Im a business kinda of fellow and I was sitting today thinking... "What if I had the money to buy my own MLS franchise? What would I do? Where would I place it?" Interesting questions. Im from the south so here's my answers: Location: Charlotte or Raleigh (Leaning more toward Raleigh) Stadium Capacity: 15,000 ( Areas around Cary and Raleigh have great soccer facilities) Coach: Hire Jerry Yeagley from Indiana University. Pay the oldie an ridiculously amount of money so I would win the MLS Cup. Players: Definitely shop abroad. Salary Cap: I'll just do what the NFL does, give huge loads of signing bonuses!!! Great Idea!!! Anymore????......Let's Hear!!!
I think NOrth Carolina would be a good location for a club also. However, first choice would be to buy DC United. After owning them, I would start expansion squad in either Charlotte or Portland with a 22,000 seater SSS. Dream world, hire Arena after 2006 and have him lead me to glory. Until then, Guus Hiddink. And I'd bring in Ronaldo AND Michael Owen, just to give those stupid threads a real purpose. A guy can dream.
If I won a couple hundred mil in the lottery? Houston. SSS of 25K. Houston gets the highest tv ratings for soccer, a much better indicator of a soccer market than youth soccer numbers. And I'd market it as sports entertainment for adults. $1 beer nights, excellent food, wet t-shirt contests at halftime. MLS has tried to make the game experience something like Chuck E. Cheese with a soccer ball.
San Diego or Portland. San Diego 'cause it's my hometown and is filled to the brim with a) anglo suburban youth types; and b) hispanic soccer crazies. If there was room in the center of the town (anglo suburbs to the north; hispanic suburbs to the south) somewhere (there isn't), I'd build the 22,000 SSS there and they would come from both directions, and we'd average 18,219 easy. If we were consistent winnder we'd average even more, as San Diegans are perennial frontrunners and love a winner. But it won't happen, for too many reasons to go into. Why dwell on the negative? Portland 'cause they love their soccer there too, and they love being part of the action. Remember the Bill Walton days of the NBA in the 70s? It'd be like that with MLS. It'd become cool to go to games. Build it near the river; turn it into a scene. As it is I'm worried about my digital cable payment.
If I was an owner Id sell my team. But if I was capable of becoming an owner, Id buy a nice house in Malibu and a private jet instead.
"for the good of the game" Anyways, I would make one in seattle. 25k stadium all under roof with only field exposed, and good drainage system. Market the hell out of the team. Get Rudi Voeller to coach, get Wolff, get Pires, and figo
Instead of buying a team here I would go over to Italy, buy out Inter Milan, shut down their operations, and move Toldo to Columbus. I would then donate the remaining players and the remaining supply of money from the scum to the city of St. Louis for them to form a team. I sell the rights to Phil and use the money on a nice house and a luxury box at Crew Stadium. C14
I'd make sure there was: • no jock jams • soccer specific stadium • good team on the field • I'd buy a newspaper and put photos of MLS players in the sport section - something they are afraid to do where I live. I'm not sure what city I would pick though. At a guess, not knowing anything about it, I'll pick Philadelphia.
well even whem i'm a fan of columbus, If I could be an owner i would buy a lot of land in chicago and give them an stadium... those fans need one i think.... ahh and give columbus a roof...
give the Quakes their own stadium of 24k expandable to 30-35k for other stuff like concerts and whatever... Oh and buy a local paper eithe the Mercury or one or the Examiner and make sure there was always exclusive Quake coverage in the sports...in fact maybe no sports outside of Rugby, Football and Aussie rules And have good! commercials with hot chicks modeling with the players.
this is what I would do, and there are many oters ideas in here too https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25551
I am not sure this would do it if you wanted to build a real stadium and run the team for at least 7-10 years worth of losses. Lets say you win $200,000 million on the lottery. To have any chance of getting in the game before you get to old, you would need to take the "lump sum" pay out, which would drop the winnings to around $140 million. Then the government would take their bite, lets say around 44% for fed and state. That drops your take to around $93 Million. That pretty much now rules out any hope of building a real stadium and being able to support a team without you bleeding dry in a decade. Horowtiz showed everyone just how dangerous it is to run an MLS team without an enormous bank roll. Andy
Andy, I doubt your numbers. If you put together a public-private partnership so that you spent $43M on your stadium and franchise fee, that would leave you $50M. But, remember, now you're in an SSS, you control ancillary revenues, so your team almost certainly makes money for you. Yeah, you've got to answer league cash calls, but throw in the revenue from occasional concerts and the Nats, you should break even. (Remember, that's breaking even after you've coughed up $43M.) And even if you come out $1M in the red annually, you can withstand that for 50 years.
Andy B is zero fun. I would buy the Burn. Knock down Reunion Arena - out in a 30,000 seater soccer staidum in its place. I would change the Burn logo and name - to what I don't know but they would get changed. And I would make Mark Cuban seem boring by comparison.
Ken Horowitz. Case closed. Andy ps: As a side note, what type of stadium do you intend to build that costs LESS in 2003 than Crew stadium cost in 1998? You can't build one with less frills than CCS IMO. However, if you are advocating doing a "Lockhart", then I think winning $200M in the lottery could get you in the game.
I had this discussion with someone a few weeks ago after reading something about the Rochester franchise. To be honest, I'd forget about MLS and look at starting an A-League team. The start up costs are so much less (even if you build a stadium) and the chance of breaking even on your investment are much greater. Teams in Seattle, Rochester, Portland and Charleston have all been successful. Bottom line in my opinion is that the franchise fee for an MLS team is something like $20 mill. The franchise fee paid by the new Milwakee team was only $30k. That would leave plenty of money to buy good talent and develop a stadium the locals would want to spend their summer evenings.
Andy...OK, my numbers don't work if the franchise fee is $20M *AND* the team gets almost nothing from the gvt. But I thought the league would reduce the franchise fee for a team with an SSS? I was operating under the assumption that a team could get land and roads and stuff free from the gvt., and that MLS would charge $5M. I think my math holds up then.
That fee was $350,000 I think - but still quite a bit less than an MLS entry fee. All things considered, if I had the dough - I'd buy an MLS team and take the risk. Certain A-League teams may make money - but I'd rather have that shot at glory in front of 61,000 fans on national TV.
I guess you have not been following the Rochester situation too closely. I guess you did not follow the run up to CCS and the NTC too much either huh? NOTHING comes for free when it comes to soccer in the US. The best you can hope for is a good lease term like the Crew got. The amount of assumptions to make your numbers hold up have no basis in what has happened before concerning stadium building for soccer. I will admit that just because it did not happen before it may not happen in the future but it would be a VERY tough road to go down, IMO. While in theory I agree that it would be smart for MLS to drop the franchise fee down to $5 million for people with an SSS, I have yet to see anyone in MLS state or even hint this. My guess is that Horowitz would pull a nutty to say the least, but luckily he only holds one vote. The facts remain that the only way your numbers hold up with the current business climate of MLS is if you change the new stadium in to a "Lockhart" situation and even then you can be driven out of business very quickly as Mr Horowitz all too quickly found out. Andy
Ok, Andy "wet blanket" B I guess i'll have to wait til the jackpot is $300 mil before i win the lottery.
Hey Guys, Say you have Uncle Phil type money. To buy a car or a house or a jet rather then investing in YOUR sport in YOUR country is just sad. You call yourselves soccer fans? Why "waste" the money? How about helping soccer grow in America. When this sport gets as big as it will, that money will not be a waste. And you would be considered a genius or a savior, and not some schmoe who was afraid to lose a hundred mil or so over the course of five years or so.