I read earlier in the week that both Virginia Beach and Richmond were looking into expansion franchises. The Virginian Beach intrest is from the guy that owns the A-League team there. The Richmond interest comes from the local arena. They recently lost thier ECHL team and primary tennant. This seems like good news for the league. Now if we could just get some interest on the West Coast to help reduce travel costs for the Sockers.
Vegas/Phoenix? what about Vegas or Phoenix? Phoenix is building a new arena for I think both the Suns and Coyotes. May leave a nice arena downtown (even though it's too big). Not sure about Vegas. I've heard it's a decent soccer community. I would expect San Jose and Sactown to be viable.
The new building in Phoenix is only for the Coyotes. They want to get out of America West Arena where they are losing millions of dollars a year by having to pay rent to the Suns. Also, AWA was designed for basketball so there are certain section that cannot see all of the ice. I don't think that Sacramento will have indoor soccer again soon. The owners of the Kings claim that there are no viable dates for indoor during the winter. Finally, I am glad to see that there are cities interested in the MISL, but if this league wants to be considered MAJOR, it needs to go into bigger markets. The league wants a TV deal and needs the bigger markets to attract one.
MISL??? MAJOR??? i dont think anyone will ever think of them that way, even if Indoor Soccer gets to the level of Arena Football it wont be considerd major. MLS is the major league. although i support any brand of soccer, Indoor Soccer is a gimmick sport.
Well, then, good luck because they've drawn 1,409 people for their first two games in Virginia Beach with that guy running the show.
Well, Gee. On behalf of all of those who still think there is hope for indoors (i think there are about eight of us)Thanks for your resounding support and vote of confidence. <rolls my eyes in disbelief>
Of course it's a gimmick sport. It should embrace the gimmick. It has little chance as a serious sport. As much as I love the game, I say embrace the gimmick and drop all pretense whatsoever.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=52667&ran=209561 Here's a story on the Virginia Beach Mariners owner trying to bring indoor soccer to the area.
From that article: The same front office staff that has recently disappeared from the team's website? At one point they had something like a dozen sales people, and I wouldn't be surprised if he whacked most of them. Once he tries to pay Roy Lassiter and Dante Washington out of the $4,000 or so he took in at the gate the first two games, some more will likely go, as well as these grandiose plans for an MISL team. Yeah, they were able to work things out by having the MISL team move across the street to another arena. Does this game attract the delusional people or what?