Austin,Texas

Austin>>>>>>>>San Antonio, IMO.

I would absolutely love for Austin to get a team if possible.

 

441654870353797120 is not a valid tweet id

 

Interesting.. But at a guess the team would need a really wealthy backer to really get an inside track

 

All Aboard the Soccer Train
Major League Soccer and urban rail take Austin by storm

 

I love Austin. If you're a man looking for a date and you shower daily, that's 90 percent of the battle.

 

You need to keep in mind that the Chronicle is a weekly arts rag. The reason for the odd timing is that the "Week of April 1" issue was just published. I can guarantee you that it's an April 1 joke. That may require an understanding of Austin to really get it.

 

Yep. From the article:

"the city of Austin is about to announce the construction of a new soccer stadium in the middle of the Colorado River"

and

"Modeled after a similar project in Kazan City, Russia (and another in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar), the stadium...will be accessible by rail, boat, the new canoe/kayak facility at the mouth of Waller Creek, helicopter, jet-ski, or zip-line. (And as conceptually envisioned, monorail.)"

I happen to be visiting Austin this week and my wife brought the article to my attention, but it's pretty clear it's a joke. (Not a particularly funny one, mind you)

 

Garber says he's in advanced discussions with Detroit, St. Louis, San Diego, San Antonio, and Austin for expansion
— Evan Ream (@EvanReam) April 14, 2016

 

Well considering Austin can't keep a team around, San Antonio has the backing of the Spurs and both cities aren't getting a team... hard pass on Austin. Not sure why it keeps getting mentioned IMO.

 

High tech town, high income town, highly educated work force, high hipster quotient, no competition from professional or semi-pro sports teams aside from the NBA D-League and the Univ. of Texas.

 

People really need to understand just how huge TU is in this picture, in this regard. There's a reason NO sport has gone to Austin and the ones that have, are minor league and actually play out of town.

 

Big Soccer posters are lacking in imagination. Most see other metro areas deep-down as a just a slightly different version of their own. I have no direct experience of a single college sports program with the ability to totally overshadow other sports in a city but I can imagine being so and I will take a local's word for it.
I'm reminded of the posters who are totally unable to believe in the difficulties of building a stadium or siting a lower-level team in large densely populated cities.

 

TU athletics posted an $80m+ PROFIT last year

 

Ehhh....San Antonio is not a slam dunk either. Their stadium is not MLS-ready, and they are going to ask for taxpayer help to do expansion to the stadium to make it MLS ready. Add in that the stadium is way out in suburbs and not in an urban environment like all of the other stadiums, and it's not a guarantee. They have enough holes in their plan to allow an Austin to sneak up and steal one of the spots.

 

I'm not really convinced that San Antonio would be a better location for an MLS team than Austin.

 

All the other stadiums? There are plenty which aren't in downtown areas.

Having some familiarity with San Antonio, the location is certainly not remote--the interchange between I-35 and the I-410 loop is built out for miles in every direction, even if it's not high density. The project already has the support of the city. Also, this is SSE we're talking about--few sports organizations are as competent or as beloved by their community. This isn't like Miami, where the actions of one ownership group have left people fundamentally (and justifiably) distrustful.

Is it a lock? No, not like Sacramento. But it's pretty clearly the next best. (And contrary to conventional wisdom, San Antonio having a team does not rule out Austin.)

 

"Way out in the suburbs" absolutely not. You have zero clue and that comment reflects as such. Perhaps you read an inadequately informed article from a few weeks ago on SA? The stadium sits within the city of San Antonio and is right off the junction of one of the two main HW's that run through and one of the biggest throughway's in the city. when you look at the breakdown of the major population areas in Greater SA the stadium is located near the majority of the largest ones.

The stadium was constructed specifically to be expanded. Even with taxpayer money involved it won't be an enormous cost (relatively speaking), especially if SSE pitches anything in. Of course, Toyota might as part of their sponsorship ... and there are several other, rather large/significant corporate entities that could hop on board in this regard. There's plenty that could happen/options to explore outside of taxpayer involvement (not saying that there won't be any).

Urban like ALL OF THE OTHER stadiums? Holy crap you must not know a thing about MLS stadium locations.


While our case may not be airtight .... you're way off on the reality of it and already existing situations within the league.

What does Austin have, AT ALL?


I really hate when people who have no clue just spew all sorts of garbage.

You're going to need to elaborate on that one.

 

To address complaints and concerns about how distant SAFC is from downtown, here are the driving distances from downtown (as determined by Google Maps) for each MLS franchise:

Atlanta: 1 mile
Chicago: 15 mi
Columbus: 5 mi
Montreal: 6 mi
New England: 28 mi
New York City FC: 12 mi
New York Red Bulls: 11 mi
Orlando: 1 mi (new site)
Philadelphia: 21 mi
Toronto: 3 mi
Washington, DC: 5 mi (Buzzard Point)
Colorado: 12 mi
Dallas: 29 mi
Houston: 2 mi
Kansas City: 16 mi
Los Angeles FC: 5 mi
Los Angeles Galaxy: 17 mi
Minnesota: 6 mi
Portland: 1 mi
Salt Lake: 14 mi
San Jose: 4 mi
Seattle: 1 mi
Vancouver 1 mi

San Antonio: 13 miles

For the 24 locations listed, the mean is 10 miles. The median is 6 miles. The first quartile is up to 3 miles, the second is 4-6 miles, the third is 6-14 miles, and the fourth is 15 or more.

 

yeah the san Antonio "distance" is nothing to worry about once you've been to the city and understand it. It is arguably THE artery of the city as far as transportation goes, and you could make a convincing argument it would actually be a better location than downtown for that reason alone.

By all accounts, from ownership to stadium, San Antonio is leaps and bounds ahead of not just Austin, but all competition in the post Sacramento. They are the huge favorite for team 25/26 right now, and are probably further along in the process than Miami is. They come in with either Sacramento (if Miami pulls one out of their butts and surprises everyone), or with Miami, or St Louis, but im confident they are the favorites for the next team in.

 

So your saying that SAFC would be on par with LA Galaxy, Salt Lake, KC, and both NY teams . It seems our city is set like Salt Lake and KC which both are outstanding MLS fan bases.