My question is: Why does a pro league have to be created in the USA top-to-bottom? Investors decide that they might be able to make money out of it. Then create franchises in the markets they think are best suited. If it doesn’t work they cut their losses and the whole thing collapses. Why can’t people organize themselves in clubs, compete against each other and if enough people watch them, earn some money. I know most American sport fans are usually fans of their local college or high-school teams which means there is not that much space for pro sports. But in Europe every town with 20 000 has at least a semi-pro team. Why can’t cities of 500 000 or more support sport clubs in the States?
Not enuff intrest and I think it expanded too quickly. hey i don't know the spellin but I'll try phoentically: Yo sen stro! Ya benti Katz! Delit min e courates! Beli cisne
Man, you're asking for a short answer to questions someone could literally write treatises about. Put simply, Americans by and large (there are exceptions) don't support their city or town teams with the fervor other people around the world do. Many of us don't live in anything you could really identify as a city or town anyway, but in a sprawling suburb or out in the midst of nowhere. There isn't that tight social bond knitted around the local team - and if there is, it usually is already knitted around another team (see college football out in the midwest). To make matters worse, we're a very mobile society, and it's not like a lot of people grow up in the same house or same town or same region their grandparents grew up in. Also, though I look back at old film and see that even 30 years ago NFL and baseball games had something of the authentic atmosphere seen in soccer around the world, in my lifetime most of that has been effectively beaten out of the game, by marketing towards the upper middle class (and their kids) at the expense of all others, and by popular acceptance of the notion that sports is an 'entertainment product', on the level with a movie or a TV show. If you're really that interested in knowing more about this sort of thing historically and sociologically, start here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/069107447X/002-3614379-8460030?v=glance
We have this, by the way. Sort of. www.uslsoccer.com There's just much less interest here than in places where the game has been thriving professionally for a hundred years (that's very understandable and very forgivable, I think), so there's less money, so it perpetually struggles, even as it has gotten a little better every year.
Hey I knew this question would demand deep analysis. There is all the space anyone needs if they think they can contribute.
Re: Re: After the collapse of WUSA I didn’t only mean soccer. Why aren’t there more pro basketball teams? You can find American basketball players in every country in the world. Those people don’t have a chance to make a decent living at home but are often stars abroad. I think this might have to do with the ethos of amateurism. People support their college teams because they feel those players play to represent the community and not to make money.
Re: Re: Re: After the collapse of WUSA A lot of it has to do with "diluting the talent pool." Sure, many more cities could host NBA, NFL, MLB teams, but there aren't enough quality players to go around. With the expansion of Major League Baseball, we've seen a massive decline in the quality of the pitching for instance. This is even taking into account the "importing" of players from Latin America and Japan. Basically, there would be an even greater gap seperating the top teams from the bottom teams...a wide gulf already. There are a lot of what in the US we call "minor league" sports (lower division clubs.) They do okay, but it just isn't nearly as interesting. I live in a city with a metro-area population of over 900,000 people. We don't have one top division pro sports team. We do have a minor league baseball team and a minor league hockey team. American football is the most popular around here (Southeast), but particularly college football. At least here, there still are a lot of community ties to the college team. University of Alabama football is one of the winningest, most prestigious college football programs in the nation. They are a Real Madrid or Manchester United of college football. They pack over 80,000 people in a stadium every weekend they're at home and tens of thousands travel on the road. There are times Alabama fans outnumber the home team when we travel. We played away at Hawaii last year and had over 20,000 fans in the stands. They're getting ready to expand the stadium to hold 106,000 people and they will sell that out every weekend too. Hardly any pro team can compete with that level of passion. Our minor league teams are lucky if they can muster a few thousand fans per game.
Re: Re: Re: After the collapse of WUSA It's called market saturation. How many thousand multi-millionare basketball players can any given city afford to have??? The problem with sports is that it has become way too commercialized, therefore at all levels the main concern is financial profitibility. Specially when you have a few big teams with deep pockets in every league (football, Basketball, baseball), these teams can afford to monopolize the talent pool. all and all, as a result, the authencity of the game and sport is lost and we are left with a "commodities exchange" rather than a sporting atmosphere.
This might be one of the reasons. I myself could never support a minor league sport team, but i do care for my school teams. Of course, I never lived in a city with any minor sport teams(that is a major league team also exists)
I'm Surprised the MLS has lasted as long. Apparently in Kansas City they were given away tickets for free and still no one went. It's a shame.
One thing MLS has done little to none of in its history is giving tickets away free (as opposed to leagues like - I believe - the Mexican league, where kids get in for little or nothing). And KC has been a pretty strong success story this year.
Re: Re: Re: Re: After the collapse of WUSA I wasn’t talking about more NBA teams. I was wondering if minor regional leagues were possible in USA with average attendance of say 5 000 and average players earning about 50 000 dollars a year.