The YBTD Pro/Rel Thread, Part 9,614

And I think every North American soccer fan should hope they do.

North American Major Premier United Super Soccer League here we come!

 

I think that this understanding is already more ingrained into the fanbase in this country than many give credit for. MLS was on this same point when they tried to make the Sounders change their name. The thinking was that the potential fanbase would have difficulty telling the difference between the USL and MLS if the Sounders remained under the same name. History up until now tells us that this concern wasn't well founded.

Also, one only has to look at the relative attendances between D2 clubs in this country and other minor league sports. Before MLS the Timbers were known to regularly draw close to 10k per match while the AAA Beavers Baseball team could never draw a quarter of that number. I know of no minor league team in another sport that does. Perhaps hockey in Canada.

However, you regularly see D2 teams like FC Cincy, Sac Rep, Indy 11, as well as Portland's B team and the Thorns. With that said, NCAA soccer is not as well-supported as it is in other sports, but it's been getting better with the increasing profile of MLS as a whole. However, like MLB with it's farm system, MLS' academy and reserve/loan system doesn't allow as many of the direct-from-college to pro stories as the more popular collegiate sports do.

 

Other sports do have minor league teams with high attendance. 7 minor league baseball teams averaged over 8,000 in 2016, and 5 minor league hockey teams are currently averaging over 8,000 in the 2016-17 season.

 

Minor league sports draw decently in minor league markets. Ticket prices are significantly lower than major league tickets would be, which is something that also needs to be taken into consideration. Here are the various averages for 2016 at the official second division/highest minor leagues:
AAA Baseball - 15 teams over 7k out of 30 - 50%
http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?y=2016&t=l_att&lid=117&sid=l117
http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?y=2016&t=l_att&lid=112&sid=l112

AHL Hockey - 9 teams over 7k out of 30 - 30%
http://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph_season.php?lid=AHL1941&sid=2016

NBAD/GL Basketball - I could not find a reliable link

NASL Soccer - 2 teams over 7k out of 12 - 17%
http://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2016-nasl-attendance/

Using the argument that second division outdraws other minor leagues and is therefore demonstrative of the feasibility of pro/rel is critically flawed.

 

I couldn't find a full list of NBA D-League attendances, but I saw a news story that listed the top two attendance averages in the D-League this season: the highest is about 6,200 and the second-highest is about 4,800. I've seen other stories about the D-League not being able to draw as well as other US minor leagues, so it's pretty clear basketball is the exception.

 

In all fairness, it's also the newest and smallest. Plus, college basketball is so massive. The NBA parallels the NFL in that regard. The fact they even started a minor league still amazes me.

 

That and the very increased resources they have to devote to sales and marketing.

Which always, somehow, seems to be overlooked while people look for supernatural reasons why teams draw or don't draw.

MLS teams are better capitalized. They have to be.

MLS teams have actual sales and marketing budgets and devote resources to hiring people to sell tickets. They have to.

Those things actually move tickets, in addition to the luster of being in the top tier and playing actual international players and such.

 

Minor-league basketball has always struggled. Its heyday was probably back when the CBA was a relatively stable minor league with a formal relationship with the NBA. (Even then, they still had teams move quite a bit - sometimes during seasons, as the Jacksonville Jets and Tampa Bay Thrillers did - and fold and get birthed. But they were a good league until Isaiah Thomas screwed it up.)

I think some of it has to do with the fact that in several places you might put a minor-league basketball team, one or more of the local universities has a program that's far more popular and to which far more locals have an emotional connection. You could not plop a minor-league basketball team in North Carolina's Triad and hope to compete with the popularity and history of Duke and UNC.

College hockey is very popular in some places, but minor-league professional hockey has been a thing for decades. College baseball is very popular in places, but minor-league baseball has had a renaissance since they put in stadium standards 20+ years ago. It only seems to be basketball where the minor-pro version pales in comparison to both the NBA and the college version.

And it is odd that NBDL attendance numbers are not readily available. I do know they drew 3 million as a league last year. With 19 teams that season, each playing 20 home games, that would be about 7,895 a game, which is way more than it was at launch and way more than I expected it would be.

 

Very happy to see a more neutral title to the thread. The focus here should be more about discussion of a topic rather than forwarding agendas, either way. Because, in the end, nothing that we say here has any bearing on what MLS does. This is just throwing around ideas and personal entertainment and that shouldn't be restricted.

 

It was 25 home games per team in the regular season, which would make the average somewhere on the order of 6,300 per game. Or, if the 3 million includes playoffs, the average drops to around 6,100.

The 3 million number for the 2015-16 season looks fishy, if the highest team averages in 2016-17 were 6,200 and 4,800 as of early April, and the average for 2014-15 was 2,698 (and highest team average was 5,510).

Source for 2014-15:
http://upsidemotor.com/2015/11/02/chicago-bulls-d-league-affiliate-2016-17/

EDIT: I found another source that says the top two attendance averages in 2015-16 were 5,600 and 4,600.

http://krod.com/would-nba-d-league-succeed-in-el-paso/

 

I see the expansion of the US Open as a much stronger possibility than pro/rel, but with the chance to provide even more of what now makes soccer different in the US pro sports market.
I realize it adds some games to an already crowded schedule, but it would be interesting to turn the later rounds, final 32, of the US Open into mini league format gives chances for D2 and lower leagues to play MLS clubs.

 

You're right, 50 games, not 40. #mathishard

 

USSF does not want this, and neither do MLS clubs.

And on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the summer, except for a few places, it does not seem as if there is a huge appetite for it on the part of people who are not hardcores.

Again, MLS teams beat lower level teams nearly 70 percent of the time, despite being largely disinterested most of the time.

 

Wait, what?

What were the other ten cities? As I remember it, until Vergara got convinced and Checketts followed, they were one serious investor shy of one serious investor.

 

I didn't say it was likely. I said it was more likely than MLS going in for pro/rel.
If there was a market for it, they'd want it. You are correct, right now there doesn't seem to be any way to make serious money off the US Open. If there is a groundswell of interest outside of MLS cities, meaning there is actually a chance to turn this thing into a money maker, I believe it could work and MLS would be excited about it. as it stands, of course not. Still, I would say that it is more likely as a way for most lower league clubs to get their shot at MLS sides ( a few will be expansion clubs).
As for USSF, why aren't they interested?

 

Cleveland (RIP Wolstein), Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Rochester, Seattle, Tulsa, Toronto.

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/04/sports/sp-mlspreview4

And San Diego was in play for Chivas.

http://www.soccertimes.com/wagman/2003/nov08.htm

If you're looking fro the best place to put a soccer team, you might rank most of those cities ahead of Salt Lake City. But the RSL bid had what others did not -- at least, what those other cities did not have to the satisfaction of Garber, Anschutz and Hunt.

 

Other things more likely than MLS going in for pro/rel:

1 - Antigua winning the World Cup
2 - Elvis playing Market Square Arena again
3 - Joan Jett actually asking me if I want to touch her there

They don't really care about the tournament. And if they were, the pushback from pro clubs would likely squash it.

 

Oh, the vague "cities are interested" line that seems to be an easy drop into such stories.

How many of those had actual potential ownership groups?

Rochester's window had pretty much passed by that point. That Times story also lists Houston and Philadelphia as front-runners, with zero attribution to that statement. Of course, it did not happen (until SJ moved to Houston). The others were filler, it says here.

I see no reason to believe it was not true that MLS was desperately seeking suitors at that point.

 

Exactly my point. Gotta have the owners stepping up.

 

So you're saying a somethingburger was better than a nothingburger?

Thanks for that.

 

I'll amend the original statement: