This comment is ridiculous... London supports half a dozen first division teams that each make far more money than MLS teams. London could easily support an entire 30 team league by itself if those teams only needed say $10 million a year in revenue (just making up that number but you get the idea) in order to operate successfully. Like I said, it's because MLS is so SMALL that they can have MORE teams. NYC could support half a dozen MLS teams, but it couldn't support half a dozen NFL or MLB teams. Those sports are far bigger... which is a problem. Look at it this way: Salt Lake City cannot support a MLB or NFL team. Neither league would ever DREAM about expansion to Utah, there is zero chance of that ever happening. Yet Salt Lake City CAN support RSL, very successfully in fact. Same goes for Portland. They don't even have a Triple-A baseball team now. Forget about immigrants who may be soccer fans and all that other speculation that may or may not translate over: how do each of the four big boroughs and NJ compare to the SLC and Portland areas in both population and disposable income? Answer: As someone said, LA/NY met areas have 1/7 the US population. Given that they are the big media markets that get attention, and the places where foreign stars want to play, MLS would be smart to put many teams in each as long as they were in different areas (ie not Chivas). And let me add, it's for this reason that fans in other areas that want MLS expansion shouldn't bash this whole NY2 agenda. MLS will not stop at a 20 team league, Garber has said as much. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't stop expanding until it was between 30 (the minimum for big NA sports leagues) and 40. There will be plenty of expansion slots available to whichever moderately-sized cities have decent ownership groups and stadiums. So worry about your city lining up those two things, not NY2. Maybe people should trust Don Garber, he's done a pretty decent job so far, certainly well enough to have earned some.
2,233,841 (2010) Queens, Population Which professional sports teams are based in Queens? 1. Mets 2. ?
Considering the direction this thread has taken, I may need to mention this post was a joke. Also, DoctorD, if your post was in response to me, you may want to try again.
Doesn't matter what stadiums have a Queens street address, New Yorkers for the most part identify with any greater NYC area sports team regardless of what borough they live in. You'll never hear someone from Queens say they don't follow the Knicks because they play in Manhattan...
True, but that number means at least those 2 million people, and realistically the entire 7 million of Long Island, as well as some others from the other boroughs, would have easier access to this site than to RBA. If we say 8 million have easier access to Flushing Meadows, that leaves another 8 million from the NY metro area that have an easier time getting to RBA. 8 million is approximately the size of the metro area of ALL of Chicago, the third biggest metropolis in the United States. So the point is that both teams can be easily supported.
I am amused. One of the guys playing soccer that was interviewed is wearing a RBNY jersey. According to all the hearsay on here, they must've looked long and hard to find that guy.
exactly. but they had to go with the random guy in the RBNY jersey for this NY1 news report, as unfortunately they didn't have enough time to try to locate someone actually wearing a Cosmos jersey.
That guy can nearly* be forgiven for wearing that since he actually plays soccer. RBNY shirts will be the most popular soccer shirts in Queens if a stadium is built there since it will be ironic and "retro." It annoyed me seeing how that reporter held his mic. *It's still Red Bull.
You're gonna have to explain this better. I watch lots of Euro soccer, and I see alot more unattractive soccer than attractive soccer. I'm just not getting the idea of, for example, a Italian expat who grew up a Chievo fan turning up his nose at a good MLS team. I suffered through a hell of alot of butt-ugly soccer to see how Michael Bradley is doing. And if that's the case with a mid-table Italian team, are the fans of Croatian clubs or Moldovan clubs going to have higher standards? No.
It seems odd to me that ever since 1996 the consensus about why the MetroStars/Red Bulls weren't drawing better were: 1.) Bad stadium; 2.) Historically poor team; and 3.) Location in New Jersey instead of the city. They fixed #1 and are working on #2. Now that they seem to be addressing concern #3 (albeit with another team), a lot of people are saying that a city location wouldn't really make any difference. The league obviously believes otherwise; I guess we'll see. The whole DP thing is an interesting angle that I hadn't considered before; now you can cram 6 DPs into the New York metro area instead of 3, and the big name foreigners all seem to want to play only in New York or Los Angeles, so it's an easier sell. Having said that, having a second team in Los Angeles hasn't exactly had foreign stars lined up to play for Chivas USA. When you put more than one team in a metropolitan area, the second team usually struggles to avoid being second fiddle to the first. The White Sox, for instance, have never been nearly as popular as the Cubs, even though they have been vastly more successful and both teams are over a hundred years old. The New York Jets have never been as popular as the Giants. The St. Louis Browns were never as popular as the Cardinals. The California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels have never been as popular as the Dodgers. The Mets are not as popular as the Yankees. This is not to say the market can't support both teams; obviously in some cases it can (St. Louis having two baseball teams is the exception). But the league is probably hoping that a New York team based in the city would be more popular than the one they already have in New Jersey, and they appear to be fighting against a historical trend.
Interesting aside...actually the White Sox were the more popular team until the Black Sox scandal drove a huge portion of their fanbase into the arms of the Cubs. The players conspired to throw the Series in large part because Comiskey was an incredible bastard to them. His depiction in Eight Men Out isn't much of an exaggeration. But in the long run, that cheapness cost him much more than it saved him. But your main point stands...in the US, you hardly ever see an AC Milan-Inter situation. The Bay area NFL and MLB teams seem to be the only ones where that's worked out. In the old days, the New York baseball Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers were very successful themselves, but those days are long gone.
