Is MLS future in medium sized cities?

This would be a very good choice for MLS. The Sacramento/Stockton/Roseville metropolitan area (did I just write that?) has a huge population, many Latinos, and lots of families all with very few sporting options. There are the Kings and two minor league baseball teams (one triple A, one class A). That's it. I think it'd be a great choice - similar in fact to Salt Lake City.

 

Its funny. You want to be 'big time', but you don't seem to realise the biggest way to be truly big time is to be financially stable and (then) to grow your product/sport out of profits and not losses. Like most good businesses.

You must realize the tremendous overhang of decades of financial ??? attached with this sport. It is one of the strongest points the anti-soccer crowd has. "Those soccer guys don't know what they are doing....the sport ain't popular....look at the losses"..

I think we are just taking 2 sides here. You the ueberfan. Me the investor.

 

Why are so down on the growth potential for SA? That part of your argument I just don't get....

I think it is a great financial equation if SA can start around break even at 12-13k a game....and grow their base to 18k in 5-7 years, and be solidly profitable...that is a great business soccer story, and allows for upside (and maybe someone building another SSS at that point)...

 

Since it wasn't on the original list, Rochester's TV market size is 396,880. That makes Rochester barely half as large as San Antonio.

here's the raw populations:

City.................................................2000 Pop......1990 Pop....Growth...% Change
Sacramento-Yolo, CA CMSA................. 1,741,002....1,506,792....234,210....15.5
San Antonio, TX MSA.......................... 1,564,949....1,324,749....240,200....18.1
Rochester, NY MSA............................ 1,079,073....1,062,470....16,603......1.6

(Included was Sacramento to futher knave's comment).

 

The problem in Sacremento is that California cities rarely fund stadiums. The Kings are beginning to complain about not getting a new arena.

 

One thing that's not being included in this is that Austin and San Antonio are close to being linked at this point. They're separate in the table, but it's just over an hour between the two. Closer than parts of the SF Bay Area. If you lump in Austin's 1.35 million with SA's 1.75 million you're up to more than 3 million and into Minneapolis/Seattle territory. I understand that I can't exactly compare SA/Austin with Seattle. But with our cable in Austin carrying a San Antonio station, I can say that the two cities are linked enough that the I-35 corridor is a viable addition to the equation.

 

Like Charleston... and their 5,000 seat stadium?

 

might be the most sold out venue in all of MLS

 

New stands can be built if the interest can be generated.

 

You've obviously never been to Daniel's Island, South Carolina. You also missed my point.

 

The biggest way to be big time is for revenues to grow. Revenues aren't growing. You may be an investor, but you're a lousy one if you plan on investing in a business whose revenues haven't grown in 10 years.

You think I'm an uber fan, but I'm really just a realist recognizing that we've been in 'park' for 10 years. I'm not advocating we rev it up to 95 MPH from this position, but putting the gears in 'drive' might help.

 

Because it's a town of 1.5 million people with a fairly low level of disposable income and a 2nd rate stadium. How much can you realistically hope to extract from such a market?

 

From the folks I talk to, the league's per team revenue has most certainly grown. Ticket sales aren't the only measure of "revenue". Corporate sponsorships are way up over the last few years.

 

Just curious - what happens to the correlation when you exclude LA from the analysis?

 

Im from NYC, a city which basically has 2 MLB teams, 2 NHL teams, 2 NFL teams, 1 NBA team, and 2 minor league A ball clubs. Now all agreed this is a huge market, but Metrostars will always remain bottom of the barrell as far as revenues go. You can only build so many sporting events in one area.

I said USL only because they have clubs established, although small places to play, they can easily build on to it because they have a foundation.

Some palces are the exception to the rule though, for example I live right outside DC in Fairfax county. Certainly there is enough room here for another club to battle against DC United. Id like to see more medium to small cities in MLS.

just my opinion so dont bash me to hard.

