I don’t know that there more have nots than haves if you count the 2011 expansion

Have
Seattle
New York
Houston
Toronto
Vancouver
Chicago
Dallas (they turn a profit)
LA Galaxy
Houston
(Montreal when)

Nots
KC
SJ
Colorado

Who Knows?
Chivas
Columbus
Portland
Philly
New England
RSL
DC (their lease sucks)

Lastly, it was weird to find my own blog linked somewhere else for a story I hadn’t written. It may be a bit before I get used to it.

I thought it was interesting that Freddie says that two internationals would give a team a big advantage. I wonder if he counts Kellar in that company. I certainly would!

Dave, if Freddie is talking about two or three players at Scholes’ level, then the kind of money we’re talking about is $10 – $20 million a year in salary. The “haves”, in my mind, would be the teams that could pay that without thinking about it too hard. Seattle, LA, and Toronto fit that bill without a doubt. The others in your “haves” list I’m not so sure about. New York and Houston could probably do it, but Dallas? I feel very confident that if they are turning a profit, it’s mainly through cost control. With the lowest attendances in the league, they’re certainly not doing it with gate revenues.

I guess other ways to ask the question are when will MLS be ready for eight-figure salary budgets across the board? Or will they be willing to sacrifice parity and allow the clubs who have the money to spend it?

Dallas’ profit is actually through renting their stadium for concerts and high school football.

I also tend to include the SUM profits in the Haves configuration, as teams are making nearly 10M$ per year (remember the Summer of Soccer?).

Are there any published figures anywhere on which teams are making money and which aren’t? Dave, so are you saying the teams in the “Have” column are turning 10 million in profit or more?

I thought I’ve seen in various places talk of the Galaxy, Toronto, and now the Sounders were the only teams turning a profit. I found that really hard to believe personally.

Forbes estimates for the 2007 season had LAG, TFC and FCD as the only teams turning profits. But they did not include SUM profit distribution.

Their 2008 report is not out, and the 2009 can’t be out until at least 6 months after the season concludes.

Here is an article from ESPN regarding the strength of MLS. The local angle is this:

It is amazing that SSFC accounts for 12.5 percent of the attendance for the entire league. The Sounders have been an overwhelming success off the field.

The MLS still needs to keep the salary cap, but there are ways to tweak it here and there. There are aspects of the big three sports caps or sharing of revenues that MLS might be able to adopt.
This is my first year following MLS and I get the feeling that teams were not very imaginative in marketing their teams and the sport. Hopefully, Seattle has turned MLS upside down. Toronto has has shown how to do it and Seattle took what they did and did it better.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=687260&sec=mls&root=mls&cc=5901

Somehow I screwed up the formatting and deleted the statement from ESPN. Here it is:

Expansion club Seattle has kept attendance at a respectable level with fans flocking in record numbers to Qwest Field. The Sounders are poised to set the league’s all-time attendance record, currently averaging 30,709 fans. That is double (and sometimes triple) the averages of nine teams in the 15-team league and accounts for 12.5 percent of the league’s total attendance this season.