Legal Victory a Boon for MLS
If there is a new jauntiness in Don Garber’s step these days, if there is a brighter light in his eyes, it’s not difficult to explain.
Major League Soccer’s commissioner no longer feels as if he is pushing a large boulder up a steep hill. Instead of waiting to be overrun by events, he is back in control of them.
“We had a real distraction, I can’t emphasize that enough,” Garber said while visiting Los Angeles for the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
“I mean, we lost three to four months of our year where we really couldn’t focus on moving forward, we were focusing on keeping the league alive. We lost a couple of critical months, not to mention millions of dollars. That was a huge distraction.”
The league’s victory in court in the antitrust lawsuit brought by its players means MLS can finally concentrate on strengthening its 12 teams and looking ahead to the time when it can add as many as six more.
“There is new energy now,” Garber said. “Our teams are feeling a little better about what is happening on the business side.”
That’s a significant change. Only a few months ago there were rumors that MLS might drop two of its teams.
Garber said that was never the case.
“It was inconceivable,” he said. “If anybody came to me, whether it’s our ownership or anybody else, and said you’ve got to drop two teams, I don’t know how we could have done it.
“What would we have told ESPN in the last year of our contract? What would we have told those players that are under contract? That we’re throwing them into a waiver pool? We’ve got enough problems with credibility. It just would have thrown the whole thing upside down.”
Garber said the rumor resulted from discussions that were nothing more than that, just discussions.
“You can’t believe the things that are discussed at [MLS] business meetings,” he said. “We’ve discussed trying to see if we can go out and buy [French 1998 World Cup winner and two-time FIFA world player of the year Zinedine] Zidane. That doesn’t mean we’re going to do it.
“We’ve discussed a lot of different things. We’ve discussed adding six teams in the next three years. That doesn’t mean it’s feasible or that we’re going to do that.”
What MLS is doing is changing direction. Instead of trying to sell its four league-operated teams, it is seeking local business groups to operate them.
That already has been done in San Jose, where the Earthquakes are run by Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment, the same company that operates the NHL’s San Jose Sharks.
Similar arrangements are being pursued in Dallas, Tampa and Washington.
“We’ll be out of the league-operated team business, we hope, within the next 12 months,” Garber said.
Philip Anschutz, who already owns the Galaxy, the Colorado Rapids and the Chicago Fire, is expected to take charge of D.C. United within the next few weeks.
It remains unclear, however, whether Anschutz will actually purchase the team or if he will simply operate it, with an option to buy it at a later date.
EXPANSION DELAYED
The league had been expected to expand by two teams in 2002, but Garber said that might be delayed by a year.
“Two things have happened,” he said. “We had an agreement with WUSA [the Women’s United Soccer Assn. that begins league play in April] that they were to operate a team in our league in 2002. We were looking at either Atlanta or Philadelphia as one of those markets. That was to be matched with [a second MLS team in] New York.”
But WUSA has not yet exercised its option to field an MLS team, and Stuart Subotnick and John Kluge, owners of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, are waiting to build a new stadium in New York before adding a second team.
“We want to have more teams, we need to have more teams,” Garber said. “But I think at this point our goal is to shore up markets where we have weakness, to get those markets under control.”
He also indicated that in the chicken-and-egg scenario, stadiums will come before teams, not the other way around.
He said MLS wants to “go into markets that make the most sense, make sure they have stadiums in place and not be in a situation where we add an expansion team and then have years of wishful thinking that we’re going to have an appropriate venue.”
RELOCATION
Attendance has lagged badly in such cities as Kansas City, Miami and Tampa, Fla., but Garber said there is no thought as yet to moving the Wizards, Mutiny or Fusion.
“It’s conceivable that could happen,” he said, “but that’s certainly not an objective. There are no plans to do that at this time.”
Miami is the biggest concern. The league will help the Fusion, which plays in Fort Lauderdale, all it can, but ultimately it is up to local fans, Garber said, pointing out that Kansas City has doubled its sale of season tickets for 2001.
“If Kansas City can do it, Miami can,” he said. “So if the fans in Miami don’t want to have an MLS team, we’re not going to keep it there. There are many cities that want it.”
