Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
Promotion and Relegation with Adam Crafton
Tue, 04 Feb 2025
Should Major League Soccer adopt promotion and relegation? On Unfiltered Soccer, Landon Donovan and Tim Howard are joined by Adam Crafton, writer for The Athletic, to discuss the pros and cons of MLS adopting the format. What is promotion and relegation, and how does it work in Europe? What makes promotion and relegation exciting for fans, but a nightmare for owners? What would have to change in Major League Soccer for promotion and relegation to be adopted? Tim and Landon also dive into your AT&T Fan Connection questions about the format! New episodes of Unfiltered Soccer with Landon and Tim drop every Tuesday. Subscribe to the show on YouTube and follow on all your favorite podcast platforms. For bonus content and to send your mailbag questions in to the show, follow on all social media platforms @UnfilteredSoccer. (https://www.unfilteredsoccer.com). Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard is presented by Volkswagen. Learn more at https://bit.ly/4g8bZG3. Thank you to our additional sponsors: AT&T. Connecting Changes Everything. Visit https://att.com/guarantee to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These teams are willing to spend really quickly, and then they just yo-yo. Not good enough for the Premier League, they're too good for the championship, and they get stuck in this kind of middle ground.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon and Tim, presented by Volkswagen. Volkswagen has long been a supporter of soccer in America and has proudly been a partner of U.S. Soccer for the past five years.
LD, we are back. I can't understate or overstate how excited I am for this moment of the week. Every time I get to see your face, it's amazing.
What have you been up to this week? Says nobody ever. Golfing. Oh, God, you golf so much. I know. I've got this league play match today. So you play. Don't laugh, dude. So you play. It's the only competition I have in my life anymore. You play individually against someone, then you have a teammate, and you as your teammate play against this other team.
So we're playing San Diego Country Club today. This is a big match here at our home course.
You know what? That's amazing. I'm not even going to ask how you play because all my friends say they play great. It doesn't matter. All I'm going to say is I think we should have an episode on how great your life is. I think we should just walk through.
You were just talking about how cold it is. I said to my wife this morning, I'm like, It's actually warm today. I think it was 58 degrees when I walked outside. I hate you.
Oh my god. It's the coldest it's the coldest it's ever been in New York. It's just horrific. Whatever. You don't have to live there bud. You choose.
All right guys. Reminder as always follow us on social media Unfiltered Soccer. Make sure to subscribe to the show on YouTube. Follow on Apple Podcasts and Spotify if you like what we're doing or if you don't just leave a comment. We like it. We like reading the bad ones. Timmy loves the banter. You can also email us at feedback at unfilteredsoccer.com. What do we got today, Tim?
Well, I couldn't be more excited for today. And here's why. So many of our listeners are desperate to talk about and want to have knowledge and debates about promotion relegation. We talked about doing this episode, but LD, you and I wanted to do it with someone who was at the top of their game with knowledge of promotion relegation. And I couldn't be... more excited about our guest today.
Adam Crafton, the genius writer for The Athletic, a friend of ours, a friend of the show. Just so incredibly excited about what this means to our listeners and to the subject at hand. So Adam, welcome. Welcome, Adam.
Thank you. You wanted someone at the top of the game and you got me instead.
Good English banter. I love it. I love it. Adam, the interesting thing, we're going to jump in. The interesting thing about promotion relegation, and I'll talk from my standpoint, is I'm Again, wholly, I'm against promotion relegation, and we'll get into reasons why.
In America.
In America. And it's not because I'm an MLS owner. I was against it when I was a USL owner, but just based on the principle of it. And I think what I would say about this conversation is I've had two very distinct, specific conversations with high-level people in big positions in football, and I've come away from...
the argument, even though I was against it, I've come away from the argument more inclined to accept promotion relegation. That doesn't mean I'm still against it, but I've come away from these amazing conversations feeling like, okay, I see the other side of it. So I'm willing to be convinced and I'm happy to talk about that, but ultimately to start the show, I'm against it.
And Adam, can you, just to start, just explain for, you know, most people understand what promotion relegation is, but just as a general statement, what it is in England, Europe, the rest of the world and how it works.
Yeah, well, I suppose the major difference is the rest of the world kind of has this idea of a pyramid, right? This idea of teams that have always existed, that have been around for decades, centuries, and this idea that there is a top division where you may have maybe 12, 16, 18, 20 teams, but you don't have a fixed place in that division.
Certainly, if we just take the example of England, you have 20 clubs in the top division, then there's 24 in the second tier, 24 in the third tier, 24 in the fourth tier. That's just the professional game. And The idea is it's fluid. So three teams will go down from the Premier League, three teams will come up from the Championship.
And I suppose the advantage of it is this concept of being able to dream, of being able to take a place in the top flight, but also this idea of sporting jeopardy so that bad performances have consequences.
And good performances are rewarded, but also from a spectator sport perspective, it doesn't just mean you're looking at the top of the table as to who's going to win the championship or who's going to win the playoffs, or who's going to qualify for European competition. But you also have this other layer of television jeopardy, which is who's going to stay in the division.
And we'll go probably even deeper into this, but with the Premier League, that's become even greater jeopardy because of the cost of relegation and the jeopardy of the trapdoor, which there is a kind of...
perverse jeopardy to it in many ways right because often it leads to fire sales and redundancies and fears over the future of the club I mean Tim will know better probably than well Landon as well you were at Everton as well so you know how for Everton over the past few years there has just been this real kind of existential fear of what might happen with relegation.
The reality, of course, is that there is a secret rule in English football, which means Everton can never be relegated. However badly they play, they never actually go down. But that's kind of the premise of it. This idea, you can go up, you can go down. And it means that, you know, the makeup of the Premier League today compared to 10, 15 years ago is very, very different. And it means we have
some incredible stories like Brentford and Bournemouth and Brighton and Ipswich at the moment. But then there's also teams like Nottingham Forest, who in the 1980s were winning European Cups, but it's only been the last couple of years that they've managed to get themselves back into the Premier League.
