Promotion and Relegation in the USL League System : Seven key factors to discuss
We can't do sustainable promotion and relegation overnight, unfortunately
I’ve seen in the last few weeks a lot of PRO/REL advocates angry at USL Championship growth. I discussed this on Twitter the other day, but I realize that isn’t the place for long-form content or fleshing out the entire picture with multiple perspectives. Therefore I am expanding that discussion here and giving more background on what is actually happening.
I understand the sentiment that demands instant promotion and relegation and have sympathy for it, but several key factors have to be worked through by USL before they institute a system of promotion and relegation.
Promotion and Relegation must happen long-term for the United States to compete at the highest level in this sport. However, as the sport becomes increasingly driven by financial considerations, skeptics of promotion and relegation view any piece of data or club failures as evidence it cannot work in the United States.
So it’s necessary for it to be done right the first time. USL is facing an onslaught of sorts from MLS on the men’s side while picking a battle with NWSL on the women’s side. Therefore USL needs to differentiate itself in the market and promotion and relegation is likely the way to go - but it cannot happen overnight.
Below I outline seven critical factors and components of this conversation.
1- More clubs playing professionally a positive thing. It creates more high-level playing opportunities for domestic players. It creates more front office jobs and importantly, more investment and permanent infrastructure in local markets all over the country. The idea floated by some promotion and relegation advocates that USL should freeze expansion until PRO/REL is implemented is a way of unilateral disarming at a time when MLS Next Pro is trying to squeeze the remaining mid-sized markets.
As infrastructure is built on the local level, PRO/REL becomes more realistic and in fact necessary. But without building the infrastructure, PRO/REL adds additional risk to an already money-losing proposition. At the same time closed leagues have a much higher fail rate for clubs than open systems, BUT the infrastructure needs to be built first.
2- I can report that USL has internally discussed splitting the Championship into two leagues. Then you would have three professional tiers and you could start P/R within the professional divisions and then link the amateur divisions later. There are a lot of ideas floating around within USL, with this being one internally discussed and even floated to some clubs. I should note at the risk of pouring more fire on this discussion I believe multiple USL League 1 clubs are potentially moving to the Championship in the next year or two. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if we consider the potential split of the Championship into two divisions down the road. The top division of what is now the Championship might revolve around bigger markets and yield more revenue opportunities which as noted in one of the below points as well would help generate the sort of revenue streams needed to guarantee parachute or solidarity payments down the pyramid and for clubs that do get relegated.
3- USL has to grow its top league which has the most visibility & revenue potential. Without this revenue, any effort to link divisions and create a sustainable model for upward and downward movement probably is a non-starter. This is why the Championship continues to expands and needs to gain more revenue streams that can help with things like parachute payments and guaranteed funds for relegated sides. This is not to mention the growing threat from MLS Next Pro, which perhaps not as visible to the average fan, is moving quite robustly behind the scenes. It’s a safe assumption based on my own sourcing that any decent-sized place in the country that currently does not have a USL professional or MLS club is a potential target for MLS Next Pro.
4- USL building out to where they can have a viable multi-division professional system, which has upward and downward movement is contingent on entering enough bigger “markets” to sustain revenue long-term. Once you bring in enough of these “markets,” like Brooklyn which is launching next season and maintain clubs in tier one media markets like Orange County (LA), Oakland (San Francisco), Detroit, Tampa Bay and Phoenix, you can potentially generate enough in sponsorship and media revenue to sustain a pyramid.
5- Right now USL is competing with MLS for young players. Strategically USL championship clubs in bigger markets makes sense. The more USL Championship clubs initially the more infrastructure is built to create momentum for P/R. Because if you’re not producing young players in the big places, the system isn’t sustainable. If you’re not selling young players onward, soccer is in many cases not a sustainable business.
6- Launching a USL D1 women’s league that also generates revenue and gives club owners additional dates in their stadiums and incentivizes the building of more purpose-built soccer stadiums is critical as well. This is about to happen starting in August. It also helps with sponsorship for the entire USL system.
7- Amateur clubs - some can make the jump, most cannot. Currently in USL L2 most clubs operate part-time. As summer entities that rely heavily on the intake of college players. To put these clubs in a truly sustainable situation for year-round play will take some serious doing.
I’d note a number of clubs that are semipro or amateur do operate year-round outside the USL ecosystem (and outside NPSL the league that has Tier 1 status from the USASA). Most of these clubs operate on very tight budgets and do not travel more than 100-150 miles for any match. It’s difficult to envision PRO/REL in an amateur realm without serious regional geo-fencing in terms of clubs - but getting that balance permanently correct is very difficult.
Bottom Line
The potential disaster of opening the league system up and then it failing means we’d never have an opportunity to do Promotion and Relegation again.
I know it’s not what people who favor promotion and relegation (including me) want to hear, but it’s not going happen at this moment. For it to happen long-term there has to be a certain build out that sustains itself. I believe USL, having serious discussions about PRO/REL has gotten feedback from their club owners and investors understand how the build out has to look before owners are willing to go forward with P/R.
USL, I do believe realizes they MUST differentiate themselves from MLS in the market and that means P/R in the future, but they have to have the infrastructure built and sustainability in order to make it work for their clubs. I realize this isn’t what many want to hear, but it’s a dose of realism. And those fans who don’t support their local clubs or boycott the domestic game currently because we don’t have PRO/REL are actually hurting the effort to make it happen here. Ironically enough, many of those fans are no different in their preferences to MLS-oriented fans who look down on lower division soccer in all forms (hence get incensed when comparisons with the English Championship or League 1 are made).
Supporting local soccer isn’t just a slick mantra. It is the ONLY way we ever get promotion, relegation and the elements of an open, competitive system in this country.
I don't for see many amateur sides ever wanting to turn professional or ever joining a professional league. Just using the UK for example, teams aren't going to 4-6x their travel distance for a game (668 miles being the longest possible travel distance from Plymouth to Newcastle) when there are plenty of local leagues they can play in.
Some USL League 2 teams likely could make the jump pro but I would expect many to 'rebrand' and move to NPSL or a local regional league if it was ever forced upon them. It takes significant costs to go from part time to full time and I expect many are happy filling a niche time in the local calendar.
While it may not be the best comparison I do expect most amateur sides are seeing what is happening with the promotion of teams from NISA Nation and have already made a decision if asked to go pro the answer will forever be no.
But again, none of this matters if these clubs aren't doing the foundational work locally to build community and get people invested.
Put this comment on Twitter-
My view is that we have 15 years of evidence of people complaining about the system being closed and watching European football instead and not supporting teams that play five minutes from them with no positive action towards P/R actually happening to say OK maybe it’s better to support your local club if you want to make a change.
And often times when I engage with these folks, the arguments are very snobbish about how bad the Soccer is in USL or NPSL or how unless the team can be promoted I’m not not going to watch.
There is also something about supporting local players, local staff local people that build up local institutions. I think this is one of the things that’s understandable yet frustrating about the era of social media and streaming - that we can sit in our living room and pretend like we live in Milan, Manchester or in Madrid when we’re living in Moline, Madison or Monroe.
I also think the trend of working remotely, unfortunately, has impacted this as people have in the last four years become even less connected to their local communities.
I speak from my own experience in that the two years around the pandemic when I really didn’t get out the way I used to and I was more disconnected from the local soccer scene than any point in my adult life. I’ve now been back in it full throttle for more than a year, but working from home disconnected me and had me watching more of Germany and England and Italy, than local stuff. I’ve reversed that in the last 15 months.