Expansion plans taking shape?

Ok. Your numbers add up to $20 million less than it cost to get Toyota Park done.

If $20 million can turn that place into a great little soccer stadium you are about $60-70 million ahead of the other candidates and existing teams playing in non-soccer stadia.

You also have some insanely rich people in your town who I presume are hanging in the shadows right now, but are probably a part of the plan.

 

merritt will have to get his daddy involved. i think we will find out more in the next year or so. if he really wants a MLS team here in portland he is going to have to do a bunch of gladhanding with local politicians about PGE and the beavers. no way will portland allow the beavers to go away so there is going to have to be a good solution to them moving. hes also going to have to convince everyone that PGE needs a lot of renovations to make it more soccer appropriate (specific is such a stupid word).

bottom line: if he really wants to get it done, its going to take some time and a lot of hard work, but it is very possible. portland has shown that it can be a huge supporter of soccer (at all levels from high school through college up to the timbers). the potential in this market is very large and if paulson can get over the hurdles of the beavers and renovating PGE than i think portland will get an expansion team in 3-4 years. a lot needs to happen in the next year though.

 

Here is an idea MLS should push the Salary Cap to 12.5 million dollars and add a second DP. The money can be used to buy second tier Latin and European talent and keep more USA players here. increase the minimum to 35,000 dollars too.

 

MLS knew that Buck Shaw was the likely venue when they granted the franchise. Nothing that's going on is a surprise.

 

This part of the article would indicate Philly with Seattle in 2009! The article clearly says 2010 or 2011 expansion could be and then a few cities are named including St Louis... So I would think Philly , but then again you never know with MLS expansion!

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/sports/1192679738147820.xml&coll=7

"The league probably will name Seattle and an East Coast city as sites for the newest franchises, to begin play in 2009, Garber said. Portland is vying for one of two more expansion teams that would begin play in 2010 or 2011, he said. The competition includes Atlanta, Montreal, San Diego, St. Louis and Vancouver, B.C."

 

gotcha. thanks.

but it would be a surprise if Buck Shaw does not end up being the temp venue?

when will that deal be finalized?

 

Demand, or at least the appearance that that tickets are in high demand, is a good thing for any expansion year. It will push people to buy season tickets for the new stadium and create a fantastic environment. Buck Shaw should be perfectly acceptable for a season (or 2 if need be, I heard there's some issues with a SSS for SJ).

Seattle need a year to build up momentum, captalize on Beckham, Blanco and any other DP that will build media attention for MLS next season. Hopefully they add a DP (or 2 if they expand the rule) to really get fans in the seats. Seattle is going to need a big turnout for QWest to look good, so I'm hoping they pander to Asian fans that support Ichiro so much and go after Nakamura.

 

Here ya go:

http://stupidfilter.org/wiki/index.php?n=Main.HomePage

That said: In an ideal world, Chivas USA would build their own version of the HDC somewhere in San Diego. That's not to say they're not an asset to the league as-is in LA, but I think they'd be moreso down the coast a bit.

 

I'm not sure you know the first thing about San Diego, SoCal, or Sports Branding. Moving Chivas USA to San Diego would cripple their chances for growth.

 

Do you mean in one year? That's about a 10 million dollar increase to the cap, or around 500 percent! I'm not sure most teams would even know what to do with that. If they all made use of it, you're talking about spending an additional 140 million dollars, and it's not clear to me that would greatly increase revenues. How many additional fans would the league garner with second tier foreign talent? I think the slow growth model the league's been pursuing makes more sense.

Now if MLS really ends up adding 5 new teams in the space of 3 or 4 years, I think the cap will have to be increased beyond the typical 5% per year. But not by nearly that amount.

 

I understand that Chivas cleans up in sponsorships partly because they're in the second-largest city in the country, which was their reason for rejecting San Diego (remember, that's where MLS originally wanted them) and choosing LA. I also understand enough about Sports Branding to recognize that the name "Chivas" has had more to do with those lucrative sponsorships than the tagline "USA" or the fact that their home is in "LA".

That said, I question the logic of the statement "Moving Chivas USA to San Diego would cripple their chances for growth."

Sponsorship growth? Probably. But certainly not growth of their fanbase - in case you haven't noticed, CUSA haven't exactly raked in the crowds thus far - or gameday revenues.

