How Major League Soccer (U.S. & Canada) compares with other sports leagues

The first temptation is to compare the league to other North American professional sports, like the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. Of course, any comparison has to keep in mind that MLS is only 19 years old, a baby compared to the NFL (94), NHL (97) and MLB (145), and still many decades younger than the NBA, which was formed 68 years ago. Also, MLS has only 19 teams, compared to 32 NFL teams, 30 MLB, 30 NBA and 30 NHL.

So, MLS has two thirds as many teams as other North American leagues and either one third or one seventh of the history. One would thus expect its business fundamentals – profits, revenue, wages, TV deals – to lag behind.

Let’s first look at professional sports’ cashcow: television. The NFL’s most recent TV deal was for $27bn. The MLB gets $800m annually; the NBA about $930m. The NHL looks much weaker, at about $200m annually. However, the NHL also has a lucrative Canadian TV deal, worth about $400m a year. So how does MLS stack up?

The league’s new TV deal is for $70m a year. That’s about a ninth of the NHL’s combined TV revenue, an 11th of the MLB deal, a 13th of the NBA deal … and way behind the NFL. So if the MLS has two thirds of the teams and about a fifth of the history, why such a big disparity?

The answer lies in the other major difference between the MLS and NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. Those leagues largely have monopolies on talent. Yes, some good baseball players play in Japan and Cuba, but most make their way to MLB. European basketball has grown by leaps and bounds, but the NBA is the destination point. Russia has a good hockey league but the best Russian player, Alex Ovechkin, laces up his skates for Washington, not St Petersburg.

In comparison, MLS has to compete with the leagues of Europe and the riches of Mexico.

MLS has a pretty good average attendance – higher than the NHL and NBA but less than MLB and way less than the NFL. MLS also has a good share of Hispanics compared to other sports, even if the average income for MLS fans is pretty low.