you have no idea what you are talking about. do the research and then come back and talk to me. A. the mls fans are NOT 30% hispanic. according to the KC study they are barely above the percentage they represent in the general population at large in the US B. if you separate the MLS attendance markets into thirds based on their lifetime median attendance (or projected in the case of POR, VAN, MON( and compare certain demographic factors you will find that there are certain demographic factors that correlate, either positively or negatively to attendance. high % of hispanics negatively correlates. high median household income % over 50K positively correlates. a high % of median household incomes under 25K negatively correlates. a high ratio of Bachelor-Grad to HS Only/No HS (meaning a well educated population) has a positive correlation. having only 2 or 3 pro teams positively correlates. having a large percentage of population between 20-54 positively correlates. San Diego is awesome on all of the factors and Miami is the WORST MSA on all of these factors. Miami is the SINGLE WORST DEMOGRAPHIC for an MLS team in a major MSA in the entirety of US/Canada. period. end of discussion. the numbers don't lie. And this doesn't even factor in the study i did that shows that professional sports attendance (comparing avg attendance and % capacity to the median for each team's league) in Miami is amongst the WORST in the nation. if MLS is stupid enough to put a team in Miami again it will again be a giant failure (Miami has the worst median attendance ever in MLS) and will have to be contracted or moved. they cannot even draw fans to their D2 team unlike their new rivals up in Tampa Bay (also a bad demographic market mind you) who just had 8K for their home opener. i understand that if you live in S FL you might want a MLS team around and thus your judgment is clouded but please make sure you know what you are talking about before you try and draw factual conclusions. the data shows beyond a doubt that Miami is one of the worst cities for pro sports attendance across all sports and their demographics (high poverty, low affluence, low education, high hispanic population, low % of population between 20-54) are THE WORST of any possible top 50 MSA market.
the number is WRONG please see page 33 of this KC Stadium Report http://bocc.jocogov.org/dist3/Documents/KCSoccerFinalReport.pdf and they actually get their number from the SBJ the percentage of fans at the time of that report was 19.1% (the US as a whole is 15.4%) and can only have gone down since with the decreased attendance performance of FCD and Chivas USA. and that is entirely unrelated to the fact that if you take each MLS MSA and scatter graph their % hispanic vs their median attendance (or estimated attendance for teams like VAN, POR, MON for which i used the very low estimate of 19K) you find that there is a moderately negative correlation between % of MSA population that is hispanic and attendance. in other words the MSAs with the best attendance tend to have the lowest hispanic % population (SSFC, TOR, MON, VAN, POR all under 10% and LA being the one exception) and the MSAs that have done the worst in attendance have a high % hispanic (SJ, DAL, MIA, DEN all being over 20% and CBUS, KC and TB being exceptions). this is NOT to be mistaken for a CAUSALITY, which it is not nor would anyone myself included claim that it is. it is a CORRELATION which can be taken with other demographic/attendance correlations to draw some moderately accurate conclusions about what demographic make ups are shared in common by the best attendance MLS MSAs and what are shared in common by the worst attendance MLS MSAs. now admittedly San Diego and Miami do equally poorly on this particular metric. but San Diego does extremely well on all of the other important demographic metrics that have good correlations to high MLS attendance, namely well educated, high affluence, low poverty, high % aged 20-54.
its a stadium built to be expanded. I can't believe seeing people hating on these stadiums. 10 years ago we were pipe dreaming about teams havign their own places, even the crew stadium was a grail because it was a permanent home for a professional club in the USA. Get over it people, soccer is still a cult sport in this country.
To be fair though, the Skydome (unlike Olympic Stadium), has a full-time tenant. To even further that, their schedule runs concurrently with the MLS schedule which makes it even harder to do something like that. If TFC qualified for the knock-out stages of the Champions League and had a game in February or March I could see them using the Rogers Centre, much like Montreal did for it's game vs. Santos Laguna.
Yeah, I've learned to lower my standards when rating MLS stadiums as soccer popularity is still a work in progress in this country. We'd obviously see stadiums more comparable to the palaces that NFL teams get if MLS was even half as popular. Heck, RBA is a step in that direction.
Also the cool thing about the Impact playing at Olympic Stadium is that they bought a portable grass surface for the stadium for any soccer match they play there. The flexibility for hosting big matches on grass is a huge bonus for their bottom line.
Yea let's put a team in Miami. Look at how great their teams do attendace wise now. The Marlins always sell out and have a waiting list. The Dolphins always sell out too. Miami is a terrible sports city. Stop over anylyzing information.
