MLS launches new professional league

I don't think this is a commercial enterprise, at least in the short-term.

People don't watch reserve teams, with the Red Bulls and Montreal at one point getting less than 100 fans through the gate.

It could be a threat to USL though in terms of securing players that would have otherwise signed for an independent USL team, and reducing the number of players available both on loan and in general.

But it won't be a threat commercially.

 

Well, it's at least somewhat of a commercial enterprise, at least if you consider what Seattle and Portland are doing.

And clearly Charlotte is taking this approach, as well.

I mean, if you consider MiLB and the independent leagues as commercial competitors, this is functionally no different. The MiLB teams have a competitive advantage because they aren't have to pay labor costs. The difference is that in baseball, the incumbents are MiLB, whereas in this case it's the well resourced farm system coming into market to displace the established, though far less wealthy, independent leagues/teams.

 

This also should serve as a good development option for American players that won't ever be MLS caliber but will be USL Championship quality and will find their way to those rosters.

 

I think this is an importznt point. MLS is looking for potential and eventual first team players. They arent likely to want to waste a lot of time and money on a player once they determine that hes not going to make it.

 

It’s not a reserve side.. It’s a development team… It’s going to give more local talent the ability to improve their skills in a competitive environment. Giving more players more opportunities to be professional soccer players is a good thing and, overtime, will result in better players and a larger fan base.

It also doesn’t have to be a loss generating situation if the team doesn’t want it to be. Just look what the Sounders did with S2. They teamed with a local MiLB team, were getting 2,500 fans a game pre-pandemic, and are going to build a 5k-6.5k stadium in the near future. While I'm sure the Defiance aren't making money for the Sounders, they aren't going to be the massive sources of losses that you see with other MLS2 teams.

 

But it does give themselves a place for serviceable pros that for some reason (mental, too slow, not strong enough) that would not survive in MLS, but are otherwise great players for the program that play their role and help the potential future MLS players they're around. The "coach on the field" type.

One of the over-arching problems with age group teams is that you end up with a roster full of relatively inexperienced players with really good potential.

The ability to move some 16-20 year-olds in with some 25-30 year-olds without having to immediately be at MLS level has some value.

If 20 year-old Dan Califf had had more experience against career pros, there's a really good possibility that Kansas City wouldn't have won the 2000 Western Conference Final mini-game. He had no clue that the 37 year-old Mo Johnston was not going to pull up when it appeared that Califf would get to the ball first, that Johnston had realized that lying facedown in the mud bleeding from the head was an acceptable trade-off for getting the ball to a wide open Miklos Molnar to score the winning goal.

The whole age and treachery vs youth and ability equation.

I can see the more successful organizations keeping a set of those seasoned players around. Sort of the role Kevin Costner played in Bull Durham. It's one thing to have some coach telling you something, it's completely different getting stuck in with someone with experience.

 

I think it will be a reserve team, though the focus will be on youth. It will give players an opportunity to rehab in competitive games and keep marginal players on the books.

 

This feels like a distinction without a difference. I also assume it will be a little of both: rehabbing first team players will likely get minutes, just like they currently do on the 2 teams in USL.

For the parent team this is probably true, yes.

So setting aside that I don't think that you're going to get a following with development teams, I also think the Defiance massively over report their attendance, which they're incentivized to do due to their hybrid setup.

Take, for example, this pre-pandemic match vs. Orange County, where they announced the attendance as 3,222 (per https://www.sounderatheart.com/thef...e-vs-orange-county-sc-recap-defiance-dominant). I'll start the stream at a point where they pan across the entire crowd:

There are maybe 500 people there.

Their highest attendance in 2019 was vs. Austin Bold. They announced 5,185. Cheney seats 6,500. This is what the crowd looked like:

Forgive me if I'm not exactly sold on the Defiance being the model to show that people will happily follow development teams if they are packaged as independents.

 

If the teams all provide someone for the Susan Sarandon role, Im guessing the DA kids will be eager to sign up.

 

That’s the point though: the reason why people think the Defiance is reasonably well attended is because they post these figures and nobody is actually there to refute them.

It might as well be a simulation.

