Investing in the Product Means Investing in the Players

A follow-up on the USL CBA battle — and why some narratives need to be challenged directly.

I've been following the conversation around the USL CBA more closely in recent days. There are a lot of opinions about what is going on. Some have been uncomfortable in the right ways. But a particular argument keeps resurfacing — one I've seen show up in comment sections, LinkedIn posts, and casual conversation — and I think it needs to be addressed head-on.

The argument goes something like this: we need to see both sides. Owners are losing money too. Teams simply can't sustain much more. It's not fair to only look at the players' perspective.

I want to engage with that seriously, because I don't think the people making it are wrong to care about financial sustainability. I do think they're wrong about what that argument actually means — and who it actually serves.

Doing Your Due Diligence Is Not the Players' Problem

Let me start here, because I think it's the most important point and the one that gets glossed over most often.

USL teams have been losing money for as long as I've been connected to this league. I heard owners complaining about operating losses the year I signed my first contract in 2012. This is not new information. It was not a secret buried in fine print.

Professional sports franchises — especially at the lower league level — are not typically cash-flowing businesses. They never have been. The investment thesis for owning one of these clubs has always been about long-term appreciation, market positioning, community brand equity, and in many cases, pure passion for the sport. Anyone who bought a USL franchise expecting it to turn a profit straight away either didn't do their homework or was sold a story that wasn't true. Either way, that is not the players' responsibility to absorb.

The players did not ask ownership to buy the team. The players showed up, signed their contracts, and held up their end of the agreement. The owners are responsible for holding up the other end — and that includes meeting professional standards. You cannot simultaneously market your franchise as part of one of the best professional soccer pathways in the country and then turn around and use operating losses as a justification for substandard conditions. That's not both sides of an argument. That's a contradiction.

The "Can't Sustain Much More" Narrative Ignores the Full Picture

When someone says USL clubs simply can't sustain much more, I want to push back on that framing — not because operating a professional sports franchise is easy, but because that argument conveniently leaves out a lot of context about who is actually sitting in the ownership seat.

Owning a USL franchise is not an open door. The league has lead ownership requirements that carry meaningful net worth thresholds. These are not community fundraisers. The person at the top of a USL ownership group is, by the structure of the league itself, a wealthy individual who has been vetted as having the financial capacity to operate a professional club. That is the entry point. And beyond the lead owner, most USL clubs are structured with multi-member ownership groups — several investors sitting around a table, each with their own capital and financial interests in the club's long-term success. To look at that room and tell the players that the organization simply cannot sustain professional standards is, at best, a selective reading of the balance sheet.

I'm also not naive about how sophisticated ownership in this space is becoming. Firms like BellTower Partners and Weatherford Capital are not investing in the USL ecosystem because they expect to bleed money indefinitely. Private equity operates on long-term theses. They see something — league appreciation, franchise value growth, the 2026 World Cup tailwind, the promotion and relegation structure, the broader institutionalization of American soccer. That long-term upside is very real, and the people with the most visibility into it are the ones investing heavily right now. Ignoring that entirely in order to argue that clubs can't afford to treat their players like professionals is not an honest argument. It's a negotiating position dressed up as financial reality.

None of this means I think owning a USL club is a stress-free path to riches. It isn't, and I know that. The operating losses at the club level are real, and anyone who goes into this space expecting otherwise hasn't done their homework. But here's the thing — that homework was available before anyone signed a franchise agreement. USL clubs have been reporting operating losses for as long as I've been connected to this league. I heard about it as a player in 2012. It was not a secret hidden in the back of a disclosure document. Owners made a decision to enter a business with a known financial profile, and the players who suit up for those owners did not make that decision for them. The power imbalance between a multi-millionaire ownership group and a professional soccer player making a modest salary is significant. Asking the player to absorb the consequences of the owner's business model is not balance. It's a transfer of risk from the people who can afford it to the people who cannot.

This Argument Has Been Made Before. It Doesn't Age Well.

This is not the first time we've seen the financial fragility of an emerging league used as a reason to keep players underpaid. The WNBA spent the better part of two decades operating at a loss, and for most of that time, players were told to be grateful for the opportunity — that the league simply couldn't afford more, that asking for better conditions was a risk to the whole enterprise. Players largely accepted that framing for years. The result was a generation of elite athletes who had to play overseas in the offseason just to make ends meet, whose labor built a product that grew in value enormously while their compensation lagged far behind.

The WNBA's recent CBA battles — and the broader cultural moment around players demanding their fair share — happened precisely because that "we can't sustain it" argument was used for so long that it calcified into an accepted truth. It wasn't true then. It isn't true now in the USL.

The NBA itself was not profitable in its early years. Neither were most of the major professional sports leagues we now consider pillars of American culture. The path from emerging league to established institution almost always runs through a period of deliberate investment — spending ahead of revenue because you believe in the long-term value of what you're building. The NBA did not become the NBA by keeping player costs artificially low forever. It became the NBA by investing in the product, which meant investing in the people who are the product.

Devaluing the Product to Protect Short-Term Margins

This is the part that frustrates me most, and I want to say it plainly: when you use financial losses to argue against professional standards for players, you are devaluing the very thing that gives your franchise any value at all.

The players are the product. Not the owners. Not the crest. Not the league's vision document for promotion and relegation. The people on the field, night in and night out, are what fans pay to watch, what broadcast partners pay to air, what sponsors pay to be adjacent to. When you argue that those people don't deserve professional living standards because the balance sheet is tight, you are making a short-term financial argument that undermines the long-term value of everything you've built.

I've sat in enough locker rooms to know what players who feel disrespected look like. I've also seen what players who feel invested in and valued look like. The difference on the field is real. The difference in community engagement is real. The difference in the story your club tells about itself is real. Cutting corners on player standards is not a neutral financial decision. It is a decision about what kind of organization you want to be — and it has consequences that show up in ways that don't always appear on a P&L.

I Hold Both of These Things at Once — And You Should Too

I want to be a part of an ownership group for a USL club someday. I've said that publicly and I mean it. A former player helping to further grow the league that he once played in and opening doors for other players to do so as well. I go into that aspiration with eyes wide open about the financial realities of operating at this level. I know it won't be easy. I know the margins are thin and the path is long. And I know, from having played in this league for a decade, exactly what I would want to build for my players — because I know what it felt like to play in an environment that fell short of professional and what it felt like when it didn't.

Those two things are not in conflict. You can understand the financial pressure of owning a USL franchise and still believe that players deserve to show up to preseason knowing their contract will be honored, that they'll have health coverage, that they're being treated as professionals in a professional league.

The "owners are losing money too" argument is not wrong on its face. Operating losses are real. But using them to argue that players should accept less than professional standards — in a league that is simultaneously courting major private equity, planning a first division, and building $1 billion entertainment districts — is not a both sides argument. It's a deflection. And the players in this league have been hearing versions of it since long before I signed my first contract in 2012.

It was unconvincing then. It's unconvincing now.

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