I posted this on lnkd.in/p/gftePHwE Good morning, and happy Nor’easter Saturday. With @ManCity in the news, I goofed around on a spreadsheet with my morning coffee. What else was I to do when the weather outside is frightful? I assumed the usual penalties first: fines and a points deduction. That is already serious. Then took a look at the version some people are floating out loud — expulsion from the @EnglishPremierLeague, or even a drop that ends in @LeagueOne. That is not a sporting slap. That is a cataclysmic business event. According to City’s latest accounts that I found they have about $902 million in revenue and a club value of around $5.5 billion ... this is strictly the individual club, not the entire City Football Group A Championship season has already been modelled as a roughly $494 million revenue drop. League One would take another bite. Football income could be in a range like $104–234 million. That would represent a an annual hole of $650–780 million-plus versus today. Not to mention a collapse in club value and a forced dismantling of the squad. Some say this is the nuclear option... assuming one nuclear bomb... I think this would be the equivalent of a country unloading it's entire arsenal on the @etihad. I have said this before, when a large Premier League club drifts toward the bottom three: at some point one of them would go to court. Not because they hate “sporting merit.” Because the revenue drop is too severe to treat relegation as simply a position in a table. I thought we might have seen that with @SpursOfficial last year, but they were saved in the last weeks of the season from having to test my theory. City is a different case, of course. This is not bad luck in April. An independent commission has found them guilty on 114 of 115 charges. Sanctions are still to come. That is a rules fight, not a form fight. Without a doubt they will appeal the case. Fine. What I don' think they can permit is forced relegation. Fines they can pay. A points hit they can try to outrun. Being removed from the league that produces almost all of that $902 million is a blow to the business of a club this size. And I think they would fight the relegation tooth and nail. Not the falling giant scenario I pictured. But the principle is the same, the cause is different. This is existential for Manchester City for certain. It is also a threat to the Premier League and the rest of the English pyramid. Like it or not, the open pyramid that is the Premier League may have unintentionally chosen its destroyer. #PremierLeague #ManchesterCity #FootballFinance #SportsBusiness

I decided to do what our #prorelforusa brethren have not done in the years I have been debating this issue. I took it upon myself to draw up a roadmap for promotion and relegation, and what it would actually take to create an open pyramid. It has pretty much consumed all my non-work, sleep and bathroom hours. Aside from this fact, I hope those who advocate for promotion and relegation will at least have something of substance to lean on. So here it is. Enjoy if you so choose. The links to the roadmap is in the description of the video. SC. PS. I am done. The Pro/Rel Blueprint: How It Could Work in the US youtu.be/_vlNf7sKtlg?si=Nk0b… via @YouTube

Because he has me blocked, so I am posting it this way.... @3Four3 You’re stacking three arguments and calling the pile an answer. MLS is a closed league. Investor-operators buy a protected seat. Nobody plays their way into D1. That setup drives almost every calendar and money decision they make. You can think that’s bad for the sport. A lot of people do. Monopoly is the word you reach for when you want the conclusion baked in. MLS is not the only professional soccer in this country. USL is here. The amateur side is here. The Open Cup is still here because USSF runs an open tournament MLS does not own. If walking away was suppression and coming back is also the machine’s endgame, nothing they do can prove you wrong. That’s convenient. It isn’t analysis. You asked for THE reason, then took sport and money off the table before anyone answered. Of course what’s left is a captured Federation and a quid pro quo. You built the funnel that way. The actual record is messier and still not pretty. Trying to dump first teams for MLS Next Pro in 2023 was a power move. Garber’s comments were ugly and harmful. And I, like many, thought he should resign. SUM running USSF commercial rights for two decades was a conflict (maybe). Congestion was real but self inflicted with MLS helping create it when Leagues Cup became their summer product. Fans pushed back. The Pro League Standards said U.S. teams have to play the competitions they’re eligible for. That combo stopped a clean exit. 2024 through 2026 was a compromise. USSF gave ground. MLS extracted terms. Both things happened. 2027 lines up with what MLS already wanted. They’re flipping to a summer-spring calendar. First teams come in July, before the new season and before Leagues Cup, final in mid-December. The Cup isn’t sitting on top of the product they actually sell. The old gate split is gone later in the tournament. Fixed hosting fee. MLS hosts the Round of 64. Lower-division sides come to them. That’s the opposite of “we don’t want game played on a high school field.” Rosters go to 20. They can use first team, Next Pro, academy. That’s load management. The CCC berth is still on the trophy. That’s not the prize check. That’s a path clubs actually care about. You’re right the purse doesn’t move this. You’re also right that “what’s best for the sport” is not how MLS decides. They protect franchise value, the calendar, and how their game looks. When the Open Cup got in the way, they tried to leave. When leaving got expensive, and the dates and the money terms bent toward them, they came back. That’s not a secret handshake. That’s a league looking after itself. If USSF traded something in the back room, put it on the table. Votes. Sanctioning. Youth. Rights. A side letter. “I crossed off the public reasons, so it has to be corruption” is not a finding. A closed league tried to walk away from the only open national cup it doesn’t control. It couldn’t. USSF then made the cup easier for that league to play in, on a calendar the league already wanted. MLS gets the good vibes, a continental spot, and home games. The Federation gets a full D1 field and a tournament that isn’t an annual fight. Lower-division clubs get 27 first teams instead of 16. Fans get the competition back. Hate the closed system. Say SUM starved the Cup for years. Say Garber talked about the country’s oldest tournament like it embarrassed him. Those points stand on their own. They don’t need every schedule announcement to be proof that the machine just coughed. If monopoly is doing all the work, that’s the argument. It isn’t the reason they came back. And I still find it humorous that you block me. xitter.cf/3four3/status/20952079…