilding years" HAVE FEWER VIEWERS AND SELL FEWER TICKETS.

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you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

my man, Swansea City had three coaches last year? Crystal Palace had two, is that right? A quick wiki search shows me Sunderland has a new manager for next season, Middlesborough has a new manager for next season, and Hull City have a new manager for next season. So I dunno, I feel kinda good about saying relegation threatened teams change managers frequently.

Also, I've watched their football. It's 9 or 10 on top of the box with straight balls forward hoping to poach a goal. That's not how you build a system that engenders long term, systematic improvement, which is what MLS needs.

But maybe I misunderstood you? Maybe you have examples from other leagues that I don't know about? I genuinely think it's hard to say 'relegation threatened teams play better football.' Yeah, maybe they play more intensely and with more passion, but I wouldn't necessarily call that 'better.'

And losing is losing is losing -- of course losing during a rebuilding has a negative effect on fan interest. No different than getting relegated, except getting relegated can have calamitous effects on long-term fan engagement. Maybe the teams that 'stay up' with a heroic last push will have fond memories of that season, but we both know they'd like the season a hell of a lot better if they did something like qualify for Euro or CL (or playoffs) than if they spent the whole thing in the basement, so let's not pretend one version of sucking for the whole season as dramatically better than another.

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yeah, losing teams switch managers and play small team football a lot (relegation does not affect that rate of turnover, in my experience). Maybe more in the EPL than in la liga. in la liga, some of the relegation teams are very fun teams to watch. And their stadiums are awesome because they are small and some of the teams that made it into la liga and have stayed for a couple years (eibar!) are neutral favorites because of their story. And some relegation teams have pulled crazy upsets (hercules, which recently lost to barca b in the promotion playoffs to play in segunda A memorably beat Pep's barca to start a season).

sporting gijon was fun to watch last year. relegated. deportivo la coruna was a great redemption story last year after falling off from their early 2000s great squads and barely stayed up. though sporting's victory over eibar was one of the final straws in eibar's hopes of making europa.

at least in la liga, the relegation squads are often used as loan destinations for young players from the top teams. Which adds to the quality of players in la liga in lieu of those (more expensive) mercenaries. From barca in the last 3 or 4 years, Halilovic (his father/agent has fucked his career, sadly), Samper, and Montoya all went to relegation level squads on loans.

>Yeah, maybe they play more intensely and with more
>passion, but I wouldn't necessarily call that 'better.'

yes. relegation teams vs. equally bad teams in non-relegation leagues play more pasionately. And if you aren't good, at least be trying super hard. and relegation teams do.

>And losing is losing is losing -- of course losing during a
>rebuilding has a negative effect on fan interest. No different
>than getting relegated, except getting relegated can have
>calamitous effects on long-term fan engagement. Maybe the
>teams that 'stay up' with a heroic last push will have fond
>memories of that season, but we both know they'd like the
>season a hell of a lot better if they did something like
>qualify for Euro or CL (or playoffs) than if they spent the
>whole thing in the basement, so let's not pretend one version
>of sucking for the whole season as dramatically better than
>another.

talk about an apples to oranges comparison. No shit they'd rather do well. but the barca blog I follow wrote posts about epic relegation battles that had nothing to do with barca just because of how great they were. no one is doing that for rebuilding teams.

I AM NOT SAYING BRING RELEGATION TO MLS TODAY. I am saying relegation is really fun and an MLS that had a relegation system from the jump (or grew into it) would be cool to me.

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you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

what about when teams in the relegation zone are way out of it with weeks left to go? are there not times when the bottom clubs that will be relegated are decided before the season's over?

i'm honestly not against promotion and relegation over in Europe. i get it. i just don't get how starting it here would work and why it's such a dealbreaker for so many people.

and i agree: relegation is fun, but it doesn't need to be imported. I wish it had when MLS first formed, but no need to foist it on now.

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you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia