Doesn't the City of San Jose own the stadium? I believe that's how Fisher/Wolff got around the property taxes.
Wolff I'm not certain but I knw Wolff had a sort of disdain for SJSU after they wouldn't want to work with either him or Fisher in regards to the initial sharing of a stadium. When Wolff was asked something about SJSU he scoffed. He is gone now but I'm pretty sure Fisher feels the same way.
Well, to be quite honest, those of us who are SJSU partisans weren't too thrilled with Lew when he demanded the right to pave over all of the remainder of South Campus as a sweetener for The Project, so there ya go. Don Kassing will always have a good place in my heart for telling Lew to go pound sand.
From the MLS forum: https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article227472439.html Some news in there, at least to me. Garble says: 1. BoG will meet in April to discuss expansion, though will not make a final decision (True). 2. MLS will pause after 28 (False). 3. 28 down to Sac/St. Louis. (True). Other news: 1. Sac treating April BoG meeting like final shot. 2. Sac wants to get term sheet for stadium signed wuth city prior to April BoG meeting. 3. Stadium would be ready sometime during 2021 season.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... (breathes deeply) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA BREAKING: David Beckham's new #MLS team, @InterMiamiCF, reveal temporary stadium plan in Fort Lauderdale. Full details ⬇️ | #MLS 🏟 https://t.co/2T3bJkI9vj— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) March 14, 2019 Back to Lockhart they go! When is MLS going to pull the plug on this shitshow?
What's the over/under on number of games before they break out the Fort Lauderdale Strikers throwback unis?
Austin and Miami are going to be such a freaking embarrassment for the league initially. It is going to have to be some creative ju jitsu to get them on track even after 5 years in the league. The stadiums and their attendance will be dire and a stark example of......what not to do......when permitting teams into the league in the future. Youd think at this point in the game we'd have learned.
Didn't Inter have a huge redevelopment plan for Lockhart? Isn't the proposed stadium, which is temporary for MLS and permanent for reserves, nicer than the Stadium in San Jose? They will have two stadiums nicer than half the current league. But hey, Miami is joke and Garber is stupid and SUM is evils !!!
You do realize that the Mas brothers & Beckham will likely sign Cristiano Ronaldo right? That alone will guarantee sell outs. As for Austin being a failure. The league has way too much riding on that one to allow PSV to repeat the mistakes they made with the Crew.
With so many opportunities for Throwback Jerseys amongst all the late but not entirely lamented soccer clubs through the history of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, that could take care of pretty much the entire first season at Lockhart.
I mean I will never be able to spill the irony of stadium troubles on a NYCFC fan, that irony will be lost immediately. Your team has the dubious distinction along with New England as not being able to talk one shred of crap about stadium situations or what constitutes a soccer stadium. Games played in that stadium you call home sincerely make curling more enjoyable to watch than actual soccer, and as a SJ fan, I know some seriously crap soccer. Your stadium makes it actually worse than the SJ product, and that takes some serious work. But hey..... "muh marketing and corporatez" right? But uh.......what Miami stadium??? Freedom Park get approved with all the road blocks removed and only you happen to know about it?? Its as existent right now, and in plan, as NYCFC's SSS, or New Englands.
Isn't that the same excuse that Miami Fusion had for bringing in Carlos Valderrama? Yep. And two-plus years at Dell Diamond is really gonna cement the tradition of El Tree. Who knows - Austin and Miami may indeed work out. I was dead-ass wrong about Atlanta, so (shrug). What is just as likely is that Austin will flop and be sold to San Antonio's MLS Expansion group (and hopefully renamed Scorpions), and Miami-Beckham will end up getting tired of the Miami political scene and selling out to a group of investors who will move that team to St. Louis. As to whether MLS will not "allow PSV to repeat the mistakes they made with the Crew", well...PSV still owns the team, so I know where my money's gonna lay on that one.
you can wall of shame it the moment Austin puts up a sellout crowd, be my guest. Or Miami gets a stadium thats not called Lockhart. However, I will say Austin does not average 11,000 their first year and will be lucky to break 10,000 over half the season.
