possible expansion market with most potential is...

Only because Milwaukee built a baseball only stadium. If Miller Park had been football compatible, the Packers would still be there.

But as you say, it was a unique situation. Milwaukee is treated as an equal to Green Bay by the Packers... they have two flagship newspapers, radio stations and TV stations in each city, for example. But they need the Milwaukee market to survive.

 

IIRC the new high-speed rail that's due to start construction next year and open in 2004 is supposed to take 1 hour + 5 mins from Tampa downtown to Orlando airport, less (about 40 minutes) to Disneyworld - there'll be a station in Disney, as well as central Orlando + the airport.

If a SSS was built at the Disneyworld stop + the team was marketed in Tampa as a mid-Florida team, would fans come from Tampa on a regular basis?

 

Possibly.

Although, if they did in fact name this team "Orlanda City" as I have heard in some reports, that is about the worse name they could have chosen if their objective was to also appeal to Tampa area residents. Florida *fill in the blank* would have been a better name.

 

True, but in my opinion it is better to adopt a good name now. Get it right the first time and avoid the expense inherent in doing a rebrand.

 

The Carolina Hurricanes weren't named "Carolina" in order to appeal to Charlotte or even Greensboro area fans. The "regional" name was used because the market they're in doesn't have a well-defined core or anchor city. Raleigh-Durham Hurricanes just doesn't have the same cache as Carolina Hurricanes. It's like the teams in Minneapolis-St. Paul being called "Minnesota".

 

Not in any great numbers.

 

Probably not. I highly doubt many fans in Tampa would support MLS in Orlando after the way the league handled the Mutiny. Heck they didn't really support MLS in Tampa because of the way the league handled the Mutiny. The only way you will get Tampa on board with MLS is probably this:



The same holds true for South Florida. History dictates that anything other than the Fort Lauderdale Strikers will likely fail because no one will show up. The Miami Gatos, Toros, Freedom, Sharks, Fusion and Miami FC all failed miserably on nearly every level. The 2 Strikers teams may have eventually folded but they at least drew good crowds and won some games.

If MLS comes back to Florida it should be with 2 teams, and there is room for that if the league goes to 24. If they want to own up to past mistakes, those two teams should be the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Fort Lauderdale Strikers. I would like to see Orlando have a team, but not at the expense of the two markets the league screwed over the first time. Going to Orlando would just be adding salt in the wounds of South Florida and Tampa fans.

 

Having been to several Bears-Packers games over the years at Lambeau, I couldn't disagree more with your statement.

The Pack made improvements to Lambeau Field in the early '90's and again on the early 2000's which have made it possible to not play in Beerwuakke anymore. The Pack played for decades in Milwaukee for sure, but stopped cold in the early 90's after renovations. Miller Park opened a few years ago, more than a decade after the Pack stopped playing in County Stadium (a huge dump)..

Additionally, the Packers don't need to play in Milwaukee since their revival when Favre and company made GB a consistent playoff competitor. I wish the Pack would play in Milwaukee, it's closer for us Bear fans; however, GB has made all the necessary improvements about 20 years ago and and proven that Wisconsin fans everywhere are willing to travel to that little berg religiously every home game. Pack fans are like Bear fans, they'll drive and travel to watch their team. That's not a concept Detroit Lions fans understand.

Back on topic for a moment, I feel NYC is the front runner for the 19th team based on all the rumors and Garber's hard-on for another NY team. After that, I hope to see another MW team preferring Mpls/StP, StL or Detroit (in that order). All these cities need now is the committed owner with long term money to sponsor a franchise and a stadium arrangement that makes the club profitable.

 

you mean NYC as the 20th team in MLS-- montreal is # 19 in 2012

when graber mentions over and over again that a particular city is probably next in-line, then its almost a done deal for ownership, financing and stadium plans-- and he has been saying consistently that it will be NYS cosmos, to be announced in 6-8 months-- probably 2013 or 2014 kickoff season

the question remains-- when and what city/ownership group will be # 21 and 22?

 

Yes, really.

Why do people constantly overestimate the number of hardcore fans there are just because they, themselves are hardcore fans?

Uh, no.

The Packers last played games in Milwaukee in 1994, six years before the demise of County Stadium.

Regardless of how fervent Milwaukeeans are for the Pack, it made a lot more sense for the team to have every game in one location and not continue to split season ticket holders between the two cities. Especially after the $4.7M renovation to Lambeau that resulted in 90 more private boxes and expanded the seating capacity to nearly 61,000 (nearly 10k more than County Stadium) for the 1995 season. Odd coincidence there. And you don't sell people luxury suites and then say "Oh, by the way, we're not going to have every game here. Sorry!"

In short, it made little financial sense to have Packer home games anywhere but Lambeau starting in 1995, and I don't know what "football-compatibleness" Miller Park would have had to have, but I know part of it would have involved, oh, I don't know, 20,000 more seats because Miller Park only seats 41k for baseball.

Which does not necessarily mean they need to play games in Milwaukee to survive. Except for potentially people along the Minnesota border, the Packers have the entire state. And it's been 15 years since they played in Milwaukee, and, oddly enough, they seem to be surviving quite well.

 

I still think Vegas is potentially the best market for #21. It's one of the fastest growing metro areas, has no major league sports in it and has a large hispanic population. Theres also plenty of land and it isn't held up in the politics of a place like say DC or central Boston. At the moment Vegas is down in the dumps with the recession and housing collapse but around 2014/15 it should be on the road to recovery. I know if I had a couple hundred million dollars spare it'd be where I'd be putting my money. Whichever major sport gets in there first has the potential to tie up the city for decades to come, especially if they have the market to themselves for a good few years.

