First, I can't find the clip but there was a video interview with Sunil in like 07' where he came out and said straight out that Rochester won't ever get into MLS because the market size is too small. Yes MLS used that stadium to try to leverage a move, but it was never going to get past the board and he said so. Salt Lake and Chivas were both examples of just coming in at the perfect time after retraction and MLS needing cash. Checketts also basically had St. Louis in his back pocket the whole time in which he said if he couldn't get a stadium deal built then he'd go to St. Louis. And in 04' to get a 10M check and the possibility of a stadium built was enough despite Salt Lake being a small market. Right now I don't think the RSL bid gets through IMO. Also these decisions were made before a national TV deal. At the time MLS was still paying ESPN to play games, so at that time they didn't have to be worried about building a national footprint like they do now. At this point they need to expand the footprint and the numbers if they want to grow not only the TV deal but the advertising deals. Their focus in the next decade will be much less about getting stadiums built and more about building that network (both on TV and through streaming) so they can secure better sponsorship deals. As far as your pro/rel scenario, I really am not sure if the league can do that. I don't think any of us know what the rules are for forcing relocations or forcing sales, to my knowledge nothing like that has ever been publicly said. What I think a more likely scenario would be to cut off future expansion and hope the market takes care of the underperforming clubs. So if Orlando can't buy a franchise from the league, then the only thing they can do is try to buy and relocate a current club. And because the board will be able to approve or reject offers that will be their way to basically select the next expansion team. But this is the truth with any franchise league. New investors will pop up and if they can't buy from the league then they will try to buy out current franchise holders. So I agree that relocations will happen but I don't think it will be implemented by MLS I think it will be done in the marketplace.
If Sunil Galati said that Rochester would never get a team, it certainly wasn't Lamar Hunt's opinion, and I'd bet it had more to do with how much corporate support could be expected over media market concerns, especially at the time. Yesterday's conventional wisdom is usually the target of tomorrow's snarky insult. I'll take stable, committed ownership and a supportive fanbase in Louisville or Birmingham over continuous attempts to place a team in the "superior" media market of Atlanta.
Yea a stable committed ownership group in Louisville or Birmingham sounds great for us as fans, but at this point you have to get past the board. Remember each new partner is going to take a slice from the SUM pie (league wide sponsorship/TV money). So if I own Chicago then when I'm voting on the board to let in a new expansion club I am going to be concerned with how much value they can add to SUM before I let them just in. If Birmingham and Atlanta both can offer 16k fans at a stadium the big difference is that long term years or decades from now, Atlanta has the potential to bring in much higher TV numbers. Those numbers will translate directly into better TV deals that will put money in my pocket back in Chicago. Now when there was no real TV money to divide up and it was all about ticket sales then I would agree that a small market might offer the same value as a large market. I think that still exists in NASL or USL in which there is no national TV deal so it doesn't really matter how big a market is as long as they can sell tickets. But for MLS at this point and moving forward I think the market size does become a bigger issue then it was years ago.
Nope. Not for "us fans." For the benefit of the league. Frankly, I don't care about your bottom line; going straight down a list of media markets is NOT the way the league will expand. Pursuit of NY2 is an exception, because a second NYC location was announced as one of the original teams in MLS for 1995... er uh, 1996... If Orlando and San Antonio have stronger ownership and political support for stadiums, they will get in before Atlanta, Minn/St. Paul, Detroit, or St Louis... If Oklahoma City can be a viable market for the NBA, then I think smaller cities can work for MLS... could be sooner, could be later... but there are specific advantages to MLS having top billing in a smaller market versus playing third or fourth fiddle in a larger market.
