Cindy Cone, MLS, SUM and the US Open Cup
The USSF President inherited a really bad hand- she's tried to change the game but it's not happened quickly enough.
The US Open Cup, the countries premier men’s domestic soccer competition, and the only one based entirely on sporting merit is falling apart rapidly. The culprits are Major League Soccer (MLS) and the former leadership of the US Soccer Federation (USSF).
Current USSF President Cindy Cone, I believe has a genuine, long-term vision for this tournament. It’s a vision many of us share for a competition that is open to teams from all over the country, regardless of level. It’s a tournament that for years was neglected by USSF, as they indulged MLS, subsidized NWSL (and arguably MLS also via the SUM-USSF marketing deal) and focused almost entirely on promoting the men’s and women’s national teams.
In the last 18-24 months, we’ve seen a clear change in direction from the Federation. We now have a USSF that’s trying to enhance the US Open Cup and become a more vibrant facilitator for stakeholders throughout the game.
As MLS tries to dictate terms to the federation and other stakeholders in the game as to how US Open Cup should look for them, the USSF is being criticized for not laying down the hammer on MLS.
Photo from US Soccer Federation
While you can argue Cone doesn’t have the leadership style to directly confront MLS, I would argue she’s more willing to challenge MLS indirectly then previous USSF leaders AND has been genuinely trying to build up the financial resources and commercial relationships of the Federation independent of MLS to where could be directly challenged at some point in the future.
Keep in mind Open Cup was for many years marketed by Soccer United Marketing (SUM) which is owned by MLS. SUM deliberately, it can be surmised starved the competition of resources and visibility. Even if it wasn’t intentional sabotage, the way the competition was handled amounted to an unconscious undermining of its viability over many years.
Since bringing the Open Cup back in-house to the USSF, the federation led by Match Commissioner David Applegate has aggressively tried to market the competition while working to bring in commercial revenue to make the cup more viable and lucrative than ever.
In other words, the concerns MLS publicly expressed when trying to justify pulling out of the competition, the federation has been painstakingly privately trying to fix. And they were making progress.
MLS, by taking the steps they’ve taken now regarding Open Cup are trying to preempt that process. The timing is not a coincidence.
If MLS has taken this stand a year from now, the federation would’ve been in a stronger place in which to punish them and a stronger position to centralize more of the commercial revenue in the game via USSF rather than MLS/SUM
The circumstances by which MLS could go rogue and pull these sorts of things, are a reflection of the past leadership of the USSF indulging MLS and not showing proper independence or developing their own commercial properties. This is not the fault of current leadership. They inherited a terrible hand, one which had been dealt to them, largely by MLS itself in collusion with past USSF leadership, particularly Sunil Gulati. Though in fairness to Gulati, when he first hitched USSF to SUM, MLS needed the revenue, but once that door was opened, MLS become the defacto boss of USSF and the game in this country.
As time has gone on, whether it’s been facilitated by the USSF or not, MLS has continued to centralize power in its own hands- now controlling large portions of the elite youth game on both the girls and boys side, as well as running its own lower division league. I also understand that MLS is exploring the idea of jumping into the adult-amateur space soon on the men’s side.
The reason things have come to a head now is because the current USSF leadership is trying to build a more independent federation that is responsive to a greater percentage of stakeholders in the game then we’ve seen in the past. That alone is a threat to MLS supremacy and the bottom line of SUM, which seeks to centralize the bulk of commercial revenue for the sport in the pockets of MLS owners.
So we are where we are at this very moment as a result. There are actions the USSF could take against MLS short of the de-sanctioning nuclear option no one wants (many may think they want that, but it will set the game back in this country dramatically if thousands of players, coaches, referees and administrators are suddenly out of work), and I will outline some of these in future posts.
As soccerking says, this is becoming a saga? After all of these years, why now? Messi. They didn't want Open Cup to capitalize on Messi last year, and I believe that's 90% of the problem this year. Messi is short-term. So, just let them opt out certain players. Call them "protected players" and allow for NP players to take their place. And let's all move on.... make the Open Cup more successful despite all of it
This saga has now reached the attention of Forbes, in a piece published today that references the Hudson Blue article. Forbes' take is that MLS-AppleTV incompetence & miscalculation also contributed to this. The MLS Leagues Cup debacle figures prominently, too, (but does not articulate that MLS wants all the revenue to their stadiums, rather than concede the revenue to the warmer Liga MX if the Leagues Cup is shifted to Jan./Feb.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianquillen/2024/02/19/blame-us-open-cup-saga-on-mls-apple-tvs-lack-of-imagination