The Sports Advisors Podcast: Making MLS Major League
Sign up for the newsletter at JohnWallStreet.com. In the latest episode, The Sports Advisors offer up some free, unsolicited advice for new MLS Commissioner Larry Berg. The core 4 touch on these key themes: - Domestic Soccer Fans Back Players, Performance - Berg Must Bridge MLSs Ownership Divide, Eliminate GAM/TAM - Transfer Fee Revenue Should Be Converted Into Domestic Building Blocks - Think Hemispheric, Distribute via Tri-Cast Thank you to our partners at ASL Productions!
Video Transcript
Welcome to episode number eight of Jon Wall Street's "The Sports Advisors."
I am your host, Corey Leff, better known by my pen name, Jon Wall Street.
"The Sports Advisors" is a weekly roundtable featuring experienced operators across media sponsorship, monetization, and technology, breaking down the stories and topics that matter and their second-order effects.
These are senior executives who have sat in or are currently sitting in the rooms where deals are being negotiated and decisions are being made, and they are speaking to their peers.
Soccer is the topic of this week's discussion.
MLS selected LAFC co-owner and former private equity executive, Larry Bird, to be its new, its next commissioner last week.
We're going to discuss how the league can convert unprecedented interest in soccer into sustained growth.
What needs to change across the product, media, marketing, and commercial models, and which t- which strategic decisions will matter most if MLS is going to reach its next stage of growth.
With me today are former Carolina Panthers CEO, former Verizon VP of sponsorship, and current Encore Sports & Entertainment CEO, Nick Kelly.
Former Washington Commanders chief strategy officer, former ShopYourWay chief digital officer, and current Nexlie chief AI and innovation officer, Shripal Shah.
Former Learfield CRO, former WWE global head of sales and partnerships and head of international, and current Burgo Advisory LLC founder, John Brody.
And finally, last but not least, former Fox Sports SVP of programming, research, and content strategy, and current Kreiks Media president, Patrick Kreiks.
As always, all four are Jon Wall Street advisory advisors and available for consultation.
You can get in touch with any one of them by sending a note to info@jonwallstreet.com.
Advisors, good morning.
Welcome back.
Let's start with MLS and the appointment itself.
I recently wrote a column suggesting that only a leader capable of reimagining how MLS is packaged, promoted, and sold can change the league's trajectory.
The question I start with today is, is Larry Bird that leader?
Mr. Kreiks, you wanna get us started?
Well, well, he's gonna, he's gonna have to be.
I think he probably has a great opportunity to be a fantastic leader.
MLS has a lot of open space in front of it.
It-- The biggest problem that it faces is a strategic one.
I, I was really amazed during the World Cup to watch a lot of sports journalists who probably should know better talk about will soc- will MLS become a tier one sport with- without being able to recognize the, the value of other soccer leagues in the United States and how soccer looks different than every other sport.
Soccer is a tier one sport, but it's made up of four or five leagues collectively, each one having its own kind of particular slice of a uni- of that un- of that audience.
When we think about professional football in the United States, there's one entity.
When we think about college football, there's several multiple entities, but it's grouped together in a regional coalition that's one entity.
Same with professional basketball, college basketball, hockey, whatever.
With soccer, there are five entities, of which the most popular by a viewing basis is the Liga MX, right?
So, there's the Premier League, there's Major League Soccer, there's La Liga, then there's the other kind of collective European leagues, the Serie A, the Bundesliga, the Li- League One.
They all come together, right, and they fractionalize the soccer audience.
But when you sum it up, it's tier one sport, when you look at the economic value, when you look at the, the viewing value, right?
So that's a unique challenge if you're building a US-based, soccer league because you have competition from all over the world that's actually relevant here, right?
Every single day.
And soccer is very collegial.
They, they, there's a lot of crossover, but it's, it's one of the reasons why, MLS sometimes profile doesn't look as high as the other tier one domestic US leagues.
So how he breaks through that in a cooperative way, not a either/or zero-sum, but a sum/sum, in particular with the Latino audience, in my opinion, which already watches MLS and is important to them.
But there's a real opportunity to continue to get closer and find strategic initiatives with the Liga MX.
One of the things that's on the horizon, I think, that they don't talk about a lot, but they better start talking about it, is US antitrust laws don't care what FIFA's regulations are about domestic leagues and where they play.
And I think all the foreign leagues clearly understand that now.
I can envision, and have been a part of conversations over the past half decade, about bringing Liga MX franchises to the United States and also European franchises to the United States, not to play a game, not to play a regular season match, to put a, put one in a US city.
