re: "Not Your Older Brother's MLS" article linked

That's pretty nicely done.
MLS went into this with open eyes in 1996. They knew it would grow, they went into the big stadia because that's all there was available, and many of them were venues for 1994, which was part of the intial allure. But the plan was to build these new facilities if they could keep costs down, and not go under in the first five years.

Fiscal responsibility has been a major point in the MLS model, as well. They still don't pay all that well, from top-to-bottom, but it's going to come. The owners learned the lessons of the old NASL failure quite well, and built to prevent it from happening, and now look what we have, a continent wide league, with strong support and strong teams in places OTHER than New York and Los Angeles!