But hey, this discussion is a red herring. Chivas aren't moving any time soon and there's supposedly a local group working on MLS expansion in San Diego anyway. So yeah, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

Umm, no. He would be a moron for not considering it. He would be a moron for signing a DP because some people on a message board said he should.

What I am sure he WILL do is to take a look at possibilities and then test the waters with potential sponsors and potential local tv deals and make a decision based on whether or not the dollars make sense.

The stadium (it seems) will be 4,000 less than the SSS in Colorado and 6,000 less than the SSS in Chicago and Dallas. In addition, they will be playing a few games in Oakland where they can sell significantly more tickets. If they sign a big name and move say an additional 2 games to Oakland, you can more than make up ticket revenue compared to those others.

Of course, the potential bump in the value of your sponsorship assets and tv value in an area the size of the Bay area could be huge. I don't know but it is not as cut and dried as you think.

 

Really?

And how does that make you feel?

 

Those guys are idiots. Since when is MLS a minor-league sport, and when did they put a team in Guadalajara???

Garber shouldn't have wasted his time.

 

Nice call Frazier.

 

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/or...sports/1192679738147820.xml&coll=7&thispage=1

Sounds more and more likely for Philly

 

There are fewer Chivas fans in San Diego than in LA. Your core La Legion type fans will probably decrease ...

Chances are that some non Mexican fans will latch onto the team, simply because they'll be excited to have MLS in town. But I suspect this number will be relatively small since a lot of diehard US soccer fans, Central American and South American fans will refuse to support a club with a distinct Mexican identity.

 

how does San Diego compare to Carson, CA, in terms of the number of Chivas fans?

i disagree with this "identity" as you've defined it, and I disagree with your claim that certain fans would "refuse to support" a relocated Chivas USA based on your opinion of its identity. i think (and i could be wrong) that local availability is a huge thing, and San Diego soccer fans won't have much of a problem supporting a "Chivas" side. do people in NY/NJ care if their team is called MetroStars or Red Bulls? I don't think so, they're just happy (kinda) to have a local MLS side to support. and the theory is that give them a nice, appropriately-sized stadium that is relatively easy to access, then that support will show up in the stands.

if Chivas USA were to move to San Diego, are we safe to assume that the club would have (or want to have) a "distinct Mexican identity"?

CD Guadalajara has always had a "distinct Mexican identity". i don't think Chivas USA has had such an identity, or even a "distinct Mexican-American identity". moving Chivas USA (which i think is unlikely anytime soon given the deal they signed to share the LA market and HDC) to a new city would, imo, give the club the chance to further cultivate a distinct US/MLS/SoCal identity, one that is even more separate from big Chivas, CD Guadalajara.

maybe it's just me, and perhaps i'm too far removed geographically, and having only seen Chivas USA pull in road fans at RFK, but I think a CD San Diego ("Chivas USA" to its fans at home and around the league) would be more of a success in it's own local market as a new MLS team, as opposed to sharing the LA market with the Galaxy. if Chivas USA were to go to San Diego (and perhaps rebrand itself as CD San Diego primarily, and "Chivas USA" secondarily), i think that move would help both the Galaxy and Chivas USA franchises.

 

The specific demographics of the city of Carson are inconsequential within a metropolis of 13 million people.

 

I guess my question was trying to get at the point of can Chivas USA possibly have more success in a different metropolis, given that the "metropolis of 13 million people" they are currenly in, they must share with a team that had about an 8-year head start on building a fan-base at a shared venue.

I don't think Carson is the ideal location for Chivas USA (not solely because it is not in downtown LA) but because the LA market looks to have a limit to the amount of attention that can be given to (an) MLS side(s), and the Galaxy got in there first.

 

That's not true (I don't think ). Pehaps an angelino can speak up, but in a metro area that large, it is my impression that people simply don't go great distances unless it is a truly special occasion. It is too much of a pain in the ass to go from one side of the metro area to the other, correct?

This is kind of like saying that it doesn't matter that RB plays at the meadowlands. If you live in Brooklyn and there is a game at the swamp on a Saturday night, there are about a million other fun things to do between brooklyn and NJ. You have to REALLY want to go to the RB game to scoot your butt across the bridge.