I enjoyed it but then I didn't watch Bundesliga much before & I have no affinity to any of the teams.
Its like a rerun of a decent enough TV show that I have never watched before coming on when there is "nothing else on" - I might watch it again & like bits but its not my preference & I might find something else to do if the matches have no interest to me.
I am likely going to watch Dortmund & Bayern in a couple of weeks.
Has anyone seen any info related to SS refunds, aside from the deferred payment option?
I talked to the club about it and they said the following "Very little is confirmed right now in terms of refunds as we must await MLS confirmation on the remaining games. When they do provide further confirmation on the plan for the season, we will have a further update as to how this affects your payment plan."
So looks like until MLS makes the call to cancel games they will not be making any communications about refund options and whatnot.
I do know Raptors season ticket holders were offered refunds for the 9 remaining home games that were postponed or they could use it as credit towards the 2020-21 season. The first payment is due for next season on June 8th so I am sure most did that. Thats what my cousin did anyways.
Remember The Man, The Legend, The Goal 5-12-07 and All That #9 Left On The Pitch, Thanks For The Memories !!!
I know we don’t like the Impact, but this is not right
Check out this tweet at [URL]https://twitter.com/kevlaramee/status/1263265782210977792?s=21[/URL]
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
I am joining in on the Footy Talks show today if all goes well with my work and I don't get stuck. The guest is Bill Manning so will be interesting if anything new to tell us or just "we'll let you know when we know from the league" kind of thing in terms of moving forward.
NBA is going to make its decision June 1-10. I trust Adam Silver to do the right thing. He won’t restart if it doesn’t make sense.
If MLS is seriously considering a restart (standard disclaimer - I don’t get the why/how of that in a gate driven league) .... I cannot see how MLS could decide any earlier, because they are talking about the same venue.
My strong suspicion is that none of these leagues are playing this summer. The real test case is the NFL in September, they are the guys with billions to lose and no concern for their athletes, really no limit on their risk tolerance at all.
Last edited by ensco; 05-21-2020 at 12:09 PM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
So I had concert tix, Live Nation offers 100 percent refund, or future credit of 150 percent.
I have no issue rolling over my payments to 2021, but I hope TFC offers some token of appreciation. Maybe a free jersey per seat, in addition to no price increase, etc.
MLS is in talks with TV networks about 2021+ contracts.
ESPN is owned by Disney and is looking for content
This isn't about gate revenue, its about the future TV revenue.
Good article up on the idea of the tournament from the Athletic (paywall)
https://theathletic.com/1828495/2020/05/21/
Twitter on fire last couple of hours with reports that NBA is nearing a decision to start camp in Orlando June 21, games July 15, playoffs from late July to Labour Day.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Good article. But it doesn't deal with the core point. That line about locking out the players because the deal was unratified, that sure caught my eye though...
There is no MLS TV money. It's all dreamland about a future world where they make serious TV money. But right now MLS makes $90M a year from US national rights. Let's say it's another $30M in Canada.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/27/majo...als-first.html
That is like $5M a team from national rights, and most teams get less than that for local rights (I remember when the Galaxy got $5M a year a few years back, that was 2x the next highest team).
So most teams are getting $7-10M in revenues, normally, but for a two month tourney? Maybe half that? And that is all there is. No gate.
Payrolls alone are $10-25M. A 20% cut doesn’t change the math. Plus this tournament, the sequestration, the medical side, will have enormous costs, in the many millions.
Plus, news flash, Historically, nobody watches TV in the summer. I get that this is a very weird year, but that could cut a bunch of ways. Is a somewhat weird soccer tournament going head to head with the NBA playoffs really actually that compelling? I know my historical viewing has always declined in the summer...
I don't see how they wouldn’t take a bath in the hundreds of millions. It makes zero sense.
Something else is going on here.
Last edited by ensco; 05-21-2020 at 06:12 PM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
^ its not about 2020. MLS has always been about the long game.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Plus how engaged are the sponsors going to be in this with some of their current economic plight? The NBA and MLS are night and day in a situation like this on all fronts. A random tournament vs the NBA playoffs is a real up hill battle for them. The NBA has always been in my eyes the best suited to pull off this sprint to the final type event and have the dollars to back it up.
Plus testing to me is the real challenge but something with a dedicated lab setup you certainly can figure out, because you do need the quick turn around to pull this off.
Remember The Man, The Legend, The Goal 5-12-07 and All That #9 Left On The Pitch, Thanks For The Memories !!!
