Pro/Rel Again (Prompted by USL for Sale)

yes or no

 

How are we supposed to talk about you behind your back if you never leave?

 

What do the fans want?

 

that's a no next

 

I thought this was MLS:fans thread

not the I will not comment on pro/rel because the owners think this and garber thinks that blah blah blah

 

Wow. Not only are you not leaving after saying you were (and trust me, my belief in the goodness within humanity has been completely destroyed), but now you can read minds. You're so good in fact that you seem to have found an answer that I didn't even know I had come up with. Impressive.

 

I didn't ask about the owners or Garber because that was not in your question. You asked about the fans. What forum this is now in doesn't matter. You seem to know what most fans want so I assumed you could clarify your own question, but I suppose that's asking too much of you blah blah blah

 

they should have franchises in some other countries apart from america. nothing worse than big teams stuck in a league with teams that can't fill even a small stadium. MLS's system spreads the teams across the areas so everyone is represented and people start to give soccer a chance. relegation only works if the teams below the big ones are only a small distance away in technical quality on the pitch and can be good competitors over many seasons. not enough people want to play proffessionally or to watch a game every week in america for that to happen yet. new york are crappy at the moment. but imagine an american league with no new york team in the top level. the biggest soccer fan area. besides, sometimes relegation is just bad luck. competition at the top end and the champions league is more important right now in american soccer history.

 

Holy ******** this thread grew quickly.

 

Tell you what, WSW. I will give you the answer to your question if you honestly answer one of mine... IF there are 60 professional soccer clubs in Anglo North America, all playing in decent stadium situations that hold at least 10,000 fans, AND are all profitable with stable, passionate fanbases, THEN I will support Pro/Rel over these 3 divisions...

Here's my question for you, broken into two parts:

How long do you think it will take to satisfy the requirements that I have laid down in order to win my support on this issue, and How does the potential sale of the USL make one damned bit of difference?

You got your answer, I would like to see the courage and humility needed to answer mine.

 

How long do we have to wait before we can start posting WSW bozo pics?

 

first, we are not talking about pro/rel for now, it's a long term league plan and design.
by that time, soccer should be fairly popular at least NBA/NHL level.

you need pro/rel for everyone to be represented, and give soccer a chance.
Soccer fans in Boltimore, Atlanta, Cleveland, etc... are not going to be MLS fans because they are not exposed to MLS without possibility of their team get chance to get promoted. MLS teams won't be ManU, Barca, RM, AC Milan caliber for long time, so that fans everywhere will support them anyways.

MLS is looking into 2nd New York team, and a New York team will join USL next year. If the market is well supported they should be able to support two or more teams, and their chance to survive in the 1st division should be high.

If you finish last one or two or three team(s) out of 20-24, I don't think it's unluck.

 

First off, going back a little, this thread was born out of the MLS buying USL and people speculating that it might lead to USL-1 becoming MLS-2 and pro/rel being introduced. It was not born out of a thread saying "Do you as an American Soccer fan want pro/rel if it Garber/the owners agreed?". Based on the threads actual premise, what Garber and the owners want is very relevant.

However, I will humour you:

I will support pro/rel if it benefits the competition in question. Right now I see a good competitive balance. Last season the Galaxy sucked and NYRB made the MLS final. This season, Galaxy are competing for a playoff place and NYRB have tanked. Twelve of fifteen are in realistic competition for a playoff berth and we are already into the final third of the regular season.

Conversely, USL teams tend to struggle in competitions where they face MLS opponents, even though the MLS teams tend to rest players for those games.

If we implemented pro/rel today, it is quite likely that NYRB would be dominant in USL-1 and come straight back up, while the promoted team would finish bottom and go straight back down. This wouldn't make either division more competitive or benefit either team. So right now, no.

I've already said that if US soccer gets 30 teams close enough in quality to make two competitive divisons, then pro/rel would be a viable option. That doesn't change anything with regard to the current MLS owners though, so viable or not, it may still never happen.

So as we've all discussed our views to death on this, how about we expand this discussion into something more meaningful and you tell us what you think needs to happen for pro/rel to be implemented and WHY it would be something that the controlling parties would do.

 

Well, let's do the math, shall we?

In 2009, in the regular season, the average attendance was:

USL-1 (11 teams): 4,348
USL-2 (9 teams): 1,686
PDL (68 teams): around 500 (2007 numbers are the most recent available)

We'll look at these numbers in two ways.

1. Average home attendance

Add up the average home crowd for every team and you get around 97,000 fans spread out across 88 teams.

So far this year, the 15 MLS teams are averaging 15,745 fans per game. That adds up to about 235,000 home fans, more or less.

2. Total tickets sold

This year:

USL-1 teams played 125 games
USL-2 teams played 90 games
PDL teams played 544 games

Multiply by each league's average attendance, and USL sold about 970,000 total tickets for all games played.

MLS teams will play 225 home games this year, and their average attendance so far is around 15,745. If those numbers hold up, MLS teams will sell more than 3.5 million regular-season tickets this year.

