What does money buy in MLS?

By on November 24, 2015

Yesterday, we took a look at the bang per buck in Major League Soccer and found rather surprisingly, that in 2015 there is essentially no relationship between a club’s total wage bill and its league performance. You get what you pay for, they say? Not in MLS it seems. But this poses yet another question, one we only briefly touched upon previously: exactly why do some MLS clubs spend big on high-profile “designated players” if such spending doesn’t reliably deliver results on the pitch? In Europe, clubs such Chelsea, Manchester City, and PSG have clearly bought their way to trophies in recent years, and while L.A. Galaxy did win the MLS Cup last year, the relationship between money and titles appears much weaker stateside.

This season, five MLS teams have wage bills of more than $10,000,000: Seattle Sounders, Orlando City FC, LA Galaxy, New York City FC, and Toronto FC. Together, these five clubs collectively spent more on wages than that of all the fifteen other MLS teams combined; yet only one of the five big spenders made it out of the first round of the playoffs this season: Seattle.

But MLS is a business, and while performance and profits can be related, they are not always so. Clearly, there is also another reason to spend big in MLS: increased exposure and match-day revenues. Those five teams who spent the most also had the highest average attendances this season. LA and Toronto, who both have their own soccer-specific stadiums, each had a roughly 23,500 average attendance, more than two thousand higher than the next biggest club. Orlando and Seattle occupy football stadiums (New York City FC also plays at a baseball stadium, which allows them to drastically exceed the attendances of every other MLS team for headline matches.

New York drew an average crowd of just under 30,000 at Yankee Stadium, Orlando averaged just over 32,000 fans at home matches and Seattle doubled the majority of teams in the league with a little under 45,000 fans at their average home game. Over the course of the season, this allows them to pull in roughly $15-20 million per year more than the average MLS club from ticket sales and concessions alone. It wasn’t a coincidence that Forbes reported that the Sounders were the most financially valuable team in the league earlier this year. Their spending on the likes of Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins puts butts in the seats, as is the case in other situations across the league — notably this season at the Montreal Impact with their Didier Drogba signing.

Stars bring in attention both domestically and abroad and the signings of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in New York and LA, respectively, were also a large reason why Sky Sports picked up the MLS in the UK this year.

I’ve been alluding to the logic that stars will bring in more exposure, more fans and more matchday revenues all by themselves, which definitely has a degree of accuracy to it. Yet that also suggests that success, or the quality of play itself, plays no part in attendances, exposure, and TV ratings as long as fans think they are there to see something special, or above average, whether that is the actual dish or not.

That’s why, as more money from new TV and sponsorship deals flows into the league, the clubs have to figure out where to invest it. Obviously the minimum wage is slowly creeping up, which should help bring the playing standard up from the bottom, but it’s still unclear quite how the money benefits the majority of the league on the pitch. MLS is currently sprinkling in older stars at the top of the league and even some prime players as well (Giovinco and Giovanni Dos Santos). As time goes on the league fans hope these prime-age stars become more widespread — but in the meantime, mid-table clubs have little reason based on 2015 results to expect an immediate on-the-field payback from spending big on marquee signings.

CORRECTION: NYCFC play at Yankee Stadium, not Gillette Stadium

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.