And Leeds. And Leeds is another example.
We're going to get into the cons as well, but that is certainly one of the pros of promotion relegation. Nottingham Forest or Ipswich or teams like this that at one time were in the Premier League and then fell out, but now there's always the opportunity. I like that you said dream, like you can dream, right? And Americans love to dream, so we understand that. And there's...
I think the differences are just to start is when major league soccer was started, it was very, I would say almost likely that teams or the league was going to fail and just go up in flames. Like previous iterations of professional soccer in America had, had done the NASL famously. amongst many others. And so the league, I think to protect itself said, we absolutely have to just survive to start.
And so the idea of an owner losing 10 or $15 million a year, and then getting relegated to at that time, what was called the A-League is now called USL, was a non-starter. That would just never happen. And in England and other parts of the world, these clubs have been around for centuries, in some cases, or a century plus.
So they didn't, they started with nothing basically, and they could just work their way through the system up and down. And it's, you know, there are, there are vast differences that we'll get into, but, um, Tim, I'm curious why actually you're against it.
Well, Let me ask Adam real quick. There's the financial aspect, right? So getting into the Premier League, there's a huge windfall because of the television money, right? And then once you're in the Premier League, let's go a step further a year later. Once you're in the Premier League, as I knew it when I was playing there,
For every place you climb in the Premier League to finish the season, whether you finish 14th or 13th or 11th, there's like a half a million dollar payment per place or something to that degree, right? So teams are constantly playing. They're not like resting on the laurels just saying like, we're in 10th place. No, we want to get in 9th.
We want to get in 8th because that adds a million or a couple million more into the club. But then the other side is when you do fail, right? you get a parachute payment is what they call a parachute payment, correct? And so when you go down, you don't completely free fall.
If you, if you spend the money unwisely, you free fall, but you, it at least gives you this financial cushion over a certain number of years, which you can speak to that allows you to try and maintain either your championship status or push on to get back into Premier League. Would that be accurate in terms of some of those, those numbers? That's absolutely right.
So when you're in the Premier League, there's a guaranteed revenue that you get through the television money. I think the domestic money is split equally. And then the international TV rights, one of the things that the bigger clubs or the clubs that consider themselves bigger managed to negotiate was a larger portion of that international TV rights going in their direction.
So that's kind of what we kind of describe as the big six clubs, a couple of which are kind of currently about 14th and 15th in the table, right? Clubs like Man United and Tottenham. But then there is a difference, as you say, based on performance related prize money. So where you finish in the table. Then if you are relegated, you still get that automatic TV money for that season.
That money still goes to you. But because the difference between the TV money is so big between the Premier League and the Championship, You're still being relegated often with a wage bill, with a salary bill that is so disproportionate to what you're going to receive TV revenue-wise in the championship that they were fearing that clubs would just go out of business.
And we saw maybe 15, 20 years ago clubs like Portsmouth and Leeds come incredibly close, incredibly close to going out of business when they were relegated. So one of the things that were brought in was these parachute payments. And they last three years. I can't remember the exact figures, but it's a sliding scale. So the first year, you get a big sum. Second year, slightly less.
Third year, slightly less. And the idea is to cushion that landing. And it's quite a vivid word, right? It's like you're literally jumping out of the plane, right? And this parachute is holding you up. Sure. Now, this has been successful in protecting those clubs that do go down.
What you do tend to see is some clubs will spend that parachute money very, very quickly to try and come straight back up. And I think it is becoming an issue, actually, in terms of the competitive balance of the championship itself, because what you tend to see is clubs that go down, even if they've been pretty poor in the Premier League, are still so much better than the rest of the champions.
as an example, the teams you're talking about are like a Burnley, a Norwich. These teams are, are willing to spend very good. There's another one on top of my head that I can't remember. They spend really quickly and then they just yo-yo. They're not good enough for the Premier League. They're too good for the championship and they just, they spend competitive and they get stuck in this kind of
middle ground Burnley sticks out for me because I remember speaking to Vincent company. Right. And this is, this is gets into some of my, my cons. You know, we talked to Vincent company and he was so candid with us. You did, you know, JJ watt is a American NFL player. Who's now a commentator. He, he, he talked openly with us as well.
Like they, they got to, I mean, here's a, here's another wrinkle. They got to the premier league. Off the back of tons of loan players, young stars loans from other, from other clubs, right? Those players after a year alone, then go back. So Burnley has to say, okay, this is the profile of player that we want. Now that we're in the premier league, everybody's going to ask us top dollar.
We cannot afford to go buy the players who are on loan, right? Because being on loan is cheap. Even if you pay a loan fee. cheaper than, than buying these players. So they would tell us in their scouting to go into the primary league, they're going to like the top player can't afford him.
Second in that position can afford where they were going to like third tier players in that position to come up. And they just, and Vincent company has a certain style of play. And with the players that he had, there wasn't enough quality. Right. And so there are so many perils to this that we're seeing with, with some of those yo-yo teams. You know, one of the other thing about finances is the,
the stadium regulations. So I don't think people quite understand the stadium regulations. And I'm thinking Adam specifically about Luton town and Kenilworth road, right? So they come up to the premier league. They have a wonderful season, the championship, they get promoted. And part of the payment that they get from the premier league for being promoted, they have to spend on players. Right.
But they also have to spend on their stadium becoming up to a certain premier league standard and code, right. And that costs money. And we saw. They had to push one or two of their home games because the construction wasn't done in time. Is that, is that accurate? Isn't it?
Yeah, that's right. And there's certain requirements that you need in the Premier League, and it's largely to do with the global broadcast requirements. So it's, you know, because so much of the international TV revenue is contributing to Premier League clubs and funds transfers and all the product.
So a lot of it is just about actually giving the broadcasters everything they need to be able to show the games.