And I think that there's a real chance that's coming sooner rather than later.
So how MLS works cooperatively with that and uses it as an advantage, in particular in Canada and Mexico, is, to me, an untalked about but very serious strategic opportunity and issue.
So he's got a lot of room to run.
I think the league's in good shape overall.
They need to take a look at their media partnership for sure.
They've got to get more exposure, and, and, and that means more partners.
But the biggest thing is growing the, growing within the soccer community to get more share of viewing and, and to grow the Latino audience in the United States, which over-indexes heavily on soccer viewing and is a, there's lots of lift there for them.
Okay, so a lot in there.
Not sure Pat actually answered the question though at 10, so I will re-ask it for, for Nick, John, and Srypal.
Is Larry Bird the leader to capable of, of packaging, promoting, and selling the league, so that it can reach its, its full capability?
Is there anything in his- his background, his history, his ownership of LAFC that would suggest, he can take that playbook and translate it league-wide?
So I have a thought, and I'd be curious Nick's and Brody's take on this, and Pat's as well, is that, you know, they, they replaced a career marketer with a c- you know, so in essence, a career capital allocator, right?
And then to me, that tells you where the owner thinks the problem is, right?
You know, L- Larry's job for 30 years at Apollo, right, was to allocate capital and make investments.
And I've always believed that MLS inherently has under-invested compared to the other leagues.
And it's, you know, if you think of it like when you're from like a PE fund point of view, with all the new investment and owners coming into MLS, is how do you, you know, wrangle 30 owners to start making materially more significant investments versus where the league started?
And, and I think that to me was really indicative of the profile, 'cause you went from a career marketer to a career investor.
And I think that really tells me strategically there, I believe it's an investment problem, which has short-changed the ability to do everything else.
But I'd be curious what, what Nick and Brody, clearly are closer to a lot of this, would think.
Srypal, that brings up an interesting point, and I wanna hit on it in a minute.
I'm certainly interested in hearing what Nick and, and John have to say as it relates to, to Larry Bird, but you know, MLS is a league that has historically kind of prioritized parity and, and fiscal discipline.
You know, I think one of the questions that we should address in this is, is, is the league better served, you know, allowing its best capitalized, best run clubs to kinda separate themselves the way we see in the Euro- i- in Europe and in the Premier League?
You know, would MLS be healthier with six nationally relevant teams and then a whole bunch of other teams that struggle to keep up?
Yeah.
I was just gonna say, one thing I would just add is that like, kinda to your point, Srypal, point, Srypal, is that they've done a great job of like investing in, when I say infrastructure, like training facilities and like even just like soccer-specific stadiums.
You know, there's some of these MLS clubs, especially the ones who've come online in the last 10 years, their facilities rival NBA, you know, practice facilities, NFL practice facilities, and, and they're nice.
So like I think that they're a step ahead when it comes to like the basics.
So, you know, for them to package up a product to sell to a new media partner in a couple years and to gain global relevance, they have to completely upend the whole on-field product.
And because the way that the financial constraints are currently in place with this DP model and then TAM and GAM money, and they're passing around funny money between teams- it's not, it's not gonna, it doesn't basically create an environment f- to compete.
What's exciting about, you know, Larry Bird be coming in as the commissioner is LA was spending money.
They spent money for years between Carlos Vela, between n- now they've got Son.
Like they are one of the ones who are spending the money to, to compete, and they've also seen the ramifications of what happens when you bring in these star-level players maybe a little bit sooner in their career than the back end of their career.
So, you know, you know, Carlos played there for almost seven or eight seasons.
You've got like guys like Son, who was getting other offers from Premier League clubs and, you know, clubs in La Liga, and he chose to come to LA for commercial reasons.
But the thing is, is like you only have a handful of teams doing this.
You know, when Lewandowski goes to Chicago, it's the biggest thing.
Like there's no reason why they can't compete.
These owners are far more capitalized than any other ownership group, like collectively in any of the other leagues, but they kinda have this governor on them that's been in place for 20 years, and it's been like kind of slightly tweaked.
But there is two factions within the MLS.
There's the owners that have been there since the beginning, who are very, you know, conservative, and this is the league we built for fair play and for fiscal responsibility.
And then you've got Miami and LA and, you know, some other markets that wanna be far more aggressive.
They, they have to, at, at the very least, I think he can get them to the middle, but like if they ever wanna elevate the product on the field to get to greater media rights, to greater respect globally, they've gotta change that system.