First off, no MLS ball will be kicked in Austin before McKalla Place Stadium is completed, the league already said that. Second of all, this team isn't being sold and then moved to San Antonio. San Antonio will have to go through the expansion process. The Mas brothers are PART OF the Miami political scene, which is why they were brought on board as majority investors. St Louis will get into the league on their own, most likely with the current bid group. Most MLS fans feel for fans of Sac Republic. We all get it. People are upset, people are impatient, people will make up conspiracy theories. Yes, the BOG changes the expansion criteria. Why? MLS continues to grow at a rapid rate. What was once required for an expansion team in 2010 is no longer good enough to sustain an MLS team long term in 2019 and beyond. Trust me, as a Philly Union STH I fully understand that if MLS had waited a year to decide on Philly........they very likely wouldn't have gotten a team & would still be looking for one today, as the owners don't have the funding that the majority of the rest of the owners have. If it was still 2008....Sac would be in the league. It's 2019 though, and the long term costs to run a competitive MLS team have gone up exponentially. You can say that the league made an exception for Atlanta..........Uncle Arthur is a multi billionaire who paid for and built not only a Billionaire dollar plus palace of a stadium, but also paid $60M to build a team, academy & training facility. Not to mention the 10's of millions of dollars he's paid in transfer fees for players. We can say the league is making exceptions for Miami. They really aren't. If they were making exceptions, Miami would playing already and renting a stadium. Miami is a market MLS wants and needs to be in. It's the gateway to Latin America. It's attractive to the best players in the world. The Mas Brothers have serious $$$. UniVision is HQ'd there. Yes the league is going to honor their contract with Beckham and give him time to get it right. But they made exceptions for NYCFC!!! No Shit, cry us a river. City Football Group and the Yankees have more money and global reach than God. Plus it's New York City. Eventually they'll get a stadium built, even though it won't be as soon as anyone wants, they'll get it done. They made an exception for LAFC!!! Yup, they did. Second largest city in America. Look at their ownership group. Look at what they have and are spending. That was the right decision. Does MLS make certain expansion markets jump through more hoops? Of course. MLS has a right to choose who they want to join the league. They made Orlando jump through more hoops than NYCFC, & ATL UTD combined. They made FCC jump through hoops too. Look at what a mess Orlando has been on and off the field since coming to MLS. The gap between USL and MLS is gigantic. MLS is more concerned with doing what is best for the league (we can debate Austin all we want) first and fore most. I hope your team gets in. The MLS BOG has concerns over their bid. What all of those concerns are, only they and Sac Republic's owners know for sure.
The only way Austin plays in Dell Diamond is if Miami doesn't get a stadium together for 2020, which looks like a very real possibility. Other than that, ATX is set to begin play at Mckalla Place in 2021, similar to LAFC's start.
I think what @jaykoz3 is implying is that Austin has become the pet project of the league. Austin is, by all accounts, the only expansion franchise that will be started with active participation from the MLS BoG*. For the next two years, Precourt & co. could receive direct input from Board members, who I think would be inclined to offer help, because the success of Austin only increases their overall profit margin. *- Houston was a relocated team.
Way to go off topic but yeah, I kind of know how bad the NYCFC stadium situation is. The point I was making is that I find this announcement impressive. The fact that they are investing in their secondary venue is impressive. I brought San Jose simply because they recently built a stadium and it was super cheap and lazy. Kind of hard to knock Miami when their doing this.
Not a sustainable business model - one that relies on investment only. MLS has been in existence for a quarter of a century. The league and it's teams should be self sustaining by now. At some point, the league has to stop being a pyramid scheme. How do they do that? Business 1A - go where there is actual market demand and fan passion. All the rest will follow. That's why it's maddening when they keep choosing markets like Nashville or Austin, or even Miami, markets with no proven demand for soccer. Sacramento has literally checked all possible boxes (including the billionaire investor), and most importantly, the very high demand and passion for soccer. Still no announcement. Once Burkle was confirmed, Garber should have had is sorry ass on the first flight to Sacramento, making the Sac announcement, like he did for Cincy, Nashville, and Austin. And of those, only Cincy showed the same demand and passion for soccer. Except the complete and utter lack of interest and demand for an MLS team there. You can wax poetic about the Latin market and world stars wanting to go there all you want. But it still doesn't change the fact that Miami is an extremely fickle market. There is too much to do there, and it's such a destination, that "fans" there are always very casual about local sports teams. Only the Dolphins regularly draw well. The Marlins and Heat have always struggled, even during up years. With this over saturated, indifferent market, do you really think an MLS team stands snowball's chance in hell of drawing well? Heck, even an over paid, over-the-hill, Ronaldo won't be able to save them from this (he'd certainly give a temporary bump, but the novelty will very quickly wear off). Yes, they have the right to manipulate, lie to, and push away markets with proven demand and passionate fans. At their own long term peril. The last concern, at least the last public concern, a billionaire investor, was just spectacularly solved by the arrival of Ron Burkle. There should be no more concerns. Except the one where they use Sacramento as a staking horse for manipulating the markets they really want. Now, I don't want to argue for the sake of arguing. You seem to have no problem with us joining the league. But I'm at a point of not really caring about whether or not we get into MLS. The whole process has been a huge manipulation and tease. I'm done with it. If we get in, I'll have very mixed feelings. If we don't, as far as I'm concerned, there's not a big gap in the quality of the on-field product between MLS and USL. And USL is a no B.S. league, and is welcoming to any market that can get a team going. Plus, the big Euro leagues are readily available on TV, which presents a vastly superior product to MLS or USL.