Remember about 14 years ago or so, when removing the glass along the sides was in vogue? Everybody does that now, right? Now turf in a distinctive color is going to be the thing, yeah?
It will be a thing for a long time because turfs can have a 20 year shelf life and new teams are always buying old turfs (Orlando has the Comets old turf). I just hope they don't keep changing the field markings and the new Comets owner doesn't get a "smart" idea and ruin the logo the way he ruined their uniforms. No matter how many times the Sidekicks paint the new green logo on the center circle you will always be able to see the old purple logo bleeding through.
The first weekend of MASL matches are now showing on the league's YouTube channel, MASLtv. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQ_DsLv2r9sPQfpQRQCR7g
So...about that "TV deal"?... The LONG wait is finally over...It's finally #OPENINGDAY! MAke sure you tune in to https://t.co/ElkXpy76Iq to catch all the action all season long! pic.twitter.com/ZSHxtgCejC— MASL (@MASLarena) November 30, 2018
Saturday and Sunday opening crowds have looked good. And the Ambush-SeaWolves were on NBC Sports Chicago +. Wondering if there are more deals with NBC Sports Regional Network.
I would like to congratulate the Baltimore Blast on cutting their formerly 6 second audio delay down to just 3 seconds. Kudos!
Blast add some new talent to their roster. https://www.maslsoccer.com/stats#/192/transactions?season_id=1155 https://www.baltimoreblast.com/news/blast-announce-four-signings
I completely get how gutted this league is and that the indoor barely qualifies as "sport" anymore. But... I am really getting tired of paying good money for Wave tickets when no visiting team can make it past halftime before the blowout commences. The last close game was a few weeks ago against St. Louis (and that wasn't really close in the end) and before that Mississauga, in which I think the Wave mostly slept through. Of course I am (mostly) saying this in jest, but it's not a lot of fun watching a game in which the outcome is over about 10 minutes after it starts.
yeah mjames, the Wave and Sockers have, what 4 losses between them? its not fun when you know pretty much every game is going to be a win, and not a particularly close win either. still , once you get past the first round of the playoffs, everything is single elimination, which is frankly stupid. you play 26 games including playoffs, just so you can be eliminated based on 1 game? can someone please tell me, why all playoff rounds aren;'t series like the first round?
We all know the answer to each question is "money". The playoffs are a money loser so the fewer games, the better. Then of the 17 MASL teams, roughly 5 are "good" and about 3 or 4 are "not bad". The other 8 or 9 teams are generally run on a shoestring budget or else don't have the means to acquire more on-field talent. And as I said in another thread, as long as the league and teams don't focus on this being a SPORT, it isn't going to change. Truth is, I am kind of surprised that the Wave bothers putting a competitive team on the field. As long as there is an endless supply of 8- to 12-year olds to fill the pipeline, a Wave game may as well be a Chuck E. Cheese, so why bother paying the talent?
So what is the solution, exactly? There aren't enough realistic investors willing to spend enough money to raise the potential ceiling for revenue. The league has never been able to afford to be choosy. There are very few players worth the price of admission, and they can all do better outdoors The cadre of people who take this seriously as a sport is small, and won't grow substantially no matter how much money suddenly got injected into it. It doesn't look like you can kill it, but it also doesn't look like it will ever get back off the gurney, either, does it? Maybe markets like Utica are the answer, I don't know.
I've been going to Blast games for years, and as good as they have been as far as Championships won and playoff success, the last 4-5 years, most of the games I've been to have been nail biters, last one I saw a couple weeks ago was a 10-9 win over KC that went to the wire. I don't have season tickets, maybe I just happen to go to the better games, the last two years, I think the scores have been 8-7, 8-7, 5-4, 8-7, 10-9 when I've been in attendance.
The average MASL game this season has been decided by 3.64 goals. (That's only a rough indicator of competitiveness - you could have a game be tight all the way and a couple of late empty netters make the score bigger - but let's start there.) Fans in St. Louis have seen the tightest games, with an average final margin of 2.42 (Half have been decided by just one goal, most in the league. Milwaukee has had just one, Baltimore three.) Games in Ontario have been decided by an average of 5.50 goals per game, with four by eight or more. (Milwaukee and Baltimore each have three 8+ margins.) Milwaukee's 5.18 average is second. Those are the only two fan bases seeing games decided by an average of five or more goals.
Anyone have thoughts on possible expansion for next year? I’d think that Rochester could come back in. Which teams are most in Jeopardy of not returning?
Soccer Sam said definitively that the Lancers are happy in M2 and a move to the MASL is not possible. But the Lancers situation has been pretty fluid the last five years so definitively is not all that definitive.
As per usual, anyone who hasn't been announced yet would be behind the eight ball already for a December start (which doesn't stop and has never stopped indoor soccer from doing it anyway). But you could throw out any potential market you've heard of and some that have never had a team before and probably be just as likely to be right as wrong. (As for Rochester, unless they're suddenly going to be able to get dates at the bigger arena and unless worker's compensation has suddenly been figured out in New York state, that seems ambitious. Not to mention their owner said when they had like 2,500 for their opener that they'd never - not ever - sold 2,500 tickets to a game when the Lancers were in the MISL/MASL, despite announcing exponentially more than that on a regular basis, so let us not romanticize Rochester.) But let's look at what happened in each of the last five offseasons: Summer 2014 The latest merger drama, in which six MISL III teams that had been under the USL umbrella joined 15 PASL-Pro teams to form the MASL. The MISL's Pennsylvania team folded, and the PASL's Cleveland, Cincinnati, Illinois, Mexico and Bay Area teams did not join the combined league. (Cincinnati was supposed to, I believe, but did not eventually.) Summer 2015 (-5, +3) After Hidalgo had folded during the season and Seattle had been replaced by Tacoma after 13 games, five other teams went away for various reasons: Rochester, Wichita, Tulsa, Monterrey and Oxford City. Cedar Rapids, Baja and Sonora entered as expansion teams. Seventeen other teams came back, though Detroit moved to Flint. Summer 2016 (-5, +2) Waza Flo, Las Vegas, Brownsville, Saltillo and Sacramento went bye-bye. Florida and El Paso came in as expansion teams. The other 14 teams came back, though Missouri changed its name to Kansas City. Summer 2017 (-3, +2) Monterrey and Rio Grande Valley (Brownsville) came back from hiatus. Baja, Chicago and Dallas went away. The other 12 teams came back. Summer 2018 (-1, +2) Dallas returned from hiatus. Mississauga came in as an expansion team. Fifteen teams came back, though Syracuse moved to Utica and Cedar Rapids moved to Orlando. (Come on, that's what happened.) Sonora "went on hiatus." What will happen this summer? Nothing would be that surprising. Everybody could come back, or they could lose as many as five teams. Mississauga is in what we call a "Gots to Go Situation." They can spin it as a hiatus, but there's nothing happening there. Turlock could (and should) go. El Paso could (and should) go. Orlando should (but probably won't) go. Florida surely could. I would not be surprised to see St. Louis go either way. Same with Harrisburg. But that's all speculation. Anyone could make various predictions during any of the recent offseasons and they wouldn't be that outlandish.
Indoor Soccer is the Cockroach of Sports. Just this week the Alliance of American Football and the Canadian Women's Hockey League went out of business. Major League Lacrosse also contracted by 3 teams (1/3 of the league). It's important to note that the AAF had a very good presence on television and yet only managed to play 80% of their inaugural season.
It also cost the AAF $10M a week to do business. I would be surprised if the franchise values of all the MASL teams were $10M combined