2015 expansion team, Tulsa, has unveiled new kits... Tulsa Roughnecks The name is the same as the original franchise from the NASL. A natural rival for OKC. They'll play at Tulsa's minor league baseball stadium on natural grass. OKC and Tulsa used to have a pretty intense minor league hockey rivalry. OKC is slightly larger metro area than Tulsa, but Tulsa has higher income levels. With OKC's attendance being considered a success in that high school stadium they play in, I suspect Tulsa will match, if not surpass OKC's success.
St. Louis FC has announced their season ticket prices for 2015, and they are considerably cheaper (for the most part) than SRFC: They will play at a 6,800 seat stadium. The complex has four grass and two turf fields with the "main exhibition field" being turf. BTW, their supporters group is called the "St. Louligans."
I had to post this: Sacramento Kings soccer jersey concept Courtesy of Carmichael Dave tweet See the entire NBA here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/18769939/NBA-to-football
Montreal, Vancouver and RSL planning to field USLPro teams in 2015. The league is going to get very crowded. The five expansion teams will bring the league to 18 (minus Orlando), plus three MLS organizations makes 21. It will be interesting to see what they do with schedules, which are currently (way!) unbalanced. I'm guessing enough teams don't have the budgets to travel cross-country much. And, if the five new expansion franchises prove successful, at what time might the league tell the attendance laggards, Dayton, Charlotte and OC, to shape up or ship out?
Ultimately, I think the MLS "seconds" teams plan to just set up their own circuit. But as long as they are in USL, it'll probably only lead to more unbalanced schedule, with teams rarely (if ever) making the cross-country trip into the other time zones. We'll probably also see the standings broken down into a geographic table with a west-versus-east final. And as for Dayton and Charlotte and OC Blues...they may have to seriously look at dropping down to PDL if they can't keep up.
Check that. Rumor has it that Charlotte Eagles will drop to PDL next season and a new Charlotte group will enter Queen City Soccer Club into USLPro for 2015. Maybe they'll be an upgrade over the Eagle's ownership, which actually appears to be a Christian ministry. http://www.charlotteeagles.com/ABOUT/index_E.html
Red Bulls and Sounders have been rumored to be setting up their own USL Pro teams for 2015 too. Plus, there was a tweet that Toronto may as well, following the CSA announcement allowing for USL in Canada
NYRB decided against fielding a USL side for 2015. No explanation given. Vancouver still plans to but is having trouble finding a home ground for the USL side. Montreal has also stated their intent on fielding a squad for 2015, but not much info is available. As a wrinkle, each MLS side will own their USL players, not the league. According to this article originally announcing the NYRB side, there is reference to MLS requiring each club to field a USL team, but no deadline is given. http://www.soccerbyives.net/2014/03/bulls-planning-start.html
And, Orlando has whittled their roster down to three in prep for the big jump to MLS, so there may be a few good USL-quality players looking for a winning team for next season.
That would seem to make some sense, given MLS' single-entity structure in which actual MLS players (and members of the MLSPU) are all contracted to MLS, LLC. It's kind of The original announcement of the partnership said every MLS team had to either affiliate or establish its own team by 2015. I think we're on track to see that happen (largely affiliates, but some MLS O&Os). If they were going to make every MLS team create its own USL team, that's going to be a lot of DIII teams.
Yes it would. Perhaps he was referring to the original announcement and just phrased it poorly. BTW, you ended your first comment above as, "It's kind of." Was there more?
Found this on the Dayton Dutch Lions thread - a rumored move to Cincinnati... Cincinnati Dutch Lions? The part that I found the most interesting... "Reportedly, the only income keeping the club afloat comes by way of their youth academy, as club fees collected from each academy member are being at least partially used to help prop up the struggling professional side. Apparently, the Dutch Lions are also operating on what has been deemed “the smallest budget in the league” by a sizable margin." I should say so, considering their attendance is only a few hundred. And, if I were a dad of an academy kid, I'd be pretty pissed if part of my fees were to keep a struggling pro team afloat. Again, there is a lot of speculation in this article, but a move to Cincinnati would seem like a revenue generator.
Completely unsourced, and going to great lengths to say "I couldn't get anybody to confirm this, but I'm totally confirming it, you guys." Cincinnati has not been a successful place for past teams. They've been more successful than Dayton has been, though. But they'd still be Dayton, just in Cincinnati.
Prices aren't surprising. I looked up all the 2014 single-game ticket prices in both USL Pro and MLS last week. St. Louis FC prices are similar to Orlando City's 2014 prices, which were the second-highest in the league. (Sacramento's were the most expensive in the USL by far, and almost exactly in line with 11th-through-17th of the 19 teams in MLS.) Most USL teams are charging single-game ticket prices about $20 per game for their most expensive seats and around $8 for their cheapest seats; season ticket prices are even lower. At the bottom end, Dayton's single-game ticket prices ranged from $4 to $12 in 2014. Not really. There are a lot of people of Dutch ancestry in New York and Michigan, and there's a decent-sized Dutch expat community in Houston (where there's another Dutch Lions team in the PDL). But there wasn't exactly a big Dutch community in Dayton to begin with.
It appears Portland will announce next month the launch of their own USLPro side, though nothing is official: Portland in USLPro in 2015? I hope San Jose is generous next season.
Both Seattle and Portland officially announced they will field USL clubs in 2015. Bye, bye, Jake Gleeson, not that you can bank on loanees returning. I like Jacubek, but I don't think he's a starter.
I wouldn't be surprised if Gleeson replaced Andrew Weber as the #2 GK for the Timbers (MLS). Weber has been useless for them as a sub, and I sure as hell don't want him coming to Sacramento.