The MLS Stadium Thread

I thought the entire roof/stadium was going to be a fabric like LAFC and NYRB, but it looks like just the side of the stadium is going to wrapped of fabric.

 

I find myself unworried about matters of stadium capacity.

Build to the demand you have, or to the amount you'll need to satisfy the cost of the investment. Have room for expansion if you can but otherwise just focus on your prospects in the near term.

Limited capacity doesn't seem to inhibit the NBA or NHL's overall growth and it seems like its getting harder and harder to bring butts in seats across the board anyway.

Am I wrong for thinking this way?​

 

NBA and NFL teams have 41 home regular season home games, while MLS teams have 17. That's a big difference.

 

NFL has 8, MLB 80.

 

31 days has Jan, Mar, May etc

 

I don't think it speaks super highly of the ambition of the league when new franchises are putting up purpose-built stadiums with a smaller capacity than the league average attendance.

Especially since, if I were in the league office, I would be viewing MLS as a more butts-in-seats focused business than the other Big Four anyway.

The trend toward smaller capacities represents those other leagues chasing their own tail as they price out the class of fans who made them what they are in favor of corporate expense account playgrounds.

 

I agree your overall point, but I think with NBA and NHL even if it were feasible for them to have larger capacities, the added seating would be so bad it would add no value. The fields are so small, and the current venues already max the height and distance from the field.

See: Alamodome for NBA and Tropicana for NHL

 

That's assuming the necessity of extensive luxury boxes. Eliminate or reduce those and there's a whole new world of possibilities available. Even more if the venues were basketball or hockey specific as opposed to needing to switch between the two.

Those aren't iron laws of physics, those are choices that have been made to maximize immediate-term revenue.

The United Center in Chicago seats 20,900 or so, and it's the largest arena in the NBA. The Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill seats 21,750 and is a much smaller, more intimate venue. Rupp Arena in Kentucky seats 23,500, same story.

If NBA and NHL franchises wanted to maximize the number of fans that could see their games, they could put up 30,000 seat arenas where the nosebleeds are better views than they are currently, and could build them much cheaper than the current luxury playgrounds. That is not the business decision those leagues are making. That is the sort of business decision I would be making if I were MLS.

 

You do realize that those luxury boxes generate more revenue that the extra seats they displace would right? Like, A LOT more money. Having the extra seats also doesn't always mean that those extra seats would sell anyways. Unless a team is selling out every game (Which most sports teams don't) then giving up on luxury suits that do sell and for big money, for more seats that might or might not sell and bring in less money is an easy decision. One I am sure even you would make toward the luxury suits if you were actually faced with that decision as a team owner.

 

Premium seating is a definite necessity. The space/investment ratio is usually about 9:1, but the revenue is 1:2. I don't see how a modern sports operation can afford not to have premium seating options. The trick is to get the right balance.

 

Totally understand that, and they are also more consistent customers that require less work and advertising. Big white shoe law firm just re-ups their suite every year for untold thousands and those add up to a massive, easy no-effort revenue stream. It's a no-brainer when you see your fanbase as a given.

But where is sports going to be when a generation has grown up not having seen the games live?

And for me, MLS really differentiates itself from the other leagues in atmosphere and affordability. They have the opportunity to play a different sort of game here, winning legitimacy through having people come see their live product as opposed to just another shouting voice in our advertising attention economy.

You can sneak in premium seating here and there and still have a fundamentally democratic seat layout. The renovations to Wrigley Field are accomplishing that well. But I dissent from the view that immediate-term revenue maximization is the best option for the long-term health of a public brand like a professional sports team, especially so in soccer, doubly especially so for a league that wants to grow and establish itself. Sell 'em cheap and pack 'em in would be my view.

 

Attendances are based on tickets distributed, not turnstile clicks. I doubt there are more than 20,000 in the stadium very often these days.

Resale tickets will still be available on Stubhub and Ticketmaster.

 

Well, if you were making business decisions it seems pretty clear that MLS would have folded ages ago. I don't know why you need this explained to you, but revenues are what pay for a sports league. You talk about the aspirations of the league, then conveniently ignore how to pay for it if you deliberately eliminate valuable revenue streams. You know who doesn't have things like luxury boxes at their stadiyms? Minor league baseball teams

 

MLS is at the moment more butts-in-seats focused than the Big Four leagues, and even more so earlier in their history. They've certainly sold premium seating and that continues to ramp up, but that hasn't been the core of the business model the way it is now in the NBA, where premium seating and TV (not to mention public stadium financing scams) have almost entirely minimized any concerns about regular attendance at all.

Everybody wants that business model, as it is causing revenues to soar. And not just in North America, European soccer is moving further in that direction than American sports are moving in the European direction. Tottenham is currently constructing what is both literally and in spirit an NFL stadium.

Businesses exist to make money, and MLS especially has no route forward but continued revenue growth. I'm not passing out copies of the Marx-Engels Reader here by any means. I am just dubious whether focusing on fighting in the incredibly crowded corporate expense account market is a superior path to long-term revenue growth for a relatively low-visibility soccer league, as opposed to maximizing the number of people who can come and view your product. There is a network effect there, being in one of those huge Atlanta crowds makes a happier customer than watching tumbleweeds roll by you in Chicago. And that's to say nothing of the longer term consequences of pricing out regular joe fans, something that hasn't happened in MLS (yet), but would scare me if I were a Big Four league.

There are valid counterarguments to this, and we could get into a whole big thing about culture and politics and the modern world which would go increasingly afield of the subject, so I'll leave it alone. My central point is that it's not as obvious as just taking a dollar or refusing it. Making long-term growth plans requires making choices about what your business is and who it is for. And those decisions have consequences.

 

Amazon made losses for its first 21 years. Recent share sales have valued DC United and Orlando at around $500 but they're probably worth half that today. There are short-term and long-term decisions and MLS investors are banking on the long-term.

 

Good post, except this last part. MLB stadiums most certainly do have Luxury Boxes. Citizens Bank Park in Philly has lots of Luxury Boxes, I've even been fortunate enough to watch a game or two from one. Yankee Stadium has lots of Luxury Boxes as well. As do all of the newer stadiums.

 

Minor , not major League Baseball.