I don't have that much of an issue with that side of it in terms of, you know, if a club such as Luton is getting to the Premier League, I think they'd almost rather than be spending it on enhancing the infrastructure of the club, getting the training ground right, getting the stadium into a better place that enables them then to actually be more successful longer term rather than spending it on, I don't know, another £8 million left back that probably won't do that much.
Yeah.
You know, So I don't have that much of an issue with that. I think just to go back to the point you were mentioning around the yo-yo clubs, there's a real issue in the championship at the moment for those clubs who received the parachute payments but didn't come up. So a club like Stoke, who we saw in the Premier League for quite a long time, then got relegated, or Middlesbrough, went down.
But now they're kind of in this, or Birmingham, you know, now in League One, they're kind of stuck because they're not able to organically drive the kind of revenue they need to be able to hit the top of the championship. And then you have these three clubs coming down every season who are disproportionately financially boosted.
So yes, you do get these freak instances of teams that just hit runs of forms on Ipswich, back-to-back promotions, or Luton. But it's really tough, I think, for those clubs that are kind of just living at the moment between, I don't know, 8th and 20th in the championship. Swansea, another example, right? You saw the owners of DC United, Levine, kind of just give up on Swansea by the end.
And there is this ongoing debate within English football around how the Premier League should redistribute to the EFL to try and, I suppose, just even it out a little bit more because I think even the Premier League is starting to see an impact of this because of what you describe as these yo-yo clubs that get to the Premier League and actually just can't compete anymore.
And that's a problem, right? If teams are being promoted, spending 100 million, but still really way off being able to properly compete, that creates an issue actually for the Premier League as well as the EFL.
So a question I have for you, and I will probably never have the answer to this because they'll never answer, honestly. Do you think the owners in England, writ large, like promotion relegation? And obviously it depends on the spot you're in. But if you said, we're going to start over, and everybody's got the 92 teams in the English football, the top four tiers,
You're going to start over and you're going to make your way to the top or you're going to make your way to the bottom. Would they want promotion relegation or would they say this is not a system that works for us?
It's such an interesting question because then you get into the realm of actually who are the owners? What do the owners want? Why are the owners there? And there's so many different ownership models amongst 92 clubs, right?
There will be owners in, you know, an owner of a League 1, League 2 club who is kind of just the local businessman in his town who is actually really happy owning a club in League 1, League 2, being that community asset. who maybe thinks, you know, we'll have the old good year in a cup or something like that, but we're not going to get to the Premier League.
But they probably still quite like the idea of having that far away distant dream of maybe we could, right? Who knows? Maybe we could. Then you have the other extreme, which is, I suppose, if we just take the block of American owners in the Premier League. I knew that was coming. Sorry, but, you know, because that's the interesting block because it's the growing block.
And, you know, now with the Everton, the three-kin guys in Everton, we're getting pretty close to having kind of the, for any rule to pass in the Premier League, it's 14 or more clubs need to approve it. Now, would some of these owners like the Premier League to be a closed shot? Of course they would, because it protects their investment, it increases the value of their asset.
You would then start to get Premier League clubs, I think, getting towards the valuations of some of the NBA teams and NFL teams, right? Because the Premier League basically is the Super League, right? Right. I think between us, we can probably say that. I know some people would argue La Liga, etc.
But in terms of just viewing figures and global reach, the Premier League is kind of outstripping everything at the moment, probably other than the Champions League. So some of them, yes, I think would like it. But I think what's also true is the Super League had such a scarring effect
on particularly the owners of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea weren't there at the time, but they know about it, Tottenham, Arsenal, that I don't think they would dare at the moment even try and go there. So I don't think it's a realistic conversation. And I also don't think it's...
realistic because something that's going on in the uk at the moment is this football governance bill that's going through parliament so i think you would actually see incredible political opposition i think it would simply be blocked by yeah by parliament and i know this is a kind of something that probably seems quite alien to americans like the idea that
The government's going to get involved in whether the league has promotion or relegation or whatever. And yes, they are, because it's a hugely popular issue. And there's probably, you know, you saw it when the Super League came along. The prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson, basically came along and said, I'm going to drop a legislation, I can't even say it,
legislative bomb to stop this from happening and that was one of the reasons why it didn't progress so as a result of that yes there are plenty of owners i suspect who would like this um to change but i don't see it as being realistic as a policy change anytime soon you know adam to that point it's interesting so um full disclosure i have a very very very very small um
ownership stake in Lincoln city and league one. And I have a very good friend, Harvey Chibara, who, um, with Clive Nates there has, um, invested a lot of money in the club and they've spoken a lot about this reform that may be coming in for people don't understand.
There are a lot of teams in the championship league, one league two, who as this, uh, you know, I call it the Rexham effect a little bit. Everybody thinks they can buy a club and be Ipswich and go up twice in a row and be in the Premier League and Wrexham now is doing it.
And the reality is, is for every Wrexham or Ipswich, there are 10, 12, 15 others who get American owners or foreign owners or spend way more than they can. And like you said, with Pompey, Portsmouth and And others are on the verge of going out of business. And so as a whole, English soccer, football has said, OK, we need to help subsidize some of these teams so that they can't go out of business.
But if I'm the Premier League clubs now, I'm looking at it and say, OK, these guys are coming in. And I know very intimately how teams in League 1 and League 2 are spending now and how crazy it's gotten. I mean, they're spending millions and millions of pounds on transfers for players in League 1, which has never happened in the history of the league.
And if I'm the Premier League clubs, I'm kind of looking at this and saying, wait, I'm subsidizing this so they can just go spend carelessly, right? So I understand the idea of wanting to protect English football, but at some point you have to put the onus too on the owners and say, you can't just keep spending like a drunken sailor.
We're not going to subsidize that, right? So could I ask you, Landon, as an owner, however small that stake may be, how would you feel if the promotion relegation was all of a sudden not a possibility?