Failing Vegas, maybe San Diego, Minneapolis or St Louis. Also the Carolinas if you're feeling exceptionally risky with your money.

 

Not in any great numbers.

No, not in any great numbers.

Some might. But as I'm on record as objecting to the notion that a "regionally branded" team in a less-than-average-popularity sport is unlikely to work, that's part of it, too.

It's still in your same market, though. It's still Chicago. Chicagoland people are used to going to various points in and around the Cook/DuPage etc. Counties area to get to things that interest them (except for the whole city/suburbs divide thing, which is about more than distance). Would you go to Gary? Would you go to Kenosha? Would a lot of people?

True or false: a lot of Fire fans did not go to Naperville, despite the fact it's closer to Chicago than Orlando is to Tampa, and despite the fact you could take the BNSF right from Union Station and other points and get off a few blocks from the stadium? That would be true. Obviously, there were other issues with Cardinal Stadium, but distance and time are only one part of the equation. People will come from far away to Soldier Field for a Bears game, and they came from points north, south and west to Soldier Field for Fire games.

I simply don't believe people from Tampa would be fired up enough about an Orlando team to get on a train - no matter how convenient it is - and go in any great numbers to support a soccer team that plays in Orlando, no matter how "regionally" you tried to brand it.

I was speaking specifically of hardcore soccer fans. People don't need to be hardcore fans to go to a Bulls game.

Try this little experiment sometime: try to give away NBA tickets in your office. See how fast they go. Tell Louise in accounting she can have two free tickets to the next NBA game or an MLB game or an NFL game and see how fast they go.

Now do the same thing with MLS tickets. Watch what happens. See how the level of interest has to go way up for people to even consider taking free soccer tickets.

I know. I've done it. I've seen it.

You know, Floridians don't consider Disney World to be this big mecca that they go to a lot. And they don't have time to combine a trip to Disney with a trip to an MLS game. And if they did, they wouldn't be taking a train to get there. Disney is for tourists. And tourists are unlikely to make the time to add an MLS game to their itinerary unless they're pretty hardcore about soccer.

So, as to the general point, no, you can pretty much forget about an Orlando-based MLS team drawing significant numbers from the Tampa Bay area. Some people? I'm sure there will be some people. But significant numbers? Nope. Train or no train. Ain't happening.

 

That's the gist of it. A lot of people don't realize that the season ticket base is still spit, however, between Milwaukee and Green Bay. If you look at the Packers schedule, you will see three regular season games noted as "Gold Package" games -- those are games for the one time Milwaukee season ticket holders from County Stadium. There is a separate season ticket list even today. (BTW, this distinction does not apply to club seats and boxes -- only general admission tickets.)

http://www.packers.com/gameday/schedule.html

The history of the Packers in Milwaukee is beyond this thread, but it's interesting. The Packers drew poorly in Green Bay for decades, and they hoped playing in Milwaukee could boost revenues (although it's not clear it did). Later, there is some suggestion that Packers continued to play at County Stadium to keep control of the Milwaukee market. At the end of the day, they never really had a good stadium situation there, and with the renovations it made sense to end it. The Milwaukee season ticket holders now drive to Green Bay instead, but they do have their own games.

 

Yes, renovations made playing in Green Bay more lucrative than playing in awful County Stadium, but the Packers left in 1994 assuming that when the Brewers built a new stadium it would be up to date enough that they could eventually come back and still roll in the dough. After all, they'd been playing in Milwaukee for over 60 years and had an entirely different season ticket base for their games there. When the Brewers decided to build a baseball only stadium, the idea died and everyone happily went off in their own direction.

Also, it was only 6 years between the Packers leaving Milwaukee and Miller Park opening... not over a decade.

Easy to support a team that just made a Super Bowl a few years ago... I'd love to see how Soldier Field would look after the worst decade in the history of professional sports.

 

( a ) They didn't assume anything. The only way the Brewers were going to get a new stadium was if it was baseball-only. The price tag of a combined stadium was too much for state legislators to go for.

( b ) The irony of the whole thing is that they thought a baseball-only stadium was going to cost $165 million and a combined football-baseball stadium with convertible roof and grass would cost $20 to $25 million more. But Miller Park ended up costing $400 million and was a year late in opening.

( c ) From the Milwaukee Journal of October 13, 1994 (emphasis below is mine):

They did not intend to come back because there was nothing in the works for them to come back to. Milwaukee couldn't get the combined deal done, County Stadium wasn't cutting it, the economics of football were changing, and - and this is the key part - Milwaukee's Packer fans understood. They were taken care of, and have been since then.

As we know now, the cost ballooned - but the cost of a combined stadium would have been astronomical when all was said and done, and it still would have only been used for three Packer games a year in addition to the Brewers.

 

Roger Goodell in Atlanta for the Thursday night NFL game made a point of supporting a new outdoor stadium for Atlanta. Arthur Blank in recent statements has tied his MLS bid to getting that stadium built and doing a share with his Falcons.

 

#20 nyc2
#21 atl
#22 canada
#23 san antonio
#24 tampa bay/orlando

the winds are pointing toward nyc2 and atl being the next two...

 

What makes you think Atlanta would be number 21? The Silverbacks limping back to league play?

 

The Silverbacks have little to do with Atlanta getting a team. Instead, Arthur Blank and the local government in Atlanta hold the key. Garber has flown to Atlanta a number of times to visit with Blank who in so many ways fits the profile of the type of owner that Garber is seeking ($$$$$). The real hang-up is a suitable stadium. If a stadium deal can be worked out, I guarantee that the very next thing you will see is a press conference with Garber and Blank announcing Atlanta as a new expansion franchise.

 

If a stadium deal can be worked out with ANY candiate city, they will be announcing a new expansion franchise.

 

Think harder.