It is about the bottom line of other stockholders in MLS since new partners will take a percentage of the revenue. So stock holders will look at the benefits vs. the loss of revenue from bringing on a new partner. The point is that in the future small markets will add smaller and smaller benefits. Orlando and San Antonio is a strong overall market because they are pretty large (2-2.5M) and only have 1 other major league club and no major league club in the summer. So I agree that you don't just go down the list and only look at population but it is a major factor when looking at a market. As far as Oklahoma City for instance, the reason why smaller markets can work in a big league in the US (Green Bay as well) is that they can draw regional support. You are in Tulsa correct? I imagine you hear a bit about the Thunder on local media coverage. I'm sure state wide the team draws fans. Regional support happens in these leagues because if you are a basketball fan anywhere in the region, you will probably adopt the Thunder to be your team. Even if you are hundreds of miles away from that team. Green Bay Packers have plenty of fans all around the upper midwest. The reason why MLS/soccer is different is because MLS is not the best league in the world and in fact there are much more successful and popular teams for someone in the region to adopt. So if you are hundreds of miles away from an MLS team and you are looking to adopt a team, many will opt for Man United or Real Madrid. MLS looses considerable market share to international clubs. That doesn't happen in other sports. If MLS isn't local, MOST fans will ignore it. Now you don't live in an MLS city and to you this may seem untrue. But we can use real data to back up this claim. For instance media reports of different sports. NFL is covered nation wide on sports sections of papers even if the city has a NFL team or not, this isn't the case with MLS. In fact MLS has a hard time finding press even in MLS cities. So it is difficult to compare the regional draw of an MLS team to the regional draw of a small market NBA team such as Oklahoma City.
When Tulsa was under consideration and a soccer specific stadium proposed in late 2005, the idea was that the stadium would be built as a long term regional attraction. Tulsa's Winnercomm had been producing MLS broadcasts for years, Francis Rooney's Manhattan Construction was in the business of building stadiums, and a local LLC was partnering with DC's new owners to get it done. http://tulsanow.org/index.php/2005/12/in-the-mood-to-help-fund-a-downtown-soccer-stadium/ I really get sick of people who insist they have all the answers, and know the true workings of media markets... past-present-future... especially in parts of the country they likely have never traveled to, let alone lived... any arbitrary cutoff point of city population, media market, or MSA or CSA #50 is an artificial one. This league needs stable markets more than it does oversaturated ones. I lived in Chicago (Rogers Park) off and on for about 15 years... sometimes the Fire could barely get the time of day in local media... Nobody knows the future. MLS is already in most top media markets and can't get better overnight ratings than a Tulsa-Fresno State college football game. Someday, maybe... but to expand the league to accommodate a long-term media strategy that may NEVER happen... well, that's even harder for me to believe than a team in Albuquerque.
I wish we could get in the NASL. I don't know why we don't already have a pro team in the NASL here. It's upsetting. While I lived in DC I was a member of La Barra Brava. I used to imagine how awesome it would be to support a team from my home state of New Mexico.
Let me help him out...from most reports, a lower division pro club in the US is going to cost you about 1.5-2M (front office/salaries/rent/travel) a year and no matter who you are you are going to run at about a 1M a year loss (give or take a few hundred grand). So the moment you find an investor who is totally cool with loosing a million bucks a year on a minor league soccer team will be the exact moment that Albuquerque will have themselves a minor league soccer team.
That statement is correct for pro soccer in general-- including MLS. The 1.5 to 2mil budget scenario in which a team loses $1mil every year sounds more like Edmonton than San Antonio... typical posts from bigsoccer's trollicious cynics signifying nothing.
Yes the statement is correct about all pro soccer. Why don't you go on the NASL/USL boards, there are people there who have worked in the D2 business for a few decades that will tell you that you are going to loose at least that much year after year no matter who you are. I'd be pretty surprised if even San Antonio broke even last year, if you have any links to anyone connected to the team saying they did I'd love to read about it.
YOU are WRONG to state a budget of 1.5 to $2 mil and losses of 1mil per year as something typical in minor league soccer... DEAD WRONG! Why do I need to read the NASL/USL boards? Are they going to be any less accurate than YOU'VE BEEN? Are YOU the forum police? The D2 "business" has changed in many many ways over the past three decades... it will continue to change... your BS doesn't explain any of that... you offer ZERO insights... just regurgitated bull mularkey... the currency of bigsoccer.
You tell me, smartypants. You're the one who made the outlandish statement that $1mil losses are the NORM in minor league soccer. ASL-- NPSL-- A-League -- D-3 --- USL1 --- NASL --- USL-Pro --- WSL-- MISL--- etc etc...
No kidding. Some people on this site have just enough knowledge to be dangerous-- dangerous stupid, that is...
Oh I'm sorry I was referring to D2, that is what I thought we were talking about. Sure if you want to start an NPSL team without professional players, playing like 12 games a year all regionally then certainly you won't be lossing 1M a year. I was just going by the comments I've heard on NASL/USL boards from people who worked in D2 teams over the years. When you said that the business has changed I thought you meant that MLS teams were paying transfer fees or Fox was paying for TV deals or some other kind of new revenue stream that would make the business of running a D2 team today any different than it was in the past.