Because it's like even as a fan, it's hard to follow.
What do you mean I ch- I traded this player to this team for GAM or TAM?
It's like, you know, nobody as a re- as a non-regular fan gets it, and I think that that has to be cleaned up because like even international clubs, international fans like make fun of the whole like system there, and it's just like it's gotta be clean and easy to follow.
Yeah, you know, I Maybe it's been brewing as I've been listening to my, my friends and colleagues speak about it, but let's be straight.
They got a product problem.
Their product isn't good enough.
The product isn't good enough.
It's not Major League Soccer, it's minor league soccer.
Like that's what we called it.
At the other sports properties, if you wanna play with the big boys, you've gotta have better talent, and you have to have better quality of play.
And you know, I, I, I applaud this, I applaud this hire because I think they are, though he's an investor, in the LA club, they're hiring an outsider.
I don't want a marketer.
With all due respect, I think, I think the current commissioner's done a wonderful job marketing a suboptimal product.
And in the US market, if you wanna compete against the places that I've been or Nick or y- you have to have a better product.
Major League Soccer is not a major league product, and until they get better, y- the Messi story's a great story.
There, there are stories about Major League Soccer that are really interesting, but the product's not And ultimately fans watch the best.
And Pat's point is spot on.
I- there's nothing wrong with Minor League Baseball.
It's great, but everyone knows there's Major League Baseball, and that's better.
And until they fix that problem, I think it'll continue to be what it is.
We can get excited about World Cups, which are transformational global events, but it doesn't change the product if you keep that governor on it, so you cannot spend to get the top talent in the best market.
And we're not the best market 'cause we don't have the top talent, and I think Larry knows that.
I think Larry's a business person who sees And I don't know him.
A, a business person who sees opportunity.
They have to change the model so they fix the product.
So that's a good segue to my next question is, well, what does the league need to do over the next 12 to 24 months to convert this World Cup buzz into lasting MLS fandom?
How do you convert the league and capture a larger share of people who we clearly see love the sport to become MLS fans?
Certainly increasing the talent pool, raising the amount of money teams spend on players is part of that solution.
Pat, what else needs to be done?
Well, I think there's probably two or three things.
The first one to, to kinda dovetail off of what John and Nick and Shripal were getting at, people watch players.
I understand that in the United States and internationally there are some teams that have their own intrinsic brand.
You know, and, and they can, they can outlive players or even long periods of underperformance.
My alma mater, Indiana, and their basketball team is a great example.
Indiana still draws huge viewing on TV for basketball.
Football as well, but- A football school though.
Indiana.
Yeah.
They're a football school now.
Football school.
So, and we're working on that.
But the point of the matter is, is that, you have to get a bigger, you know, share of players that are closer to the middle of their prime.
To do that, you're gonna have to up capital spending.
How you structure that, both across the league, right?
Many leagues have, have come together to put together funds for stadiums.
You know, Major League, Major League Soccer probably needs a fund that Larry probably could help put together for player acquisition, right?
And, and I do think the structure, the, the structure that built Major League Soccer and prevented a lot of the cannibalization, eating, and infighting that we see with many startup leagues, wa- was proper, right?
You own a share of Soccer United Marketing instead of a share of an individual team.
And, that probably needs to be adjusted some.
There needs to be more intercom- competition.
That will bring problems with it, but it brings opportunity as well, and goes back to player spending and development.
I also think there's a lot of player opportunity development in, in, in this hemisphere, and you gotta own the hemisphere, I think, somehow.
And, and, and so that, that's one.
Two, they, they need a new media distribution strategy.
There's no doubt about it.
They, they, they did monetize economically, right?
An improvement over the, their last TV deal that I helped do when I was at Fox.
And, but the s- the, the point is, the platform they embraced, a, a futuristic technology company with all these devices, billions of devices in the world, didn't really help, the reach at all.
Matter of fact, if you do the math, and I was able to get I've been able to get into the arithmetic, they're, they're, they're down from where they were on a reach basis.
It's, it's worse.
Worse.
So it doesn't mean that Apple's not, or somebody like them, isn't part of the solution, right?
But you have And, and they still have a presence on, on Fox, but they cut their presence across what I would call the fullest reach platforms, 'cause there are no true full reach platforms anymore in the United States.
50%.
And so there needs to be a conversation about what the mix is, and you see it with, you know, we see it with the other leagues, right?
They're spreading things out.
They're growing their rights fees by adding partners across different distribution platforms.
