Yes ok but we were talking about distance costs, if Bermuda Hogges move to Baltimore and become a succesful NASL, USL or even MLS franchise doesn't make sense to what we are talking about
What? That the team actually got better because they left the sun and the Hawai beaches for some hard work on the Tulsa practise fields? (lol)
Personally, I think Hawai'i has the potential to be a good pro market, but they're at least a decade away from any investor even thinking about it. As for Alaska, I'd love it, but I doubt it's happening Anyways, I looked up some attendance figures: Hawai'i University: football: 35k (good team this year) basketball: 6k (through 5 home games) women's basketball: 1700 (through 5 home games-mediocre team) women's volleyball: 6k (team is always nationally ranked) women's soccer: 655 (really bad team) Team Hawaii (old NASL): 4550 (one season-1977-2nd worst attendance in the league) NFL Pro Bowl: officially sells out, but it never looks like more than 30k of the 50k seats are filled. University of Alaska-Anchorage (D2): I'm not joking. An MLS advertisement actually popped upon their athletics site. basketball: 1710 (last season stats-decent team) hockey (D1): around 3000 (mediocre team) My thoughts: So obviously college attendance doesn't mean a whole lot in realtion to a pro team. Nonetheless even if students get in for free, 655 is still pretty could for a 3-14-3 girls soccer team. The 6000 for basketball games is even more impressive considering that Hawai'i has never even been close to the NCAA tournament. As for the old NASL team, I'm willing to chalk that failure up to bad management. They screwed San Antone and then they screwed Honolulu. Big Supprise.
College athletics are also bolstered by their participation in the conference system. That means they're getting money from bigger, better televised markets. But NASL isn't single entity, and while they're teams do support each other (or Traffic does), NASL's clubs don't share their profits in the same way that college sports and even MLS do. With the expense of travel and the lack of a profit sharing structure, a team in Hawaii seems like it'd be pretty much doomed from the start.
Distance from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to: Minneapolis, MN: 1,084 miles Ottawa, ON: 1,768 miles San Antonio, TX: 1,829 miles Montreal, QC: 1,852 miles Atlanta, GA: 1,974 miles Cary, NC: 2,072 miles Tampa Bay, FL: 2,367 miles Miami, FL: 2,569 miles Bayamon, PR: 3,486 miles Total Miles: 19,001 Distance from Honolulu, HI to: San Antonio, TX: 3,716 miles Minneapolis, MN: 3,967 miles Atlanta, GA: 4,500 miles Tampa Bay, FL: 4,693 miles Cary, NC: 4,787 miles Ottawa, ON: 4,819 miles Miami, FL: 4,865 miles Montreal, QC: 4,919 miles Bayamon, PR: 5,859 miles Total Miles: 42,125 That means that a team in Honolulu, HI would have to travel 23,124 more miles than a team in Edmonton, AB. As you can see above, that's more than double Edmonton's distance. It's not exactly apples and oranges--more like apples and a type of apple that's so large it's nearly indistinguishable as such. Remember too that Honolulu and PR are six hours apart, and that a flight from one to the other would take around 11 hours if you were to fly straight through. Their closest rival (Houston) would be a 7 hour flight. Compare to Edmonton, whose farthest opponent (PR) is 7 hours away and whose closest opponent (MN) is just two hours. Edmonton will surely spend a fortune on travel, but the travel budget for a Hawaii team would be downright astronomical.
Not even top teams like Barcelona or Man U or AC Milan make that many miles per season. What an expensive hobby, Div 2 soccer in the USA
Plus there's some chance that future teams could be located in closer cities like Calgary and Victoria. No chance that there will be any new teams between Hawaii and the mainland unless they play underwater.
The only realistic possibility for Hawaii would be the NPSL (Island Conference?), or something similar. They could have maybe 4 teams on Oahu (Honolulu, Waikiki (yeah, I know, it's part of Honolulu), Mililani, and/or Waipahu (sp?)), one or two on the Big Island, and maybe one each on Maui and Kauai. And I'm not even sure that would work. PDL would be way too expensive for something like that, so it would be either NPSL, or maybe something like a Hawaii Super-Amateur League, operating with the same format. Heck, it may just have to all be on Oahu.
Hawaii actually has a league, it even has relegation. It's called the MISO, it has three divisions. http://www.islandsoccer.com/ I don't think Alaska has one, though Anchorage might have something similar to the pub leagues every town has.
It's not that bad of an idea, but I think you would have to put two teams on the island, and sent teams on 4 games tours to make the cost worth it. The business case for it is solid, you have a location that has no sports, you could have a ping pong team there and you'd get some major coverage. If you go there less often, but for longer terms, you can very quickly make up the costs/time of the long trip.