Thread dedicated to cities that get little or no discussion for whatever reason or another... I'll just throw some names out there Buffalo Sacramento Hartford/Providence Cincinnati Anchorage/Honolulu Calgary/Edmonton Twin Cities of Minnesota Quebec City Halifax Atlantic City Pittsburgh Boise Anaheim Memphis/Nashville Portland, ME OKC ( Remember when they all but had a team? ) Now don't kill me here, I understand that most of these are either ridiculous or too close a proximity to another team(s) but i just want some ideas thrown around about some of these places, whether they be even close to a legit reason to join MLS or not. I love the idea of Quebec City, had (and still do have) a very loyal hockey fanbase, obviously have a more of a connection to Europe than anywhere else (mostly francophone population, France still has some kind of cultural influence) automatic fierce rivalry with Montreal, fans could also travel to New England, Toronto. We could see how this does... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Quebec
I have always thought that sacramento would be a big success. Since it is the capital maybe California Republic which is a name MLS seems to want to use. The metro area is double that of Salt Lake's (2.2M) and there is only 1 major league team in the city and there has been long talks of the Kings being the nba team that eventually moves to Vegas. If that happened Sacramento would replace Vegas as the biggest city in America without a major league team. Lots of youth soccer, 25% hispanic, pretty good income levels, and San Jose is 2 hrs away and 6hrs to LA. 4 teams within 6 hour drive is pretty cool for traveling fans, could help give San Jose a shot in the arm as well to give them a rival in their back yard.
You forgot a city. Now I am going to make A point for the next 15 years for Tucson, AZ on getting an MLS team. Tucson has A 1998 built Spring Training Facility that is no longer being used. Yes, I know, its A baseball stadium, but we can transform it into A soccer stadium, just like Portland is doing. http://www.kinosportscomplex.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Electric_Park Now the reason the D-Backs and White Sox's left the facility was due to low attendance. Now you may say, Oh, Then why should the MLS add A team there in Tucson. Well in 2005, and 2009, the Mexico National Baseball Team played two friendlies here. The attendance for each game was over 13,500. When the Dodgers played here, the attendance was usually at 12,000. The Complex, is located in South Tucson, also known as A major area of Mexican-Americans. Now when ever there are soccer tournaments here, registration is usually filled A week after it opens. If we could get A team that would allow for the culture of Mexico to influence the team, then I believe we would become the next Toronto FC/Seattle Sounders, fan base wise. Now you may say, Oh, Tucson Would Have No One To Influence Or Pay The Fees Of The MLS. We Actually Do Have A Person. A Man By The Name Of Jim Click. Jim Click has been trying to bring A minor league team to the city of Tucson, ever since the Tucson Sidewinder left for Reno in 08-09. Jim Click has a net worth of over 100 Million Dollars. He has donated over 50 Million Dollars to the University of Arizona. If you take A look at McKale Center, we are about to totally re-do it to make it look like a brand new arena with suites and etc. Now guess who the main person is leading the way into donations for the project. Jim Click. He is also trying to help build a brand new downtown arena for the convention center, because we are losing 3 million dollars a year with are current arena, which was built in the early 60's. Now we have football games there all the time for Pima Community College, and A football field is basically A soccer field arrangement. So as I am writing this, I am looking into creating a Tucson Diablos fan club to bring an MLS team to Tucson. If Anyone Needs Any Clearing Up On This Bid, Please Quote And Write Your Concerns.
Tucson could be cool, the main issue is that they only have 1M metro area making it the smallest in the league. Even smaller than Salt Lake which entered during a time when expansion was 10M and Garber would pretty much take a check from anyone. At this point I don't know if they would get in to be honest. Even that bid came out of nowhere, everyone thought Cleveland was the winner... But I just don't think it will be big enough for MLS. The league wants TV revenue now, and adding such a small city, even if they could fill a stadium, might be tough. And that baseball field looks like a really hard conversion. PGE park conversion seems to work much better, but even that is far from perfect.
I'd add Baltimore to the mix. They are in a good area geographically for the MLS. They draw well for the friendlies that play at M&T Bank stadium. Crystal Palace Baltimore does well. Ownership is an issue so this is why I think relocation would work better for Baltimore than expansion. Imagine the DC United/Baltimore derby. Could be fantastic.
The reason i didn't put Baltimore in there is because although they never make the expansion shortlist, lots and lots of talks about DC potentially moving there, recently a study done about the viability of an SSS and apparently its in discussions in the city council about building it. Not sure how likely if at all that is but there are talks and hopes for Bmore
IMO the best that Halifax could do is a USL2 team in a modest SSS like the Charleston Battery and Blackbaud Stadium.
But Indy won't really bring in the tv revenue. The Colts bring it in because of Peyton Manning. But who will be the big name for this MLS team? Thats why I believe they will probably get the 24th team?
When I saw the title of this thread, three cities popped into my mind: Indianapolis, Louisville, and Sacramento. Agreed. They've got a good-sized population, I think they have some decent demographics for soccer in general, and they've got relatively little in the way of sports competition. Two places that I kind of like as remote possibilties are Louisville and Little Rock. MLS would be the only major league professional sports team in either state. Not just in the city, but in the whole state. As for Tulsa, yeah, I liked that idea too. The Thunder sure made the NBA work in that state! Haven't heard much about MLS lately there though. I suspect that's done for now. Really? I don't think I've seen an Indy MLS thread on bigsoccer in a long time. Can you post a link? Interesting thing about Indy is that there's talk of them possibly building an international-level cricket stadium here in town. And there's also some other international-level sports construction that was just announced a day or two ago in another potential MLS city. While I understand why it didn't make the list in the first post, Austin wouldn't be a terrible expansion choice. It's the 15th largest city in the US, with no major professional sports. And now they're supposedly building a brand new F1 race-course. Austin already gets a ton of cred as a hip and trendy place, but if they can really build an F1 course, their international name recognition is going to skyrocket.
I know Omaha isn't an extremely large metropolis or anything but we get 6-7,000 sellouts for Creighton University soccer games nightly at Morrison Stadium downtown. It is a fabulous stadium (one of, if not the best in NCAA soccer), and there's a massive youth soccer community. Might be a good idea for a NASL or USL team in my opinion....since we all know all the leagues will eventually merge to create a "Football League" type set-up. Just a fantasy anyway...
Omaha in D2 has always made perfect sense. I always thought maybe Creighton didn't want them to use the stadium or something.
I was also wondering how Halifax got on the list. Winnipeg and Regina are building brand new stadiums, if MLS is willing to overlook FieldTurf like they did for Seattle then they'd be much better bets than Halifax.
It's far from definite, but if it happens, I think they were talking about some park in the southeast part of the city. If it happens it'd be only the second real cricket stadium in the US.