Meanwhile, you have actual teams, with actual atmosphere, like Sacramento or Tampa Bay or New Mexico or Birmingham or Detroit, and it doesn’t matter how they measure attendance, there is actual support and fan and community investment in their success and results. And in Sacramento’s case, how many seasons did they go before they didn’t sell out a game? New Mexico is basically in the same boat. They weren’t hiding behind the charade of tickets distributed, even if that’s what they’re technically reporting.

And let me also note that not all teams use tickets distributed for their numbers. USL and MLS both do, however.

 

But, realistically, I went to the second-to-last Crew game at HCS, and they announced it as a sellout as well. I looked at the chart held by the steward to show which seats were sold and which ones weren't. There were lots of sold seats that were never occupied, and fans were not allowed to just mill around anywhere in the stadium.

(The stewards had charts so they could be more effective seat Nazis. The seats were sold in blocks of 4, but I have 6 in my family. They required my other two family members to go sit next to strangers rather than sit next to the people they share germs with every day. We also all wore masks outdoors, including all the vaccinated people. COVID theater is ridiculous.)

 

Now is probably a good time to note that, like many MiLB stadiums, Cheney Stadium has a lot of things to do away from a person’s assigned seat, including standing areas, bars, restaurants, and even a playground… All of which have views of the field (or don’t if that’s their jam). A fair argument could be made that they aren’t there to support the Defiance, but it’s still people in the stadium spending money and that’s what is important for their owners.

 

I mean, who’s got the cognitive bias here? What freaking mental gymnastics are required for this? At any point you can watch either of those streams and the stadium looks the same. There is no one there.

@Yoshou you are somewhere around there, yes? Have you been to a Defiance game?

 

Also, how come these other teams that I have mentioned don’t have these thousands of people wandering the concourse, just out of sight?

 

Also curious why the Reign manage to keep these itinerant fans in their seats somehow

https://www.prostamerika.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/0X3A1446.jpg

https://www.prostamerika.com/2019/04/22/photo-recap-seattle-reign-vs-orlando-pride/220193/

(Btw, the Reign announced only 200 more fans there that day than the Defiance did for the Austin Bold match linked above. Somehow they’re not all in line for a hotdog or whatever)

 

I suppose aliens could have abducted 80% of the audience every game, which I guess is what you’re alluding to here, but it certainly feels a lot more likely that Defiance is massively over reporting their numbers. Occam’s razor and all that.

I still don’t understand what your argument is. Is it, “actually this complete lack of atmosphere or supporters culture will grow enthusiasm in the sport”? Because if not, what exactly are you defending about Tacoma Defiance?

Try it without attacking me, although I realize that’s the only trick you’ve got. Tell me how Tacoma Defiance, touted as about as good of a fan experience as we can expect for a development team, is building interest in the sport of soccer vs. say Phoenix Rising or Forward Madison.

 

No one that doesn’t live near Tacoma goes to Tacoma.

that being said. There’s a reason we have the “It looked like less on TV” meme here and ultimately banned it from the attendance thread. Cameras are just not a good way to assess attendance.

 

That’s fair, and it’s a development team, even more reason not to go, right?
But it doesn’t really help the argument that there’s people there that you just can’t see.

I don’t disagree with that if you’re trying to estimate numbers or whatever for a specific game. Hell, the club I support points the camera at 11,000 seats that they don’t even usually open. It literally looks like an empty stadium.

But setting aside their reported numbers, you can see the experience at Cheney, at London United, at Bethlehem, back when they still played at Lehigh. It’s not just that there’s no one there (there isn’t) it’s that there’s no energy at all in the stadium.

So even when we compare that to the Crew or Dallas or Houston or Chicago Fire, those stadiums may have a lot of empty seats, but they still have plenty of supporters. This isn’t about not having a full stadium. It’s about not having any following. And I don’t think a development league or a development team can generate one.

 

I think someone is in the wrong forum.

 

No. Because on a good day Tacoma is an hour drive away, but can randomly turn into a three hour drive for no apparent reason regardless of the day of week or time. Tacoma is the land of the phantom traffic jam. Just to give you an idea, I recently drove from S. California to Seattle. The worst traffic I encountered on the entire trip was in Tacoma….

 

It looked like there were way more there than you suggested once the game was underway. There were at least 500 on the far side plus lots in the bars, and we didn't see the nearside.

Tonight Tacoma announced 857, which may have had something to do with overlapping the Sounders' match.