NASL v MLS trial promises key insight into American soccer, with $500m at stake

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Major League Soccer is being led by Proskauer Rose’s Bradley Ruskin, who has represented nearly every men’s professional sports league in the U.S., including the NHL, NFL, NBA and MLB.

The trial began with a 135-minute opening statement by Kessler, who painted NASL as outsiders in the American soccer landscape despite the league’s apparent success toward the end of its six-season stint. He called American soccer a “small, insular world” that “you either belong (to), or you don’t.”

“The established soccer powers of this country — USSF and MLS — did not welcome the competition that NASL wanted to introduce,” Kessler said in court. “Instead, they entered into an agreement — a conspiracy — where they took the professional league standards and applied it in a discriminatory way to prevent us from competing.”

Yates instead touted the standards as the very reason for soccer’s current success in the United States. He told the jurors USSF was “wrongly accused in this lawsuit.”

“Professional leagues have gone leaps and bounds over the last 30 years. That’s not an accident,” Yates said. He later stressed, “Minimum standards helped fuel that growth.”

Meanwhile, Ruskin described NASL and MLS as leagues on very different scales, minimizing the potential that NASL was seen as a threat by MLS.

“NASL was just not on Major League Soccer’s mind,” Ruskin said. “NASL and MLS were operating in different universes, different stratospheres.”

The trial continues this week with witness testimony. NASL’s first witness was called Wednesday, with Rishi Sehgal, the league’s former interim commissioner, taking the stand for eight hours, including a tense cross-examination.

Former NBA superstar Carmelo Anthony was an NASL co-owner. (Brad Penner / USA Today)

Future testimony from other high-profile sports figures is expected, including retired NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony (a former owner of NASL’s Puerto Rico FC) and Kansas City Chiefs CEO and FC Dallas owner Clark Hunt. Another key player is billionaire Rocco Commisso, who partly funds the lawsuit and in 2017 purchased a majority stake in the New York Cosmos, a former NASL club.

Insiders such as MLS commissioner Don Garber, USSF president Cindy Parlow Cone and former USSF president Sunil Gulati are also likely to take the witness stand, offering further insight into the mechanics of American soccer.

All three were in the courtroom for opening statements on Tuesday, with Garber and Gulati already on the receiving end of pointed attacks from NASL’s counsel.

(Top photo: Jewel Samad / AFP via Getty Images)

Source link : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6068165/2025/01/17/nasl-mls-trial/

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Publish date : 2025-01-16 20:00:00

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