Yeah, that's a good question. I, as a fan, love it, right? Because I grew up in America watching American sports. And the biggest, to me, the most boring sport in the middle of the summer is baseball. And it's not because I think it's boring. I love baseball. I love watching baseball. It's that halfway through the season, half the teams have nothing to play for. Zero. Nothing to play for.
And so I hate that. The best baseball season ever in the history of my life was in 2020 during COVID when they played 60 games. Because every game basically counted for three games. If you won a game, it counted for three in a normal season. And it was so exciting and so riveting. And I was glued to the television. But there's way too many games. It'll never change because there's so much revenue.
And baseball is such a tradition in history that they'll never change the amount of games because stats matter so much. But I love the idea because every game matters. Every single game matters. Now, I'm looking at it as a fan. and not a business owner, and I'm not outlaying millions and millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
So if I was... And there's context, and there's nuance here. I can't be mad at MLS owners for not wanting promotion relegation. I get it. I understand it. But as a fan, as a player, one thing we haven't talked about yet is the opportunity for players. And I didn't think about that until I was coaching in San Diego. And a lot of the players, English players, would say...
It gave us an opportunity to play at the next level because a club in the championship would never sign me as a League One player. But if we got promoted, all of a sudden I'm in the championship. And if I play well and do it, now I'm a championship player. And that changes my life. And if you go from championship to Premier League, that completely changes your life financially and otherwise.
I mean, there's players at the moment at Ipswich that were there in League One, right?
Right.
A lot of players. Bournemouth, you know, when they went up with Eddie Howe, it was like League Two to the Premier League, some of these players. So, yeah, I've never considered it really, yeah, from a player's perspective in terms of it possibly being their only way to get there as well.
Yeah, it's a great point because it's life-changing for you to make that point, Landon, is you take it a step further to the glory lane, which is the Premier League, right? You and I have played with some of these players. There are championship players that get into the Premier League and they run their socks off and they can complete a couple passes.
And then all of a sudden, they just figure out a way to stay in the league. And all of a sudden, they're a Premier League player and their next contract now changes their life. Literally changes their life. And they wouldn't, as you said, outside of getting promoted, not a single Premier League team would have ever thought to sign them. Right. And so there's, there's, we talk about dreams.
There's an aspect of that as well.
Yeah. So let's take a quick break. I want, when we get back, let's, let's see, let's dive into how this would look in America potentially, because that's what we're really talking about. And now people have some context of what the Premier League looks like. how promotion relegation works, but let's see how this would work in America potentially. And we have lots of thoughts on that.
We'll come back with Adam, me and Tim right after this promotion and relegation talk here on unfiltered soccer with Landon and Tim presented by Volkswagen.
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Right. This is the other side of this conversation, LD and Adam. And that is what all of our listeners oftentimes talk about is how do we have how do we create promotion relegation in America? Again, so many of the things we outlined about England and how they use promotion relegation throughout their tier, I think is the basis of this conversation.
Look, I don't believe that it could work in the US currently because of what we talked about, the pyramid tier system, right? Everything is... Governed by a governing body in the FA, the EFL, the Premier League, they all kind of fall under the same umbrella. In America, that isn't the case, right? When you look at how this system works, U.S.
soccer is over here, MLS is over here, and USL is somewhere over here, right?
Yeah, but Tim, U.S. soccer is the governing body. Like they sit on top and they have to sanction the leagues.
Yes, they do. Correct. But there's such a divide. in there. We don't have a tier system, right? We have independent leagues. Okay. And so, and so if you ask the USL, their company line would be, we're not a second division. They're seen as a second division, but they, they would clearly state, we are not a second division. We are a thriving first division league within America.
That's how they, that's how they describe it. And so when I think about the cons, what jumps off the page to me is the finances. And the finances, Adam, as you mentioned, basically start with a television deal, an astronomical global television rights, which is what keeps the Premier League afloat and thriving.
So first of all, you have to get a lucrative television deal that everyone can buy into, right? And so that's a starting point. The other part of it for me is if Landon and I and you, Adam, were going to say, we have enough money, we want to go buy a team, right? And we buy into the MLS.
And we're in for half a billion, three quarters of a billion dollars with our stadium and all the things, right? We have an opportunity then after that investment 12 months later to no longer be playing in the Premier League, excuse me, in the MLS, the top league. I think we'd have a powwow and we'd all say to each other, well, I'm not signing up for that.
I'm not spending nearly a billion dollars. to then, in 12 months, have my asset be depreciated so much that we have to have a fire sale. There would have to be the system in place where there's a tiered system, there's parachute payments. Nobody would sign up for that. The other part, as I continue to think about this, is You laid in talking about Lincoln City, right?
I can talk about playing against Macclesfield Town or going to Burton Albion, right? And playing in the FA Cup. These small teams, right? Adam, you mentioned they're run by local businessmen, not billionaires, not foreign dignitaries, local businessmen, right? There's a heart and a soul to people in Lincoln City or in York City or wherever, right?
America has never, hear what I'm saying, America has never adequately supported a second division. The NFL, they've tried to create, everybody loves football. NFL's king. So they've tried to create the XFL in the spring because there's no football. A USFL in the spring because no football doesn't get supported. The NBA fans would never support a G League team. They wouldn't.
The G League is a second division. Major League Baseball fans, if they got relegated to AAA, they wouldn't. AAA baseball is a dog and pony show. It's fireworks and let the kids run the bases. A second division in America in any sport has never been supported. So are we then to assume that a first division club, an MLS club, let's say, the first division, gets relegated
Are we to say Americans don't support second division teams? Simply put. And so my argument to end all of this is when I look at the MLS, of all the teams, and Landon, you know this, I think there's probably... maybe four teams, four, that could sustain a relegation because the teams are supported as an institution. The LA Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, and a possibly think in Portland.
