Twelve PDL Teams Bite The Dust
If you’ve ever thought the Premier Development League business model sounds great – no player salaries or workman’s comp, limited regional travel, short seasons – keep in mind it’s no guarantee of success. A dozen PDL teams – some of them clubs of long standing – are no more, according to the 2013 schedule announced today by United Soccer Leagues.
The biggest loss – at least from an historical perspective – is the Nashville Metros, who had been around in one form or another since 1990. Begun as an indoor team, the Metros moved outdoors, went professional, played at the second division level (briefly as the Tennessee Rhythm) before dropping back to the PDL in 2002. They’d been operating at a subsistence level – drawing 131 fans per game last year – before apparently giving up the ghost this off-season.
Orange County Blue Star, which began as the pro Orange County Zodiac in 1997, is also a casualty after 16 years, while the Brooklyn Knights are out after 15 seasons. The Fraser Valley Mariners (formerly the Abbotsford Rangers and Mariners) and New Orleans Jesters (nee Shell Shockers) both survived ten years but are no more. The Cincinnati Kings, who began as a third-division pro club in 2005 but had played the last five years at the PDL level, are also gone, as are the Ogden Outlaws, who had been around since 2006.
Shorter lifespans included the FC Jax (Jacksonville, Fla.) Destroyers, Fredericksburg Hotspur and Real Maryland Monarchs (which all played two seasons) and the one-and-one Boston Victory and Worcester Hydra.
Four new teams have joined the PDL for 2013, including the awkwardly-named New York Magic – F.A. Euro (that’s one club), Oklahoma City (no nickname yet, hopefully it’s not “City”), Real Boston Rams and Southwest Florida Adrenaline. So the PDL is net minus eight clubs from last year.
There have been several PDL success stories, as the Des Moines Menace, Michigan Bucks, Kansas City Brass, Orlando City U23s, Vermont Voltage and Westchester Flames have all been around for 15 years or more. But of the 210 PDL clubs in the modern era (since 1996), 147 are no longer with us and 94 (45%) have lasted three years or fewer. It’s not easy to do this, even with small budgets.
So it appears we’ll have 106 men’s outdoor clubs in 2013, down five from 2012, but still the second highest total of the century. With at least a couple of NASL and USL Pro teams joining the fray in 2014, and expansion still a near-term possibility in MLS, we could soon get close to the modern era record of 112 clubs set back in 1998.
Tags: PDL, stuff only I care about, USL
January 18th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
As long as the CSA and USSF do not allow PDL and amateur clubs to recieve payments for developing players, PDL business model is a bust. If you look at PDL players who have signed for NASL or MLS or gone Pro elsewhere if they have received the basic FIFA mandated fee, lots of extra cash would have been in the tills.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:16 pm
This was actually discussed years ago, and was (a small) part of the reason why MLS and USL didn’t continue their contractual agreement post-2000 or so.
The argument from USL teams was that they should get not only compensation when MLS took one of their players, but that if they then sold that player on, they should get a piece of that. USL teams thought the amount proposed should be larger, MLS thought it should be smaller.
My argument at the time was (and this is specific to the PDL, because at the time I was working in the A-League) that whatever “investment” a PDL team had made in a particular player paled in comparison to the investment a professional team had made in that same player in terms of salaries, relocation, training, housing, (sometimes) visas, all of it. And that for PDL teams to receive similar compensation that professional teams were looking for when they were basically a pit stop in these players’ careers was ludicrous.
I’m not familiar with CSA and USSF having a prohibition against the practice, or why anything that is “FIFA-mandated” would apply to it. Players that play in the PDL aren’t contracted per se, though they are registered with those teams for the brief period that they play during the summer (May-July or May-August). It’s a model that doesn’t really have a straight-line comparison elsewhere in the world. PDL teams don’t own their players, and they’re interchangeable parts (even more than your normal pro soccer club’s parts), largely. When their PDL “commitments” are done, they’re free and clear. The vast majority of PDL players are college players who then go back to school and remain amateurs.
And the PDL business model is obviously not a bust, as evidenced by the clubs that have been around for 10+ years, but the point I was making was that just because you don’t have that particular line item in your budget, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to run or maintain a proper club. Because when 70% of them are failing, and that number’s fairly close to the failure rate across the lower divisions, the common denominator isn’t player salaries.
If MLS teams had to start paying every time they drafted a four-year guy from, say, Northwestern, who had spent a summer or two playing a total of 25-30 games for a PDL team, they’d simply (and quietly, I’d guess) just start steering guys away from playing in the PDL (or make it known they weren’t going to pay fees, so good luck to you in Norway).
Reading had five players drafted yesterday. That would obviously be a nice payday for them, but then PDL teams would just start competing for likely MLS draftees without regard for anything else. And while they couldn’t pay them wages, they could offer ever-escalating packages of amenities and camp work and other inducements to play for them. Which would likely offset any fees they’d get from MLS.
