With the 2020 NISA season now in the review mirror, the League Tuesday morning quietly published a trademark image for something called “NISA Premier” which has led to all sorts of speculation as to what the next move would be for the third-tier soccer league in the United States.
Offhand, it looks like “NISA Premier” is nothing more than just some kind of apparel trademark for the League, however, another Twitter user did some further digging on the filing revealing a section that includes actual match organizing.
NISA has always seemed to strive for a promotion/relegation system in the United States as it was originally developed as a “feeder league” for the NASL which eventually folded after the 2017 season. And although those plans were obviously sidetracked and detoured with the demise of NASL, NISA’s move to develop affiliations with amateur leagues across the country, and now this trademark image dropping this morning, the logical explanation would seem that the National Independent Soccer Association is moving forward with a promotion/relegation system of their own.
If “NISA Premier” is actually a promotion/relegation system and they’re actually able to pull it off, it would serve as the only pro soccer league in the United States to implement such a system that’s widely used within the vast majority of soccer systems around the world.
I guess how the USSF would respond to such an anticipated move from NISA — which has done nothing to help promote the growth of soccer in the United States given the way they let MLS dictate the top-tier of the U.S. pyramid — is still yet to be seen.
As far as that pyramid goes, MLS sits at the top with USL Championship serving as essentially “division two” within the second tier. There are two third-tier leagues including USL League One and NISA which serve as the extent of official recognition within the U.S. soccer system. Beyond that, there are some unofficial tier-four leagues like USL League Two and NPSL as well as a number of amateur and pro-development leagues including the Eastern Premier Soccer League — which implements a promotion/relegation system with the Cosmopolitan Soccer League and the Maryland Major Soccer League and the UPSL who implements their own internal promotion/relegation system.
Based on tiers three through one, the only way to get “promoted” is by forking over a shit ton of money in “expansion fees” and hope that your “territorial rights” haven’t already been established by another club in your area.
For soccer fans though, lets only hope that “NISA Premier” is actually an attempt to bring the promotion/relegation to pro soccer in the United States and not an attempt by the League to take a merchandising and branding approach utilized by USL and MLS that essentially forces clubs to sign over their soul to big corporate based soccer.
