{"id":80,"date":"2016-08-16T02:19:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T02:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsoccer.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2022-08-22T08:24:29","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T12:24:29","slug":"rising-mls-expansion-fees-harmful-to-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2016\/08\/16\/rising-mls-expansion-fees-harmful-to-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"MLS Editorial: Rising MLS Expansion Fees Harmful to Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If reports from <strong>MLS<\/strong> deputy commissioner <strong>Mark Abbott<\/strong> are to be believed, the league could be charging a lot more money for prospective expansion teams. MLS recently wrapped up its <strong>Board of Governors Meetings<\/strong>, and the topic of expansion was on the forefront of discussions. In a statement <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/post\/2016\/08\/01\/mls-provides-update-future-expansion-fees\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">posted to mlssoccer.com<\/a> on Monday, Abbott stated that MLS expansion fees could reach as high as $200 million as the league looks to swell to 28 teams.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atlanta United<\/strong> is slated to join the league next year. <strong>Minnesota United<\/strong> (or whatever they will end up being called) and<strong>Los Angeles FC<\/strong> are hopefully joining by 2018.\u00a0<strong>David Beckham\u2019s Miami<\/strong> project is next in line if they can get their stadium situation sorted out. That would set the league at 24 sides. <strong>St. Louis<\/strong> and <strong>Sacramento<\/strong> lead the race to 28 teams. <strong>Detroit<\/strong>, <strong>San Antonio<\/strong>, <strong>Cincinnati<\/strong>, and <strong>San Diego<\/strong> have also expressed interest in the league.<\/p>\n<p>To date, the highest expansion fee ever paid to MLS was <strong>LAFC\u2019s<\/strong> $110 million.<\/p>\n<h3>Why are MLS expansion fees so high?<\/h3>\n<p>The main reason MLS can charge such ridiculous prices for admission is because there are ownership groups willing to pay. If LAFC didn\u2019t think ponying up $110 million would be worth it, MLS wouldn\u2019t be able to charge that much. The same would go for the prospective $200 million fee. If the investors looking to bring new teams in aren\u2019t willing to pay that much, the number would drop. Just don\u2019t expect that to happen anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are rising Major League Soccer expansion fees harmful to the growth of the league? Michael Kovacs explains why they are and how they should be stopped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[57,51],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-mls","tag-mls-expansion"],"modified_by":"snackmedia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}