Different countries handle development differently. In Spain the reserve teams play in the actual league system but just can't be promoted to the top division. I only follow Barca in Spain but I know Barca B have moved from the 4th to 2nd divisions. In other nations like in England you don't have reserve teams playing in the league system with pro/rel you have closed reserve leagues.
what we can see is that being in MLS has been massive in terms of crowds to the clubs that have (kind of) moved up from the lower division. I find in difficult to believe that a game to earn a place in MLS wouldn't draw a bigger crowd than the same two clubs battling for a minor league title - I could be wrong, but what sort of crowd do those NASL title games get? For a number of reasons, I do actually think NASL clubs would have a much harder task than even clubs going from the championship to the premier league. They seem to be geared up towards a league where having a 7000 capacity stadium is more than adequate, and crowds are usually well below that. It would be more like Burton Albion getting promoted straight into the championship without having built a decent League One team first. It wouldn't be impossible but it would be very difficult. That's not to say the chance of going up would be off-putting though, Oops. I missed a "n't" off but I do believe there's no chance that a promotion-chasing Coventry would draw far more than an equally successful team with no promotion on offer. The examples from England's 5th tier were highlighting that exact point. Before the league opened up, the title race wasn't a huge prize. Afterwards, the interest was massive, albeit with a much lesser impact on the rest of the division. There have been a few cases where the team that won the 5th tier knew they wouldn't go up due to ground requirements, and in all cases winning their championship has been a muted affair with the "real" prize of the achievement. It did also perk up the bottom of what was then the 4th division, although that didn't really kick in until the last few week when reality started to hit for a few. A moribund Burnley, in the top flight 10 years earlier but then bumbling along with depressed crowds of 3000, had to win to stay up. Over 15000 turned up, and Burnley didn't really look back from there. The story of the day could have been the Football League champions of 1960 going out of the league altogether. Instead it was about how Lincoln went down after being in last place for only 30 seconds, after conceding a late goal in time added on after one of their players had been bitten by a policeman's dog. What I do know is that when more than one promotion place is available, promotion itself is the major celebration, not winning the championship (and four of the 5 promotions I've seen with Reading have seen the club win the title as well). The title is nice, but it's of secondary importance to going up. Put it this way, if fans could choose between going up and not winning the title, or winning the title but not going up, they wouldn't choose the latter.
Slight nit, they can't be promoted to a league where the top club plays. if (in some bizzaro universe) Barca got relegated from La Liga the same year Barca B won the Segunda then Barca B could take Barca's place in La Liga, since the two teams wouldn't be in the same division. And its not just La Liga, its anywhere in the pyramid. Tenerife B won promotion to Segunda B last year, but since Tenerife lost the promotion final to the Segunda and stayed in Segunda B, Tenerife B didn't get promoted.
Largely before they're playing in a system where pro/rel matters IMO. Either in the B sides lower in the pyramid who's goal isn't promotion or in reserve sides who aren't in the table. That's not to say there's no development happening as a first-team starter, clearly that's not the case, but a large part of the development of players happens before they claim that starting spot.
I think it is impossible to compare true promotion to what has happened in PNW/Montreal over the past few years. Remember these clubs were only named after the D2 club, Seattle could have easily become Seattle Alliance with a new identity. But the main reason why it is different is because clubs and markets know that 'promotion' will happen years before the actual event. This allows MLS to step in and work with the new club on marketing and ticket sales. Remember MLS has an entire training center just for ticket sales in which they can share best practices among the different markets and help new clubs understand how to market and sell an MLS ticket. New MLS markets can work to develop their fan bases for years in order to get excitement up before entering the league. If this wasn't the case I don't think you would see anywhere near the same amount of success. If you have 3 years to get ready for MLS instead of 3 months, it would make a huge difference in your marketing and media success.
Really, I've never heard of that before. So Barca B could be promoted while Barca gets relegated and then the clubs could just swap all the first team players in the B team and thus stay up? That seems like a really bad idea, I can't believe they would allow that to happen.
As far as I can tell, yeah. If not then not only does Barca get relegated, you would have to take the winner of the lower division (Barca B) and instead of promoting them you'd have to relegate them so that Barca and Barca B aren't playing in the same division. That seems to be an even worse idea.
