Since 1949, the time it takes thoroughbreds to run around the 1.25-mile track has averaged 2:02.25, and no winning race time has deviated by more than 3 secondsInterestingly, horse speeds have plateaued but human speeds have not. Doping? Genetics? Sport science?
Overall we arrive at an annual loss of $139 million, or just over $7 million per franchise in 2014. No doubt there are various tax write-offs to soften the blow, especially if losses can be written off against profits in other businesses. But I doubt that would make this a profitable venture overall.He then surmises that this loss-making situation does not appear likely to change anytime soon, with its impacts softened only by the entrance fees paid to the league for new teams. The bottom line?
You can fund a loss-making enterprise from the entrance fees of new buyers for a while, but without making money, the only reason for doing this would be glory, not profits. Americans constantly tell me that owners of sport franchises in the US will insist on making money. If that really is the case, then I predict that MLS will collapse, and probably sooner rather than later.His last statement is a conditional, predicated on the desire for owners to make profits. If owners don't care about profits, then of course, Szymanksi is not predicting collapse.
The basic argument of "Giant costs - smaller revenues = big loss, therefore collapse is imminent" only makes sense when you've actually accounted for all revenues. Szymanski hardly got started on that. When someone makes this argument while actually accounting for all revenues, maybe their argument and prediction will be taken seriously.On his blog Szymanski responded to a similar criticism:
Well, until MLS decides to reveal the books to us we are both speculating.A second type of critique focuses on the longer-term prospects of the MLS. Here is an example:
This was always going to be a long term effort with return on investment delayed much longer than your typical stock market play. From an individual team standpoint, losing $5 million dollars per year, 1/20 of that $100 million, the loss is not all that significant when you factor in what these teams, or the league, could be worth 10 years down the road. A $5 million dollar loss per year is peanuts to some of the richest men in sports. Also, TV revenue tripling in 10 years isn’t a bullish thought. The numbers are so low now that it wouldn’t take much to accomplish that. This would more than cover the current losses and that’s before we factor in advertising, sponsorship and other sources of revenue that would naturally increase as well.Arguments about future revenue growth reflect hopes and dreams as much as dollars and cents. The sky may indeed be the limit, and if a profit is to be made then Szymanski's conditional is off in any case. Those critiquing his argument in this manner can just ignore it, and watch the revenues grow year by year.
If MLS has done anything well, its certainly been the strictness of their cost control. A slow and steady approach has led to an extremely successful league at the ticket window. Once that transfers to television, the sky is the limit.
On the 2014 [MLS] salary list are 572 players earning total wages of just over $129.5 million. This sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But in comparison to the Premier League, for example, it is small potatoes. The MLS total includes 21 clubs (for 2014 it includes Chivas USA, since folded, and partial squads for NY City FC and Orlando City FC, both being formed). Yet their total wage bills combined equals about the same as the wage bill for Queens Park Rangers ($126 million) in 2012-13, the most recent year’s data available.The total payroll of the MLS is about 1/15 that of the NHL (data from my new book). Right now the MLS is to global soccer what the Russian professional hockey league is to the NHL -- interesting domestically, but not a threat to the world's top league in any way.
In 2012-13, six Premier League clubs each had wages bills well in excess of the entire MLS, with Manchester City topping the list at $376 million (for all club staff). The wage bills for the top 20 clubs in England were almost $2.9 billion combined. For the bottom 20 payers across the Premier League and the Championship it was about $750 million.
I think the only way around this conundrum is for MLS to become a minor league for Europe and for European teams to buy up MLS franchises. European teams already employ the talent that would make MLS attractive and the big clubs have more talent than they put on the field. Manchester City’s acquisition of the new New York City FC franchise is surely a logical step. Of course, European teams could just loan players to MLS in the same way that they do in Europe, but then there’s the worry that the borrower will not take good care of the asset.This might be branded as a 2nd-tier Champion's League of sorts, as the clubs with the assets to invest in a minor league farm team would likely overlap significantly with regular Champion's League squads. Such a strategy would also have the advantage of not denying the MLS status as a minor league, but instead, exploiting that fact as a feature.
Sport is a multi-billion dollar business engaging billions of people. It is also a global symbol of fair play and a source of great joy for many people on this planet, whether participating, attending or watching events.At the core of the initiative is a major report on sport, which will eventually be comprised of more than 50 (!) chapters on various aspects of corruption and sport. (I am an author of one of these chapters.) Of note is that TI is including the NCAA as a focus in its report.
With so much public involvement, political influence and money at stake, corruption remains a constant and real risk. Mounting scandals around match-fixing, major events and elections, and systemic deficiencies in sports governance are now so undermining public trust that it is reaching a tipping point.
Keeping sports clean is therefore a global imperative. Our goal is to ensure that sport can continue to “create a way of life based on (…) the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” (Olympic Charter).
Given Russia’s ongoing violations of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, we respectfully request that you convene an Extraordinary Congress of FIFA to consider stripping Russia of the privilege of hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Allowing Russia to host the FIFA World Cup inappropriately bolsters the prestige of the Putin regime at a time when it should be condemned and provides economic relief at a time when much of the international community is imposing economic sanctions.With the 2016 US elections now in view, it would be timely for the US Senate to hold a hearing or two on FIFA and the 2018 World Cup. Can you imagine a panel of witnesses including Sunil Gulati, the head of US Soccer and also a member of FIFA's Executive Committee, Sepp Blatter, and Jeffrey Webb, the head of CONCACAF? We the Senate to invite these men and be turned down, it could cause some problems for US and international soccer. It would be a delicate situation for certain.