Like if those teams went down, the crazies in Seattle would still wear their green. They'd still march to the game. They'd still meet at the pubs because it's an institution. The LA Galaxy wouldn't allow their team to falter because it's more than a soccer team. It's an institution within the city.
But for so many of the other teams, if they go down, I don't believe the infrastructural support from the fans are there. I think they love their team being in the MLS, but I don't think they'll support it. There, rant over.
Go ahead, Adam.
No, I think the points you make are valid. I think if I was looking at soccer in the United States and I was looking at the MLS, there's kind of two ways you look at it. One is... you have to adapt to what the audience here is about and what the audience here is about as, as Tim says is we don't support second division teams.
And my really simple sociological take on that is just Americans love watching the best.
They want to watch the best. You know what, Adam, let me jump in real quick. It's, it's, um, in England, um, Throughout the years, those teams matter in their city regardless of what division they're in. And it doesn't fluctuate as much based on that. Like if, knock on wood, Lincoln City went down to League 2, they'd still probably have the same amount of fans, right?
And in America, we don't understand the concept of not being in the top league. So continue, sorry. That's a foreign concept to us.
Yeah, and I think it's why the Premier League and Champions League is really popular here. A bit in the way that you guys call baseball the World Series, right? Because you expect the sport you watch to be the best, right? So that's why people are watching Champions League.
um now the flip way that soccer could look at it and is set is to basically still say you guys might push back on this a little bit but they could say we're still a challenger sport to you know nfl to college football to baseball to basketball we can argue about that when we look at participation figures and um and i suspect but they could say well actually because we're challenging
Maybe we actually do do things differently to the way that American sport tends to see itself, right? And say, we do bring in this jeopardy that you don't get in other sports in the US and say, we're going to do this differently and see whether the audience comes with us on it. Now, whether there is the evidence there that people would go with that is another story, but that's what they could do.
But I really do think MLS, it's the easiest thing to say ever, has to do something. Because as an example, I was actually in Vegas last week, and I was talking to one of the sports books in Vegas. And I said to them, out of the soccer leagues... Where does MLS rank in terms of the most betted on soccer leagues? Not all sports leagues, just soccer leagues.
It's the ninth most bet on soccer league, right? So that's a domestic market, right? I know Vegas doesn't obviously have an MLS team, but you're talking about within the United States, the ninth most betted on soccer league. That to me is a problem, right? Because people bet on what they're watching on TV.
And that tells me, you know, I know we don't get the figures around what, you know, what people are watching on Apple at the moment, but it tells me not enough people are watching, you know, Liga MX was second, right? So we know Liga MX is very popular within the United States. But that's an issue because that tells you that people aren't tuning in.
Yeah.
The interesting point you make there is the risk versus reward is bringing in the drama of promotion relegation, which is a foreign concept, but is exciting. I don't think anybody watches a promotion relegation game at the end of a season and isn't excited, right? And that's what you're betting on. You're bringing it into a
into a foreign market that doesn't understand it, but it's still good watching if you can educate enough of the viewers. The downside to that is getting the investors to buy into the loss, right?
Because they've already- And why would they, right?
They're not.
It ain't happening.
This is like the great, you know, sorry to everyone listening, not happening.
No, but look, Adam, look, the question is, will the league at some point find a creative way to tackle this, to make the games more exciting at the end of the year, right? Or throughout the year. So that's, I mean, when we turn on the Premier League here in America, and it's April 17th, and Ipswich are playing Everton, people are like, whoa, there's a lot at stake here, right?
And they're 15th and 18th in the table. And people are like, oh my God, I can feel it in the state. And by the way, the performance of the players and the crowd, it all matches that. And that's what's riveting about the Premier League versus watching the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Cincinnati Reds in August, right? And so is there a creative way? I know in Mexico years ago,
And I think they put a kibosh on this. But they used to do it, I think, over a three-year period. So you would have an average league position over three years. And if you were at the bottom after those three years, you would get relegated. So it gave you a little cushion. If you had one bad season, it didn't destroy you.
The other idea that people have talked about, I'm curious what you guys think about this is, could you, if MLS is now in 29, 30 top American cities, could you add the Phoenix's, the Vegas's, the Memphis's, San Antonio's, et cetera, of the world and make an MLS too? And have it within your system, just within MLS. So you have 40 teams now and 20 are in the top and 20 are in the bottom.
And do you create it within yours? Will USL do it at some point, right? And just say, you know, forget about MLS and how that works. We're just going to do it on our own. Do you think those, or is there a creative, I guess, is there a creative solution? Because the way it is now, it's not going to happen, right? But is there a creative solution to bring it into our sport here?
Well, let me tell you about that. It's all about valuations, right? And so as much as MLS owners don't want to lose the money that they've invested, I talked about us having this fake ownership group, and we wouldn't want to lose that, right? And so...
In the USL, what you pay for a USL championship club, which is the top league, you're paying more than you would for a league one team in USL, right? But I think the starting point for me would be for USL to adopt promotion relegation because they do have a tiered system, right? They have championship, league one, league two, it's already in place.
So for them to adopt it, to pitch it to a television streaming service or what have you, and create that drama in and of itself, right? And then have some sort of proof in that, right?
So you can go from and create the parachute payments based off of television, but you're going to have to make a sacrifice somewhere, but allow a championship club, USL championship club to say, look, if you go down to league one, right? You're not having to make changes to your stadium. You're not having to Um, you can still play in your 8,000 seat stadium that you, that you built. No problem.
If you come up to, um, you know, the championship, I think that's the starting point for promotion relegation in America. I just don't see an avenue where the powers that be MLS owners, USL owners, and both leagues come together and say, all right, well, we'll, we'll create the system. It's very similar to what you said, Adam, about the, about the premier league and the, and the rest of, uh,
the pyramid. I don't think you're going to get a lot of people to agree on seeing it the same way. I just don't.
I totally agree with you on that. And also, rationally, if you're looking at it purely from the business case, why would you look at what's happening in the Premier League and the Championship and say, I want to take that risk with my business.