Last edited by ensco; 05-21-2020 at 09:52 PM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
New Athletic scoop out tonight with details
Two tidbits
Games at 9 am 8pm & 10:30 pm
4 Conference finalists seeded away from each other - in theory one of Atlanta or TFC become a second seed in an eastern group behind Orlando but in practice, that doesn't mean much as the rest of the groups are placed in random. (Of course, Atlanta fans already whining why they don't get an automatic 1st seed & LAFC do)
If MLS want to spend $200M to move the TV needle, this would be the way to do it. Just sweep the world market for all the names coming on the market this year. I bet there are at least 10 guys like this out there, and the total cost over multiple seasons would be less than $200M
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020/...onzalo-higuain
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
There was lots of reminiscing of 2016-2019 during the show and the success we had so far and talking about how resilient the team is and how hard they work to earn their spots. He spoke about the VDW situation and the lessons learned from not doing all the background check work so he said they really changed how deep they go into looking at the personalities starting with the Pozuelo deal and then Piatti to make sure they wouldn't have another VDW situation again. He talked about the time off being a bit of a blessing for Piatti and Bradley being able to train and get therapy the entire time during the break because they were still allowed to use the TFC training centre to do it and he thinks they will be ready to play this season healthy. It sounded like Piatti needed extra time and now he got it. Bill said 18 months was really what he needed to fully recover and get back to fitness from the time he got injured and now he has it. He talked about all the stuff they did for the players to keep them fit during the break so far. As far as the season goes they are still hoping to play in some way but waiting on the board of governors and the Don to come up with the solution. It is complicated due to all states, provinces and both countries having all of their different COVID handling and restrictions. He was asked about refunds if the season doesn't have fans at BMO and he said they will definitely be doing right by their fans/members because the way they see it, how they handle this situation will reflect on how our relationship will be with the club going forward for all of us and they want to get it right and make sure they do right by everyone so he doesn't want anyone to worry about that. He talked about players and their time off and what they were doing aside from keeping fit and how happy they are to get back to training they are now able to do at the training ground even if not as a team.
That was about it. Anyone else listening in on the show can chime in here if I missed anything or misstated anything but that was it from what I recall. Lasted for an hour.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
This clearly has some sort of momentum... but as noted above the “why” of this has been bothering me so I went looking for the terms of the new CBA on this. Didn’t find it. But I did find a pretty interesting provision, buried in a USA Today story two months ago...
Hey guess what - alone amongst sports leagues, MLS are paying their players full freight! Amazingly, there is no force majeure clause in the players association agreement!
These Athletic guys are too close to the clubs, I think they should have picked up on this. They are helping the owners set the players up to be bad guys, but really, both the owners' and the players' situation are a lot different than every thinks it is.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...id/5068551002/
MLS Player Association executive director Bob Foose said the union's CBA with the league does not include any force majeure language and MLS players "are receiving, and will continue to receive, their regular bimonthly paychecks" even while play is suspended.
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If you have to pay payroll regardless, then the math is completely different. It's incremental revenue regardless. Even better, if you propose a tourney in “good faith” and the players don't show, you win big time - you can lock them out and stop paying payroll. The fact that games would be buried on some ESPN streaming service is a feature, not a bug!
This also explains why Vela and Bedoya and various others are super grumpy about this. Why play in some fake event in horrible conditions, and risk Covid, if you can just sip pina coladas all day and get paid?
There are probably virtual conference rooms full of labour lawyers involved in this on both sides, and probably driving what happens here.
This thing is probably just as likely to be heading to court as it is the fields of Orlando.
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The media coverage of this league really sucks now.
If I have this right, this is an epic disaster for the owners, and Garber and Abbott may lose their jobs because of this.
Last edited by ensco; 05-22-2020 at 08:10 AM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
This likely affects MLS the least, but the backdrop to everything that is happening is the US election this year. The White House is desperate for things to return to normal and the billionaire owners of the NFL are mostly friends with the current occupant. That will dictate that (in addition to the cogent arguments Ensco has made about weak players union etc) the NFL will play this fall. i doubt that the MLS owners are all as close to Trump as the NFL, but some may well be and the league will be getting pressure to open up from the White House, to the extent it has noticed the league - and there will be pressure from sponsors etc who know that the NFL is going ahead."If they are, why cant you? Are you sissies" will be the tone.
its all crazy. There will be a second wave. How do you manage that? What happens when players get sick - they already have in the EPL - or god forbid get seriously ill. Will it just be treated like an injury (Injuries: "Jones, knee, day to day; Davis, two weeks, ventilator, covid related") but very serious politics will be behind it. MLS probably being caught in the wake.
That's why playing in the summer is for the long game. The biggest part of MLS' costs are fixed costs, so there's no "investment" or down-side, apart from the costs of running this mini-tourney "empty venue." They aren't going to make a lot in revenue, but it keeps their broadcast partners happier than they otherwise would be, and that's critical to the long-term game. It also may introduce new eyes to MLS, as there isn't a lot of sports out there right now.
The biggest question is whether players will feel safe (and actually be relatively safe). The whole idea can easily be scuttled.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
We profoundly disagree. This looks like the ultimate short term move.
Nothing here looks like burnishing the brand or working with the players. This is a situation where someone got profoundly outnegotiated, and is trying to find ways out, and is apparently willing to go to the mattresses to get out. It's pretty ugly, beneath the surface.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
If I was a league looking at my assets (players), I'd be concerned about players not playing for an entire year - what that'll do to their fitness, skills, reflexes etc. I bet the players are feeling the same way. No player wants to take a year off.
I'm more concerned about what not playing for a year does to team cohesion.
Even at the best of times, players come in and out of form and have to make adjustments due to age e.g. 23 year old speed not the same as 20 year old
A soccer team is not a machine- its a complex organism that only works as well as its ability to adapt to the changing variables within itself.
I would be curious to know what the threshold is when it comes to not continuing to pay someone's salary in this situation. Is it simple as announcing a plan for all players to report to Florida on July 1st to prepare for the resumption of play regardless of the format it takes ie this mini tournament? If a said players chooses not to, I guess he would be in violation of his contract?
Remember The Man, The Legend, The Goal 5-12-07 and All That #9 Left On The Pitch, Thanks For The Memories !!!