I'm very aware of what they are. I'm a fan of the Sky Blues and have been since they were a much more competitive side. That statement though means crap all in regards to what we're talking about. In fact, it's just a statement, period. It has no bearing on anything at all. Certainly ... however, the situations are completely different. The Portland Timbers of the MLS are not the Portland Timbers of the NASL. The entire business entity and infrastructure changed. That's not what happens with Reading, Southampton, etc ... I would be very surprised if the Scorpions would have drawn more for a "promotion" match than we did for our inaugural match this year ... ... which illustrates perfectly what history and culture do for said model. Our history and culture are tied to the trophy. Certainly. when more than one spot is available. Same thing with the BCS bowls here. You start out aiming at the national title game ... and if you lose, you want to stay in position for one of the other BCS bowls and the associated monies/exposure they bring. Were I a Championship club my goal at the start of the year would be to win the Championship. Everything else would be taken care of if I did that.
I don't think anyone hates pro/rel in general. I don't know of anyone who wishes to abolish pro/rel in leagues in which they already exist. I do think many people take issue with larger beliefs that pro/rel advocates have. These threads are never REALLY about pro/rel, they are in fact about growing the sport in the US. Some people believe that pro/rel alone will increase the amount of fans and increase the amount of investment from owners and all of a sudden we are going to have a much better league than we do now simply by implementing pro/rel. Others (like myself) think that there will be no magical button we can push that will quickly change these things and that pro/rel itself does nothing. Like I said earlier if you split MLS into 2 divisions right now of 10 team and 9 teams and had pro/rel between MLS1 and MLS2 do you actually think anyone who watches Man United every weekend or Club America is going to start caring about MLS pro/rel? Do you think our salaries will go through the roof or our academies will improve simply because instead of having 2 conferences we now have 2 tiers with pro/rel? I don't buy it. There is no evidence that pro/rel alone will change anything. But like clockwork every week or two a new member of Bigsoccer will start a thread with their genius idea of creating pro/rel that will somehow make our league more popular and make owners spend more money and make our players much better. And like clockwork you have the same people come out and try to explain to that new member that there are actual reasons why pro/rel exists in other countries and doesn't exist here. Often times people don't even understand how MLS works, so there is a general education period where someone must actually learn how MLS operates before they can advocate change.
I don't hate pro/rel, but I'll answer your question: 1) They're fun. We really get to enjoy the latest magic bullet theory that's going to save MLS from being to "American". B) There is no B III) See #1
Why do pro/rel zealots spend so much time in a fantasy world? Do you, WSW, and cdskou jump into an old, dusty wardrobe everyday and emerge into a world where European sporting and business culture have taken over America, because the mighty lion Prorel and his pals Singletable and Playoffsuck have defeated the evil witch and her legion of casual American sports fans? A hundred years pass and you're living happily in the United States of Barclays Premier League, until you decide to leave the wardrobe and realize only two hours have passed in the real world, a world where 99% of your theories and ideas don't make any f*cking sense.
I would imagine (I could well be wrong) that fans of the USL Portland Timbers in 2010 who carried on to follow Portland Timbers in MLS would regard it as another incarnation of the same club rather than a completely different club that they switched their support to. The MLS club owners did own the old club, after all, and the use of the Timbers name was quite deliberate to create a continued identity. In reality it's not that different, albeit in opposite circumstances, to when clubs such as Aldershot Town and AFC Wimbledon reformed. Technically they are completely new clubs, but in reality they are a continuation of the old ones, with the same supporters etc. That was a one-off special game that won't ever be repeated. And also, a promotion-chasing crowd boost wouldn't just be one game. You've never had anything else, so how could it not be?
I'm not saying it isn't a natural evolution of the club and doesn't have any connection at all. The organization that existed in the USL though, is not the one that exists in the MLS. The entire corporate infrastructure changed. Players changed. The stadium changed. Even the fans changed. Yes, the identity is there as well as the look and spirit of the club. The "engine" though is not what drove the lower level incarnations of the Timbers. I mean, the same people are buying H2's that bought Hummers. Hummer though, is absolutely not the same company it was when Arnold made them popular to the "regular" buyer. Honestly, the same thing can be said for promotion chasing ... I mean, we've seen crowds in newly promoted sides dwindle significantly by Christmas because they're being lambasted. Ditto ...
