A Look into the Efficiency of the Major League Soccer SuperDraft

A Look into the Efficiency of the Major League Soccer SuperDraft

In this series of articles, we are going to look at the efficiency of the Major League Soccer SuperDraft. For this research, we analyzed the 2013-2019 MLS SuperDraft along with the 2013 MLS Supplemental Draft. We will evaluate draft efficiency by looking at several different success factors for both draftees and teams. Over this 7-year period there were 30 rounds of drafts and 632 allocated draft picks, from which 576 players were selected-approximately 91%. We can deduce that the majority of Major League Soccer teams use their allocated draft picks when available. However, the number of players actually signed to contracts by their drafting club is significantly lower. According to Figure 1, there is a sharp contrast between the number of players drafted versus the number that are signed to MLS contracts. Out of the 576 total selected players, only 269 were signed to an MLS Contract by the club that drafted them.

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