What's the end game here?

Messi will draw the eyeballs. What then?

Photo by Emilio Garcia on Unsplash

As I wrote last week, I have nagging doubts about whether the signing of Lionel Messi will be successful on the pitch.

There will be those who disagree with that take and suggest that his talent is such that he will come to dominate the league and carry Miami on his back. It is almost a Disney movie — the chosen one arrives to a last place team and pulls them to the promised land of an MLS Cup.

A cynic might even suggest that MLS expanded the 2023 playoff pool in anticipation of Miami’s first half struggles. Though they probably didn’t think the club would be this bad, what’s 12 points with 12 games to play when you have the GOAT in the line-up?

Time will tell. However, this post isn’t really about the scoreboard. Instead, I wanted to explore the other side of this signing and try to come to grips with why it’s rubbing me the wrong way.

I want to attempt to articulate why this move is one that is sending the league backwards and that can potentially end up hurting the product in the long run.

Please note the “long run” part of the sentence above. I’m not going to argue with you that his arrival isn’t going to drive insane attention for the rest of 2023. It’s clearly the reason Apple signed on and why they have stressed that the Apple TV+ deal is available worldwide, without geo-restrictions. It’s MESSIVISION and, they are going to sell some subs in Argentina. I’m sure Apple thinks some of those football fans will also be interested in watching Season 2 of Severance, too.

This is all obvious, boardroom arguments. Will it work? Like the scoreboard, time will tell. I’m not seeing a lot of new Al Nassr fans, now that Cristiano Ronaldo has signed. However, the Saudi Pro League isn’t available worldwide, with the click of a button (and $100 USD).

I’ll acknowledge that it might very well work. For Apple. Since I don’t have stock, I don’t really care what’s good for Apple though. I’m concerned with whether this is going to work for MLS.

There, again, I’m just not sure. I’m not even fully clear on what MLS wants to see happen with this signing.

Seriously, what is their end goal here? What does MLS want to be when it grows up?

This has always been a tricky thing to nail down. That’s largely because MLS is such a unique league operating in the type of market that no other football league in the world has to deal with.

As much as many football traditionalists (or, Eurosnobs, if you prefer) want to argue otherwise, MLS must operate within the parameters of the North American sports landscape. That prevents the league from taking on the qualities that football fans in the rest of the world take for granted in other leagues. In turn, that makes the traditionalists reluctant to embrace MLS. Signing Messi is the latest effort in a long history of efforts to attract those fans to the league.

The reason MLS wants to attract them is obvious from a commercial standpoint. They want their wallets. And, you can’t completely separate those commercial goals from the football needs because MLS also has to deal with the other reality of the North American sports model: other sports properties in North America are the best of their kind in the world.

Basketball, hockey, baseball and American football are as much MLS’ competition as the Premier League. For many, it wouldn’t matter if MLS snapped its fingers today and suddenly had a winter schedule, pro/rel, single table or any other “real” aspect of football that the Euro-focused fans have been yelling for over many years, they would still view it as a minor league.

They only want to watch the best leagues in the world, or, failing that, leagues that they have long established histories with and connections to. That’s not going to change with Messi signing. In fact, it just underlines that MLS isn’t that. Fans understand that he’s coming here for a victory tour and the league’s over-the-top marketing of his arrival is just driving home the whole aren’t-we-lucky-to-finally- have-a-real-player-for-you-to-watch attitude.

That does nothing to create MLS fans. It just gets Messi fans to watch. Once. Without a connection to the league, few are going to stick it out for the long term and, history tells us, very few, if any, will remain after he leaves.

When David Beckham signed for the Galaxy in 2007, the league was in a much different place. Then, they truly did need something to get people’s attention — even, in some cases, to make people aware that the league existed. In that way, it was successful.

Very successful. In fact, the expansion and interest that has followed Beckham’s arrival has created really vibrant and healthy pockets of MLS supporters all across North America. These fans have made MLS the king of the niche leagues. In some parts of the United States, they might even have an argument that they can challenge the NHL in popularity.

That success has also allowed MLS to undertake slow but steady progress to the point where it produces some genuinely great young players and a truly entertaining product. If left to continue, MLS would continue this trajectory.

It would never be among the best league’s in the world, but it would be a very good league and a league that mattered to a great deal of people. It probably wouldn’t be a league that signed 36-year-old former Ballon d’Or winners though — because that’s not a good move for league’s that fit into the football infrastructure in the way that MLS was trending. That is to say, a league that has a solid group of lifetime players and focuses on developing young stars that will eventually leave to bigger leagues. Along the way, that type of league would greatly improve the football pyramid in the United States and Canada.

My worry is that this move is singling a move away from that model and an increase in trying to build a commercial, entertainment product instead. It’s not only the Messi signing that has me concerned about that, but also initiatives like the Leagues Cup and the Apple TV+ deal in general all point to that.

In the case of the Leagues Cup and tv deal, it also points to a league more interested in creating an Apple TV show than serving those fans that have driven the league’s growth over the 15 post-Beckham years. Getting a new subscription in Mexico City or Buenos Aires seems more important to MLS than the needs of their existing fans.

It’s soulless business-think. The new customer is always more valuable than the existing one.

They had better hope that they don’t lose too many of those fans because Messi will retire eventually.

Finally, there is a possibility that MLS has grander plans than most assume. They might look at this as an opportunity to remove spending controls and truly try to become one of the best leagues in the world. That would represent a fundamental change to how the league operates and require players to buy in to the idea, as well.

Both of those seem unlikely. So, I ask again, what’s the end game here?

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