It's the tri-cast strategy I've been pounding the table about for seven years.
It's still relevant, and you gotta do it.
So how that media mix works, how much revenue you ma- you know, how much revenue it actually earns versus reach is a conversation that y- they have to have that's serious.
And to your point, they have well-capitalized owners, Nick, and what the investment level is, right, may go up to compete more and get a ge- greater share of mind.
Finally, I think there is a I do think, though, you're right about its marketing era is over.
I think there's, there's a need for a relook at how they position themselves.
And to the point, they're d- they've done a lot of good things.
They're gonna go to the calendar, the standard calendar.
They're not gonna be playing soccer anymore really when there's, FIFA weeks and all these other things that are going to be important.
But they really have to position themselves, aggressively as a viable, hemispheric watch option.
They, they've always concerned themselves, I think, with the TV rights in Europe and other things.
They're, they're internationally undermonetized.
I would be much more aggressive about developing the brand in South America and all of Latin America.
Again, I think the biggest, easiest lift for them is to be hemispheric, both from a player development, a monetization, and a marketing perspective.
So we're gonna- No joke let's drill down on that for a second.
Shripal, how, how do we go about, And, and I have a question for Shripal.
Let me put that on the side for a second.
But let's drill down on the hemisphere.
How do you go about capturing a larger percentage of those Latino fans?
Is it as simple, as thinking bigger than the Leagues Cup and, and establishing a formal competitive relationship between MLS and Liga MX, Nick?
I, I mean, look, I mean, Leagues Cup's been fine.
I, I don't know that it's been, like, that transformational tournament that they hoped it would be, that all of a sudden these Liga MX fans who are watching on Telemundo every week can convert over and start watching, like, a random LAFC game.
That's just not happening.
Like, I think that that's the intent.
I will say the attendance numbers for those Leagues Cup games, especially for the bigger clubs like Tigres and C- Club America, they're large.
Like, they, they are You can clearly see, like, when, you know, Club America's playing in Houston and they're not playing at the Shell Stadium, they're playing at NRG, it's because they can sell 40,000, 50,000 tickets to these, like, big Mexican clubs.
So, like, there's It's, it's one of both sides.
It's great for MLS because they're bringing fans to witness an MLS match against one of their favorite clubs, but it also continues just to show, like, there's so much more they have to grow.
Like, you're never gonna be Club America.
Like, one of the things we used to pitch when I was in Charlotte was, "We wanna be your MLS club."
You may already have an EPL club you love, or you may already have a Liga MX club, but you know, most soccer fans or global football fans have multiple clubs.
Like, they This is the club they like in La Liga, this is the club they like in, you know, Premier League.
And MLS just has to be in that consideration set.
And, and so, like, I think that, you know, that is the hard part.
Like, and, you know, LA Galaxy did a great job years ago when they signed Chicharito.
He was, like, still, like, in his prime.
And, like, LA's got, like, a history, or the Galaxy does, of, of bringing in big guys.
Like, I mean, they brought in Zlatan, Beckham, like Chicharito, and then And that market responds when they do it.
But that strategy is alwa- i- is really specific, 'cause LA fi- has, knows they can commercialize the value of that person in that unique market.
New York's tried it a couple times.
Red Bull had Thierry Henry.
Like, you've seen similar types of things with, NYC FC.
But like, you know, I just don't know, like, how they They're never gonna be the leader in North America, but they have to be at parity, and that's gonna be the hard part.
Because Mexico's still, those clubs, that passion is gonna be hard to match.
You know, everything, everything you just outlined, Nick, I agree with, but it still outlines to me the challenge.
You sell out NRG not because of the MLS team.
You sell out NRG because of the other elements of global football coming into the US market.
We get all excited, present company included, for a month about the World Cup, and then I've talked to a number of marketers, not one, not two, a number who have said, "Okay, now back to normal, back to regularly scheduled programming," where MLS is kind of second tier.
That's gonna continue to happen until you have transformational change.
When we talk about, "Look at the sellouts, look at this," it's for the best product, and we don't have it.
Right.
Right.
So I, I, I just don't, I don't see until And I wanna hear your point, but until this new leadership team comes in and says, "We have to..." The, the Apple deal was absolutely the wrong deal.
They don't have anyone watching on it.
I mean, the numbers are bad, and they don't have anyone saying, "I'm really excited about these players."
Henry came to New York when he was 40.
Yeah.
Yeah, but then- Hold on a second.
Would, would a Super Bowl, if you will so Leagues Cup is like an exhibition, right?