And NASL and USL Pro teams simply don’t have the resources to add an additional player acquisition fee when they’re already cash-strapped. It’s unrealistic.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
Current PDL teams that have been around for at least 10 years:
Des Moines and Michigan (18 seasons)
Bradenton and Kansas City (16)
Orlando, Vermont and Westchester (15)
Thunder Bay (14)
Chicago Fire and Southern California (13)
BYU, Fresno, Ocean City and West Virginia (11)
Carolina, El Paso, Laredo and Reading (10)
It can be done. It often doesn’t for the same reason pro teams go under: their owners are underfinanced and don’t have the vision or patience to make it work.
January 19th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Real Maryland had a few pro years in D3 before moving down, like 3 or 4, I think.
January 19th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
You are correct. Three in D3. I was originally thinking of Baltimore, which went in the other direction (and then to oblivion).
January 19th, 2013 at 9:30 pm
This link says the New Orleans Jesters have joined NPSL.
http://www.nationalpremiersoccerleague.com/home/675627.html
January 19th, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Good find, thanks.
February 1st, 2013 at 6:16 pm
two points:
the non-renewal of PDL teams seems linked to the MLS-USL tie-up – does this indicate underlying scepticism of the direction of travel towards greater control?
several of these clubs were competing in the same market as NPSL teams – does this suggest greater freedom is the way forward?
February 1st, 2013 at 6:35 pm
Proximity is not causation.
PDL teams have been going under whether there is an MLS relationship or not. And many have succeeded long-term regardless of the relationship (or lack of same) with anyone other than USL.
And while the specifics of the USL-MLS agreement are still nascent and their effects indeterminate, I feel very, very confident that it doesn’t impact the PDL, which is ( a ) not covered by the agreement and ( b ) largely populated by college players who aren’t under anyone’s “control.”
A large number of NPSL teams is similar to the proliferation of $.99 stores and content farm websites. Someone sees a low-overhead opening in a growing market and looks to exploit it.
PDL teams are for people with limited budgets. NPSL teams are for people with limited budgets and even more limited vision and ambition.
And the “freedom” NPSL teams have, if you choose to describe it as such, is like the freedom you have at 19 to move out of your parents’ house, come and go as you please, eat pizza for breakfast, not clean up after yourself, and stay up all night playing video games and smoking weed. You don’t have to answer to anyone, but that’s not always a recipe for progress.
NPSL teams are accountable to the barest of minimum standards, even less stringent than those in the other leagues. Any league that will let the Phoenix Monsoon in, when they had no money, no set place to play,no infrastructure, no ability to generate revenue and no indication they’ll ever be anything but a bottom-feeder as presently constituted may very well be an attractive choice for people who aren’t interested in actually doing things in a professional manner.
I just wouldn’t want that type of organization in any league I was in.
March 1st, 2013 at 11:09 am
I take some offense at your NPSL mischaracterization. Using the worst-run teams as examples of an entire league (yet one that competes pretty darn well with the PDL come US Open Cup time every year) is a logical fallacy that I’m too many years removed from college to recall the name for right now.
Keep in mind that no matter the league requirements, there will always be badly run clubs. And while having a league with fewer barriers to entry provides more opportunity for failure, it likewise provides more opportunity for successes. And in the end, it’s the successes that will matter far more than the failures.
March 1st, 2013 at 11:45 am
You can take all the offense you like.
The point being this: there aren’t many well-run NPSL clubs that I can name. Yours is, obviously.
And, no, it’s not the case that the successes matter far more than the failures. The failure rate for PDL clubs is 70 percent over time. I haven’t run the numbers on the NPSL because I’d have to work up the energy to do so, but would you imagine it is north or south of that? And what is a “success?” They have so many new teams, who can tell?
And when we have our first NPSL club that actually aspires to – and reaches – a higher level, great. Until then, they’re just having a wank. They’re choosing to be in a bargain-basement league – which is their right – but, please, don’t tell me that Kmart is something I should be paying attention to.
And I show NPSL teams (who have had entree to the US Open Cup as a league for the last two years, but who could have qualified through USASA before that) as 5-7-1 against PDL teams since 2003. Good for them. The two leagues have matched up only “every year” since 2009 (and six of the twelve meetings came last year).
Get some standards. Stop letting organizations like the Monsoon in. Start publishing actual stats and attendance figures. Start acting like an actual league. Then we can talk.
March 1st, 2013 at 11:51 am
You know what else they can do?
Stop misspelling the names of their own teams on their own website.
(The irony there being that there were MORE errors before, they obviously cleaned up some, but have either left or made others – Las Veaga Stallions, San francisco, Furbol Club Santa Clarita, Hersey Wildcats, blah blah blah blah.)
March 2nd, 2013 at 4:44 pm
All of those trappings of a “real league” cost money. Like you, I wish the NPSL and PDL had more of them, but the simple fact is: mid-to-small market teams can’t afford membership in a league that would consistently provide those. But when the two other alternatives are, lose even more money in a higher-tier “real league” or have no team, the majority of potential owners in those cities will choose the PDL or NPSL. And they’re making the right choice.
Another thing: in past comments, after being challenged with similar arguments, you often retreat to a point of mock indignation, effectively saying, “well if you want to watch bad soccer, go ahead.” Which is silly, because you’re not admitting there’s some good soccer being played at the 4th tier. I also think you’re letting some past frustrations severely color your outlook of the present and the future. We’re living in the most exciting period of American soccer to date, but you really seem to be having trouble enjoying it.