Arena League Football

[wlu_lax6]

6 team league suspending operations. I feel like the AFL goes through this every 7 years or so.
https://www.arenafootball.com/article/s ... t-10-29-19

Guess they are going to try and figure this thing out or just a way around a law suit
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... ructuring/

[brian]

Filed Chapter 7 today. Wouldn't bet on a 2020 season at this point.

[bfj]

Damn, I was just getting ready to buy my Baltimore Brigade season tickets.

[rass]

Pretty good run down from The Defector on the ongoing collapse of the new AFL.

On May 11, Philadelphia Soul general manager Kelly Logan announced his team—which is actually based in Trenton, N.J.—was done for the season. The club had fired all its players before the season opener against the VooDoo, after they demanded promised pay. The fired players were also kicked out of the Super 8 motel where they'd been staying, because the team hadn't paid the hotel either. The Soul played the VooDoo using the roster of the Dallas Falcons, a team from a rival confederation called the American Arena League 2.

[Ryan]

♫ Tommy's got his goalposts in hock ♫

[Nonlinear FC]

I know this is a bit of a stretch, but Imma just say it:

This type of zaniness is what I point to when American soccer nerds bitch and moan about MLS and USSF their approach to building the sport in this country. While it's sprawling, the US soccer pyramid puts a structure in place to ensure these various leagues don't completely cannibalize each other and dilute their relative brands to the point you read in that article. That's madness.

[Shirley]

I know this is a bit of a stretch, but Imma just say it:

This type of zaniness is what I point to when American soccer nerds bitch and moan about MLS and USSF their approach to building the sport in this country. While it's sprawling, the US soccer pyramid puts a structure in place to ensure these various leagues don't completely cannibalize each other and dilute their relative brands to the point you read in that article. That's madness.

But you could argue that promotion/relegation solves this as well by allowing the financially sound teams to stay or move up while the broke ones slide down.

[Nonlinear FC]

I know this is a bit of a stretch, but Imma just say it:

This type of zaniness is what I point to when American soccer nerds bitch and moan about MLS and USSF their approach to building the sport in this country. While it's sprawling, the US soccer pyramid puts a structure in place to ensure these various leagues don't completely cannibalize each other and dilute their relative brands to the point you read in that article. That's madness.

But you could argue that promotion/relegation solves this as well by allowing the financially sound teams to stay or move up while the broke ones slide down.

The last 4 or 5 years are the first time I've been following American soccer where I would entertain a pro-rel system, at least for the top 3 tiers. With the USL structure being pretty solid (top league, and then two feeder leagues below that) I think you could make it work.

The issue is the buy-in to MLS is something like $150M, whereas the buy-in for a top tier USL team is only $20M and for tier 2 it's $5M. These teams are in decent markets like Detroit, Las Vegas, Charleston, etc. I doubt that type of imbalance exists in most of the long-standing soccer pyramids around the world.

The OG owners in MLS also feel like they took huge risks to get this league to where it is today and balk at the idea of shuffling down to a league that just didn't have the same level of financial risk from owner to owner. But that argument is starting to wear thin, IMO.

But the idea of MLS working with "the competition" (USL) to set up a drop system... Unless USSF grows a spine, that's never going to happen. At a minimum, it would absolutely have to be handled in the courts.