Well I'm concerned that Nashville's stadium in a fairgrounds will be just like Columbus, so hey wee all got problems...
Especially given that one of those teams has ownership that does care about the team and does invest in it... just not in a way that make people with attendance fetishes cream their pants.
I think that's an awful point. There was a lot of question about NHL games in Vegas. Smaller market, more niche sport with no history in the area, and a huge hit with both locals and tourists.
I'd have been content with 24 teams in MLS and them expanding USL and NASL to be proper 2nd/3rd divisions but there's loads of $$$$ in the air.
NO, it can't stop until we get a real derby with FC Lawrence Fighting Cranes vs Topeka, then stop. Of course FC Wichita has to get in way before those teams get in.... for sure...
Peter Vermes said, his opinion was the league will go to 40 teams before it's done.......... we will see....
I guess my thought on the current pace of expansion is that there seems to be a critical mass for a national sports league in the US. That number seems to be in the mid 20s. The post merger NFL had success that the 16 team NFL and grew to 10 team AFL wouldn't have imagined a few years earlier. MLB had 26 at the time, and probably had longer term stability. I also think there is a perception that there is a ceiling to expansion, which may be fueling demand. People don't want to miss the boat? There was also a perception that MLS was a cheap buy in. Of course, the 2017 expansion race seemed have qwelled that idea, hence the fewer suitors today. I think the Sacramento bid at the time was the poster child for this attitude... Expecting MLS to accept a smaller fee because Sacramento was destiny. I can't say how big the league will ultimately be, but each increment is going to get more expensive.
the league has always struggled with the quality of officiating as well. More teams, more games requires more qualified officials. Not sure where those are going to come from
Not exactly applicable, tho. The point was that being made was in relation to spring baseball’s attendance being used as an example of Phoenix getting good attendance. The counter was that spring baseball’s attendance was driven by tourists. That isn’t the case for Vegas. Vegas metro has 2 million residents, had no professional teams, and seems to get a lot of local support.
And you have too many posts nobody cares about, but that doesn’t stop you from expanding your count. Name a league where people don’t think the officials are horrible.
Only positive I see from expanding to 30+ plus teams and with the solidarity payments going forward is that more clubs equals more academies. Teams will push hard to find that "jewel" to make a big profit of off. I just hope the next step is to take off the home grown territories.
At the moment, they do it via the expansion process. "we're stopping at 28" when there are like 12 cities competing for 2 franchises. Then "We're going to 30, but we don't know what will happen after that". Etc. It seems like the main factor in how many teams are allowed in is that it must be less than the number that want to be in. And Crew was the first team with a SSS that threatened to move because theirs was the first, and cheapest, SSS. The Save the Crew movement caught the league by surprise, in my opinion, but I think it was absolutely part of the business model. To their credit, they saved face somewhat. But if you think that the league with a bunch of NFL owners and a former NFL executive in charge was not borrowing that page from the NFL playbook, I respectfully disagree. I think the only reason we haven't seen more teams threatening to re-locate is that most of their stadiums aren't old enough yet. Maybe Save the Crew nipped that in the bud. I hope so. But brushing it off as a conspiracy theory seems extremely naive to me. If I claimed that carmakers and oil executives were secretly meeting to decide how to kill electric cars, that would be a conspiracy theory. When OPEC meets to decide what they want world oil prices to be and then give quotas for each member for how much they're allowed to produce to reach that price, that's not a conspiracy theory. When MLS has a board of Governors meeting to decide how big they want their league to be, and then always keep the number smaller than the number of bidders, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's just rational decision-making from a league that has a monopoly on first-division soccer in the country. That's why I don't think they will want all of the top 36 markets, for example. If they do that, they won't be able to make the cities compete with each other to get in. If you want concrete evidence that artificial scarcity is part of their plan, just look at the tarps on some of the stadiums. It's not a conspiracy, it's just business.
Yep, it's inconceivable that a league would move a team from a large market-- let's say, Los Angeles, to pick a random example--to a much smaller market --let's say St. Louis, or possibly Oakland.
They changed the ownership group. Cut out the guy who said he was out if the ballot measure failed, and added the Taylor family.
A couple of disparate thoughts on expansion: First, I don't buy the more markets = better TV ratings theory, mostly because it used to be something MLS talked about publicly ("expanding the national footprint"), it's already largely been achieved, and it hasn't done shit for the league's ratings. The national sports/entertainment broadcast market has changed dramatically over the past decade, and I don't see any hint the MLS has a good strategy regarding how to build a paying TV market base/improve its ratings. Expanding into more markets won't hurt, I suppose, and may help on the margins, but there's no reason the believe that the league's ratings aren't going to suck for the foreseeable future, expansion or no. Second, with more MLS clubs opting to run USL clubs as developmental sides (Columbus' new owners say this is their plan in the near future), continued MLS expansion will, eventually, have a pretty big effect on the shape of lower division professional soccer in the US. To date, unless I'm mistaken (and I did kinda/sorta try and research this a bit), 100% of MLS clubs who operate USL teams (in the top two divisions), run them out of either their MLS stadium, or their nearby training facility. Now, maybe that'll change, and some teams might choose to operate USL sides in cities farther way, but I certainly see the logic (and cost savings) of having a developmental roster living, training and playing with the senior roster, so I wouldn't hold my breath. As MLS grows, and as more MLS teams decide to invest in USL sides (I think the pressure to do so will increase), what you will eventually see is a USL structure with a split personality; a growing number of clubs which only exist because they're owned by MLS teams (and for whom attendance, local marketing revenue and the cost of travel aren't really part of the equation), and the rest, which consist of a smattering MLS expansion also-rans and teams in markets that are too small for MLS (and for whom attendance, local marketing revenue and the cost of travel are existential issues).
The Dynamo's USL club is quite some distance away. Several hundred miles. So not 100% which is rather pendantic of me but thought I'd clarify.
People point at the NFL and say, well they have 32 teams. They also have a lot of franchise instability and movement. 9 or 10 moves since 1982. Basically 1 every 4 years. The NFL also has a lot of teams that haven't won championships in decades, if ever. The NFL also has a lot of teams that might be popular locally but nobody cares about outside of the locality. Carolina, Houston. Tennessee. Arizona. Buffalo. Kansas City. etc.
There are probably more expatriate Bills fans (including me) than there are living in the Buffalo metropolitan area, and they tend to form a significant plurality, if not a majority, within a stadium in places like Miami, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Nashville, L.A., and whatever burg Carolina plays. There were reportedly over 25,000 Bills fans in Memorial Coliseum in L.A. for a game with the Rams in 2016, and a similar number for a playoff game in Jacksonville in early 2018. Here's Atlanta QB Matt Ryan commenting post-game about the astounding number of Bills fans in Atlanta during only the second NFL game played at Mercedes Benz, with the Falcons coming off a Super Bowl season, a ticket which should have been too hot to allow a large number of opposing fans. (By the way, the Bills fan in the sombrero pictured in the article traveled to Atlanta from Houston, not Buffalo). https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buff...ns_in_attendance_that_billsmafia_is_real.html Anecdotally, there are at least three Bills fans, including me, among the San Jose Ultras supporters. I'm an expat but one the others grew up in the East Bay and has never been to Buffalo in his life. He has been to Bills games, though, because we went together to Candlestick back in 2012. When I go to Bay Area Niners and Raiders games against the Bills, and I've been roughly 10 altogether over the past three decades, there are at least 10,000 Bills fans in attendance every time.