Garber eager to see MLS keep growing
LOS ANGELES — For years, Major League Soccer has focused on constant growth.
The success keeps commissioner Don Garber awake at night. How can he sustain the growth? How can he navigate each challenge that stands in the way?
And there other challenges.
A few hours before the MLS SuperDraft, Garber gave a broad-ranging talk on MLS’ accomplishments, future goals and ongoing struggles.
“There’s an enormous amount of momentum,” Garber said. “We’ve achieved more, our business is better, we have more popularity and that just means the pressures are different.
“We are still a league on the rise . ... The opportunity for us to be bigger, better, stronger, to get deeper in our communities to have better academies to develop our players, to be a league of choice, if you will. We’ve got a lot to do to achieve that.”
Garber spent a significant amount of time talking about being “a league of choice,” meaning players in their prime choose to play for MLS rather than go overseas or to Mexico. He said it was the league’s mission, aiming to dispel the reputation MLS is a retirement league for aging stars.
He wants more players like Seattle’s Jordan Morris and Nicolas Lodeiro and Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco, standouts who chose to play in MLS despite many other offers. The same goes for homegrown talent and coaches such as Atlanta’s Gerardo “Tata” Martino, who previously led FC Barcelona.
“It's not just about what you pay them, because Sebastian Giovinco makes more playing for MLS than he would in Italy,” Garber said. “In many ways, that’s something the folks in Serie A and European football scratch their heads about, say ‘Why do you need to do that?’ That’s kind of an interesting thing to focus on.”
It points to other areas in which the league continues to improve: building proper facilities, providing an exciting in-stadium experience and gaining relevancy in markets that holds players accountable to rabid fan bases.
“So that when Sebastian is playing in Toronto, he feels like he’s a professional, he’s recognized in the street, that his fans are both embracing him when he’s good and challenging him when he’s not,” Garber added.
He also mentioned more than once the need for continued and enhanced media coverage, positive and critical, to fuel league interest.
When asked a few weeks ago about why the league does not reveal the amount of money involved in certain trades, he promised to consider the issue. During the draft Friday, the league disclosed for the first time the amount of money involved in a trades for picks.
The league recently completed a year-long research study to better understand the soccer market in the United States, he said.
People want higher-quality television broadcasts, wifi in stadiums to socially engage during matches, among other conveniences, and a higher quality of play, Garber said.
“We need to figure out what’s the best way to do that,” he said of increasing quality.
“Is that expanding the designated player rule? Is it by investing more deeply in the roster? If we invest more deeply in the roster, who are those players and how do we ensure we get more Lodeiros, so we have a quality that can be increased quickly?”
But arguably the biggest challenge Garber faces in his quest to grow MLS is the amount of competition. There’s more soccer on television than any other sport, and European leagues are signing massive broadcast deals in the U.S.
“I get the perception that more people care about us, but I do worry about how do you keep that going,” he said.