That's great news coming out of Des Moines! When I saw the location for the proposed SSS I looked back to a posting of mine 5 years ago (Sept. 28, 2014) on a NASL thread about Des Moines: "I don't know how recent Bing maps are; but there seems to be open space south of MLK and west of 9th near downtown where the city took down some old factories. People could easily get to the Court Street clubs after the games and make a nice evening." I only missed it by 5 blocks!! (I was on the wrong side of SW 11th.) So, should I go to the Hessen Haus before or after the match?
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...ly-too-risky-menace-krause-kum-go/2375445001/ Don't get too excited yet!
Minor league soccer risky? Still can’t blame them. The public shouldn’t be paying for private league’s stadiums anyway if we’re being objective.
Completely agree. Honestly, I'm sure they could figure out something in the $20-30M range that the owner could finance himself. Give some tax incentives but not use tax dollars at all possibly.
I'm good with the land and/or tax incentives. It's something that we are lacking in DM as a place to host outdoor concerts (Principal Park sucks for concerts, Water Works is small and usually flooded, and the Fair Grandstand...) and it could host high school football, State soccer finals, etc. Drake and/or GVU could use it as a home soccer stadium (closer than Cownie for Drake) and GVU could use it as a home football stadium instead of East High's field. The DM metro loves to give land away to multinational companies with limited local staff and no public access, so I'd much rather see something like this than another corporate office. It seems like the final piece in the rebirth of this chunk of land.
Instead of GVU football, much rather see Drake and GVU as well as any local high schools (better than playing on the turf football fields). I wish more cities the size of Des Moines (and suburbs in much larger cities) that have 3-4 high schools in a district, have a proper district soccer field that is shared and a district football field ... these places are so underutilized that it only makes sense ... why have 4 turf football fields that are only used for their "purpose" 5 times a year and then used for other random things the rest of the time ... sorry, getting off my soap box!
Drake & GVU both use Cownie. At one point the five DMPS high schools did/were going to. But as a native South Sider and alumnus of both universities, Cownie sucks. It's not accessible and it floods way too much. Having high school and/or college soccer matches in a downtown SSS seems like a no brainer to me. It's accessible from virtually everywhere in that location. It's minutes from the Airport & bypass from the south and from 235 from the north. MLK is a quick bridge from the fairgrounds too. It's not really a stretch to see Dowling Catholic use it either given their location on the eastern edge of WDM just blocks from 235. I know that one of the proposals 15+ years ago was building the SSS (then known as Liberty Bank Stadium) in collaboration with them in the area near Valley Junction.
USL League 1 leadership has been considering Portland, Maine as a potential market since the league was preparing to launch. Now, the president of a Portland-based marketing agency and a Maine real estate developer are meeting with USL executives and city officials in an attempt to make professional soccer in the city a reality. They're scouting stadium sites, optimistically targeting a 2021 launch, and have settled upon Portland United (meh) as a name. https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/18/pro-soccer-in-portland-its-a-possibility/
USL San Diego has announced their principle owner and chairman, local businessman Andrew Vassiliadis. He becomes the USL’s youngest owner at 36. https://www.uslsandiego.com/news_article/show/1053513
The Athletic reporting that the New England Revolution will field a League One reserve team in 2020. They will play at Gillette Stadium.
SD1904 must be overjoyed that there will be a team with an even lower stadium capacity percentage than theirs.
I’m not going to lie. I actually had beer come out my nose just now... Honestly I had the same thought. I mean great they’re going to have a USL team. But given their longtime issues with MLS attendance at Gillette... USL attendance is likely to be laughable.
So you think they will have lower attendance than Swope Park's 443 per game in USL Championship? Orlando B is 203 and Toronto II is 168 in League 1.
Gillette Stadium's capacity is almost 66,000 CMP is 18,500 TFCII plays in a 1,000 seat stadium OCB plays in a 3,500 seat stadium Revs 2 would need to average around 1,500/game to have a better capacity percentage than SPR.
Doesn’t have to be lower than those three to be laughable. As those 3 are also laughable. But as is pointed out above. 450 people in a 66,000 seat stadium is going to look far worse than the 3 alternatives you listed.
It is a development team in League One. Who cares if the attendance is zero. They are probably playing in thier because Kraft owns it and the Revs offices are there allowing them to watch games from the office. If they play during the day like TFC II then it is a super low cost stadium even compared to a a HS Football Stadium.
Nipun Chopra and others are tweeting, and the local Lansing newspaper wrote an article suggesting, that Lansing Ignite are folding up the tent after just one year in USL-1. The club won't announce anything officially until the USL1 seson is over, but a player (Marshall Hollingsworth) did on social media. The Ignite were very successful on the field- 2nd highest point total of the 10 teams (12-6-10). The news article said the team needed to average 4000 to break even. They averaged about 2800. Some tweeters said that the Ignite only had 1 weekend match per month and most matches were weekend evenings (to accommodate the minor league baseball team with whom they share the stadium). There were also hard feelings that the Ignite displaced a 5 year old local team- Lansing United (NPSL/PDL); not all supporters instantly transferred their loyalty to the new pro team. The Ignite were owned by the owner of the minor league baseball team. They paid a $6 million franchise fee, estimated a $1 million operating budget with a $350,000 payroll. The Ignite got the city of Lansing to accept $1 million of expense over 5 years (I think for the conversion of the city owned minor league baseball park- approx. $15,000 per match). Someone tweeted, "I hope they are paying attention in Omaha." Omaha USL1, like Lansing, is owned by minor league baseball owner and will play in minor league stadium. The Ignite failed in a downtown ballpark; the Omaha ballpark is in the western suburbs on the edge of the metro area. The pitch in Lansing was laid out poorly to avoid removing the pitchers mound (the pitch was in the outfield); as a result, fans in the stands were far removed from the action. I understand Omaha will use a retractable pitchers mound; the pitch will be laid out along the 1st base line. Also, the Omaha metro is twice the population of Lansing's.
Lansing's attendance was 3rd in League One behind Madison and Richmond with only Madison slightly over the 4,000 mark, so it wasn't like they under performed relative to the league. They also only had 2,340 for a Saturday night in October in the Playoffs, but by this point they are going directly against B1G Football. NTSC had 4,067 by comparison.
A big part of Lansing's issues were a lack of "ideal" nights to host soccer games. A lot of weeknights and very few weekend evenings for soccer. Something to think about, but others at the USLC level seem to make it work so who knows.
The issue seems to be not tickets distributed, but how few of those tickets distributed were actually sold: https://www.reddit.com/r/USLPRO/com...swirling_that_lansing_ignite_is_dead/f3r1nj9/ and more importantly: https://www.reddit.com/r/USLPRO/com...swirling_that_lansing_ignite_is_dead/f3r6lij/
Swope Park actually had a season high crowd of 1500+ last Tuesday (October 8) before playing in front of Lou City's season high home crowd four days later.
2021 Western Conference: Tacoma, Portland Sacramento, Monterey Reno, Las Vegas Los Dos, Orange County San Diego, Phoenix Real Monarchs, Colorado Springs New Mexico, El Paso Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio Tulsa, Oklahoma City Austin (?) Eastern Conference: Hartford, Queensboro New York Red Bulls II, Loudon Pittsburgh, Bethlehem Charlotte, North Carolina Charleston, Atlanta Birmingham, Memphis Louisville, Indy Eleven Saint Louis, Kansas City Tampa Bay