Why would I want to take the risk of having an end of year situation where I may have to let people go because revenue streams are unpredictable, where my valuation may change because we've I don't know, our star striker got injured and therefore we've not played well for 10 games. The beauty of European football is the irrationality. And that's maybe the motivation.
The bit I always find strange is coming from the UK into America is in so many industries,
Americans kind of shun the idea of protectionism and regulation and then when it comes to sport it's like this kind of right protectionist cartel to be honest right looking after a very very small amount of you know very very wealthy people um what and I don't know maybe you could actually argue that's exactly what what goes on in other industries but but So it's interesting.
It's like in so many other spheres, it's like trust the market, trust the market, it'll be fine. Whereas here it's like, no, don't trust the market. We have to make sure we are completely protected and everything's relatively predictable. Of course, you then have wildcard factors like drafts that make things more egalitarian and things like that. I just wonder whether there's other things that
MLS could change first in terms of making itself more attractive, more appealing, more jeopardy without promotion and relegation. Whether it is increasing spending limits, whether it is creating greater visibility outside of paywalls. I think there's a lot of things that MLS can do and also US soccer can do as well.
The thing that shocks me most is when I look at soccer all around the world, it is so accessible for people to play regardless of background, ethnicity. It is the greatest sporting vehicle of social mobility. You look at where a Messi or Ronaldo came from, a Luis Suarez to where to where they went and in the United States, you know, it is incredibly expensive. Yes.
And the stories I hear of like what people have to pay for their kids to be able to, to play soccer.
You're going to get people real mad now. We might have to bring you on a, we're going to get into that with you. Right.
But I think it's a really important debate for, uh, for for for us soccer to have because although again it may be rational it may be logical it is not what happens elsewhere in the world right right and it's a big it's a big differentiator yeah could um tim just thinking about this um andrew our producer put in our chat here could would mls argue that the way they keep the
the season interesting and the way sport and I actually never thought about this sports in our country are interesting is because you have a playoff system, right? Which you don't have asthma you do in, in some format in other places in the world, but not, not to crown a champion the way we do in America with our playoffs. And so even if,
Last year, the San Jose Earthquakes were way out of the playoffs. They're playing LA Galaxy at the end. There is meaning in the game for the Galaxy still because of the playoff push. Could that fit in still with promotion relegation, or would that have to go away? I'm just thinking about it as we're talking about it.
Look, I mean, I think ultimately you could have… The MLS would argue, and rightfully so, American sports would argue, their drama is in playoffs, right? Their drama is in the last place team to get into the playoffs. So let's call it the number eight seed beats the number one seed. That's the drama. And they'd have a rightful argument there, right? Because we love, we watch playoffs.
That's when things heat up here. Could there be a system where you have a playoffs where with... eight, you know, the top eight teams make it. And then the last place or the last two place teams go down. I suppose, I mean, that's major drama. I mean, I suppose you could, ultimately you have to get, they'd have to get creative.
And I go back to, I don't believe in the promotion relegation conversation that MLS is budget at all.
No, zero chance.
Zero chance. I do believe, and I'm repeating myself, if the USL who already has a tiered model, they already start like this, right? Then I think if they were to be able to do it, and they were to be... It's all about dollars and cents. If they were to be able to gain traction and show real... oomph in their television rights and say, look, we've put this on TV.
Our figures have shot way up from the last five seasons when we were just the USL and we had a playoff system and not many people watched. If you start to have some proof, then I think you then get MLS to look at it and go, huh, okay, there is an appetite for this. There already is a litmus test. But until then, I'm not sure that MLS budges at all.
well well to adam's point though this is america right like somebody could start a league and people have tried nisa and bringing back nasl yeah you could you can start your own league yep and and i mean you got to build it from scratch and credit to mls and don garber who built it from nothing and made it what it is today right so you you do have that opportunity if you want to go there and
Obviously, you need people with many, many billions of dollars. But Adam, question for you. How do people in England view playoffs here? And is that something that you think would ever trickle into the Premier League at any point?
As in to decide the championship winner? Yeah. Yeah. I think people like it with people who are into NFL in the UK, which is growing, to be honest. It's now shown on Sky or BBC. There's highlight shows. I think people like it. I think it appeals. Could you do it with the Premier League? There'd be resistance because there's resistance to everything.
Can you imagine?
You know, I mean, you could go out and say, you know, we're going to give everyone, I don't know, $100 and there'll be resistance because it's changed, right? So true. So there is a bit of that. I have been thinking it in the last few years. You know, there are those years, right, where, and it may be one this year, where Liverpool actually ended up winning the league by 15 points.
and you're in April and it's a bit like, yeah. Right. That's not that exciting. Right. Whisper that quietly. You know, a team, you know, when city, when to be fair with city, it's tended to be pretty close, even though it's felt inevitable. Yeah. They're going to win. Right. It's tended to be a couple of points here or there. I think
what you could do is a playoff for the fourth place yeah the final champions league place yeah oh that's interesting so particularly now that you've got this kind of clutch of clubs who are all pretty competent you know between kind of third and uh i don't know seventh or eighth in the table maybe you take the teams that are third fourth fifth sixth seventh or something like that
and put them into a playoffs. Because, I don't know, I think it's lame that you can finish fourth and you get into the Champions League. And I quite like the idea of actually maybe you should have to do a bit more to do that. And it could also increase the teams that actually make it through.
The flip side is you could get a team like Forest that finish fourth and everyone says, well, they absolutely deserve to make it because they've overperformed so much. And then you put them into a playoffs and then it gives, I don't know, a a man silly a second chance yeah and obviously they then take it so that would be the counter argument i also don't dislike the idea of a kind of 17th place
So possibly you relegate four clubs instead of three, or you do a playoff between the fourth bottom team and the fourth team in the championship or something like that. I think Germany does something like that.
They do that in Germany, yeah. That's actually quite entertaining. Yeah, it is entertaining.
