[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

I agree  with what Ska'd is saying here.  I live in the Norther California Bay Area and the San Jose Earthquakes are one of the modern day typical US football franchises who are steadily on the rise in terms of popularity.  They have just opened their brand new purpose built stadium that holds nearly 20,000 fans and is built in the style of a more European stadium.  Gone are the days of the major teams over here playing in NFL stadiums in front of 2/3 empty stadiums, they are now filling purpose built ones like this one.



The emphasis over here is on relative parity between the teams in the leagues, this is achieved by revenue sharing most of the money that comes into the league equally among the teams allowing them to be able to compete regardless of market size.  Of course some will rise to the top due to bigger attendances or sponsorship deals but the league is built on mutual benefits and prospects for all teams.  The success of the US national team has been key to the rise in popularity of the sport and whereas the original leagues were all about showbiz, the current set up is all about making the US National team a worldwide force, so the number of foreign players is restricted to allow the US players to develop.  You no longer hear anyone calling for wider goals or other quirky rule changes to make the game more exciting, as the quality of the play has risen across the league, so the interest and excitement has risen, leading to more support and crucially more TV coverage.

I've been really impressed with the new stadium (admittedly only seeing it on telly!), especially the fact that the horseshoe shape gives them a decent capacity here and now while also potentially allowing for a new stand to be constructed from scratch if attendances grow.  Plus the club are actually making an effort to put together a decent team with a decent manager for the first time in about three years!

MLS really is football's best-kept secret at the moment, and its level playing field is its greatest strength.  Even though that system can sometimes cook up some real absurdities in terms of transfers (i.e. new clubs being allowed to pick their players from the squads of the other clubs, and the time last summer when they basically flipped a coin to decide whether Jermaine Jones would play for Chicago or New England), it's still better than knowing that one club is going to spend more cash on one single player than all the others spend in the whole transfer window put together.

Trouble is, the more popular it gets, the louder the calls for private ownership and free market economics will be, and as we know, it's all downhill from there...