What difference does it make when you draw a .01 viewing audience or less than a star trek rerun. If you have 15,000 in the seats at Rochester its far better than general indiference in Houston or San Antonio.
The problem with your thesis is that generally, ratings for soccer programs are higher in Houston than any other non-MLS city, including Rochester. So not only does the Bayou City have five times as many households, a higher percentage of them are tuning in. I have no idea about soccer's TV ratings in San Antonio.
How about adding Buffalo and Syracuse to the mix. All of WNY watches Bills games, so if the Rhinos are the only major club in the summer there should be a solid interest. 77 Syracuse, NY 395,400 75 Rochester, NY 396,880 46 Buffalo, NY 651,970 So it's like 1.4 million households. You could even throw in Binghamton and Elmira maybe, but I won't.
San Antonio 748,950 Austin 567,870 I used a cut off of an hour and a half away, because after that, I'd imagine the team wouldn't be "local" anymore. So about 1.3 million. Rochester had what, 1.4 million someone said? Western New York has more people, but it's pretty close. Of course Rochester should be a much higher priority since they've showed extraordinary support already. But MLS isn't only interested in fans. Actually, have they shown that they care about that at all?
Using this standard puts Syracuse (88 miles east all freeway) and Buffalo (65 miles west all freeway) in the Rochester local market. This places the Rochester market at about 4 million I think. Buffalo is about 1.5 million and Syracuse is somewhat smaller. You also have to include any population between these cities that my not be included in the metro figures. Buffalo Bills NFL regularly get 80,000 and they are on the outside edge of this market. Rochester is located in the middle of this market. MLS will make soccer in Rochester a regional commodity. The draw that they have on Syracuse and Buffalo populus in the USL 1st div is very minimal. The new stadium will help that some, but MLS will guarantee a contingent from Buffalo and Syracuse. If Buffalo had an MLS team in a SSS I would be a Bufalo FC fan insteat of a Rochester Rhinos fan and I live in Rochester.
My understanding is that Rochester ownership is unwilling to give up their annual profit to buy into a league-wide investment that means it would lose money each year. Definitely 2nd hand, but it's what I hear. San Antonio seems more likely to be the new home for the KC Wizards, with actual expansion not coming until 2007, for Toronto and ???????
Then they will always be a big fish in a small pond and an increasingly irrelevant team in American soccer. And of course, they will have committed a minor fraud in getting the public funding for the place, seeing as they were all but promising MLS soccer at PaeTec Park. Not that they would be the first to make promises in the process of getting public funding that they failed to live up to.
Due to pecularities of Texas geography, the San Antonio team would also be the "home" team for pretty much all of south Texas, including Corpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley, and Laredo. Just look at the Spurs' example. Now, that might seem like a stretch to you, but no more so than the idea that people in Buffalo will head to Rochester in great numbers.
Actually, I think maybe the numbers I had were TV households, not population, because they were from a TV ratings site. But anyway it's kinda tricky, because you'll have some people from Buffalo not wanting to support the Rochester team because they'll want to have a team of their own, I'd imagine. But if you have a team that close, you might as well attend the games anyway.
That is not the way the WNY sports culture works. Even with UB football moving to 1-A, there are still more Syracuse college football fans in Buffalo than there will ever be UB football fans.
The heavy steel is going up today for the West End (Broad St) of the stadium. It's the final side of the stadium to go up.
Not sure where it went, but the new pic on the front page of the Rhinos site that I posted about last night is not there anymore today. Looking forward to some pics of the west (Canal) side now going up. This is the highest at around 60 ft.
Paetec Park Rochester 4/19/05 from Lacrosse website. Paetec Park 4/19/05 photo on Rochester Rattlers Lacross site.
http://ism.infinityprosports.com/Uploads/218/NewsManager/133.jpeg A little bigger version of the above photo.
From the photos, it looks like so far they've just put in bench seating. Will the stadium have much individual seating?
I think MLS is using Rochester both as a threat and as a fallback position. With PaeTec in place, it's a gun to the head of outfits like San Jose and Kansas City. Before, the only thing the league could say was "Hey, if you guys can't arrange for us to play in an appropriate venue, we'll move the team to....er....somepalce else without an appropriate venue" NOW they can say "We've got a place all ready to go in Rochester, pal. Ready made fan base, great soccer stadium, we can have them in there next week" More importantly though, from a financial perspective, is that the Rhinos Owners are not in a financial league with Anschutz, Hunt, Kraft and Kroenke. They're not picking up extra hours as Security Guards over at Kodak to help make ends meet or anything, but they can't exactly write two or three million dollar checks every year without it hurting a lot. It's no crime being a "small fish" if you really ARE a "small fish". They've done very well dealing with A League economics, but MLS is a whole nother game.
Rochester was always a tire kicking stage. If there hadn't been years of delays getting the stadium built, it is quite possible that Rochester would've been in the league two or three years ago. But that window of opportunity has closed until someone with deep pockets shows up. Ironically, MLS seems to be moving into the financial stage where shallow pockets like DuRoss or Horowitz would likely be sufficient baring a major recession. But MLS is quickly becoming a sellers market, and San Antonio is now the wedge. Kansas City and San Jose now have a mid-August deadline. If they both manage to put something together, even teams like DC United, MetroStars and Revolution would have to be considered "in play" however unlikely a move might be. In four years time, the franchises currently located in East Rutherford, Washington DC, Kansas City, and San Jose will all be playing in Soccer Specific Stadiums. Time will tell where those stadiums are.
Like you say, MLS is aproaching the point where owners don't need to have as deep pockets. I'm guessing that if Metros get their stadium built, that Rochester suddenly have a viable ownership group. Alamodome does shake things up. It's a great economic deal, and it's a controlled venue for the club (even though not a step forward in atmosphere). Don't forget Bridgeview, it turned out the Fire didn't have to drop a dime to get that built, and that will have the kind of atmosphere MLS really wants. They will have to pay rent, but still, it will be reasonable. Basically, the cost of entry for MLS remains too high. If you look at the recent Forbes article on the value of soccer clubs, I think Ajax was valued at about $110 mm. $50mm is the price of entry for MLS (including expansion fee, stadium commitment and share of future losses). Now, if the Bridgeview, Alamodome situations drive down the cost to get a stadium, and a Metro stadium helps drive the MLS losses down, the cost of entry could drop dramatically and MLS becomes a much better ownership proposition. And Rochester is a good situation with a nice existing fan base. I see no reason why Rochester doesn't fit in MLS's plans for a 20 team league.
Bill hit it on the head there basically. I would love to have Rochester in MLS, but the question is completely in regards to their ownership. Even a guy like Horrowitz, who was probably wealthier, couldn't keep up with MLS, and he put up more for his stadium down there, than these guys are putting up and are able to, for PAETEC Park. Does that instill confidence in their possible success in MLS? I don't know.
We're still trying to knock on billionaire (Buffalo Sabre's owner) Tom Golisano's door or perhaps Rochester native Malcolm Glazer could invest a little more in his home town than the property tax he pays on home number #2 or 3 or 25.