I love soccer and am an avid MLS supporter so I'd love to chime in on this issue.
And I apologize in advance for the very long, sort of stream of consciousness essay to follow. But I love talking about this. You can skip to the bottom (In Summation) for cliffs notes.
First off I think it's important to differentiate between two separate issues: first, why isn't soccer as popular as other sports in the US, and second, why is coverage of the sport apparently so sparse on TV?
Why isn’t soccer (specifically the MLS) as popular as other sports in the US?
To the first point, I think some of the issues have been covered already. Quite honestly, money is a major factor. Athletes generally follow the money and the simple fact is that American soccer players don't earn as much as baseball, football, or basketball players, so I don’t blame an athletically gifted kid for pursuing one of those other sports. But the money is getting better. You can Google MLS player salaries and see them going back to 2007. I believe the minimum salary is somewhere in the low 40's now (lower for younger players), but most players obviously make more than that. The guys making the minimum are generally the league's journeymen and young guys straight out of the academy (aka 17-18 years old). So I don’t think it’s fair to say that most of BGO make more than the avg MLS player, especially once adjusted for age.
Salaries are paid by the league and are driven by the league's strict salary cap, which is in place to promote parity amongst teams. (And it appears to have helped so far, as I believe nine different teams have one the MLS cup since its inception in 1996.) The cap tops out individual player salaries at 350k. Each team is allowed two designated players (most popularly, the David Beckhams and Thierry Henrys of the league) who can earn more than the max, so long as the individual team makes up the difference in 350k and the individual's salary. And any team can have more than two DPs, as long as the team pays a 250k fee to the league for each DP beyond the initial two (and as long as they make up the difference in salary). There are currently 28 DPs in the league, and 32 more former DPs who are either playing under regular contracts or no longer in the league. The issue here becomes, where are individual teams getting the cash to pay DPs?
This is where the second money-related issue comes in to play – stadium revenue. Five years ago, seven MLS teams played in their own stadiums. Now 13 teams play in their own stadiums, 2 of the remaining have stadiums in construction, 1 shares a stadium with another MLS team, and that leaves just 3 (DC, New England, and Seattle) without their own stadium or one in the works. With their own stadiums, more teams are now able to generate revenues, and with higher revenues, we can attract more players. I think stadiums also bring intangible benefits – that is to say, a new soccer-specific stadium indicates that the team is here to stay and that the locality is invested in the team’s success. In a country where many people don’t put the MLS on the same level as the top pro leagues, state of the art stadiums go a long way in proving that people are in fact interested in the league, and in its fans. TV deals are another factor, and one where individual teams still struggle, even though the league has started to improve visibility.
Beyond money, the second major issue in the US is that successful soccer players aren't built like successful football, basketball, hockey, or even baseball players. The world's best soccer players don't learn their skills on the local rec fields, top high schools, or even top colleges. The world's best soccer players are developed in youth academies which are associated with pro clubs, and this type of system defies the American sports machine which relies on high school and college. But soccer development requires much more playing time than either of those sports, and it requires you to start at an early age. And the sad fact is, most youth soccer coaches in the US are ill-equipped to developed good soccer players. It's gotten better, for sure, with more certification and training programs, but we're far from where we should be. MLS teams are starting to get the hang of the academy system; the league’s rookie of the year a few years back was actually a 17 year old DC United academy product. But we still have to move beyond the American structure for pro-athlete development and allocation which feeds off of high school/college and the draft.
Why is TV coverage so sparse?
I think this boils down to two issues: we don’t understand it and it's not.
While many Americans may have grown up playing soccer, as alluded to above with the coaching and player development issue, we don’t grow up truly understanding how to play well. As a result, we don’t really appreciate what we’re watching on TV, and soccer doesn’t lend itself to in-game analysis like other sports do. Go home tonight and watch a baseball game and watch how much time is spent dissecting a pitch or a player’s swing. You simply don’t see that with soccer. You may see replays of amazing goals, but the announcers do an awful job of explaining the play that led up to the goal…of explaining the off the ball movement, or the first touch, or the placement of the ball in the net. As a result, the average viewer doesn’t see the strategy that goes in to the game.
So why don’t ESPN and co. provide more coverage of the game? I honestly believe it’s because they’re ill-equipped to do so. When the avg ESPN analyst starts gabbing about soccer (usually just about Messi, let’s be honest), I cringe because they really have no clue what they’re talking about. ESPN is supposed to be coming out with a daily ESPN FC show which will air on the deuce. I’m interested to see what comes of that. But until then, I’m happy to flip over to Fox Soccer and watch them run through literally every game from the week.
While it may not be commonplace on Sportscenter, soccer is actually really easy to find on television if you are looking for it. Between Fox Soccer Channel, NBC Sports, GOLTv, BeIn Sport, and the various Spanish channels, you can watch soccer pretty much any day of the week now. Off the top of my head I know I can watch MLS, EPL, Champions League, La Liga, Liga Mx, Budesliga, Serie A, and A League games all on American cable TV. It’s awesome, but it’s also a double-edged sword.
Unlike football or baseball, where we know that the NFL and MLB are king, we don’t know who is the king of soccer, probably because there isn’t one. You can argue about the best team, but best league gets more difficult. So then which league do ESPN and co. focus on? To this point they haven’t figured it out. Each league has sort of found their niche on one of the networks I’ve mentioned above, but the American public generally has no idea which they want to follow. ESPN tries to shove certain players/teams down our throats, but that’s not how you build support for a league as a whole. (MLS doesn’t seem to understand this either as they consistently put only NY games on national TV.)
So basically, the fact that the soccer market is flooded is a major challenge to the sport’s growth in the US because people don’t know who to follow. Soccer snobs refuse to support MLS because they’re not a top-tier league, so said snobs spread their support about the various top-tier leagues in Europe and as a result mainstream US media has no idea who they should promote in a given week, so they don’t really fixate on any one league, thereby not catering to any one audience, which doesn’t generate any kind of consistent ratings, and thus moves the vicious circle round and round. Everyone will agree that UEFA Champions League is the best of the best, but even fixing on that is problematic from a TV standpoint, because the tournament is spread out across 10-12 months.
In summation:
To the first point, MLS is not as popular as other American pro leagues because there’s not enough money in American soccer and our current structure for athletic development is not conducive to the development of soccer players, but we are improving in both aspects.
And to the second point, TV coverage is so sparse because we don’t understand soccer strategy and we don’t have announcers capable of truly dissecting that strategy, and because coverage is actually not sparse at all. In fact, the market is flooded with coverage, it is just spread across multiple channels which show various leagues and the American public has no idea who to focus on so we don’t focus on anyone.
Of course it’s also important to note that the TV issue feeds in to the popularity issue in that if kids aren’t watching soccer on TV, they’re probably also not striving to be professional soccer players. In that regard, the Messis, Beckhams, and Donovans of the world are great for the sport, because they give kids an individual to look up to. We are just now starting to see the first generation of kids who grew up watching/following MLS, and I think that’s an important factor to remember. Love for a particular team isn’t usually built over night. It most often stems from childhood or family memories which are built from a young age, and MLS is just now getting to the point where those kinds of relationships with the league and its teams are present.
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