The on-going labor battle in Major League Soccer sees the 2010 season in jeopardy, and it couldn't be coming at a worse time.
Major League Soccer is at an all-time high with attendance records in Seattle and Los Angeles, new stadiums in New Jersey, and new franchises in Philadelphia. At a time when the league should be thriving, it is in jeopardy of falling by the wayside in the fashion that the National Hockey League did when they went on strike - and have never recovered at the turnstiles and television ratings.
Ives Galarcep of Fox Soccer Channel analyses whether the MLS players or owners can afford to strike at this time.
The league’s on-going labor battle is threatening to result in a player’s strike, which would deliver a crippling blow to the relatively young league if it were allowed to happen, and worse yet, allowed to devour a season so vital to the future of MLS.
How did we get to this point? How did a league that rose from the ashes of its previous low point, when two teams were forced to be shut down before the 2002 season, find itself in a situation so dire?
It has been coming for years.
MLS has had the luxury from its humble beginnings 14 years ago of determining player salaries and contracts and controlling the player market in the United States. The league’s total control gave it take-it-or-leave-it power when negotiating with players, which helped MLS keep costs down as the league moved through its formative years.
With the exception of elite players with the talent and requirements to secure contracts outside the United States, American players with professional aspirations took what MLS offered, even it often meant little job security and lower salaries than top young prospects and foreign players.
MLS players didn’t have much recourse to improve their bargaining position with the league, at least not until a player’s union was formed (the MLSPU) in 2003. Less than two years later, the first Collective Bargaining Agreement was signed.
The original CBA did well to lay the groundwork for some basic necessities for players, such as a retirement plan and better health benefits, but it did little to address the lack of job security (guaranteed contracts remain rare in MLS, and the way contracts are structured still allows teams to waive players without having to pay them well into the season).
With the old CBA expired, the MLSPU has sought, among other things, more job security in the form of more guaranteed deals, as well as an improved (or players would argue an equal) percentage of league revenue.
With the league pocketing eight-figure expansion franchise feeds on multiple occasions, and more teams making money thanks to the construction of more soccer specific stadiums, the MLSPU expected the new CBA to be a step toward improved compensation for players, but MLS has followed up with CBA offers that (according to the MLSPU) offer more money than the previous CBA, but a lower percentage of league revenue.
So yes, even though the union says the labor stalemate isn’t about money, it ultimately is about money and whether MLS is trying to give players a smaller slice of a bigger pie.
Both sides have a point. MLS has seen owners lose millions for more than a decade so you can’t blame them for wanting to reap the reward of that dedicated investment, but it has also been players who have sacrificed and helped the league get to this point, which makes it understandable why they want to see the benefits of that sacrifice.
As reasonable as the arguments are for both, it all means little to the MLS fans who might have their faith in the league shaken by a strike, and even less to casual sports fans who could wind up either giving up on MLS or ignoring it before they ever bother to embrace it. Both sides have supporters, with some fans calling MLS greedy, and others still blaming players for jeopardizing a league that may never recover if a strike butchered the 2010 season.
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