The All-Encompassing Pro/Rel Thread on Soccer in the USA

Discussion in 'Soccer in the USA' started by bigredfutbol, Mar 12, 2016.

  1. Roger Allaway

    Roger Allaway Member+

    Apr 22, 2009
    Warminster, Pa.
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    But for the most part they are, as I said, small cities.

    Here are the cities that have AAA baseball teams, the highest level of minor-league baseball: Buffalo, Allentown, Pawtucket, Rochester, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Syracuse, Durham, Lawrenceville (suburb of Atlanta), Norfolk, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville, Toledo, Colorado Springs, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Round Rock (suburb of Austin), Fresno, Reno, Sacramento, Tacoma, Albuquerque, El Paso, Las Vegas, Salt Lake.

    Good places all, including a few that have major-league teams in other sports. But as a whole, looking at them from a major-league viewpoint, they are decidedly small market and even smaller market. Nobody expects teams there to draw the way that teams in New York and Los Angeles do.
     
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  2. barroldinho

    barroldinho Member+

    Man Utd and LA Galaxy
    England
    Aug 13, 2007
    US/UK dual citizen in HB, CA
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    Can we please nix anymore talk of abandoning pro/rel in England. It just ends up being a distraction.

    I'm inclined to go with @Crawleybus in saying that it would be an enormous shake-up and I don't know quite how far the backlash would go. It would certainly be horrendously unpopular there.

    Nonetheless, it was the sport of football that became popular, both in England and abroad. It was spread by Englishmen living abroad, playing and starting local clubs.

    I am convinced that whatever pro/rel may add in terms of entertainment and drama, football does not owe it's popularity to the mechanism in any way.

    It was the proliferation of clubs and competing leagues that spawned the system. The growth of the game ultimately resulted in pro/rel as a logistical tool.

    Ergo, we needed something like pro/rel because the popularity had lead to a critical mass of teams.
     
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  3. mschofield

    mschofield Member+

    May 16, 2000
    Berlin
    Club:
    Union Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
    You realize about half that list is MLS expansion targets (with 3 already in)...
    Nobody expects minor league clubs to draw, though, because they are minor league. There are minor league clubs in larger metros, Phoenix springs to mind, but they still don't draw "big city" crowds. That's because big city fans prefer the other, major league-ish options. We're talking two sides of the same coin here, but the metros of LA and NY have had and might still have minor league clubs, they never were drawing on a par with major league clubs.
    The only reason I make this point is that the original point was that minor leagues don't draw, which you attributed to the size of markets. I think it's that and more, minor leagues are seen as an inferior product, and therefore don't/can't really thrive, even and perhaps especially in major league markets.
     
  4. Elninho

    Elninho Member+

    Sacramento Republic FC
    United States
    Oct 30, 2000
    Sacramento, CA
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It's especially telling that the few attempts to field USL teams in MLS markets were all among the worst-attended teams in the USL. OC Blues, currently in the USL, come readily to mind. There were also FC New York and California Victory, both of which which folded after one season.

    PDL attendance shows the same pattern. There's a whole bunch of PDL teams in the Los Angeles area, and not one of them got over 150 average attendance when I last lived in LA, while PDL clubs in places like Des Moines and Fresno can draw 3,000 or more.
     
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  5. Dan Loney

    Dan Loney BigSoccer Supporter

    Mar 10, 2000
    Cincilluminati
    Club:
    Los Angeles Sol
    Nat'l Team:
    Philippines
    Yeah, I realize I've lost this part of the argument - certainly if the goal was to actually persuade anyone. My only contribution to the discussion (and there really isn't one) is to point out that pro/rel keeps teams down, it doesn't help them promote.

    I disagree that it would be the death knell of the Premier League, but I also think that pro/rel decreases, rather than increases, the number of teams that can compete for the title. But I'm also aware that laboriously trying to explain away Leicester City is something I only think I can do because I tend to vastly overestimate my charm and persuasion sometimes. And I don't want to cheer against Leicester City simply because it would help my Internet arguments - there's got to be a special place in hell for that sort of person, and I'd just as soon not be the guy at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
     
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  6. HailtotheKing

    HailtotheKing Member+

    San Antonio FC
    United States
    Dec 1, 2008
    TEXAS
    Club:
    San Antonio Scorpions FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Honest question here as I'm not overly familiar with the borrowing workings over there ... how does that compare to other clubs?

    Well, what you said, was that minor league sports aren't popular.

    You've decided that the only metric that matters in this regard is the attendance compared to the 'major' leagues. Considering your track record I'm quite surprised you're shoehorning it into one overly simple data point.

    Even with that though, we have minor league hockey that draws MORE of a % of the top tier league than the Segunda Division does.

    In North Carolina MiLB draws more fans than NASCAR does

    This sums up things pretty well for MiLB and it's already 2 yrs old: http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140110&content_id=66453294&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb

    You have multiple clubs in the Segunda that would be dead last in the AAA leagues here.
     
  7. HailtotheKing

    HailtotheKing Member+

    San Antonio FC
    United States
    Dec 1, 2008
    TEXAS
    Club:
    San Antonio Scorpions FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Nor did it take long for the usual hot air filled "pro/rel torchers" to either disappear entirely or post absolutely nothing of consequence.
     
