Promotion and Regulation

 

I read an interesting article yesterday about how professional soccer in the United States would benefit from adopting the European soccer model of promotion and regulation. For example, if U.S. professional soccer adopted this model, Major League Soccer (“MLS”), the top tier soccer league in the country, would partner with the North American Soccer League (“NASL”) and/or the United Soccer Leagues (“USL”), the second tier soccer leagues, to implement the promotion and regulation process.

Under this model, the respective winner of the annual NASL championship and the USL championship would be promoted to the MLS while the teams with the worst record in the MLS Eastern and Western Conference would be regulated to play in the NASL and USL the next season.  Based on the 2011-2012 season, the NASL Champion Tampa Bay Rowdies and USL Champion Orlando City Lions would be promoted to the MLS.  On the contrary, Eastern Conference loser Toronto FC would go to the NASL and Western Conference loser Chivas USA would go to the USL.

 

In order for this work, all three leagues would have to have similar standards regarding league/team financial stability, stadium size, player contracts, endorsements, and fan support because of the possible migration of teams between the respective leagues.  I think this model would be interesting because it would force MLS team owners to invest in their teams to make them competitive so they could stay in the top tier, and it would force NASL and USL team orders to further invest in their teams so they could have a shot at fielding a top tier team with access to top tier endorsements, television deals, and players.