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MLS and Players Reach New Agreement

Sanity has prevailed and armageddon has been averted.  With less than a week to go before the season opened and a threatened player walkout, MLS and the MLS players union announced today that an agreement in principle has been reached for a new five year collective bargaining agreement.  While most of us may have suspected that a deal would get done this week, as these deals inevitably take until the eleventh hour, many observers, including this one, began to wonder if the powers that be at MLS were so misguided as to blow the biggest marketing opportunity that MLS has had in years. 

Coming off a year in which the league launched a tremendously successful franchise in Seattle, and is about to launch one in Philadelphia which has all the makings of another success, would the league have been so crazy as to have shut itself down?  Interest in the US Men's National Team is probably at an all time high following a great 2009 warm-up campaign and anticipation for South Africa 2010.  Last night, the Red Bulls debuted a new soccer palace in New Jersey that will undoubtedly become the Ease Coat version of the Home Depot Center, by that I mean, the East Coast home of US Soccer. A new stadium deal has finally been reached in Kansas City. With all the positive happenings around the league, I'm just glad to see that the league will not let this World Cup year, and the mighty and never ending ESPN hype machine go to waste.  Now, it just needs to formulate a good, comprehensive marketing strategy that can build off the World  Cup and not treat it as a mid-season distraction.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on March 20, 2010 (boomark / email).