I mean, look, Adam, what I would say... The English fans that listen to this or the American Premier League fans listen to this are going to hate me. But that's how my world works. You made an interesting point. I should know this. It's somewhere close. But I think, is there 10 American owners in the Premier League? I think it might be more now. Okay, it might be more now.
But to your point, and I want to make sure people understand this. In order to pass any sort of change in the Premier League, you need 14 owners of the 20 to vote. in favor of that. If, if they're, if they're at some point is 14 or 15 American owners, which it seems to be trending that way. And they have, they have ideas to make change. It's 2025. I put nothing past anybody.
Cause by the way, these are their assets. These are their business assets. And most, most of these American owners are Uber successful businessmen.
right and so i i don't put it past them and by the way by the way television rights are are only going up only going up nbc paid 2.6 billion dollars for the last rights that's going up globally right so people people are going to want more by the way when when you start to pay this type of money the viewer is then going to expect more and you have to deliver so
Yeah, so Tim, you're 100% right on that. They will want more. And the question is, what is it they're going to get, right? Is it, you know, so one thing that is constantly spoken about is do you end up with a regular season game?
Mm-hmm.
uh, being taken around the world. Sure. I would say most likely to the States. I don't think the premier league will be the first to do it, but we know La Liga are desperate to do it. We know Serie A would do it. We know UEFA would do it with the champions league. Um, it could be something like that. It could be, how do you bring the viewer closer to the action?
Is it miking up the coaches on the touchline? Is it giving access to locker room, uh, half-time team talks. Tim, I don't want to put you out of a job at half-time analysis.
No, but listen, to that point, and you mentioned you could give people in England $100 and they'd question why, right? They hate change. You cannot get anything. I've played in the Premier League. Lions played in the Premier League. You cannot get anything from these clubs. They're so protective, right?
Brentford now, if you've seen over the last couple of NBC shows, Brentford has put out no sound, no audio, just video of Thomas Frank and his team giving a team talk, pregame, halftime. That's brilliant, right? So, but in order to get these teams to give more, It's like pulling teeth and it's really, really difficult, but that is the way we're headed.
Something has to change for the astronomical fees. And look, I think, you know, going back to the American side of things, I know we've stoked some fires here, Adam, and having you on and your insight's been brilliant. And I just think, you know, for our listeners,
You got to keep sending in your questions, keep sending them feedback at Unfiltered Soccer because I know I still have more questions and the answers are what we're all looking for, right? Because promotion relegation can possibly live somewhere in... the ecosystem of American soccer. I just don't think right now or for the foreseeable future, it's going to be all inclusive.
I think it's going to have to, as you said, LD, someone's going to have to take the bull by the horns and do it themselves before it becomes overarching.
Yeah. We're going to stop torturing Adam. Um, I want to leave you guys with this. Just, I just thought this is so interesting. Okay. So this was a quote from Don Garver on, uh, when asked about if promotion relegation could exist. He said, I'm going to leave you with two quotes. First is Don Garber. This is the never say never thing, Garber said. I've been pretty consistent on that.
We shouldn't walk away from having the courage to evolve over time. And as the league continues to grow and evolve and our fan base and the market continue to grow and evolve, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be thinking about new structures. I don't see how that works today, but I can't look far enough in the future to say never. Okay, so interesting.
Then Nashville SC CEO Ian Ayer was asked about if MLS owners would want promotion and relegation. And he said MLS owners voting for promotion and relegation would be like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
I think there you have it.
There you have it, right? So the owners very clearly, but Don sees the big picture and says, you know what? You never know. Let's be open to it. And maybe it's not exact promotion relegation the way we're thinking of it now, but you're only limited by your creativity, right? So...
It's also interesting, guys, in terms of how does MLS actually continue to expand? They're now up to 30. I think, as you say, you'd expect maybe Phoenix, Vegas. But the challenge is, you're talking about a $500 million expansion fee. Then you're also expected to build a soccer-specific stadium. In a market like Vegas, for example, you'd have to... have a retractable roof because of the heat.
You know, you're talking about really, you're talking about people who have a billion to drop.
Many billions.
Before you've even started. Many billions.
Yeah.
So before you've even started, right? And I know this is a place with a lot of billionaires, but are there that many more people that want to be spending that on a new MLS team? I'm not sure.
I always ask that, but there's always more, Adam. Yeah. There's always more. There's always more. Yeah. All right, guys, we are going to take a break. Adam, thank you so much. We will dive into mailbag questions that you guys submitted about promotion relegation. Adam, I think we're going to have to have you back on once we have a lot of feedback from our fans. But we appreciate you.
You were brilliant.
Pleasure. Thank you for having me.
We'll be right back with the AT&T Fan Connection here on Unfiltered Soccer with Landon and Tim, presented by Volkswagen.
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LD, it's not everyone's favorite time of the week, but it is absolutely Jordan's favorite time of the week. Jordan, get on in here and give us some questions.
Hello, JR.
Hello. I don't know if I can follow that. Adam was great.
Hey, it was great. Awesome. Great. We're going to have great questions after this. Yeah, yeah, we are. This lights a fire.
Well, let's start with the questions that we've gotten so far already. These are all about promotion and relegation. We're staying with the theme this week. So the first one came via YouTube. Someone who's identifying themselves as EGC. EGC. Whatever that means. What does your ideal American soccer landscape look like in 50 years?
If we aren't aiming to build a pyramid, what are we trying to build? And are we done growing? Hmm.
Great question. God, I need time to think about that.
I'm not going to jump in. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think the league, I don't know how much more we can grow, but it's by a sheer numbers size, right? I think... You mean teams? Teams, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like number of teams.
Mm-hmm.
you know, I think that you have, we have to now 50 years is a long time. Right. So I think, I think we have to continue the growth financially, right. You know, in terms of getting the right television deal deals in place, you know, getting the right roots of certain clubs, you know, cause there's with expansion, you have new clubs, right.