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  8. mschofield

    mschofield Member+

    May 16, 2000
    Berlin
    Club:
    Union Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
    I think that what we're seeing is that there is a point of diminishing returns in the spending on a football club. It was quite a bit higher than most clubs could imagine a couple years back, but the money in the prem has now allowed clubs such as LCity and Tott to find the level, above which there's a lot of wasted spending, and buying for the sake of buying and not for the sake of building the exact team a manager wants.
    But this gets at your point of fewer clubs and RichardL's point of the chasm between top and second leagues when there's this much money around for the top.
    And it brings up a point for this discussion, which is that the pro/rel structure itself might have very little to do with the success of the biggest leagues, but it also isn't at fault for the problems or inequity below that.
    Both failure and success in the Prem/1Bund/etc bow down to the same god, lucre (and the unequal distribution of it). It allows the creation of dominant super clubs, and it keeps those just arriving at the party from truly being able to fully enjoy themselves, as they've got a lot of catching up to do.
     
  9. mschofield

    mschofield Member+

    May 16, 2000
    Berlin
    Club:
    Union Berlin
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
    Especially if they were playing baseball ...
     
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  10. barroldinho

    barroldinho Member+

    Man Utd and LA Galaxy
    England
    Aug 13, 2007
    US/UK dual citizen in HB, CA
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    Is their nothing romantic about the Portland Timbers rising from the ashes of the NASL to finally bring the American championship home?
     
  11. HailtotheKing

    HailtotheKing Member+

    San Antonio FC
    United States
    Dec 1, 2008
    TEXAS
    Club:
    San Antonio Scorpions FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It is the system of pro/rel that continues to rotate, chew up, and swallow those "just arriving."
     
  12. KCbus

    KCbus Moderator
    Staff Member

    United States
    Nov 26, 2000
    Reynoldsburg, OH
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    F*** you sideways.

    Sincerely,
    A Guy Who Roots For the Team That Can't Beat Them.
     
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  13. Roger Allaway

    Roger Allaway Member+

    Apr 22, 2009
    Warminster, Pa.
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I guess it's a case of the chicken and the egg. Are they where they are because they're minor or are they minor because of where they are? As you said, two sides of the same coin. There is no question that they are an inferior product, places where major-league teams stash their players who aren't good enough for the majors (or aren't yet good enough). And I suppose that mitigates in favor of your viewpoint.

    I do realize that several cities on that list are MLS expansion targets, but considerably less than half (I count Indy, Sacramento and Oklahoma City) and that Columbus, Salt Lake and Atlanta are already in. As I said, "including a few that have major-league teams in other sports."

    The minor-league baseball teams that are in the same city as major-league teams have tended to be low minors, a world apart from the big leagues and not really competing for the same fan loyalty. Teams like the Brooklyn Cyclones. I think the only team on that AAA list that's in the same metro area as a big-league team is Lawrenceville.
     
  14. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So post some "accurate non-bullshit".

    There's an actual discussion going on. Nobody is under any obligation to meet your standards.
     
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  15. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I find this hard to believe.

    Arsenal would not have spent years financing Emirates if the revenues from Highbury had been irrelevant. It was widely understood at the time that they felt Old Trafford's larger capacity gave Man United an edge.
     
  16. Yoshou

    Yoshou Fan of the CCL Champ

    May 12, 2009
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah... I may have been relying upon the information of others a little too heavily.:) I was listening to one of the shows on Sirius FC a few months ago and they had an owner from an English club on and he said they only get 10% of revenue from ticket sales. However, after mschofield noted that Arsenal's matchday figures, I decided to look it up myself and saw that Arsenal in 2014 and 2015 got 100 million GBP in match day revenues of their 300 million GBP (2014) and 344 million GBP (2015) total revenue. So.. roughly 1/3 of their total revenue is from match day..

    http://www.arsenal.com/assets/_file...63_Arsenal_Holdings_plc_-_Annual_.pdf#page=44

    I'll show myself out.

    [​IMG]
     
  17. M

    M Member+

    Feb 18, 2000
    Via Ventisette
    I'll start reposting when there's some evidence that the moderation of this thread isn't going to be as inept as in the previous thread.
     
  18. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    What a stupid comment.

    "Moderation" doesn't mean "delete any comment M finds incorrect."

    You won't be missed.
     
  19. M

    M Member+

    Feb 18, 2000
    Via Ventisette
    Odd, I never suggested it did. More bizarre stuff from the moderator.

    The ineptness was in the previous thread. I'm hoping this thread will be moderated better, but let's just say I'm not exactly holding my breath on that.
     
  20. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There's the issue of how the Premier League divides up the TV money versus the incredibly unbalanced way it's done in La Liga.
     
  21. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You add nothing to this discussion. All you have done is complain that some un-specified standard isn't being met.

    This is a new thread. Either participate in the discussion, or post nothing. Those are your choices.
     
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  22. M

    M Member+

    Feb 18, 2000
    Via Ventisette
    Of course. I mean having someone correct the more obvious nonsense that's spouted about pro/rel is a thorn in the side of your ilk.
     
  23. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Agreed.

    I think that was one of the distractions that contributed (in a minor way) to fouling up the previous thread.

    As I posted in that thread, I'd actually argue that England is one of the handful of places--probably the best example, actually--where you really NEED pro/rel. There are just too many clubs and too much genuine support to go to closed leagues, IMHO.
     
  24. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Um...no. You didn't "correct" anything. You whined about it.

    For the I-don't-know-how-many-times-now time: PARTICIPATE in the discussion. That means: when there's something you think is wrong or incorrect or unfair--SPELL IT OUT. Say what you mean.

    Passive/aggressive whining about the other posters or the moderation is not "participating in the conversation." Either make your case, or go post somewhere else until you can do that.
     
  25. M

    M Member+

    Feb 18, 2000
    Via Ventisette
    A major reason why there are so many clubs with "too much genuine support" is because a pyramid of pro/rel leagues allows all clubs to improve their status based on their performances on the field of play. If they were locked into a specific minor league, you wouldn't see that level of support outside of the teams in the major league.
     

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