The franchises of the MLS have had many opponents to their way of running things from many people around the football and business environment. We have a look at the MLS and the franchises as a business structure and talk about different Low Cost Franchise that formed the structure of the league over recent times. In spite of what your view is of the current league structure it has been very productive over the past several seasons and is still continuing to grow each year with many Low Cost Franchise being allocated the option to join the league. The league was created in 1993 as the main component for the next few years football world cup finals, this was a guarantee that was made to the governing body FIFA if the United States was awarded the football world cup finals. It was thought that the sport of football would increase gradually as it has a great deal of competition from more recognised sports in the USA market like basketball and baseball, but this league would provide it with a solid foundation of where to open. All the teams started as Franchise For Sale that was offered to several cities in the United States, large investment was given by people and sponsors across the world to buy and get the Low Cost Franchise started and to expand a Home Based Franchise for every main city or town.

The first match begun in 1996 when the league included just ten small Home Based Franchise that were acquired by businesses and sponsors as Franchise For Sale opportunities. The attendances for the matches were greater than expected and the overall outlook was looking good. But, at the very start, the league never in reality became successful, the team and players abilities were rather poor, this together with the franchises not having enough depth to be competitive with each other steadily destroyed crowd statistics. A Home Based Franchise had found it hard with the huge distances travelled and expenses that the league had at the opening, so the Low Cost Franchise suffered over this initial start up time.

Following the 2002 football world cup finals where the United States squad made the quarter-final stages, there was a an increase in the appeal of the football league and football across the whole of America. There was a new principal in power of expanding the league into a business sports leader in the United States sports field for the Low Cost Franchise and under this new management the MLS started to bring in better quality of players from across the countries.

The players abilities on the pitch still remain less compared to that found at a European football league but the amount of top players that are working and playing in the league, whether it be for the massive money deals or the lifestyle changes, is increasing. Franchise For Sale in Toronto, Canada is now obtainable and set up and this improved the leagues appeal to Canada, where football is more recognised.

We now look at the Columbus Crew team and how the team has developed into one of the most recognised Low Cost Franchise in the MLS, with huge investment.

The Columbus Crew were specified their name in a ‘name the club’ competition. In fact, from the club website “Columbus, OH local Luis Orozco was the only applicant in a month long competition to suggest that the club be named The Columbus Crew”. This name, and the club crest, summons images of diligent Middle America – steel plants, auto manufacturing and the like. In fact, the clubs semi-official nickname is ‘The Hardest Working Club in America’. The Columbus Crew ground was the first of the recent of wave of team-owned soccer-specific stadiums which are slowly starting to modify the financial picture of the sport in the United States. Virtually all clubs in the past have played in massive NFL stadiums that dwarfed even reasonable crowds.

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