That's an easy one--Vergara is cheap. If he declared tomorrow that Chivas USA would be getting 3 "name" DPs, agents and players would be lining up to be in L.A. But he's not, so they aren't. Vergara came into the league on the cheap, at a time when the league needed him. And he's botched everything since--from marketing to the rivalry with the Gals--in part because he refuses to spend money on the field or off. The $100M price tag on NY2 will guarantee commitment. You're all-in at that price. No ownership group is going to pay that amount of money and then be such a skinflint that they have to cover half the stadium in tarps.
can't imagine what this stadium will look like if this goes through, especially if the league is taking the reins on it before an ownership group is even announced.
I'm not sure if the league is going to be the ones designing it, are they? It sounds like they are just going to be getting the groundwork laid for the decision and then handing it off to the new owners to actually go about the design and build process..
It seems to me, from what I've been reading, that MLS is prepared to design and at least start the process of building the stadium if no ownership is in place by then similar to how AEG began the process before Red Bull stepped in over in Harrison.
in the video it said "while MLS won't comment on potential ownership, using private financing it wishes to build the stadium first" *shrugs*
Well, if the league is going to build it, then they need to charge the new owners significantly more than $100 million then..
I believe that will be separate from the expansion fee in either the form of rent or a stadium purchase.
Who knows how/if this will play out, but all of these steps seem to be required: 1. Select a site and get approval to build a venue there 2. Build the stadium (using somebody's private funds) 3. Find and settle on an ownership group for MLSteam20 4. Announce that new MLS team "FC NYC" (or whatever) will begin play in 201x Clearly the league is at Step 1 for the NYC MLSteam20 project (and that will likely be the longest of the steps and will be controlled in house at MLS HQ). Steps 2, 3 and 4 can all be done kinda at the same time after step 1 is complete. There's no set precedent for MLS as a single-entity operating/expanding exactly in this format. The league collective can and likely will get reimbursed by any new ownership group for the cost of the stadium construction. Or the proposed venue could wind up being an "MLS League stadium" (or NYC-controlled city venue) that the new owners rent at a very reasonable rate. But Garber and MLS seem very confident that once they have the stadium (or just the stadium plan in place and finalized) that they'll also have potential and real ownership groups lining up to acquire the rights to team 20 as an expansion team in MLS to play at the NYC location. How all of those business transactions will play out is really anyone's guess, but MLS (and they've decided to do this collectively on their own before welcoming in a new/expansion ownership group) has got to do the very difficult leg work within Step 1 before moving on to the apparently easier and quicker tasks of Steps 2, 3 and 4.
While I'm all for NY2, if the league pays for the complete construction of a stadium while DC United flounders, I'm going to start throwing rocks through windows.
There's a difference here. DC United has ownership in place. It may not seem fair, but there it is. NY2 is an MLS project for a prospective ownership who will be eventual tenants or buy the property from MLS at likely a profit for MLS. DC United has ownership in place and a new stadium for them is thier own concern, same as it is for Chivas, San Jose, and New England. None of those teams are going to be paying MLS 100 million US dollars any time soon.
I'd agree with Unak78's analysis of the reality of an MLS (existing) team (like KC, DC, SJ, or NE) all having owners/investors who are responsible for having/getting appropriate venues for their team -- and how that makes those projects different from the focus of this MLS centralized collective effort to get Team20 into NYC by first securing a venue for that new/expansion team (and ownership group). (Likely no new owner is going to be able to execute the task of getting as stadium built in NYC on their own -- so it is a wise business move for the league to handle that portion on their own. Or they very likely could find themselves looking at the "outer-burb/other-city" scenarios that unfolded for expansion teams like RSL (in Sandy eventually) and Philly (in Chester). DC United getting out of RFK and into a new venue (be that at Buzzard Point or elsewhere -- maybe even, gasp, Baltimore) is on the team's owners, currently led by Will Chang. And that is in large part why Chang needs to bring in additional investors and money to help him fund and push through any new stadium project for his MLS investment/team. (And I wouldn't necessarily say that DC United is "floundering" on the stadium front. They're just taking a very long time and making a lot of missteps along the way in a very difficult real estate market/area, but fortunately the still do have a great/useable venue at RFK, even if it is outdated and costs them too much rent and doesn't offer enough modern amenities. But most signs indicate that they'll be getting some new majority owners -- within weeks perhaps -- and are working to actually have a new venue in the next 2-3 years; perhaps a timeline that may end up lining up rather well with NYC2 and could/still be ahead of any possible move that Kraft might consider from Foxboro into Boston.)
With existing MLS teams like United, Sporting, Real, Dynamo, etc. this second NY team will of course be called Queens Park Rangers.
All hopefully true. If United gets a stadium the same year that NY2 comes into the league, we might be talking about the dawn of MLS 3.0. Also, I'll take RFK over Gillette (and frankly a handful of "SSS" in the league) any day, so my best wishes are with the brave souls in New England that still support the Revs.