So, no. MLS still has more fans by any reasonable measure.

 

The answer is 10-15 years for USL-1 to have SSS. you also have to understand that a team that is promoted has one year to upgrade it's SSS. Philadelphia is building a stadium from scratch in 1 year.Also with Pro/Rel adapted rich investors will try to buy teams in USL-1/USL-2 because they know their is a chance to get into the MAJOR league.

 

No. Why would I?

Promotion and relegation is a solution to two problems that do exist in England but simply don't exist in the United States.

First, seven thousand professional or semi-pro football teams playing in a country the size of the state of Alabama.

Second, soccer leagues where individual teams' revenue and spending are the primary determinant of the quality of play.

In the United States, we have maybe 150 teams in a much larger country. We also have salary caps, drafts, weighted lotteries, and other methods to achieve relative parity, meaning the team at the bottom of the top league is more likely to bounce back the next year and the team at the top of the next league down isn't likely to stay dominant for long.

The American system also avoids the negative effects of the English system. Namely, you don't have a cluster of teams at the top with nowhere to get "promoted" to, making the league uninteresting to fans of other teams. You don't have one city hosting half the teams in the league, as you do in some European leagues. You don't have the experience of seeing your team yo-yo from a great year to a doormat year and back as it get promoted, then immediately relegated.

As a fan, a losing season is bad enough. But in the American system, a losing season can be a "rebuilding" season that lets the team bring in young talent and look to the long-term future; not every team does this, of course, but it's possible. In Europe, it's a "now we lose an enormous chunk of revenue and must desperately try to string together one decent year to get it back" season.

What is the benefit for a fan who lives in a major league city? Pretend I'm a Milwaukee Brewers fan, or a Yankees fan for that matter, and explain to me why I would want promotion and relegation?

"Oh, it's great! One day you might not have any rivalry games against the Mets or the Red Sox! And maybe, one year, you might not see any of the top players in the majors--you might even have to sell yours, because you'll be playing the Lexington Legends and the Lehigh Valley IronPigs instead! Also, instead of just the Mets and Yankees, maybe there'll be seven MLB teams in New York some years, different ones every year!"

Does that really sound appealing to you? It doesn't to me.

 

You barely scratched the surface of his requirements. He didn't ask how long for USL-1 to have SSSs.

He stipulated 60 teams each with a SSS capable of holding at least 10k and a loyal, passionate, stable support for each as well as profitability. You addressed the stadia and nothing else.

Rich investors? Why would it be appealing for them to buy a lower league club that not only has to play at least a season before it even reaches the MLS, when in the current system they could simply pay the expansion fee and enter the league directly?

 

WSW has been selectively sidestepping facts for the last 35 pages of this thread. Why should he stop now?

 

Sorry, but I don't buy that for a minute.

Who has their own stadium right now, in which they are the primary tenant?

Portland
Vancouver
Montreal
Charleston
Puerto Rico
Rochester

Two and probably three of these teams will be gone soon, leaving exactly two U.S. teams un USL-1 that aren't sharing a high school, college, or amateur stadium.

Meanwhile, the departure of these teams illustrates the other problem with the idea of USL-1 suddenly filling with stadiums. Can you guess when the last year was that USL-1 or one of its predecessor leagues played a season after which at least one team didn't fold or leave the league?

As far as I can tell, it was 1989, back when the USL was a regional league called the Southwest Independent Soccer League. It was the third year of its existence, and all eight teams that played that year returned for the 1990 season.

Since then, every year since 1990, at least one team has folded or dropped down to be an amateur team every year. That kind of churn is not conducive to stadium building, and until it's stopped, the USL will never have soccer-specific stadiums; most of the teams just aren't around long enough.

 

Nope... You completely did not answer the question at all. You're attempting to give yourself a satisfactory answer to continue the discussion. How long will it take USL to be profitable, in two divisions to make a 3 division p/r system more than academic? Your answer was worse than Barney Frank at a town hall meeting. In other words...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIvxqUCu41Q&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIvxqUCu41Q&feature=related[/ame]

Thanks ever so much for joining us, we have some lovely parting gifts for you on the way home. Thanks for playing. Can we have our next contestant?

 

I'm stiil saying 10-15 years, we don't know what will happen to USL. It took 16 years to get MLS where it's at now, why couldn't it be the same with USL?

 

USL is older than MLS.

 

Dude. Stop. You're embarrassing yourself. The number I put on P/R was 60 profitable franchises. MLS has 18... USL-1 has 11 (counting TB and NY, but not Por and Van) and USL-2 has 9. Are you really saying that USL can not only double its size in 15 years, but all these clubs will have proper stadiums seating 10000+ and are profitable?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dew3GZePwN8"]YouTube - family guy who the hell did a hit[/ame]

 

pro/rel would be a good move for mls, it would give any team and fans the chance to play first division football

it would boost attendances in usl and MLS for sure like in the J.league