 

It's not. People keep accusing me of wanting instant big time growth when they favor small steady growth, and I can only point out the lack of any growth in MLS so many times.

I want small sustainable growth too. The current situation outside of the Galaxy does not represent such a scenario, and settling for expansion options that don't satisfy anything on the supposed expansion checklist just because they're offering it for cheap is unlikely to get us on that road.

This league is on the road to nowhere unless it decides to be just a touch more ambitious than it appears it's willing to be. And that does kind of upset me, and if that isn't going to change, I want to know. It would radically change how I view and support this league.

The league doesn't want to consider that maybe having a league full of average clubs isn't the best way to do things. It doesn't want to consider that spending a fairly trifling sum on youth development would more than likely pay itself back in increased transfer fees and quality of play. It doesn't want to consider that the clubs that make more money have every right to be able to expect to reinvest that money in further building their club. They don't want to consider that subsidizng the incompetence and failure of some of its clubs is one of the best ways to breed further incompetence and failure within the league. It doesn't want to consider the possibility that maybe there's a reason every other soccer league in the world runs themselves differently than MLS does (the correct answer is probably not, "they're dumber than we are"), and the value of anti-trust exemption SEM gives them likely does not outweigh the sluggish growth potential these types of strictly centralized ventures tend to produce.

In short, they don't seem to realize that 10 years without an increase in attendances for the remaining original franchises might be a sign that their way of running things might not be all they've cracked it up to be, and some significant reform may be warranted.

 

I agree with you. The league seems like it is a bit confused on a bunch of issues, and probably part of it has to do with things such as AEG owning a bunch of teams. Not bashing AEG, but if I was in their place, id be seeking to stay on the line and not venture anywhere because im trying to dump some clubs and make a profit. They need individual(s) ownership of every club.

I dont know, my opinion of MLS is that they want to mold themselves after the other sporting leagues in the USA, instead of molding themselves after established leagues in other countries. So it seems stagnant(spell?) and not likely to attract any big name players from overseas. SO then you have to develop your youth here.

I still say they need to hit the medium to smaller cities, even if they dont have the huge venue now, an estblished small club could fair better much sooner.

 

If you're gonna say NY has 2 football teams (both play in Jersey), then NY has 2 basketball teams and 3 hockey teams. Don't go cherry picking the good parts of NJ's teams and leave out the Nets and Devils You gotta take the good with the bad!

Just having fun you nyceuro.

 

I've always thought this too. A mid-sized stadium in the Hampton Roads area could make a lot of money.

Build it large enough for the NFL (Hampton Roads is better than either Charlotte or certainly, Jacksonville for that...) (and create a secondary big event like the annual UNC-UVA football game and bill it as the real world's largest outdoor cocktail party), but have the stadium in a configuration that's can easily be scaled down to MLS proportions...

It's a tough nut to crack...

 

Maybe they're ready for a Major League team...

...And Green Bay is in the NFL, why?

 

I'm calling BS.

You left out 1 NHL team, 1 NBA team AND you counted "2 minor league A ball clubs..."

Lemme guess...You're not really from NYC, are you?

 

cause Green Bay figured out having a team is a good idea ~80 years ago. ... and Milwaukee not figuring out how to steal them away. It's 8 home games a year. That's not much for travel. And the locals own the team. GB really doesn't apply to any other sport or any other market.

 

Primarily because the NFL is one of the only team leagues I can think of that generates the vast majority of its money nationally. If it didn't, there'd simply be no way there'd be a team in Green Bay and not one in LA. So in that sense, being in a big city is actually somewhat of a hindrance for an NFL team because the extra costs are not necessarily balanced out by the ability to make lots more revenue.

This isn't the case for MLS, whose teams will principly rely on local revenues for the forseeable future.

 

excuse me i forgot the nets soon to be in booklyn and the devils. SI Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclones (my hasty typing)

as far as the last comment goes, born and raised in Queens