The Strange Perils of Collective Action

Over at Match Fit USA, Jason posits an intriguing idea, but is it a good one?

"Keep United in DC" Day would work like this: fans attending matches all over MLS, in that aforementioned spirit of solidarity, would display signs or banners showing their support for the march efforts in DC. No matter if you're attending a match in Columbus, Chicago, or Houston, show your support for Barra Brava and all of the other United fans as they rally for their club. If it was your club being threatened, wouldn't you feel better knowing that fans around the league have your back?

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Let's be clear: I realize that what people in other cities do will have no effect on DC and their stadium issues. Local politicians aren't really going to care if a few fans in Columbus wave around "Keep United in DC" signs.

But that's not the point. Attention needs to be paid to the United's plight, and the wider the message goes, the better. Don Garber has made statements indicating that the team could be moved, and while many people believe those statements were idle threats (for the time being), the fact remains that United supporters feel the need to rally in support of their club.

Now this tends to be the sort of independent minded call to action I normally would wholeheartedly endorse, but I do have misgivings. As Jason rightly notes, this action would not place any pressure on local leaders, but it might indicate a certain collective voice to MLS and DC ownership. Which is my concern. We've written before that the only real leverage either the league or United ownership has is team relocation. That's it. And so if this action has any positive outcome other than fostering fandom solidarity (which is a useful thing in and of itself), it will be to undercut the bargaining power of V-Mac, Will Chang, and Don Garber. In other words, there's a bit of a zero-sum game at work here. Any power taken away from the owners means that localities have an incentive to be more intransigent, to dare to call a perceived bluff. And I, for one, think that bluff would eventually get called. Maybe not this year, or next, but within five years? Certainly. So the threat of relocation must be real, and perceived as real, a process that Garber just began.

Given that a long term viability plan for United must involve a stadium, we now have a strange paradox: The only way to ensure United's survival is to threaten United's survival.

QUICK UPDATE: This logic, applied the same way, explains why I do support the May 9 rally to keep United in DC. In this case, the pressure would be applied at least to both the ownership and local political power, in a way that a collective league wide action might not.

Everybody Talking to Their Pockets, Everybody Wants a Box of Chocolates and a Long Stemmed Rose

The question is not whether you are cynical, the question is "are you cynical enough?" In revisiting Don Garber's exclusive interview to Steve Goff, the natural cynical reaction is to start the countdown clock to St. Louis United. However, if you move your cynicism from a detached worldview in which the Laws of Man are dominated by the Law of Murphy to a more bitter one where the world is one where those of power have all been handed a script, and play their parts, and no one bothered to let you know that you were an extra, then the Garber interview takes a new perspective. The Don has come forward, in media res, and performed his role as the exposition fairy to try and bolster MacFarlane and Co.

Now, some people are calling this sort of thing "extortion." I disagree with the word choice, but the point is well made. What Mr. Garber has done can best be understood by considering what would happen if he had said, well, the opposite. If Garber comes out and says "Well, we're disappointed in the progress on the stadium front, and if something can't be worked out, we'll just have to keep United in D.C. anyways," can you imagine how MacFarlane and Chang and all would react? Garber would have completley cut them off at the knees. Instead, he says the only thing he can say to plausibly bolster United's posiiton: That the league thinks relocation is a viable option. But the relocation is theoretical, not actual. In essence, Garber has produced his firearm of choice, but left it conspicously unloaded. There are no good relocation options, even in St. Louis at the moment. For Garber to really make this a reality, he needs to have one of two things -- Either another city proposing a stadium deal acceptable to ownership on the table, or a new ownership group with a stadium deal in another city who would be willing to take United instead of an expansion team.

Both couses of actions face problems. The first would be negotiating a stadium deal for a team that does not necessarily exist. In essence, these would be contingent negotiations, which is an awkward situation to be in. So it seems that having an ownership group that has their own stadium deal would be an easier position, but this too has a problem. MacFarlane paid $33M for the rights to United as an IO team, and an expansion fee is around $15M to $20M. So any ownership group might face an addition 50% more in costs to get into the door than otherwise, assuming MacFarlane simply would sell at a break-even point (a dubious proposition at best).

So, while you may panic at Garber's comments, to me they change nothing other than making explicit the only leverage MacFarlane has, and only when you don't really think about it. For us to really panic, we need to see the depleted uranium bullets laid on the table. Otherwise, all Garber has done is state what everybody knows already.

Am I optimistic? No, not hardly, but I am far from pessimistic. Either a new stadium deal gets worked, or it doesn't. But if it doesn't, MLS needs a good option on how to deal with the team in another city, and I don't see that yet.