Editors Note: This is the first article in a longer thematic set of articles we’ll publish here about corporate welfare and sports teams in Florida. This post was written by Kartik Krishnaiyer and originally appeared on the Florida Soccer Report on Substack.

Disclosure: I have worked for NASL, Fort Lauderdale Strikers and Miami FC. While some may say that skews my views toward MLS, though I think I’ve proven my fairness repeatedly in the past in covering subjects related to the league system in the US. Some may disagree, and that’s the absolute right of those individuals. Anyway, on to the discussion…

A massive uproar overtook the American soccer community on Thursday. The MLS club that’s based in Fort Lauderdale but calls itself Miami and sports the most famous person in the world as its biggest star (even Taylor Swift isn’t as famous as Messi) and also has the best world’s central midfielder of the last decade on its squad raised its ticket prices to new levels.

Fans and media alike are aghast.

Well, call me a contrarian but to me its a bunch of crying over milk many of these same forces helped spill in the past. In fact they are the very people who tipped the bottle over so the milk could spill.

I call these closed league problems…

Let’s set the scene.

Inter Miami CF

Inter Miami CF, is a fourth year MLS club in the US’ eight largest metropolitan area. Inter Miami CF entered MLS in 2020, which was the 15th successive season the metropolitan area had a professional lower division team.

It’s a club I rarely mention in my writing because I will admit I have nothing but contempt for them and despite living not far from their home ground, have never attended a match of theirs.

Local soccer in southeastern Florida

As a local soccer supporter I have continuedly had clubs to support locally since 2006. Many down here pretend like MLS is the only soccer on offering ever and even acted with condescension when approached about the Fort Lauderdale Strikers or Miami FC.

So many who promoted the idea of MLS in south Florida never lent support for lower division clubs locally. There are some very notable exceptions, I’d say the guys who do the Futbol Miami TV show are great and did champion the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. A few others who attend Inter Miami CF games were Strikers fans. But they are by and large exceptions in a larger sea of contempt and hostility we faced when trying to make pro soccer work in south Florida.

The Orlando example

Up the road in Orlando the lower division side run by Phil Rawlins became the MLS side and they kept the same fan culture, accessible ticket price points and general vibe until new ownership came in. Around North America we had communities where the existing USL or NASL teams were pulled up so-to-speak to MLS. This is our version of the promotion side of promotion/relegation (though importantly we don’t have the relegation side to serve as a development incentive among other things) but even if we view it that way it does involve competition not between clubs but between a set of closed leagues.

The Orlando example was impossible to replicate in southeast Florida.

Welfare for Billionaires

Back to south Florida. Many leading fans and supporters never worked to have a grassroots-oriented approach to the sport which put their fellow supporters and consumers first. Many constantly parroted the views of one billionaire (Marcelo Claure) or another (Jorge Mas) regardless of what it did to community, the local taxpayers or other clubs.

They championed Mas taking some of the last available green space in the notoriously corrupt city of Miami simultaneously with championing the destruction of Fort Lauderdale’s Lockhart Stadium complex without the building of any permanent structures or park space for the community to use. This whole episode plays into the closed league racket as I call it, where clubs in US closed leagues go and demand concessions from municipalities, and instead of championing good governance of the little guy as we see in Europe’s supporter culture, many leading fans champion the billionaire being given goodies that ultimately they and their neighbors are on the hook to pay for.

At this point in time, Inter Miami CF has never paid homage to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of NASL 1.0 who built that ground into a legendary one. Heck, they’re reluctant to even mention the former MLS club that played there. And of course various incarnations of the Strikers played there since.

Fans and closed-leagues

In general we see an unwillingness of supporters to challenge team or league management in MLS and other US “major” leagues unless something really egregious goes on. Many supporters act like they are PR agents for the billionaires. This is something I knew already in 2021, yet was still STUNNED by the reaction from many US fans to protests against the European Super League in the UK particularly when the protests involved targeting American owners and US financiers behind the concept. Supporting the supporters at that time as I did turned into a massive controversy stateside within my soccer circles. I couldn’t believe it but probably should have expected it. I was naïve in retrospect.

In southeastern Florida, when the then yet-unmanned MLS club sought a home in 2018 and 2019, both for its first team and for its youth academy, instead of questioning the expenditure or use of public facilities for Mr. Mas’ project many supporters of MLS would instead turn on soccer fans who had a more community-minded world view. This again is typical of American sports culture and the sort of mindset closed leagues tend to create.

In open systems, fans have a direct connection to a club and usually a direct role in making that club grow. In closed systems, more often than not fans are treated as consumers to be exploited or simply kept onside with various PR schemes. The act of building a culture from the ground up is often lost. This describes the situation down here to a tee.

Elitism of local MLS backers

Additionally southeastern Florida has been beset by an elitism of fans who unlike a few hours north in Orlando, Jacksonville* or the Tampa Bay Area found it beneath themselves to embrace lower division teams. This isn’t traditional football/soccer culture, it’s an elite closed-league culture. It’s an attitude saying “our area is bigger, better and more important than Madison, Louisville, Omaha or Hartford so we deserve a better side.” It would be pretty rich if fans in Hamburg, Germany’s second most populated city took that attitude while both their clubs linger in 2. Bundesliga, especially given one of those clubs was a permanent fixture in the top flight until recently.

Also some local fans had an outright hostility toward the efforts of Miami FC and the ownership of Riccardo Silva to open up the system in the United States. When I was working on that effort between 2017 and 2019, more than one person said to me “we are about to have an MLS team, so who cares?” Basically, who cares about Miami FC, who cares about the hundreds of clubs and communities disenfranchised by this system, we are about to have ours so screw the rest of you. Also a few mentioned it would best for my boss, Mr. Silva to JOIN with Jorge Mas rather than to fight for opportunity for his club and others. This my friends, is typifies the prevailing attitude down here.

The worm turns

This past week, Inter Miami CF season ticket holders got renewal forms which indicate a steep price hike, which would make their tickets more expensive than that of any club in the world. Do I blame Jorge Mas? Heck, no. At every turn those who support Inter Miami CF have shown they would champion any line from the owner, take any position, attack any one on the other side (including MLS itself when IMCF violated roster and cap rules in 2020, another closed-league thing) and generally go along with anything even if it screwed the local community.

Summary

In summary, if you lie down with dogs, you should expect to get some of the fleas…

* Explainer

*In Jacksonville fans have continued to support their former pro club the Armada even while toiling in the amateur ranks. Such a thing is unimaginable in southeastern Florida. The Armada as we have previously reported on this site and likely headed back to a professional league in 2024.