USL Pro expansion news, rumor and wishful thinking.

I think most leagues can live with the failure rate as long as the check for the franchise fee doesn't bounce!!!

 

That's no way to run a business, though. Long-term, that's not sustainable. A franchise fee is a one-time thing. Annual league fees are another. And losing 79% of your teams eventually will impact your ability to convince more people to pony up franchise fees.

There's a reason we no longer have 30 teams at the D2 level. There's a reason expansion is slower now than it used to be. Taking people's checks and not worrying so much about retaining them past that is a practice that has not been sustainable, outdoors or indoors.

 

I don't disagree (the emoticon was a "wink"), and I firmly believe that the standards that the USSF put in place for D2 are 100% the right medicine to partly heal minor league soccer in the US. In all honesty I wish there were also D3 standards which might have prevented what happened in Puerto Rico and NY last year, not to mention a good portion of the 79% failure rate that your research has provided. I know you have past USL ties, but this practice never really seemed to give them any pause for cause over all those years. Just one man's opinion.

 

Planing on going Pro is the goal goal for FC Tucson, but right now still in the the first season of the SW division of PDL in second place. I am not sure if they are just going to jump into PRO without getting things well established at the PDL level first.
Right now Tucson has a field, but very limited bleachers only 700. Attendance is around 800 per weekend game. The mid-week games I have been to have been around 450-500. So making the leap to PRO seems a bit premature at this point. They need to get more bleacher seats first. Their goal was to get around 2,500 bleacher seats by the end of this season.
If the Soccer Complex Proposal that goes to the voters next year is passed, then who knows. That stadium would have seating up to 6,000.

 

No, you're right. And I made that point way back in 1998-1999.

As for D3 standards, again - the first half of the USSF standards apply to all pro leagues. And USL Pro meets nearly all of the existing D2 standards except for percentage of markets over a certain size, stadium capacities and (of course, the big one) ownership's net worth.

Most of the people who've been clamoring for D3 standards started doing so the day the D2 standards came out.

 

Hmm...that's an oversimplification. I grew up in Albuquerque, and as I recall it the Chiles (who later became the Geckos) were quite successful in the USISL and drew fairly large crowds, especially for a D3ish team in the early 1990s. The league folded before the team did. The Geckos were an attempt by a new ownership group to compete in D-3; they came along after I left town, but I remember the decision to move to Sacramento as an attempt to capture a bigger market rather than a response to failure in Albuquerque...the team didn't fail until after they made the move. Also, their biggest issue in the A-League was performance, not attendance.

There are also several other options for stadiums in town, I think...I will confess to being biased, but there's no reason from where I sit that ABQ couldn't successfully compete in NASL. I'm confident they'd be middle of the pack, at worst, for attendance.

 

OK, did a little more digging. It seems like the 1998 A-League Geckos did indeed have a perceived attendance problem. I found an article quoting their coach (who was also my high school coach, incidentally) complaining about no one showing up.

However, at the time average attendance was still 1,300 a game. If a haphazardly managed team with a dumb logo, an ex-high school coach, and sketchy financials drew over 1,000 people a game 14 years ago and thought that was bad, I'm even more convinced an actual professional team would have no trouble living up to USL or NASL's current standards. Not that those are particularly impressive...

 

1994 New Mexico Chiles -2,100 per game
1995 New Mexico Chiles - 3,854 per game
1996 New Mexico Chiles - 3,416 per game
1997 Albuquerque Geckos - 1,010 per game
1998 Sacramento Geckos - 1,237 per game
1999 Sacramento Geckos - 318 per game

And the Chiles' league didn't fold. They were in the USISL's Pro Division (which was Division III) not long after USISL added a pro division to its existing (amateur) outdoor division. When that was further split into the D3 Pro League and the Select League, the Chiles went Select in 1996. That league was going to be D2 in 1997, but the merger with the then-A-League created just the one D2 league, and the new Geckos went D3 (which they won in 1997). They moved both up (to the A-League) and out (to Sacramento) for 1998, which, as you noted, did not go well.

 

Thanks for the numbers...I looked for them but sort of assumed you'd have them if anyone did.

Glad to see that my recollections about the Chiles and their healthy attendances - which date to 1995 or earlier - were mostly accurate. Obviously it's apples and oranges but I think the point stands...if a well-planned USL Pro or NASL expansion team hatched in Albuquerque, there'd certainly be a precedent for them to draw crowds that meet or exceed the current D3 or D2 averages.