It doesn't look fully enclosed at all, very small roof, from the areal view it looks like it will cover the last two rows only.
Did it ever dawn on you that that report may be wrong or skewed? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/sports/soccer-mls-woos-hispanic-fans-to-the-game-they-love.html 2002 2009 http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=685263&sec=mls&root=mls&cc=5901 So, hmmm it was 30% percent in 2002 and is 40% as of 2009. So the number went UP, not DOWN as you speculated. So unless you fancy yourself smarter than the league commissioner I think we ought not read too much into your statics. In fact I think they're now suspect since you had an incorrect percentage of Hispanic fans. What other numbers did you get wrong? Look, the league wouldn't even be looking at Miami if it was such a terrible place for the sport and MLS. Twice since the Fusion folded the league sought an investor for a Miami team. That's enough for me.
Teams like Houston, Chivas USA and LA Galaxy have done a good job of marketing to Hispanic communities who love soccer. The problem is that not every Hispanic population is passionate about soccer. The major Hispanic communities in Miami -- Cubans and Dominicans -- come from countries who love baseball instead of soccer. They don't have the cultural ties to soccer that Mexicans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and most South Americans have. That's why Miami is such a problematic city for MLS.
In 1998. But the demographics of Miami have changed quite a bit since then. Garber said as much during the whole Barcelona, Miami deal. Now there are plenty of Colombians, Argentinians, Hondurans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Costa Ricans, Brazilians, and that doesn't include the growth of two other non-hispanic footy mad groups, Haitians and Jamaicans. Many people on BS still think of Miami as mostly Cuban but in reality Miami now is like a miniature Central/South American/Caribbean place. That's why they call it the "Gateway to South America".
what am i going to believe. the Sports Business Journal (the one you were trying to quote earlier but got entirely wrong) as reported in a formal proposal to evaluate the viability of spending 150M on a stadium or non sourced numbers from soccernet and the Garber spewing general numbers off the top of his head in an attempt to mask or spin the fact that the soccer loving race of hispanics is barely interested in his product or the same thing from the NY Times. there is absolutely no way on earth that 30-40 % of the league attendance is hispanic. considering that nearly 1/4th of the league's attendance comes from two cities TOR (.2%) and Seattle (10%) that have no or well below the national average % hispanic populations. like i said. it is also an entirely unrelated thing. the data shows a negative correlation between high % hispanic in a MSA and attendance. period end of story indisputable. you do understand correlation right? you know how to do a scatter plot to detect if there is or is not a correlation? you are free to look for yourself if you like. simply graph each team's attendance median over their lifespan (and use the conservative numbers of 19K for MON, POR and VAN) and plot that in a scatter graph against the % of the MSA's population that is hispanic which may be clearly found on the US and Canadian census bureau websites. that's what i did. do it. you'll be surprised what you find. i know i was. the correlation is clear. again. please try to actually know what you are talking about before you make assertions that can be easily disproved. the data from the SBJ you were talking about in 2007 clearly showed only 19.1%. the SBJ is highly accurate, far more accurate and independent that Don Garber talking to the press doing a bit of PR spin. and the stadium group in KC is not going to use anything but the most accurate data in a formal proposal to try and decided whether or not to spend 150M on a stadium. you need to get over the fact that Miami sucks as a potential MLS city. even taking aside the hispanic question. A. do you deny that Miami has nearly 25% of its Median Household Incomes under 25K? or that it has fewer than 50% of its MHIs over 50K? both of which are correlated to attendance and both of which point to Miami being a very weak market? the best attendance markets in MLS have their MHI <25K at about 10-15% and their MHI >50K at 62% or better. B. do you deny that the proportion of highly educated people (Bachelors and Graduate degree) to lowly educated people (HS only or no HS) is 63% for Miami? and that there is another strong correlation between how well educated the MSAs population is and high attendance? most high attendance MLS MSAs have a proportion over 95%. C. do you deny that only 47.5% of Miami's population is between 20-54 (2nd worst of all MLS MSAs ahead of only TB)? and that this age demographic is the largest proportion of MLS attendance and that there is also a clear positive correlation between a high % of a MSAs population being in that age group and attendance? D. there is also a negative correlation between % of MSA population that is black/AA (and total AA+Hispanic) and attendance. Miami does not do very well on this either at nearly 20% and the combined effect of AA+Hispanic at nearly 60% also makes Miami the worst in this category as well? E. do yo deny that the average attendance for Miami professional sports teams averages out to be only 88% of their respective league medians? do you deny that the % Capacity for Miami professional sports teams averages out to also be only 88% of their respective league medians? do you deny that the total metric for pro sports attendance (88+88) of 176% makes them worse than EVERY OTHER MSA in the US and Canada that has a professional sports team except 5 (Indy, Cbus, Sacramento, Memphis and Hamilton ON). i rest my case. miami had MLS and it was the worst attended team ever. the demographics are clearly weak based on the data and analysis of said. miami is a proven loser in professional sports attendance. but you keep trying to spin all of that in your fact free zone into "but miami would be great and glamourous for MLS"
You write a lot but it doesn't change the fact that the league has made a return to Miami a priority. It also means you will be one sad/outraged dude when it happens (sometime after New York #2). Yes, all the quotes from league officials are trumped by your "statistics"..... Hey man, go work for MLS if you are so smart.
