United Soccer League strike could mean some smaller teams won't survive work stoppage

Phoenix Rising FC played its first home game of the new season over the weekend, a 1-1 draw with Orange County FC. But the season’s future is in question, over the need for a new labor agreement between the USL Championship — the league in which Phoenix Rising plays — and the players’ union.

The union authorized a strike before the season started, but the games have still been played. The first weekend, though, featured a minute of stillness at the start of matches, as players stood still on the field in recognition of the labor disagreements.

To explain what’s going on and some of the issues at play is John Morrissey, a contributor to Backheeled, which covers the United Soccer League; he also writes his own Substack called USL Tactics.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: So what are the big issues at play here between the players union and the league?

JOHN MORRISSEY: Yeah, quite a few areas of disagreement, frankly. You think about compensation first and foremost. Where under the current CBA agreement that is still existing under continuation, you could see players on a 10-month contract where they're only getting $26,000 of pay and that includes components for housing and health care. So the players really want a boost on that.

Health care is another topic where clubs aren't currently forced to provide players with a plan, an insurance plan, currently. So you're looking for standardization there and a certain guarantee of premium coverage. The players want 100% premium coverage. Some of that has been in dispute by the clubs.

There is group licensing where you're looking at sponsorship deals, let's say. The players union wants to get extra compensation and an extra share of that revenue in a league where there are $60 million of sponsorship deals a year. So those topics, plenty more in terms of professional standards, training, meals, everything, are really all on the table.

BRODIE: Are the two sides particularly close on any of those?

MORRISSEY: You think about the compensation piece. We're looking at about a $2,000 gap right now.

BRODIE: Which doesn't seem like that much.

MORRISSEY: Doesn't seem like that much. But then the USL wants to add a new kind of sub-minimum contract type where an entry level player could only earn $30,000, which players argue kind of undercuts the whole point of raising the minimum in the first place. On something like group licensing, they're a half-million dollar apart and nobody's budging.

So as we, we enter week three of the season, the strike has been authorized, you start to wonder when do these tensions hit a breaking point?

BRODIE: Well, so what's the chatter among the players like? Are they looking to potentially strike at some point during the season?

MORRISSEY: Definitely on the table in discussions I've had with players and representatives of the union. They are looking for continued negotiations in good faith on the part of the owners in the league. It seems as if there wasn't really much progress made last week. If that continues this week, I think there's a real chance we could see delays as soon as this Saturday.

BRODIE: Really. And like, what would that mean for the league? I mean, this is not, there's been a lot of talk about, for example, Major League Baseball maybe not having a season next year because of a labor dispute, but I don't think anybody thinks MLB won't be there after that. Is there a chance that USL Championship could be seriously affected by a work stoppage?

MORRISSEY: Yeah, I mean, you think about the financial situation of these clubs. They are all almost uniformly losing $4-$5-$6 million a year. And much of the gamble of that you're going to absorb these losses and then you hit this World Cup year in 2026 where MLS is taking two months off.

You think there's going to be a real chance to get in the market, get new fans in the door. If that goes away and you lose the ability to tap into new interest, it feels like a major plank of what all these USL clubs, Rising included, have been building towards, has been lost.

I don't know if I would go as far to say as it's a pure disaster for everyone, but there would absolutely be major contraction.

BRODIE: Do you think there would be teams that would not survive a work stoppage?

MORRISSEY: Certainly. And somewhere, because at the end of the day, a lot of these owners are in it to lose money because they want the feel of owning a professional sports team. For others, who just don't have the financial resources, because this isn't the NFL, these aren't billionaires for the most part. You don't have that capacity to absorb the losses in a way where, yeah, you could go away.

BRODIE: Are there like, is there a consensus on which teams could be at risk of not coming back from that?

MORRISSEY: It's a bit closed door. It's hard to find information about what these clubs are doing financially. Yeah, I think you look at smaller markets like Loudoun United, who plays deep in the suburbs of Virginia. Monterey Bay, who plays in a smaller town in California, they feel like they'd be top of the list.

But if there's anything that's true of the USL is that the capacity surprise is pretty limitless.

BRODIE: So you mentioned the World Cup and the timing on this is so interesting because as you say, the World Cup this summer is going to be here in Canada and Mexico. There's a lot of hope among the soccer world in this country that that would be a huge boon to levels of soccer from youth all the way up.

MORRISSEY: No, absolutely. And I'm glad you bring up the youth point because that's a plank of the larger USL model. These teams have the game day experience of senior players, but for the most part, they are trying to create academies that can tap in local families and be something of a profit center. If the top end of your operations are impacted, there is a domino effect.

And if you're not there in the World Cup, you're not raising that awareness. It hits you in more ways than just the gate attendance and concession sales. It really becomes impactful.