It's an- Mm-hmm.
If it's a, a Super Bowl where the culmination of the season, is played between MLS and Liga MX, does that If MLS wins those games, does that help raise the pr- you know, the legitimacy of the league?
Or is it simply just the talent level that you're talking about?
I think, I think it's talent level.
I think the, the, the one big thing I, I don't think it necessarily helps.
Like, you have between Copa America and, like, Club World Cup and all these other competitions where all these different leagues play against each other, like, besides maybe Club World Cup and, like, obviously Champions League, they're not necessarily, like, the biggest end-all be-all of, like, raising legitimacy.
I think that the one piece that, like, is just the hardest job for Larry is gonna be is the owners are gonna have to get comfortable losing money for years to make- Yes the investments to bring the level of quality of play up.
Because it's not like the NFL where you're getting, like, a $450 million, like, media rights rev share, like, every year to, like, build a salary cap and staffing.
Like, they don't have the current financial, like Even with their Apple deal and the commercial partnerships at MLS, they're not getting enough money per club to barely break even as it is right now, let alone to increase salary cap or restructure the way it's done without being willing to lose money.
Because, like, and this is where, you know, Mr. Burr can come in with a, some sort of capital solution to infuse money into the league itself.
But because, you know, th- this, it's not the NBA, it's not the NFL, MLB's its own problem, but, like, they don't have the money coming in that they can immediately put right back out to the players.
And because of that, like, they're gonna have to have a really tough conversation of, "We're gonna have to lose money for five years.
We're gonna have to invest in players, the quality of the product on the field to bring fans legitimacy, you know, a media partner."
But that's a hard thing to ask, especially if you just paid $300, $400 million for an expansion club, or you've been losing money for 20 years to be like, "I'm gonna lose even more for the next four or five."
That's hard.
Well, that, that's where I look at capital- Very hard.
That's where I look at capital infusion, though, right?
You may not have to lose as much money if you give away, or not give away, but you sell part of your equity to get capital infusion to allow you to compete.
Because we just all watched the World Cup.
How many of those amazing players are you now going to your local MLS club to watch them play three times a week or twice a week or once a week?
Sure.
Zero.
So y- y- that's why I'm excited about Larry, is he is gonna s- he clearly sees that.
He's at, was at the one club that was trying to do it with some level of spending.
You need money 'cause players sell the sport.
Players sell.
Just to clarify, are we You know, we've talked a lot about- The need to bring over better players.
I presume you guys are talking about European players that have had success in bringing them to MLS.
What about keeping young American players here?
Meaning our best players, Pulisic still plays overseas.
Yeah.
They all play overseas.
Yeah.
That's a better product.
Yeah.
It's, it's- And they make more money.
And they make more money.
And it's, it's interesting, right?
When you, when you talk to Liga MX fans, they understand their best players are going to Europe for a while, and they're okay with it.
Like, their relationship with Europe is a positive one to them.
And then the players come back.
They start out in Liga MX, and then they go to Europe, and then they come back, right?
And that's a po- and the same with the South American leagues, but in particular 'cause I've, I've asked these questions directly in, in multiple research studies about the Liga MX relationship with their players.
And so, you know, that, that But reducing that friction, right?
Maybe you keep your younger players a couple years longer, and maybe you bring some of the older players a couple years younger in, and that is enough to change the way the distribution is on the barbell, right?
And then m- MLS number one stop for anybody in the hemisphere when they come back, and also MLS as a stepping stone from any place in the hemisphere, so that you're deli- you're, you're now attracting the best developmental pl- talent from these huge So- you know, from Argentina, from Brazil, from Mexico, and all the other, South American and Latin American, Central American countries.
They wanna come to the United States for a portion of their career.
It's on the radar screen, and it happens.
You have to spend more money to do that.
But you don't have to flip the table over immediately.
You've just gotta change the distribution of the player development cycle, and every successful above average soccer player that's good enough to play at the world level wants to spend time in Major League Soccer in the United States.
And that will build up stars, right?
Who are how fans attach themselves to sports.
It's, it's really about building stars and, and, and not teams and clubs, and, and that's something that they've got to start looking at, I think.
Yeah, and I like to build on- I do, I do very much Sorry, Shupal.
One quick thing then over to you.
I do very much support the, the work they're doing on developmental and partnering with KKR.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I, I thought that was a really smart deal.
I, I was tangentially engaged on it and saw a lot of the information on it, and I think it's really smart because you do have to build, fr- from the foundation and getting capital, but also getting i-intellectual capital outside of just the league office.
