May 21st, 2010 12:27 am

The franchises of the MLS have had quite a few opponents to their way of running things from various people around the football and business environment. We have a peek at the MLS and the franchises as a business structure and talk about different Low Cost Franchises that formed the structure of the league over recent times. In spite of what your atttitude is of the current league structure it has been rather productive over the past several seasons and is still continuing to grow each campaign with many Low Cost Franchise being allocated the option to join the league. The league was established in 1993 as the main component for the subsequent years football world cup finals, this was a promise that was made to the governing body FIFA if the United States was given the football world cup finals. It was forecast that the sport of football would increase gradually as it has a great deal of competition from more established sports in the USA market like basketball and baseball, but this league would provide it with a stiff foundation of where to begin. 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 Franchises working and to expand a Home Based Franchise for every main city or town.

The 1st match begun in 1996 when the league comprised just ten small Home Based Franchise that were bought by businesses and sponsors as Franchise For Sale opportunities. The crowd 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 weak, this together with the teams 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 costs that the league had at the opening, so the Low Cost Franchises suffered over this initial start up time.

Following the 2002 football world cup finals where the United States squad go to 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 developing the league into a business sports leader in the United States sports field for the Low Cost Franchises and under this new management the MLS started to bring in better quality of players from across the countries.

The players abilities on the field 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 getting better. 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 peek at the Columbus Crew team and how the team has progressed into one of the most recognised Low Cost Franchises in the MLS, with huge investment.

The Columbus Crew were given their name in a ‘name the team’ game. In fact, from the team website “Columbus, OH resident Luis Orozco was the only contestant in a month long game to suggest that the team be named The Columbus Crew”. This name, and the team emblem, invokes images of hard-working Middle America – steel plants, auto manufacturing and the like. In fact, the franchises semi-official nickname is ‘The Hardest Working Team in America’. The Columbus Crew stadium was the first of the recent of wave of club-owned soccer-specific stadia which are slowly starting to change the financial picture of the sport in the United States. Nearly all franchises in the past have played in enormous NFL stadiums that dwarfed even reasonable crowds.

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