MLS Valuations and U.S. Soccer Market

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Hosted by the founders of the Long Angle community, Navigating Wealth is a podcast for founders, executives, and investor operators who have built significant wealth. Each episode features a guest with an unusual career journey and deep subject matter expertise to share fresh, candid perspectives across some aspect of the economy, investing, family, health, or lifestyle. 

Today’s guest is Daniel Altman, an economist, founder and bestselling author. He's a Harvard-trained PhD who writes the High Yield Economics newsletter and has contributed to The New York Times, Forbes and The Economist. Dan is a founding investor in Calgary Wild FC.

Key Topics Covered:

• How commission structures create principal–agent problems in real estate and the strategies Dan uses to negotiate rebates and align incentives
• The economics behind women’s sports, why live content is “the emperor,” and how relatability drives the growth of leagues like Canadian women’s soccer
• Inside the business model of sports investing, including promotion dynamics in European soccer and where MLS valuations are today
• Lessons from Dan’s years running analytics inside professional soccer clubs and identifying undervalued opportunities across global soccer markets
• What generative AI will—and won’t—disrupt in the labor market, and why Dan believes many service jobs remain insulated
• How a shrinking labor force, new tariffs, and weak training systems could create another politically destabilizing wave of worker displacement
• The parallels between today’s U.S. economy and Argentina’s recent Peronist era, and why high debt-to-GDP ratios are fueling inflation fears
• Why foreign direct investment is gaining relevance, the countries currently offering the strongest growth-adjusted risk profiles, and how currency depreciation reshapes returns
• Dan’s outlook on the U.S. dollar, why even German bonds outperformed this year, and what a depreciating currency means for high-net-worth Americans


Links:
• Subscribe to get notified when we release new episodes: https://www.longangle.com/navigating-wealth-podcast
• Download Long Angle 2025 Professional Services Report - https://www.longangle.com/research/high-net-worth-professional-services

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
02:15 - Real Estate Commissions 
12:30 - Career Journey
18:45 - Sports Investing 
28:20 - Lessons from Instawork and Labor Market Disruption
35:10 - Generative AI's Impact on White-Collar vs Blue-Collar Jobs
42:30 - The Baseline Profitability Index
48:50 - Currency Devaluation, Gold, and Portfolio Diversification
55:40 - Follow Daniel Altman