I think it's- Mm-hmm really important to help them build that.
So I think that is a really good step and a very, a very I think we'll look back on that and say, "Well, that was something that maybe we didn't realize was transformational as it's going to be hopefully a decade from now."
Yep.
No, I, I agree, Brody, 100%.
But I also think, you know, to your point, right?
Every young American who leaves takes the, the marketing identity with them, and the league's getting a transfer fee and not a star.
But the real question I think is, and you guys hit on this earlier, how do you use that transfer fee and actually reinvest it as a player retention tool or to attract other stars, right?
If you could act- you know, if early on in the cycle means that the Americans to continue to develop have to go abroad, how do you really then leverage those transfer fees, pool it, and use it to actually create building blocks in parallel?
'Cause in some ways you have to be able to take advantage of this Ameri- right?
Your academies are fostering these American stars that are now getting more opportunities, where 30 years ago no one wanted the Americans in the European teams.
Now they want them, so now the question is how do you take that transfer fee and use that to actually create the building blocks?
So that's all you have.
You, right?
Every American player that goes abroad, you're losing that star and marketability, but you have that transfer fee capital.
If you can get more of that and reinvest it, now you can have a way to start funneling that capital, start changing the dynamic at home as well.
Shupal, MLS should in theory, you know, we talked a little bit, and I wanna change the conversation over to media here, so this is a decent segue.
MLS should in theory know much more about its fans than it did when the Apple deal started, right?
How should the league be thinking about using first-party data and personalization to turn soccer viewers into habitual MLS consumers?
Yeah.
So, like, credit where I think credit's due, and this is public, so not violating anything that's confidential here, is MLS has been building, what they call fan genome, right?
Its own 360 fan intelligence platform.
You know, Marketing Brew wrote, wrote about this in depth back in June, interviewed their VP of marketing and interviewed my friend Scott Lewis, who's VP of BI at NYCFC, and he talked about how there's thousands of data points across demographic behavior and transactional data, right?
And MLS even referenced this a few times over the last six months.
The problem is the, what end of the funnel it's connected to, right?
It's connected to, you know, all the demog- like, the behavior transactional data that's at the club.
But what everyone's been talking to is those 45 million Apple, you know, TV subscribers, how much of that data does MLS actually have?
That's really the question, right?
You don't have the broadcast views.
So when you think about, well, they've created this really great investment in this data warehouse, you know, to capture the data- They only have one end of the funnel.
And I think that's gonna be one of the primary points, 'cause when you Just going back to one of the other points you said, what did the World Cup provide?
It didn't really provide a lot of MLS fans, 'cause that spike would've happened the first two, three weeks when the season resumed.
What they have is a bunch of dispor- disproportional list.
All these teams did these fan viewing parties with hundreds of thousands of people.
Every team has them bespoke, right?
And if you ask to find that one list, 'cause FIFA has the, the real data, right?
MLS doesn't have that, so it's like how do you gather that data quickly?
How do you leverage that?
So those to me are two examples.
So I think in the strategy is like, look, if you solve for the depth, now you gotta solve for the breadth.
So in the new Right?
If you got 1,000 data points, great.
Right?
You can store 1,000 data points.
Do you actually have them?
Maybe not.
So it's like, okay, when we do the new media rights deal, getting that audience la- level data is gonna have to be paramount, 'cause that's gonna be foundational to everything else everyone's been talking about, right?
You're gonna have to be able to get that data from the media rights partner to actually build this profile, to actually create a foundation, right?
You're gonna have to then think about the personalization, 'cause a fan who watched that match in the World Cup, right, either came back in two weeks or they're never gonna come back.
So that being able to notify people immediately, scheduling clean handoffs, right?
It's a plumbing problem that's gonna have to continue, and it's not sexy, but it's necessary.
And then you're gonna have to really think about, again, personalization without, a true identity of what you're watching versus who goes.
Like I remember in the NFL, right, when you think about, and Nick probably knows this the best 'cause he had an NFL and an MLS team.
When the NFL talks about a fan, they can actually tell you who at- who watched, listened, and attended, right?
They actually use that, and they have really granular metrics.
MLS has to get to that same level of parity.
Who watched, listened, and attended, and then all the subsets in that.
And I think that is, to me the simplest way to explain this.
For the last 30 years, the NFL could go to the top sponsors.
When Nick was at AB, I was at the Redskins.
We'd go to them and say, "We've got five million people in the DMV that are classified.
