The English Premier League and Major League Soccer (MLS) are two of the biggest and best soccer leagues in the world and are hardly fought for each season by teams from across their respective countries.
Whilst both leagues are brilliant spectacles to behold, there are some differences and that is what we’ll be exploring today. So how do the Premier League and MLS compare?
The Formats
The first point of comparison is very basic; however, it will always be one of the major differences between the two competitions.
The format of the Premier League is widely regarded as the standard Soccer league system in Europe, with most other leagues on the continent also following the same process. The Premier League is made up of 20 teams every season, with each team playing the others twice (once at home and once away).
At the end of the season, the team with the most points is declared the winner of the Premier League and the three lowest scoring teams are relegated to the Championship. There is of course no relegation in the MLS, as the Soccer league structure is much smaller in the US.
The format of the MLS is much more complicated and involves both a ‘regular season’ and a play-off campaign to decide the final victors. Given the size of the United States, the MLS is split into an Eastern and Western conference that both feed teams into the end-of-season knockout competition that decides the title winners.
The Premier League does not have a ‘play-off’ campaign as there are many more competitions that English teams must also compete in over the course of the season such as the FA Cup, EFL Cup, and maybe even European Competitions.
Players and Their Wages
- Average Premier League Salary: £3,090,200/month
- Average MLS Salary: $312,470/month
This means that Premier League players are paid almost 10x the amount compared to the MLS players.
The next major difference between the Premier League and MLS is the wages that the players receive each week. As many people may be aware, the MLS has long been seen by European fans as somewhat of a ‘retirement home’ for the best players in the world, with them receiving a bumper pay-day before leaving the sport.
In reality, this only happens on very rare occasions when huge talents such as David Beckham, Frank Lampard, and now Xherdan Shaqiri decide to make the move to the MLS. The average MLS player earns under $10,000 dollars per week, making it a much less lucrative league for most players to compete in.
When compared to the average Premier League salary, the average wage of a player in the English topflight was over £75,000 a week and most wages are actually much higher than this.
Looking at the highest-paid players in the Leagues, there is a marked difference in quality and earnings. The richest player in the Premier League is Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese legend who earns over £500,000 per week alongside his other sponsorship deals.
In the MLS, Shaqiri is now the highest earner. The Swiss star takes home a yearly salary of around 8 Million dollars. Which is roughly a third of what Ronaldo takes home.
Television Money
Staying with the finances, which are unfortunately one of the major drivers of disparity in modern Soccer, the next point of comparison relates to the TV rights and the global reach of each league.
In England, the rights to screen Premier League fixtures live are one of the biggest packages that media companies fight over every few years. The current forecast for the cost of Premier League broadcast rights suggests that they will hit figures as high as 5 Billion pounds by the year 2025 in the UK alone (they will likely reach the same for International rights too).
This money is then dispersed between the teams in the league and ensures that they remain rich, something that many fans from lower divisions accuse the Premier League of excluding them and it is clear to see why.
In the MLS TV rights are far less valuable, with the figure of around 100 Million dollars being suggested as the latest cost of screening MLS matches. Some of this money goes to the clubs, as well as the US Soccer Federation.
There is simply less global interest in the MLS at the moment, but it is on the rise. Teams such as Seattle Sounders and Atlanta United have shown that large crowds will come to MLS matches consistently in support of their heroes.
The Quality of Soccer
Speaking of interest, the main reason why there is more interest in the Premier League than the MLS currently is that there is a huge gulf in the quality of Soccer that is on offer in both leagues.
The Premier League is held up as the highest standard Soccer league on the planet and attracts some of the finest players in the world to play there each season. For fans, this means that even the smaller teams in the league can compete with the best and a surprise is therefore always possible.
For reference, newly promoted team Nottingham Forest has reportedly spent 150 Million pounds on new players since they returned to the Premier League. For a team that has spent so long in the second tier of English Soccer this is a risk, but one they have to take in order to compete.
At the moment, and since its inception in 1996, the MLS has struggled to attract the best players in the prime of their careers as the league is simply not as heavily invested in by the media and fans alike.
One reason for this is that Soccer is not the national sport of the US as it is in England. Most of the TV money in the US is tied up in sports such as American Football and Basketball, as they are more popular than Soccer at the moment.
As I have already touched upon, the key factor is money though. Premier League teams can afford to pay the best players the highest wages, regardless of what some say the MLS is not a hotbed of wealth. If the MLS wants to compete for attention with the Premier League, it needs more investment and for American sports fans to get behind their teams even more.
These are just some of the reasons for comparison between the Premier League and the MLS, there are certainly more that I encourage you to look at for yourself. In the years to come, there may be a shift towards more support for the MLS, however, it relies upon the media, teams, and fans to make it happen.
