NEW YORK - Major League Soccer (MLS), today, announced that the league would be slashing the allowed salary budget of each team in the league in order to connect the individual players more closely with their fan-base and attract more television viewers.
More Money - More Problems
from http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2014/05/12/Media/MLS-TV.aspx
"We feel that the players within the league are too out of touch with the local blue-collar, working class fanbases," stated Commissioner Don Garber. "As such, we are going to severely restrict the salary budget of each team, and cut down on the perks available to teams to force the players on a team to reconnect with the local populace. We need more Dan Gargan and less Sebastian Giovinco in this league. We need players that fans know experience their same financial turmoil they experience. People don't watch soccer for great play, they watch because they want to know that the player out there is making $55,000 a year."
Reportedly, the league spent a 10 year process of analyzing various ways to increase the television ratings for Major League Soccer. Data analysts for the league indicate that there were a number of suggestions put forth to the league for consideration.
"The overall majority of analysts stated that the best way for the league to increase television viewership was to increase the quality of the product on the field, but the league didn't want to spend more money on better players," stated Soccer analyst Glenn Fate. "So instead, we just cobbled something together about how out of touch soccer players are with the people in their area and the idea of being able to lower costs really struck a chord with ownership. They were really excited, though, about the suggestions from our team for behind the scenes camera shots, jock jams usage in stadium, patriotic flyovers, and more t-shirt cannons. I don't know why they think that is going to increase television ratings, but we can always use more t-shirt cannons."
Sources within the league indicate that the number one priority for Major League Soccer was figuring out a way to increase the ratings by literally any method other than increasing how much money the teams have to pay players.
"If the league increased the salary budget, the Revs would be even further left behind, and the league doesn't want that," stated one anonymous source.
The Nutmeg News will have more on this as MLS spends too much of their time and money trying to implement the wrong fix for the ratings dilemma.