MLS’s New Goals & MLB’s Labor Curveball

**John Ourand** (0:00)
There's a lot that US soccer is going to walk away from and be really, really happy about. You can tell from the size of the viewing audiences and the size of the crowds, that soccer is something in the United States that is really poised to continue to grow. I mean, there's enough fans here to support that.

**Peter Hamby** (0:19)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood and the players who run it all.
I'm Peter Hamby. It's Thursday, July 9th. Today, I'm joined by John Ourand to talk about the Blockbuster World Cup, which is drawing massive television ratings and juicing hopes among soccer officials that the future is bright for the sport here in the US, especially for Major League Soccer. We also look at the coming all-star break in Major League Baseball and why labor negotiations between players and owners are once again casting a shadow over an otherwise great season. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

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**Peter Hamby** (1:36)
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Happy Thursday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my pal, John Ourand. We're going to talk about the business of sports, the booming business of the World Cup. John is so excited to talk to me about that. Here, despite Team USA's loss, 42 million people watch the USA Belgium game on television, which blows out of the water most NFL games. We're gonna talk about that. We're also gonna talk about baseball. Yes, after the World Cup, we have to do something. It's gonna be baseball. John, we got the Home Run Derby coming up next week. Back to reality, as a Reds fan, for me, as an Orioles fan, for you. But we still got a few more days of the World Cup. Have you been having as much fun as I have?

**John Ourand** (3:11)
Well, we're taping this on Wednesday. There was no game today.

**Peter Hamby** (3:14)
It felt like it.

**John Ourand** (3:15)
I know. How empty was that? We went from having four games a day to having just a couple, and now you space it out a little bit. So it really has started to work into my social calendar a little bit.

**Peter Hamby** (3:26)
No, absolutely. The thing I was telling a few people who aren't as into soccer as I am is that, go back to 2002, 2010
We had great US teams. Obviously, 94 was fun. But the last few World Cups have been in weird time zones at weird times of the year. The act of gathering with your friends in the sunshine in the summer and watching these games is just so fun. Obviously, if you're a fan of the men's national team, it's been great to watch them. I did come crashing into reality though during that Belgium game and all of my cynical impulses rushed back. I tweeted that the US men's national team is the mid-major that we thought they were. The expanded tournament is exciting. As you said, there's games on all day long. I have them on here in my office. They're just so much fun, so much fun. But we played Bosnia, we played Australia, lost to Turkey.
Paraguay was good. We played well there. But look, it was just sort of like, oh, we are just not up to snuff. And all the old questions about the US team, you know, the way that young players are trained and groomed in the US versus overseas, those questions came back. Questions about where these guys can play in the global spotlight on the national stage. Do they care more about their club teams than the national side? All that stuff. Hating on Christian Pulisic has become a religion this week if you watch sports media. Anyway, I'm not here to analyze the actual game breakdowns, but...