Ponty_Jack said:
It hypothetical. The Trust are £4m short of that target and are skint.The Trust should not try to run the club. HJ has 14 years experience of running SCFC. Levien and Kaplan have run a US team for years. what experience do the Trust have other than running websites? The focus of the Trust should be accumulating cash and managing it. The assumption that the fans can run the club well with no experience of day to day management as a cooperative is highly dubious.
"Levien and Kaplan have run a US team for years."
let's just digest that for a second.
Levine only got involved with DC in 2012, I don't believe Kaplan is involved in DC, so he has no experience of professional football. Neither have been involved in a sport, let alone a football "soccer" team, with a relegation threat.
But let's look to see how DC have done since Levien has been involved.
In 2012 they reached the playoffs for the first time in five years. (big tick)
The next season they won only 3 games, setting a record for fewest wins in league history. That's a relegation in anyone's language - but they can't be relegated in MLS.
In 2014 D.C. United created history again by clinching first place in the Eastern Conference. (big tick - but in PL terms, that would have been playoffs in the Championship IF they had retained their best players - unlikely in PL terms).
They followed that up with 2x 4th places, until this season, where they finished bottom of the Eastern Division, and 7 points adrift of the next placed team. Relegation again in our terms.
As we know there is no relegation in the MLS, unlike here. So they have less incentive to do well. they can be up and down as often as they like, and they are not financially damaged.
And that's because of how ownership and rewards are created.
Ownership and the finances of clubs and the league are managed COMPLETELY different to the PL.
The reality is that the owners do not really "own" DC United. The MLS does. The owners become "partners" in the League. It's a franchise league.
Any money a team makes, be it through local TV and radio rights, kit and stadium sponsorships, ticket sales, or player sales, the club gets a cut (with the size depending on context of the sale), and the rest of the money goes into the league's bank account.
Some of that MLS money ends up being redistributed out to all the clubs in the league, covering the players' salaries (minus the above-cap amount of Designated Player Salaries), cost of travel, referee fees, administrative costs, and all other expenses.
Any profits the MLS then make are then redistributed. But directly to the owners not the clubs. Those owners have the option to reinvest it, but they don't have to!
How TV Money works is different too.
The owners, when they buy a club, also invest into another company called SUM. Soccer United Marketing.
Where this is different to the PL, SUM negotiates EVERY televised game in the US. Competitive or friendly, across all competitions. Be it Mexico playing a friendly on US soil. A US National team game. Man City playing United on a pre-season tour. EVERYTHING is negotiated by and monies go to SUM.
The profits are then split, and like the MLS profits, paid not to the clubs, but to the owners, who again could, if they wanted to, put back into their "franchise", or they can just trouser it.
And the final way the owners make cash - and this is where we need to be a bit more concerned - is through stadium deals and through raising valuations of that infrastructure.
This I have found from an article on the subject of stadium expansion in the MLS:
Unlike almost everything else that teams spend money on, stadiums are physical pieces of property. They are a piece of infrastructure and, unlike players' contracts and transfer fees, they represent a chance to accrue value over the long run. If you sell the club, you almost certainly get the money back with profit (especially if that stadium is built with some public money).
The article looked at Forbes valuation of MLS Clubs and it showed that owners that invested 10 years ago, they've seen a pretty nice growth in the value of their assets.
So it is easy to see why they thought we were an attractive prospect - though they will be selling a lease rather than a stadium, it still stacks up.
Plus let's not forget the new training facilities need to be included in that portfolio too.
Does that mean these guys are happy to stick it out for 10 years? Levien has been at DC for half of that so far. So it will be interesting to see how long before he twists on that ownership, and sells, as it will indicate how long he could stick with us.