Despite surviving 19 seasons and enjoying a very successful 2014, Major League Soccer has a serious perception problem.

MLS points to surging ticket sales as an indicator that the league is flourishing and has bigger, better days ahead of it.

"Major League Soccer finished its 19th season with the highest attendance in league history," wrote Empire of Soccer's Ryan Brister. "The final average crowd of 19,149 marks the first time that MLS has cracked 19,000 fans per game for an entire season. It probably won’t be the last time."

All true. But as any professional sports franchise owner will tell you, television is where the real money is. And the popularity of MLS in person is not translating to television ratings.

"This season, an average of 141,000 viewers tuned in to MLS telecasts on its main channel, NBC Sports Network, a 26% increase over last season, though audiences were one-third larger than the overall average when matches followed telecasts of the English Premier League," noted Matthew Futterman in The Wall Street Journal.

Why aren't American viewers tuning into MLS when they apparently like Premier League soccer? Take one guess. In ticking off the various challenges MLS has going forward, Futterman cited "the league’s level of play." He did not mean that as a compliment.

Like many consumers, American sports fans are drawn to games that feature the best players. MLS is packed full of players who either used to be great in other leagues or never had that sort of talent in the first place.

It will take some work for us to get to 10 MLS players who could play at the higher levels of European soccer, but we will get there.

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