This is the percent that have either watched, listened to our games.
This is the percentage that has watched, listened or attended in X period of time."
Right?
And I think that to me is a found- foundational, fundamental thing that is at the league level MLS, but then also at the club level, and I think that's what they gotta get to.
So hopefully that answers your question.
It's the point that I had to ask you, Paul.
I think the, the one thing that like you use NFL, NBA as two good examples, 90% of the fans never go to a game.
Like they're only watching, listening, engaging on social.
Oftentimes they're more engaged than those fans who actually have ever been to a game.
The, You can't say the same thing for the MLS.
Like an avid MLS fan goes to two or three games a year.
There's very few casual MLS fans who just catch 30 matches a year because they're a fan.
Like typically they're within 50 miles of the stadium.
They go to two or three games a year.
They're following on social.
There's not a lot of like, you know, passive fans who claim fandom that, you know, never go to a game.
Like it's just, it's not like the other big four sports where like you can be a Yankees fan and hadn't been to a game in 10 years.
Like, so it's just, it's, it's a little bit different, in the fact that because it is somewhat accessible, they just don't have that like second tier of like avid fans who aren't like active in the club.
Yeah.
One, one- But, but to build on that- Go ahead, Paul.
Sorry.
One, one point is let's look at Messi.
They coulda had that, but they don't, right?
Like that's an example of a player where there's probably all these people who didn't care about MLS, who actually potentially either came to watch Mes- to watch Messi in person or are watching Messi on TV, and it's like because you don't have the data connectivity, you can't actually build that second tier that Nick is talking about.
Sorry, Paul.
No, go ahead.
That was, that was a good point.
So, so here's the thing.
First of all, to Sripal's point about data, it's, it's important enough that it's worth to think about, you know, how if somebody won't give it to you, maybe thinking about how you balance the media rights.
They would, you know, you're thinking about that, okay?
Because, availability of the data to, to develop an audience with the general market is the key here.
And, and I will say that, you know, hardcore, soccer ultras that built soccer in the United States, starting with, you know, David Nathanson collecting all the leagues on Fox Soccer channel in the, in, in the aughts, right?
Which, which sent that channel into the stratosphere, right?
At one point he had every major European league and majors league soccer, I think, on that thing.
He saw it all before.
The key, those, those ultras, right?
The guys who get up at 4:00 a.m. And watch matches in Europe with scarves on a Saturday all around, those guys are, are your foundation.
Your hardcores, your ultras are always your foundation for any sport.
But to actually scale, you've gotta go general market, and there is a bit of uncomfortableness when you do that pivot, right?
And every fan base is a little different.
The NHL, those fans were not looking to be ambassadorial to new fans.
NASCAR fans, 100% were ambassadorial.
I'm That personal experience with both of those fan bases.
The soccer ultras fit more like the NHL in many ways.
They have their traditions, and they want a very European call and things like that, as opposed to a hemispheric call.
This is the new world, not the old world.
We ha- I think we have to look hemispherically.
But how you spread out to general market is super, super important.
And to Nick and Sripal's points- That's one of the challenges, and you can't do it without the data.
I'll finish in saying that, you know, the, the way we look at content is probably incorrect these days.
We got three buckets.
We got discovery platforms, we got library platforms, and we got live.
Okay?
And, and discovery platforms are largely social platforms, and they are zero-sum engagement now with library SVOD platforms.
That's why Netflix is struggling, and it's gonna continue to struggle.
But it's sum-sum with live because there's two questions you gotta answer: what to watch, and social and, and, and library are in conflict.
But live, it's how to watch.
How do you watch?
That's the question, and social and live are in, conjunction there for a sum-sum relationship.
So how you lever that data, how you use it, to Nick's point, most people that interact with most Tier 1 leagues in the United States don't go to games regularly.
They didn't before social media.
They interacted via television as it ascended, right, through the pay TV bundle, and today they interact-- You may have fans that are not interested in the games at all but are interested in players, culture, all these other things we talk about.
How the future of thinking about your games as content engines that are largely going to be consumed at scale by general market at social discovery platforms is a key strategic, pillar of building a modern league, and MLS needs to really jump into that as hard as they can.
One of the things that y- you guys started to hit on, and I, I guess I'm not exactly clear, you know, the World Cup brought a new wave of sponsors to US Soccer, right?
How does MLS ensure that that money stays here in the domestic game?
Is it about data or is it more about reaching the general market?
