US soccer antitrust fight heading to jury trial

The long-running antitrust battle at the pinnacle of American soccer is scheduled to be heard by a jury this September. This will be a pivotal event that could change professional soccer in the United States and Canada.

This issue resulted in a conflict between the North American Soccer League (NASL) and US Soccer and Major League Soccer (MLS). The NASL, which operated from 2011 to 2017, accuses US Soccer and MLS of illegally conspiring to prevent it from competing on an equal basis with MLS.

On Wednesday, a judge in the Eastern District of New York denied motions for summary judgment in the seven-year-old case, allowing the trial to go ahead. The lawsuit centers around U.S. Soccer’s standards for punishing Division I, II and III professional soccer leagues and how those standards have been applied over the years.

U.S. Soccer’s sanctioning criteria include factors such as minimum stadium capacity and minimum number of teams. Sanctions are crucial to the league’s credibility in the eyes of fans, sports broadcasters and sponsors. It also allows leagues to charge higher entry fees to expansion teams and attract top talent. For players, membership in a sanctioned league is critical to their ability to play on U.S. national teams and in FIFA-sanctioned events.

The NASL alleges that US Soccer and MLS colluded to exclude the team from becoming an MLS competitor. Founded in 2009 by teams that broke away from the United Soccer League (USL), a minor league affiliate of MLS, the NASL wanted to establish itself as a viable alternative to MLS. Although US Soccer recognized the NASL as a Division II league, it rejected the NASL’s bid for Division I status. Moreover, when the NASL applied for Division II status for 2018, US Soccer instead awarded that recognition to USL, leading the NASL to suspend activities.

The NASL maintains that U.S. Soccer inconsistently applied its sanctioning standards, favoring MLS while harming the NASL. For example, U.S. Division I soccer standards require that a team’s home stadium have a capacity of at least 15,000 spectators. Although some MLS stadiums did not meet this requirement, US Soccer granted MLS waivers for the construction of new stadiums. On the other hand, the NASL’s waiver requests have been denied, and the league says it has reviewed them more rigorously.