Monopsony and Salary Suppression: The Case of Major League Soccer in the United States

John Twomey and James Monks

The American Economist, 2011, vol. 56, issue 1, 20-28

Abstract: Top tier professional soccer in the United States is operated by Major League Soccer (MLS). The MLS was established and operates under a single entity structure, such that all players negotiate and sign contracts with the league rather than with individual teams. This monopsonistic structure was designed to eliminate competition for players across teams within the league and thus allow the league to suppress player salaries. This paper investigates how effective the MLS has been in achieving this goal and finds that the MLS devotes only about 25 percent of its revenues to player salaries, compared to 50 to 60 percent in most other U.S. professional sports and professional soccer leagues abroad.

Keywords: Monopsony; Labor Demand; Single-Entity Structures; Sports Economics; Profit maximization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943451105600104 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:amerec:v:56:y:2011:i:1:p:20-28

DOI: 10.1177/056943451105600104

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The American Economist from Sage Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().