Yeah, you know- Go ahead you know, I, I think the, And then, and you, you should give that perspective too, Nick, but I-I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm Negative Nelly, but I, I, I feel like the new sponsors that came into MLS came in because of the World Cup, and I think the World Cup was a transformational event for a month for the world to watch the greatest soccer and football players in the world play in a market that is different than anywhere else in the world, and it was an amazing celebration of global football.
I don't see it translating into this windfall of new sponsors who are supporting MLS.
I mean, we haven't talked about it today, but m- m- my strong point of view is I think women's soccer is on a, a different growth trajectory with NWSL than I think MLS is.
I think what Jess Berman and the, and the folks there are doing, is really interesting.
They gotta figure out their media rights, clearly.
But you know what they have?
The best players in the world.
And what are they doing?
Playing at the highest level.
So I'm excited about the Women's World Cup next year and what it can do for women's soccer, and I believe that can be more transformational and will be more transformational for the women's soccer league here in the US than the World Cup was, and is, and will be for Major League Soccer.
They have enormous changes that need to be made.
They have a, a different direction with a, with a new leader.
Not saying the old leader didn't do his job, it's just a different job now.
You need to infuse capital.
You need to get the best players here.
I'm excited about women's soccer because they have the best players here.
They gotta fix their media deal, and they gotta do some things with franchises, but it starts with, and Pat's right, people are fans of players and performance.
They're not necessarily fans of jerseys and jersey patches.
Yeah, I think the one thing to also too- All right if you take a look at the sp- the sponsors that heavily activated World Cup, they're all existing MLS sponsors.
So like, like if you actually look at, it's AB, it's Coke, it's Bank of America, it's Home Depot, it's DoorDash, they already have them.
And I think that if anything, I would say the World Cup, you know, from a sponsorship standpoint, may have hurt the MLS in '27 because, or '26, because the dollars they may have invested to activate around the MLS all went to World Cup.
So, like, I would say the back half of the year where you would've seen money invested by some of these traditional brands to activate around MLS, that's gone.
Like, they've put every dollar they have, if not more than they budgeted, into the 45 days around World Cup, and, you know, the rest of this year, like, their soccer program is over.
Like, NFL's starting in three weeks, like, college starts in three weeks, like, that, when they would've typically activated MLS in the summertime, they've moved on.
And I think that the hard part is, is like, to John's point, the momentum now, like, if I'm Jess, my sales pitch is like, "We have the best league and whatever.
We're gonna get our own bump next year with Women's World Cup."
So, like, if I had an extra $10 to spend on a sponsorship, I would put it towards ML- NWSL right now just for the sheer fact that I'm gonna get that halo effect of women's next year, 'cause it's another four years till I'm gonna get that World Cup halo again.
And so, like, it's gonna be, I mean, it's gonna be tough sledding for those guys.
Larry Bird gets only one major strategic decision right during his tenure.
We can talk roster rules, we can talk media, marketing, player development, Liga MX integration, whatever you wanna talk, what's the one that matters most to getting MLS to the next level?
Pat, you start.
I would say, levering players and reach together so that you can market the league better.
No, you get one.
Well, they work together, right?
So- You get one strategic decision using, using reach to lever and market the, and build, a general market fan base in the United States.
So that le- leaving Apple is the number one most critical decision.
You don't have to, you don't have to leave Apple.
It's not, it's not a zero-sum.
Okay.
Okay.
But you need to reach the masses.
Yeah.
JB, what do you got?
Two words, capital infusion.
You need money to get better players.
Larry knows how to raise capital.
Larry knows how to deploy capital.
Capital infusion, better players before they turn my age.
What do you have, Nick?
Yeah, mine's strictly r- the roster construction, the rules and the regulations around the, the inability to build a competitive global roster, it has to change.
And so that, that in it of s- of itself helps both John and Pat, but, like, that, that has to happen with the framework in place to build a roster.
Mr. Shah, take us home.
Yeah, no, I think it's rosters rules, right?
Everything on the list, everything else on your list reprices automatically as their product improves, and I don't think-- I, I actually think to John's point, I think I agree with Nick.
It's like if you fix the roster rules, I actually think the investment capital's there.
I think the rules are actually preventing a lot of the, the deeper investment right now.
So I think if, i- if he solves the roster rules, I think everything else is downstream.
That is going to wrap up another episode of John Wall Street's "The Sports Advisors."
We will be back in two weeks with another roundtable on the sports business through the operator lens.
As always, you can connect with a member of the John Wall Street advisory team by reaching out to info@johnwallstreet.com.
Enjoy the remainder of your week.
