Could loss of the Kings and being so close to portland be good for mls soccer in sacramento? Would be only team in town as well. Of course all the entry keys aply, investers, stadium, fans. What do you think?
It would certainly open a void for Sacramento fans. The one issue MLS might have is being so close to San Jose, especially since there are forces in San Francisco that want their own team as well. But you guys did very well attendance-wise for your UFL team last year. I see no reason why it can't be done. The issue is there might be a lack of interest from MLS. I would look into a team in NASL or USL Pro first.
This is the first I've heard of this. Could you point me in the direction of more info (other than the SJE forum, where I'm headed next)?
I don't see why MLS would not be interested in the event a deep pocketed investor came along. San Jose has next to no pull in the Sacramento market as the travel times between the two are pretty awful. SF-Sacramento is bad enough during times when people would need to travel to games (evenings and weekends). My brother-in-law commuted from Hercules to SF for work for 5 years. It's a bit over an hour with traffic. Sacramento is another hour in the opposite direction. If there was already an existing club in SF and Sacramento joined, the SF team might lose 500 attendees out of 14K for a weekend game...maybe...at the high end. Then again, one game a year, SF would get 20K+ rather than 14K for a Sacramento-SF game thanks to travelling fans and publicity for the "derby"...which would just about offset everything. A San-Jose/SF market mix is an entirely different story, because there is a sizable affluent middle ground that would likely be within 45 min to an hr of both venues. If Sacramento soccer fans want a club, they need to strike while the iron is hot after the Kings depart. There will eventually be growing remorse by a segment of the people in the area for not financing a deal to keep the Kings in place. Sacramento will be the wealthiest metro without a pro sports team without the hangups of the next two: -Vegas and the gambling issue -Hampton Roads, which is always in a deadlock between all of the municipalities of the area who fight over which one should get the venue and how the financing should be shared between Norfolk, VA Beach, etc. If something doesn't get done in short order, it's easy to see a scenario where an NHL or NFL team relocates there within 5 years, the public gets exicted about the Sacramento Coyotes or the Sacramento Raiders, and MLS expansion hopes are dead. The city's biggest problem is a lack of large corporate HQs. There are exactly zero Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Sacramento, which is an unbelievable statistic. The metro is twice as wealthy as the next zero HQ metro (Buffalo) and nearly 4x wealthier than any other area with this distinction. That doesn't help with sponsorship deals, hospitality/VIP bookings, or ad revenue. The demographics are there however: decent affluence, big numbers, a very diverse/international crowd, fairly progressive (by national standards, not NoCal standards).
I'm referring largely to the rumblings here. There are a good deal of people, particularly in the threads that generally speculate about future league makeup, who seem to think SF wants an MLS team. Many connect it to the fact that DC United's new owner is from SF (San Mateo, to be exact). Of course if he really wanted soccer in SF, he could've bought the Earthquakes.
If there's to be another team in California, SD and SF should be considered before Sacramento. Just makes more sense, if you're looking at potential investors, size of the fan base and # of ticket buyers, TV markets, etc. Plus, I think a Bay Area team will draw more fans from Sacramento than a Sacramento team would draw fans from the Bay Area.
San Diego, certainly. MLS has coveted that market pretty much from the inception of the league. But I disagree that the league would prioritize San Francisco over Sacramento. I think any San Fran bid would have to have an extremely wealthy owner, a stadium situation that would allow the team complete revenue control, and a very high season ticket commitment rate. In other words, San Fran would have to be a slam dunk, or you're just cannabalizing the SJ/Bay Area market. Sacramento would be far less of a risk to San Jose.
Not San Francisco, unless they're talking moving the Earthquakes there. The idea of adding a team anywhere else in the Bay Area while the Earthquakes are in San Jose is asinine.
If this was the NASL Expansion forum I would be all for it. MLS should look at San Diego before any other city in California.
If Salt Lake City can support an MLS team, then Sacramento is plenty big all by itself to support an MLS team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas This all comes down to stadiums. Ideally it'd be built just north of the old Arco Arena, where there's an old, never-completed and now derelict baseball stadium. Here: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=3...648802,-121.518102&spn=0.011747,0.007178&z=17 I'd move a rebranded Chivas there in a minute. (Biggest Sacramento drawback: that place is an inferno in the summer. Only night games would be advisable.)
Cool. I didn't realize there was a half-built baseball stadium there. You have the footprint for a pitch there... Especially with Portland as a model for converting a minor-league baseball field
Oh, it's not exactly even half built. Indeed, not even half that. It's basically nothing. But it is a great space for a stadium, and the parking and access is there already.
Love the idea of Chivas going there and rebranding. Never bought into Sacramento, but now I can believe it. They will serve as great rivals to Portland and San Jose. San Diego will never happen in MLS. Ever
Yeah I checked it out on Google Maps, but it has a great location and the parking is already there...
Well there is something. It's a corpse that'll need to be demolished. I never realized just how much desert there is in Sacramento.
Where do you live that you consider a 10 hour drive "close?" California is a big-ass state and while Sacremento might be the northern-most market of signifigance in the state, there's still a whole lot of California left to go before you hit Oregon and then Portland is situated on Oregon's northern border with Washington. Thus, it's about 580 miles between Portland and Sacra-tomato, as the great Steve Summers used to call it. Sacramento to LA is only about 390 miles so the Galaxy would be a much closer rival but it wouldn't exactly be a derby. By comparison, DC to poston is 490 miles and no one considers them geographic rivals. Same with Toronto and Chicago, which are a little more than 500 miles apart. I do think Sacramento would be a good market for MLS and would be able to attract some of outer West Bay soccer fans for whom going to San Jose is just too long a drive. But, I don't see it happening till MLS goes to it's Next Wave of expansion in a few years. Once Garber gets to shoot his was with a second NY team, I imagine they'll start looking at filling in markets they haven't got much of a presence in (Florida, the Southeast, lower Midwest, Southwest, maybe Alberta and California north of San Francisco). The exception to this will be if Chivas were to move to Sac but as others have noted, I think San Diego is where Chivas will (and should) eventually end up.
Well, it's not exactly desert, but the Central Valley would not be an agricultural powerhouse without a hell of a lot of irrigation. (There are fallow fields here and there, but not desert.) Hence the water wars of California politics. But like I said, it is hot as hell there in the summer. Not humid, but when it's 105 in the shade, dry heat or not, it's still damn hot. Sometimes people do forget how large a state California is. I used to be more negative about Sacramento and MLS. There is another thread on the city on this board where I chimed in. But I've come around over the years - partly after seeing the success of RSL in a smaller Western city. I think the city could support a team. I've also grown more negative about San Diego, which at one time I thought was an obvious move.
second everything here is wrong. DC to Boston is about 450 miles. And no one considers them geographic rivals? I guess no one except DC and New England supporters. And the rest of us in the Northeast.
I just posted in the expansion forum why Sac would be a great No. 22 MLS expansion team, even assuming the Kings stay long-term ( last week NBA said sac has one more year to get an arena deal done) Sac WILL sell out any facility under 21K. From the get go. It's just the nature of the market. Sac loves pro ball-- any pro ball. The one downside is that any games in July and August would have to be nightime affairs. The heat is too extreme then.
In the context of the discussion, it should have been obvious what he meant--that no one lives close enough to both cities that they are fighting over any fans. They're rivals on the field, but not in the ticket booth. As to the topic: Geographically, Sacto is probably a great location for a team--just far enough from SJ that there's no significant crossover, just close enough for an easy trip for traveling SGs a couple times a year. Demographically, it's fairly decent--it's not a huge town or a wealthy one, but it's a larger market than KC, CLB or SLC, and functionally less sporting competition (counting pro+college) than any of those. I can't see the league doing back flips over Sacto's interest, but if they got far enough on a stadium deal, if NY2 doesn't, and if some decent fan interest got stirred up by it, it's not a crazy concept.
I'm certainly not going to root against Sacramento. (Would make a great West partner to Orlando at #21.) But I don't see MLS taking it seriously as a grassroots expansion candidate. They may consider (wrongly) Sacramento to be in San Jose's market. I think they should start with a minor-league pro team. Get an investor willing to do what Phil Rawlins is trying to do: prove a market is viable for MLS by building lower-tier fan support. They could be a great western expansion for either NASL or USL Pro.
Sac doesn't really do much for the league's footprint though. I don't see a 4th Californian team happening anytime soon, same problem with a 3rd Texan team (San Antonio or Austin). Much more likely to see some expansion into the South-West via Phoenix or Las Vegas; or the South via Atlanta or Orlando (I use 'South' very loosely here); or even plugging in gaps further north with with St. Louis or Minneapolis. That is of course ignoring the whole NYC#2 is our focus corporate line, even though NYC#2 looks further away than ever at the moment. If MLS ever expanded out to something like 30/32 teams then I could Sacramento being a viable market but I don't see it happening within the next ten years. Not when there are gaps to be plugged elsewhere and stronger markets without representation.