There is an uproar in MLS about the NE Revolution and how they wont do this and that, and I agree that the Krapps are doing nothing right now and may not do anything at all. As for NASL we are looking at expansion and I know we are trying for more Western teams and I know a potential owner would be hard but what if Boston got a team. Boston has many people there who are screaming for a team and honestly I can see Boston having a lot of fans.
I will insert the mandatory comment. Is there a millionaire Bostonian worth 15+ million (or is it 50?) that would like to bring soccer to downtown Boston, and would not mind losing near a million usd per year? on a serious note, I do like the idea.
Getting the owner would be tough but I am just saying that if we lived in a fantasy world and somehow Boston gets an NASL team, how would it work and how popular would the team be.
Boston Rovers FC would be an amazing name. Maybe they could link with Irish champions Shamrock Rovers FC and exchange the best players. Would love Gary Twigg in NASL.
An NASL team in Boston proper couldn't do any worse than the Revs out in Foxborough. But it all comes down to the people with $$ and their willingness to part with it.
I read over the summer of a group in Boston interested in making a team but that the team would be only interested in MLS. Also that news only lasted for around 2-3 days so as of now there is no interest in Boston. I am hoping someone comes around or at least the NASL begins to try and bring in a potential owner.
what would work is New England Revolutions moving into the City of Boston and becoming Boston Rovers ....... is there a Boston Victory playing in USLPro or PDL Division? Maybe a team NASL team in Rhode Island or Connecticut may be good but Boston - Nope .... Unless Revolutions move into Boston!!!!
The Boston Victory will play this year in PDL and I have it on good authority 100% next year for 2013 a plan is already in place they will move from the PDL right into USL Pro. Very interested to see how this year turns out for them in terms of support.
No I am not saying no such thing that Revolutions be demoted too NASL ..... I am saying if a person wants a team to play in Boston instead of FoxBoro ..... Revolutions needs to move to the city
I see what you are saying but I would rather a different ownership than Krapps in Boston. The owner (in dreamland) should know how to tak advantage of the Irish population in Boston.
Do you just want to preach to the choir or do you want to have a discussion? If you want to have a discussion, I'd recommend discontinuing the use of pejoratives. The Revolution's owners are the Krafts. Anywho.... Is there any evidence whatsoever that the Boston sports market will support a minor league team in any sport? The facts are that prices (including facility rentals) in Boston are often substantially higher than outside of Boston. Minor league soccer is a money shredding business without putting itself into places that it is almost guaranteed to fail. Higher costs, almost no ability to pull in local media, much more limited ability to find local sponsors (the true lifeblood of minor league sports). It's a nice dream, but pretty much unrealistic unless you find someone willing to flush seven figures of assets down the tubes every year for the enjoyment of a few thousand fans, a small vocal subset of which will undoubtedly spend their time bitching on the internet (and in the stadium) about said owner. (There's a reason the Wellman's are gone from the RailHawks).
While I think that a USL Pro team could work well in Boston, I'm not particularly enthused about this prospect for two reasons. First, I think the model of starting in PDL and then jumping up to D3 is a bad one. It has not worked in the past, and to me it seems like a ploy by USL ownership and leadership to keep expansion fees coming in. Granted, the jump from PDL to D3 is a much smaller one than PDL to the new D2 requirements, but my own opinion on the matter is that USL has traditionally done a good job of selling team owners a trumped up bill of goods. Second, I think the name Boston Victory is about as bland as you can possibly get. In a town with so much soccer history and lore, there has got to be something more iconic than 'Victory.' What's more, there are a number of great neighborhoods and areas in Boston with distinct identities that the team could hope to serve through its image. (And note, I think the idea should be for teams to 'serve' their communities, not 'capitalize' on their identities.) Does anyone know any more about the Victory organization than can be found in a quick Google search? Organizational structure? Who is involved? Where they got that terrible "power ball" vector art? (Oh, and I think NASL could work well in Boston too. Especially if they played near Fenway--at, say, BU's Nickerson field.)
I heard the same thing about the (also first-season) Worcester Hydra PDL franchise. Pioneers, Seacoast (NH), MPS (ME), CFC Azul (CT, also new) going to stay in PDL. Of course, all dreams and rumors at this point, but these teams will start playing soon....
The sightlines at Nickerson stink. The only real choice would be Harvard Stadium. It has a fairly high capacity, but it traps sound well. I just wish the summer pro occupants could team up to remove the gridirons during the spring and summer and then get them painted back on before football season.
The Breakers definitely were/were/are bolstered by the "take your daughter to see role models" niche, but I still think they did well compared to other teams in their leagues. The Boston Cannons (lacross) do ok from what I've heard. Do the Lowell Spinners (A baseball) count? I don't think there's any other minor league teams in the area. Yup, mostly
If we lived in a fantasy world, they would go undefeated and draw 10,000 people a game. To be fair, it's been attempted exactly three times in the last 10 years. Dayton is the most recent, and Dayton (a) doesn't seem to care about its pro team, because it's all about its academy and ( b) doesn't seem to have a clue about how to actually do anything like win or sell tickets. The others were the Westchester Flames and New York Freedoms, who moved up in 2002. But if you're going to say that moving from PDL to D3 hasn't worked in the past and therefore probably wouldn't work now, yet you say a D3 team in Boston could work well, would you be basing that on actual precedent (like the PDL-to-D3 example) or just a hunch? Because the Boston Bulldogs (the most recent Boston-area pro team in USL) didn't work well, as they drew 630 fans a game over three years (the most recent, 2001). If a team had a committed local owner with sufficient liquidity and vision, and that owner hired good people, devoted resources to sales and marketing, provided a professional, safe and clean environment on game day and didn't panic when they didn't sell out the first three games, you could say "it could work well" in many places. The biggest reason teams in D3 or D2 or the PDL or the W-League or WPS or the NASL struggle is because they don't have those things, not because they're in this market or that market or because they win or don't win. Throwing a dart at a board and saying "I think it could work well there" is all well and good, but it's harder to have success at this - at all levels, in all leagues - than people seem to think. That's why we're in the mess we're in most of the time, and why very few lower-level teams give their fans complete optimism that they'll be around long-term. Because history shows otherwise.