As you know, nearly a full year has passed since unmarked Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists began their dismemberment of Ukraine. Since then, more than 40 countries, all FIFA members, have implemented sanctions on Russia in an effort to end the conflict. It is unacceptable that while nearly half of the 2014 World Cup participants have joined the international sanctions regime to counter Russian aggression, FIFA would not even consider allowing its members to vote on moving the 2018 competition to a country that respects the shared principles of FIFA and international law.
With the goal of ending the crisis in Ukraine and ensuring a successful 2018 World Cup, we strongly encourage FIFA to deny the Putin regime the privilege of hosting the 2018 World Cup and make preparations for an alternate host country.
When Blatter learned that Olé's book of cartoons was imminent he responded with typical FIFA transparency. He sent his lawyers to a Zurich court in late 2013 claiming that their client “has a good reputation and if the cartoons were published he would never be able to repair the damage.”Like most efforts to squelch speech, this one failed too. You can find an English version of the cartoon book here at Amazon.
Stop laughing.
Sure one can spin a compelling narrative and find some numbers that seem to support that narrative. As the saying goes, numbers which are sufficiently tortured using statistical methods will ultimately confess. As a corollary I might add that pretty much any narrative one cares to spin can be supported by some plausible or plausible-sounding data. But I'm also pretty sure that is not how "data journalism" is supposed to work.
As far as narratives go, the ASU Curtain of Distraction is a great one. Too bad the numbers don't follow along.
We found that distraction works. On average, college basketball players are about one percentage point less likely to make a free throw when in front of a hostile crowd than when at home. They are not less accurate in neutral arenas, which suggests that what matters is not whether a player is in a familiar arena, or whether they have had to travel, but whether they are trying to shoot in front of an organized student section hellbent on distracting them.The home court advantage in basketball is very well known, so the overall conclusions of a small home court advantage in free throw percentages confirms that which we already know.
Our analysis reveals that there appear to be some fan sections that are particularly effective. The best remain the Arizona State fans, at least since their introduction of the Curtain of Distraction. Teams playing in front of the curtain shoot about nine percentage points worse than they do at home. A handful of other teams, including Northwestern, Baylor, Utah, Nebraska and U.C.L.A., are also blessed with effective fans, costing visitors about one point per game on average.You may not have noticed what Wolfers has done with some statistical sleight of hand, so let me explain. He looks at data for all teams over 5 years, but ASU over just 2 years. You have to follow a few asterixes to the fine print to discover this - he writes at the bottom: "That said, this [ASU] data sample is significantly smaller than those of other colleges, which grouped five seasons into a single rating." What!?
Sport, it is often said, is a mirror to society. That is no more true than in the revelations found in the report of the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (downloadable as a PDF on this website), which earlier this week released its report on doping in professional cycling. We may not like what we see when we look into that mirror. Here are three uncomfortable truths that The CIRC forces us to confront.Please head here to read the whole thing. You are welcome to come back and comment if you'd like.
I have studied the CIRC report and I am satisfied that it confirms what I have always said: that there have never been any cover-ups, complicity or corruption in the Lance Armstrong case (or, indeed, in any other doping cases) . . .In stark contrast, Brian Cookson, the current head of UCI called on Verbruggen to resign his position as "honorary president" of the UCI:
I am very concerned by what I read in the report about [Verbruggen]’s actions and I will write to him asking him to consider his position as honorary president.The CIRC report goes into considerably more detail about Verbruggen's and Pat McQuaid's leadership of the UCI. These details offer ample support for Cookson's call for Verbruggen's resignation and makes Verbruggen's claim to exoneration look pretty silly.
The doping problem was well known to the UCI leadership and it was clear to everyone that doping was endemic in cycling. Hein Verbruggen had acknowledged this, in principle in his campaign manifesto when running for president of UCI in 1991. After his election, UCI employed a strategy of diverting public opinion from the fact that UCI was responsible for the doping issue in cycling. Doping was portrayed by UCl leadership as the faulty (and surprising) behaviour of a few individuals, but not as endemic group behaviour or as a structural problem within its sport.Doping among professional cyclists was known to UCI, which sought to manage it as an unspoken norm of the sport. UCI went so far as to facilitate doping, intentionally and also as a consequence of health measures, and to protect athletes from scrutiny. The CIRC report offers a pretty depressing tale of corruption, abuse of power and disdain for rules.
Not only did UCI leadership publicly disregard the magnitude of the problem, but the policies put in place to combat doping were inadequate. Credit should be given to the UCI insofar as it was at the forefront of anti-doping in introducing new testing techniques. However, the science is only one part of anti-doping strategy. To have an effective antidoping strategy, it is essential to get the right sample from the right rider at the right time and to the right laboratory. In the CIRC's view, there was not enough willingness to put such a system in place. The approach to doping was one of containment, with a focus on protecting health. Looking at the tools available to UCI to combat doping, there was no satisfactory commitment to push the fight against doping beyond the limits of health protection. Anti-doping policy was for the most part based on a predictable and quantitative approach. Going after the cheaters was perceived as a witch-hunt that would be detrimental to the image of cycling.
Since UCI's anti-doping strategy was directed against the abuse of doping substances rather than the use of them, only the visible tip of the iceberg was tackled. Deterrence was not an integral part of the strategy. Instead, the CIRC considers that the policies of announcing sample collections, notifying riders and leaving them unattended, gave riders the opportunity to adapt and to evade testing positive through medical supervision, whilst at the same time giving the impression to the public that cycling was trying to address the doping problem.
The emphasis of UCI's anti-doping policy was, therefore, to give the impression that UCI was tough on doping rather than actually being good at anti-doping.
