haven't seen this posted elsewhere, but whisler was on yesterday's broadcast of the red stars game and reported before half time that even tho he did not want to steal ussoccer's thunder, he wanted to report that all the owners met in kc just before the mls all star game, and everyone is excited about the league. he said that all he would say is that other owners are looking to get into the league, but that they are of course looking for the right owners who are in it for the right reasons. but the most important thing he said to me seems an obvious thing to do. he said that they are looking to balance the geography of the league, which suggests to me that they just might bring in a couple of west coast teams - not new york or toronto. of course, if new york or toronto have solid owners and money i don't see how ussoccer could leave them out. so there might be some tough but good options available for nwsl in the off season.
Oh Whistler, you tattle. X-D Well, if they have 12 or so interested owners like I've seen branded around, I see no reason to not just set up an expansion pipeline, bringing in a couple of teams each year. Balancing geography is a good idea, but I think it'd be better to say "Okay, you have an organization in place already? You get in first. You over there are starting from scratch? We'll bring you on in a year or two, but we WILL bring you in."
i'm really hoping that they get 2 mls teams in for 2014 - especially mls teams that have portland's kind of multipliers. in terms of balancing the geography, i'm hoping for the attendance/organizational push you can get from vancouver and l.a., altho, in that regard, i can't help wondering how we missed out on the sounders being seattle's representative. [with this week's big mls seattle news i've got to wonder if the sounders was not concentrated enough on nwsl for ussoccer's liking because they were intent on bringing in a big time dp and winning the league.]
The Sounders Women don't actually have the financial or organizational backing of the MLS Sounders - it's little more than name sharing. Similar to the DC United Women thing - had the name, not the organization. I guess the Reign organization simply beat out the one running the Sounders Women in something, I presume financing.
The Blue & Green combination (and logo) of the Sounders is better than the Reign. And they were already an established brand. With that being said, the Reign logo is pretty solid itself. I wish they could add some Green into their team colors.
They wouldn't have been able to use the Sounders brand because it's owned by Adidas, and the NWSL is a Nike league.
confirmation of skyblue/red bulls talks. maybe partial ownership, maybe red bulls stadium use (which would look terrible without a real big attendance boost).
sorry, didn't post link. it's big apple soccer's reference to equalizer's continuing report on this story with today's dateline. http://www.bigapplesoccer.com/teams/skyblue2.php?article_id=34461
I would love to see NWSL look like this in 2014: West Division Portland Thorns (MLS) Seattle Reign Los Angeles Bay Area Breeze Chicago Red Stars FCKC (MLS) East Division Toronto FC (MLS) Ottawa Fury Western NY Flash Sky Blue (Red Bulls) (MLS) Washington Spirit Boston Breakers Four MLS ownership groups. The web-streaming would be fantastic for at least half of those teams above. Most teams would have an excellent stadium and/or field (with no football lines). With Vancouver (West) and FC Indiana or Columbus (East) set to join in 2015. And Houston (or Dallas) in the West and Atlanta (East) added in 2016. Getting multiple Canadian franchises in the league is crucial. That keeps them in for the long haul, once the league continues to grow (including attendance). That way they don't start their own Canadian exclusive league or something. Both U.S. and Canada need to work together. 12 teams in the league * 22 matches per year = 132 regular season matches in NWSL. Sell the NWSL-Live (streaming package, all games in HD) for $39.95 for the whole league pass. Sell it for $24.95 for team pass. Sell it for $3.95 for each single match. Give fans the choice. And then archive the games for free a few days later on YouTube for the whole world to see.
All of the Timbers games are broadcast on Root, free, and all of the Thorns games are available on line, free. That seems to be a pretty successful marketing approach. Why charge at all?
If you subscribe to cable or satellite in the Portland area, which means that it's not free... At some point they will have to decide whether it will makes more money to charge to watch the online streams or to keep providing them free to try to reach the most the potential fans and gain possible future revenue (from ticket sales or merchandise). And really the point in time when charging for streams makes more will probably come sooner rather than later as free streams (unlike national tv broadcasts) can only generate so much non-fan interest. I wouldn't be opposed to paying a one time season pass to watch all games if it's a reasonable price (and they can guarantee that they won't have technical problems like some teams are still having in the 2nd half of the season). Though I will say, I like the free streams.
I forgot, you're right about needing to have cable or satellite in the Portland area to get Root. So if you already have cable or satellite, you get the Timbers games "free" but if you don't then you don't get the games.
Whisler's comments were what really got my hopes up about seeing a couple more teams in 2014. Needless to say, hearing that there will be no expansion teams next year is disappointing. However I do hope this means the league has more time to focus on improving other aspects.