They're, they're, they're, they didn't exist and they plopped down a stadium and create a logo and here we go. Right. And people love that, but As we talk about around the world, these clubs and stadiums are institutions and they're the lifeblood of the community.
And so although I'm currently against promotion relegation in its natural form, I think you begin to 50 years from now within that timeframe, certainly have to build a pyramid scheme. There has to be a coming together. There has to be a complete overhaul of... the youth system, the pay to play model, right, which is at the foundation and the roots.
And then that builds all the way up and it has to be one structure and one and one tier under the same umbrella. Do we get there economically because of how America works? I'm not sure, but I'd like to think in 50 years we do.
I struggle with this because I believe in a free and open market in America, and I love that. And so I love that concept that you can have a Starbucks across the street from a Philz coffee across the street from a Blue Bottle coffee, you know, and everybody just, you know, you either survive or you don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My problem is that that system, and we'll get into this in another episode, has destroyed youth soccer in our country. So I know we're not talking about youth soccer today, but if it was a free-for-all and there was... MLS and USL and NISA and NASL and some other one that, and does it dilute soccer as a general statement that we all love and are trying to grow? I don't know.
So I'm, I'm not trying to sit on the fence here, but I think ideally everybody in the U S soccer landscape could come together and do what's I'm an idealist. I know do what's best for the sport. I know that probably will never happen, but that would be my goal.
OK, here is a question from Neil via email. How do you feel about so-called yo-yo teams, a label famously put on teams like West Brom who go up and down fairly regularly between the championship and the Premier League? Is there a value in being that type of team or is staying competitive in the championship more beneficial?
Yeah, I mean, I don't have any issues with yo-yo clubs. You know, you talk about Southampton, Norwich, Burnley, Leeds. Not so much Leeds. They were in the wilderness for a while. But West Brom is a great example of that. Look, I think when you own a team, this is the great thing about ownership. You run it how you want, right? And, you know, Norwich is the most recent yo-yo team where they found –
They found a way to bounce up and not overspend and go back down and then use the parachute payments to be the best team in the championship and then go straight back up. And there was a formula to that. I don't think it's a sustainable formula. I don't think that's something you can do over the course of like a decade. That's a four or five.
Sorry to jump in. I never even thought of it. Do teams purposely do that?
Yeah. I mean, they're not going to come out.
I never even thought of that.
They're, they're, they're basically, they're basically in that gray area of, of they're, they're not, they're not trying to overspend on players to stay in the premier league. Cause they know that the wind, they can get, they can double dip. Right. So they know they go down and get the parachute payment. Then they go up and get the promotion payment.
So, um, and, and quite frankly, it's actually not the worst business model.
It's actually not, you know, it's risky. Yeah.
but it's risky. That's, that's the thing. It's very risky. Cause, cause as we know for every, you know, I just named five yo-yo clubs. I could, I could name five 50. I can name 50 teams that, that it don't work for.
So just a follow-up question. Is it a, if promotion and relegation were to be adopted by any league, is that position that those yo-yo teams, is that going to happen in any league?
That's a good question. Good question. I mean, yeah, I could see teams. With ownership, you get a vast spectrum of people who... really care about winning. And there's people who's like, I could care less. My valuation's going up. I'm trying to break even or make some cash. You could absolutely see some people saying, let's just tow this line for sure.
Yeah. Cause being, cause, cause, cause to, to Landon's question to me, being a yo-yo club isn't, you're not, you're not getting lucky. You're not like, Oh, we're just really good this year. And we went up and we're really, really stinking the Premier League. So we went down like that's a, there's, that's a planned model. So it's not, it's not about luck.
Like, Oh, we're just having to be really good this year. Um, so yeah.
And a lot of those clubs have a lot of trophies, right.
From the championship as a result of that championship trophies, baby count for a lot.
Okay. This question is from MNB via YouTube in a two tier MLS. If you remove the financial penalty of relegation and split revenues relatively equally across all teams from both divisions, would that remove the hesitations of promotion and relegation?
But then what's the incentive to be in the first, let's call it MLS1 versus ML? What would be the incentive? I don't know if there's prestige incentives or whatever, but what's the incentive if there's no financial? What are you getting?
The prestige, to your point, is when you go to the Premier League, you get the money to bring in international or... World Cup-type stars, but they cost money. You get the money from the television revenue. I don't know if I necessarily agree. It's always about finances. Otherwise, it's not that exciting.
I'm not really that interested in a relegation battle where the team goes down, but they can still pretty much buy the same players. That then just becomes... to almost evenly matched leagues. The whole point of a first tier and a second tier is that they're not evenly matched. They're head and shoulders above the other.
You're right. So I'm just thinking if it was the Premier League and the Championship, I mean, there's obviously no opportunity to be in the Champions League. You can't win the league. So maybe there's ways you can create it. It's an interesting idea. Maybe you just make that gap much smaller in the financial differences between the leagues so that it's not so stark. Interesting idea.
All right. That's it, guys. Thank you.
All right, JR. Thank you very much. All right, guys. That was certainly interesting, Tim. I enjoyed that. Did you? Yeah, it was good.
It's just a conversation that can continue to go around and around. I love having it because I love learning about the other side of the argument. So Adam was brilliant.
Yeah, that was awesome. Adam was really good. And I think you guys will probably have lots of questions. We don't have the answers, but a really good topic and one that will be continually discussed here and elsewhere. Thanks, you guys. Thanks for being here. Remember to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow the show all across our social media platforms at Unfiltered Soccer for lots of bonus content.
Thank you so much to all of our listeners. We love you all. Adam Crafton of The Athletic, you were absolutely brilliant today.
It was great.
Yeah, thank you. And the biggest thank you to our presenting sponsor, BW, and our fan connection sponsor, AT&T. Have an amazing week. No episode next week, but we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of Unfiltered Soccer.