Again, you have it backwards. Yes small towns love sports. But they love teams that have a history in the area and one they can call their own. You can't just plant a lower division team in Smalltown, USA and expect people to support it off the bat. It doesn't work that way. People in small European towns support their local club because it's been their local club since before anyone currently living was even born.
people will support anything in small towns, sp when their teams are winning, it doesnt matter if their team is freesbe.
LOL. No they won't. Most small towns don't support their minor league baseball team, so what makes you think they would support a soccer team? How will this team make money? People definitely won't go if you charge any kind of significant admission. Concessions? Very little to be made there considering probable crowd size. The best they could hope for is some sugar daddy to come along who wants a pet project. They can't make money > they can't pay to get good players > quality of play is bad > they won't get promoted > they won't grow their fan base > repeat cycle. What you fail to understand is that pro/rel overseas was implemented before the idea of professional athletes and professional sports existed as we know it. Every single club started off on equal footing and that's why it works.
im not saying is easy, first you have to somehow win... but they will support anything if they're winning, thats for sure.
we are talking mostly about attendance and the longivity of the 2nd and third division season here. so its impossible in america for lower division soccer teams to make profit?
I'm not even talking about making a profit. Of course they can make a profit. It's not about profit but about revenue. But bringing in enough revenue to make real strides toward being a top flight team will be next to impossible. First and foremost, you must be able to pay a competitive salary to even get off the ground. Without that, you will have shit for players and you're going nowhere. Where is that money going to come from? That small town better have some damn good investors who aren't afraid to lose their ass for the first several years. That's really the only way to even get off the ground.
I think there is a problem with lower divisions don't play enough league games. Even a MLS reserve team plays what 12 games. While MLS teams play 34 league games. You don't see many players from the lower divisions make it up to play in MLS games.
It's seems that you know very little about how pro/rel actually works in reality... first of all, who says, that a small town club need a lot of money in the first place ?... they start out small at the lower levels with a bunch of young talented kids and if they are talented enough they may end up winning promotion... by winning the division they were playing in, it makes the expectations grow in the small town, and this also makes small local sponsors more interested in supporting the team and their fan base grow > repeat cycle. ... notice one thing here, you are talking about where to get the money to sign good players, I'm talking about youth development, which is really what makes pro/rel work at the lower levels in Europe, because it is not really the money but mainly the pride in young local talent, that makes small town clubs grow... if a top-flight club on the other hand suffer relegation, they cut expenses by getting rid of their most expensive players and then rely more on their own youth, trying to build up a new team.... they may be successful or fail, but the key words here are 'own youth', which also is why England is not all that good at developing young English players, because there is too much money in the levels below the EPL, so they are able to sign more good foreigners, which again hurt the development of their own youth... though it doesn't really hurt the pro/rel approach, because pro/rel has already been established for so many years in England.... .
Except....someone always gets relegated. Which is the point you always ignore. You think everyone pumps money (not all have it) into getting to the next level, when the truth is the bulk of teams are in mid-table obscurity. If EVERY league is improved by this....then every league would be great, right? Except they're not. Because you can't handle complex concepts. "Dig deep to be their best." That's hilarious. That's like "players scratching and clawing for every point," when, in fact, players play.
Cal Poly vs Santa Barbara, too. But I don't know what that has to do with anything. College soccer is popular in some places. Yes. Which has almost nothing to do with soccer and almost everything to do with it being Clemson vs. South Carolina.
No, they just want an American soccer setup that looks like Europe, so they can feel better about themselves for being soccer fans. Anyone who spends more than 60 seconds studying it who still thinks "it's a better model for the* MLS, that's all" doesn't really understand why it wouldn't be a better model. Because, as has been mentioned time and again, the owners who've invested millions in top-flight teams aren't going to voluntarily vote for a system that can wipe out the value of that franchise on the basis of a bad season, USSF isn't going to impose it, FIFA isn't going to impose it, it isn't why we didn't get the bid for the 2022 World Cup, the second division isn't infrastructurally ready to send any more teams to a higher level and leagues get to choose who the hell makes up their membership. I hope you'll consider clipping and saving that so that when another freaking discussion goes off the rails and becomes a pro/rel discussion and Europosers say stupid things, you'll be able to bring that out. And the lower divisions will play longer seasons when there is proof that the market will bear more home games. Not before. I don't know why obvious stuff eludes some of you people. *And, for the kabillionth time, it's not "the MLS." It's not "The Major League Soccer." It's "The National Football League" (or "The League") and it's "The National Basketball Association" (or "The Association"), but it's not "The Major League Soccer," ("The Soccer?") just like it's not "The Major League Baseball." ("The Baseball?") Stop it. Just stop it.
behind Mexico,Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras: http://www.iffhs.de/?bdcdc2b90f413ecf05ffcc8129dad5005fdcdc3bfcdc0aec70aeedb883e8c005
That data takes into account all years from 2000-2010. A period of time in which MLS has improved substantially. If you really think those leagues, besides Liga MX, are better than MLS then there's no arguing with you.
Considering Guatemala and Honduras NT gave US MNT a good challenge and most of the players on US team play in leagues outside MLS. It's possible that they are. Also the tournament that MLS doesn't take seriously CCL, they have 4 teams that qualify compared to 2 from Honduras and 2 from Guatemala. But I'm not going to argue with MLS theorists.
How many people there do you think are REALLY soccer fans? Very, very few. Whether or not that matters is another thing entirely. Point is, it's not an accurate way to judge long term, sustained attendance.