MLS SSS situaton: Currently ahead of or behind (or at) initial plans?

I dunno. Probably depends on who you talked to.

To everyone who thought the MLS would be tits-up in 5 years, it's waaaay ahead of schedule.

For everyone in Metroland, DC, and San Jose, it's probably waaaay behind.

But I'm a Galaxy fan, so what the hell do I care. Out team practically mints money for MLS.

 

Goodsie: haven't the Metro fans suffered enough? Please, no more false hopes...

 

METROS

[Insert joke here after 60 to 90 days]

 

I agree. Although I haven't followed it that carefully, I have the impression that the Metros have been very close to an official announcement for a good two or three years now...

 

People please stop thinking the Metrostars are going to get their own stadium anytime in the next 15 years. If people stop actually expecting this to happen everyone will be better off. So for now just count the Metro to be in Giants stadium forever, if somehow a real deal is reached at some point it will just be a nice surprise.

 

If we can't expect Metrostars to get their stadium, then we can't expect MLS to break even (due to the Meadowlands rent situation).

Also, I believe Garber just put a fake positive spin, to not talk about complications on national TV in primetime.

 

I think the league from the beginning had hopes of being able to sell out these huge stadiums and not needing soccer specific stadiums. The original SSS, Crew Stadium, was mainly built because the playing surface at the Horseshoe was about the size of a basketball court and it just wasn't possible to play soccer there.

Poor Lockhart Stadium, the perfect place to play soccer but a team owner that didn't know what the hell he was doing. Thanks for the good four years Miami Fusion FC.

Then came Victoria Street and gave the league a much needed shot in the arm. Now the ball is rolling and good times are ahead.

God bless MLS.

 

Huh? You're not joking, are you? Here's how rest of the world would rank in trying to sell out these stadiums.

http://www.geocities.com/worldfootballrankings2004/Top125Leagues.html

Look at it any way. NFL is an aberration in terms of attendance average for any league in the world. Not even the most popular leagues in the world would start it right by trying to selling out in those humongous monsters.

 

I don't think the league ever thought they could sell out NFL stadiums. But I'm guessing that they thought they could generate larger attendances than they actually did. I would suppose that the original business plan said that they'd be closer to 25k or 30k than the present 15k average attendance. But once MLS realized that they could make money with 20k and a SSS, then stadiums became a priority for most teams.

 

The year one business plan projected an average crowd of 12,500. The reason these guys are still in the game is that they were and are realists, not pie-in-the-sky guys.

 

Thanks for the information. Is there a copy of the original busines plan somewhere. I'd be very curious.

 

Not really. They play 8 home games a year. 8. Barca, Bayern, ManU, etc., play 18 PLUS a ton of cup games (domestic, UEFA/Champions League, etc.). PLUS, the top players play national fixtures. In short, if the top players played only 20 games/year, the attendance would go up in soccer fanatic countries.

 

True, that. I'm hardly an NFL fan, and don't care a bit for American Football in general. But if you look at the table in that link, the impression you get is that there is a yawning gap between NFL average attendance, and average attendance of any other league, for any other football code. There needs to be a better statistical method to account for the frequency of matches. It's called the aggregate annual attendance. That site needs to put such a table of total attendance to compare among different leagues in general.

 

I agree attendance would probably go up, but its hard to say by how much.

Take the city of Liverpool, for instance.

If you combine Liverpool and Everton support, that's about 80,000 Liverpudlians who regularly attend an EPL match.

And considering that the adult male population of Liverpool is 200,000 or so, it's hard to see how combined attendance for both teams would rise to NFL levels (65,000 to 75,000 per team) if the number of games were dropped.

 

But what about Tranmere? And any other teams within a certain number of miles to Liverpool? Better yet take London - a plethora of clubs, but if it were one (or maybe two) clubs, say the London Kings and the London Knights (yank-style names, natch) who only played 8 games a year, yeah I could see them each pulling 90K easy. As it is now the DC metro area has millions of people, yet the only local team is the Redskins, so of course there are gonna be a ton of people and theres a huge waiting list for season tickets.

 

I still find it interesting that MLS is what #17 on that list. And only a few thousand behind major leagues like spain. Hmmm.

 

That list is ridicualously misleading. MLS has a minimum of 18,000, other leagues don't, like say...Brazil. Whihc is way down there. Yet they pack staidums like the morumbi stadium twice a week.

 

Here is a latest news article on the Harrison situation.

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-1/11019825163310.xml?jjournal?kj

 

I say it is proceeding quite well, way beyond what the expectations were 5 years ago, and not even in the realm of imagination 10 years ago.

 

But it's just about right for what the expectation 60-90 days ago.

AH!! THAT JOKE JUST NEVER GETS OLD!! HA HA!!

Hey, how bout this one - MOVE SAN JOSE!! HAAAA I kill me.



Sigh. too much cold medicine. Must. . . rest. Elf needs food . . .badly.

 

You must be watching different matches on TV than me.

Whenever I catch a glimpse of Brazillian football on FSW, there're almost always playing in a sparsely-packed, mammoth stadium or a relatively-full 12,000 capacity field.

 

These lists are like Penthouse Forum for the MLS apologists. It gives them something to jerk themselves off over. ​

I think they are ahead of schedule. It's not easy to get stadiums built and they do a pretty good job at it.​

 

We have to remember that the NFL season is very short -- the shortest in US pro sports: 16 games + playoffs and the Hyperbole Bowl. an aberration, indeed. How many home games, 8? I don't follow it, frankly, till the conference championships. Practically speaking, the NFL season is a showcase, with 8 chances to see your home team play. In the case of the NY Giants, the games are sold out for the next decade or something.

Soccer is closer to the long season of baseball, where attendance waxes and wanes as the months wear on.