 

Hey, given the increased popularity and mainstreaming of the game since 1995, anybody who's got a relatively-decent sized market and a good place to play, and has the money, patience and vision to see it through, certainly has a chance. I wouldn't necessarily discount anybody out of hand anymore.

 

IMO, the USSF would do better to have standards that have more to do with fiscal balance and do more to support best practices sharing at the non-Div2 level - leave it open enough for anyone to get in, give it a go, and if they can get some traction, look to grow beyond a D3 level.

 

What if they can't get traction? The problem with the lower levels has been precisely that: leaving it open for anyone to give it a tumble has resulted in a 79% failure rate.

 

Given enough years, everyone dies. We should formalize a soccer franchise "infant mortality rate". Something like pro to non-pro or relocation within three (or five) years.

Both short term and long term rates are meaningful in their own way. Of course there are a few franchises that would be problematic (up and down, hiatus, and so on).

Just a thought.

 

That Kenn would say this is another powerful indicator of how much soccer has changed in this country.

 

That settles it. Bring on New Mexico Chiles 2.0! (Actually more like 3.0, or 4.0, or 4.1.1, but hey, just bring back the team...).

 

I said a chance, not that it was a certainty.

And Andy has just given me a project for today, so thank you for that.

 

Update: I've identified nearly 300 distinct franchises, and since most of them are no longer with us, you can see how problematic this can be. I'll crunch some numbers this weekend.

 

Okay, very preliminary findings, not final: 293 distinct DII, DIII and PDL franchises. 65% folded.

As far as years and whatnot, I still have to figure out what to do with teams from the Primordial Soup era who carried over into the Modern Era and sort things out by division in which they started and if they moved up or down and all that and if I really want to count the Colorado Foxes and San Diego Flash as the same franchise.

And as much as we talk about the PDL model being so sustainable, it looks like about 65% of those clubs have folded as well. But I have to look and see if more recent clubs are more likely to make it and the length of service and all that.

It looks like the El Paso Patriots might be the longest-running club going at the moment. They started in 1989 in USISL's indoor league as the Six Shooters and became the Patriots in 1991. They've been in Division III and 2.5 and II and the PDL and are still around. The Charleston Battery, Charlotte Eagles and Richmond Kickers are all in their 20th seasons and each have been up and down the dial as well.

 

Since they're roughly on the same level as PDL, any info on NPSL?

 

No.

Not interested in the NPSL. Don't think they're relevant. Don't think they matter. Don't think they have any ambition or infrastructure or quality control. There are clubs in the NPSL that are well-run. But information on them is much, much harder to come by, and quite frankly, I'm not making the effort.

 

Playing ability is comparable to PDL, but how they're run? Not even close. NPSL is very poorly run, and if you wanted any sort of history you can't really find it on the league website (they barely update the stuff going on NOW let alone have a history section). The best bet would be to check individual team websites.

 

Speaking of poorly run, I don't know if anyone has been following the AUDL (American Ultimate Disc League) and it's battles with the Connecticut Constitution.

The AUDL is similar in model to many of the minor league soccer leagues in the U.S. where the AUDL only makes money by selling franchises. The teams are basically left to themselves.

Part of the standard deal is a 100 mile exclusion zone. The league has gotten off to a good start in its inaugural season, and entities in big markets Boston and New York are interested in joining, but both are within 100 miles of the Connecticut (and Philly) teams. The league, which only gets money from franchise fees - and is thus motivated to expand - apparently paid off the Philly team, but has actually sued the Connecticut team.

It's getting pretty ugly, and it shows the problem inherent with niche sports when the different stakeholders have financial motivations at cross purposes.

 

That's fine. Found the info myself. Of course accuracy might be off slightly due to NPSL's less than stellar records. But I count 91 distinct franchises in NPSL's history (though at least 2 may have crossed over into your count FCNY who dropped from USL Pro into NPSL and the San Jose Frogs who moved laterally into PDL). They've thus far had 42 teams fold since the league was founded nine years ago.

 

And it might or might not not surprise anybody that it appears as there are 23 clubs that have been able to stay with us for 15+ years. The Minnesota Thunder (which actually started as an amateur team in, I believe, around 1990) is one of the few long-term clubs that is no longer around (along with the DFW Toros/Tornados/Spurs/Rattlers, which actually went back to the founding of the SISL, and the Yakima Reds).

And there are, it seems, some 45 one-and-done clubs in the group. It looks like 90 (or about 30%) lasted or have lasted more than five years (some clubs haven't had the opportunity to be around for five years yet).

 

And another complication isn't just the existence of clubs, but ownership. The Carolina RailHawks are on their third ownership group, and that group is actively trying to find a fourth.