i am preparing an analysis presentation to send to MLS HQ on viability of potential markets as we speak. need to update with the most recent NBA attendance and tweak a few things. look. if mls wants to do something stupid, contrary to all of the evidence, nothing is likely to stop them. expansion has always been about A. MONEY (expansion fee, rich rich ownership) and B. SSS ... the problem is they have never seemed to consider the things i am talking about. which is why we have/had mediocre clubs or really shite clubs in places like Cbus, KC, Miami, TB, 2nd LA instead of what would be, from the numbers, pretty strong markets like San Diego, Minneapolis, SF. so maybe if they see it in black and white they might reconsider and actually go with some consideration of demographic and pro sports attendance data in making their decision. with fewer and fewer franchises to award it is more and more important to put them in the best possible markets to have SSFC/TOR/MON/POR/VAN like success. probably won't amount to anything but i did learn a lot and came across many surprising things. i would have thought that MSAs with a larger percentage of college students would do better in attendance (you know MLS being hipster and all) and that is the opposite in fact. all sorts of weird things pop up when you crunch the numbers. i was actually surprised that Atlanta, a city i have long maintained would be a horrible demographic and sports attendance city actually do mediocre on both counts, which was better than i thought they would. now, i'd prefer a team in NYC2 or Minneapolis over Atlanta but if they have to come to the SE than Atlanta isn't as bad as i thought before i crunched the numbers. anyway. i wasn't trying to be argumentative but nobody actually ever talks about these things looking at the facts. especially AC St Louis fans who don't like that their city turns out to be almost as bad as Miami and TB when it comes to the demographics. they are going to be soooo pissed when MLS 20 goes to NYC and they get screwed again.
That building that looks like a flight of stairs behind the stadium was supposed to hold a roof? Crazy.
Well this is going nowhere fast... Some info on the expansion, mainly from here (French): http://ruefrontenac.com/sports/impact/22344-replique-legendre-stade-saputo - +7k seats and 35 new boxes - the stadium was made with prefab, but that won't be the case with the corners, because you can't find curved prefab - they are making the whole building more professional, with upgraded washrooms, concessions, circulation, a player tunnel - $4m training centre with fieldturf and lighting, as well as service pavilion (dressing rooms, etc.) Remember, SS1 cost $15m for 13k seats and an administrative office, as well as one-time costs such as the field, lighting, media facilities, etc. Now, they'll be using $19m ($23m minus the training centre) to add less in pure capacity. A lot of the money is going towards finishing the stadium and making it look like a professional arena. And yes, as mentioned, the pyramids were the 1976 olympic village.
Can anyone confirm whether this is true or not? I haven't been to too many Impact games, but I paid the full price when I took my family.
I really don't mean to rain on your parade, but that bottom picture makes it look like nothing more than a glorified High School football stadium.
Never has more truer words been spoken! I see where the Atlanta Beat of the WPS has a new stadium that is expandable to 15K. Seems like a natural for for an MLS team. Only thing is that the Beat my not welcome a second soccer team to the area, hence creating competition for the entertainment dollar, and my not allow a men's team to play there.
This is a point of view that hurts the league rather than helps it. Just because the MLS scale is lesser than the NFL scale, doesn't mean that clubs/fans/players should settle for less. While maintaining a realistic outlook, it shouldn't be hard to expect and in turn get professional/top notch facilities on the MLS scale. Relativity applies of course, but no team should settle for shoddy or "lesser" facilities because the "sport is growing." RBA is exactly what I'm talking about. While not all clubs can pull that off .... if KC can get their stadium done like they are, then no team in the MLS should settle for less than a top notch job (done to MLS scale). Looking over the renderings, my personal opinion is that the one side should remain open (the side that backs up to the Olympic Stadium) because that is a fantastic backdrop from the field.