It just seems incredible to me that fans wouldn't find a battle to go up a big draw, particularly as the season reached a climax. We have? Where? I'm not saying it never happens, but I can't think of many cases of crowds slumping. Well, no. As shown earlier, there have been examples where there's been a title but no promotion, so it's not all that's ever been known here.
The USOC is a great tournament for "minor league" soccer teams to play the big boys. No other American league does that. So that is a plus for fans and teams of lower leagues to get some exposure, revenue and fans. I think Pro/Rel will be great for the sport but it is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
pro/rel would be huge in this country and fans would turn out in droves to support their clubs to get them promoted. There is no doubt in my mind.
Except in the era prior to MLS when teams were free to move up and down the pyramid (though that was based on financial basis, not competitive ones, there was no "official" pro/rel systems) the fans barely showed up. Hell, the team didn't even need to win, fans showing up alone would have been enough as a massive increase in attendance would have led to more revenue (and likely even more revenue from sponsorships as attendance went up) which would have allowed teams to move up to the next level the next season. And yet, attendances were significantly worse than they are now in the non-pro/rel MLS. So, that's my evidence that your assertion is wrong. What's your evidence to suggest your assertion is right?
Man I wish you were right about that, but the USOC shows that even if lower division clubs have a chance to become national champions, the competition itself doesn't create new fans. The issue is that these clubs just don't have that many fans. There aren't that many people who actually identify themselves as Minnesota Stars or FC Edmonton fans. Its just a reality. Those clubs are pretty new and haven't been really well supported. So if you had an NASL Cup in which all of a sudden a team had a chance at promotion, there would certainly be some additional media coverage and some casual fans might take notice but it wouldn't create a mass interest in the club. In the sporting culture of those communities, they are still identified as a minor league club. That is why expansion has worked in this country. You don't have a few weeks to try to get casual fans or media interest in the club, you have a few years. You have years to work with the community to identify potential fans, sponsors, and media partners. And you get to tell people that you are bringing a 'major league team' and one that will always be a part of a major league. Expansion in MLS has a pretty good track record, I'm not sure promotion would be as successful. Teams just wouldn't have enough time to build fan bases, they wouldn't be able to promise sponsors and media partners that they will always be a member of a major league therefore it would lower the value of the contracts they can sign with those companies. You might get a quick rush of fair weather fans come NASL playoffs but even if you get promoted and then get sent back down, I don't know if those fans would stick around. Not when they can just watch Man U and Barca at home on TV.
That's rather putting the cart before the horse. Fans don't turn up thinking their attendance will help push the club upwards. They are instead drawn by the prospect of their club progressing. You might as well ask why fans of struggling baseball clubs don't decide to fill the stadium to push their team towards the world series. That just isn't how it works. Crowds increase in response to anticipated success. Saying that, I'm not convinced pro/rel would see sides going from 4000 fans to 14000 if they were challenging for the top, nor am I convinced the typical NASL crowd would rise a great deal if it came in. The loss to MLS clubs would just be far greater than the gain to the NASL ones.
But in the pre-MLS A-League/USL world, fans just showing up could have literally promoted their team. Pre-MLS teams decided what league to play in pretty much based on what league they could afford to play in. More fans meant more money and probably more sponsorships, which would also mean more money. More money meant that teams could afford to play in a higher league. All these fans that @Cosmos_kid think that will show up if there's a chance of promoting to MLS could have shown up pre-MLS and seen their team promoted win or lose. So why didn't they? Mainly because they don't exist. I'm not denying that there would be some bump in interest, but not nearly enough to counter the loss of interest in current MLS cities that get relegated. So why would a current MLS owner ever agree to this system?
...because fans don't decide to turn up on not en-masse. The town of St Helens (pop 175000) could easily support a League One club, but instead their tiny amateur club plays in the northwest counties league against northern pit villages etc. If the football fans in the town all turned up they could rise through the leagues rapidly, but they don't because there's no sign that the club will ever amount to anything. Like I said with the baseball example, why don't the Tampa Bay Rays fans pack their stadium to it's 45000 capacity every game, as that would make them much better?