It really does seem corrupt. Building a racetrack in the Meadowlands to pay off the debt is basically equivalent to saying "lets get the middle to lower classes to foot the bill."
Whatever model you choose to look at, the reactions of fans in Seattle, Toronto, or Denver to their newfound North American major league teams are not analogous to the reactions of fans in fluid pro/rel situations.
The issue isn't debt, it's that a cartel can create a false shortage and bribe local government aka local taxpayers into funding stadium construction with threats to move away etc.
You wouldn't possibly claim there's a shortage of supply in professional American soccer, though, right?
These are one time bumps. To go back to Columbus as an example, for the first 8 years the Blue Jackets were in the NHL they played to capacity crowds every night. But after 8 years of not being very good, people just stopped buying tickets... now they're one of the worst attended teams in the league. If Seattle and Toronto suck for a few years, the good will and great attendance will dry up fast. Not at all true. Most AAA markets are large enough to host MLB teams and many have been considered for relocation or expansion over the years. But that's besides the point... expansion != promotion. If Las Vegas got an MLB team, a lot of people would be excited. If the Las Vegas 51's, who nobody in the city really gives two shits about, I doubt the bandwagon would be that big. Especially if a team Las Vegas baseball fans have grown up with like the Dodgers are relegated. There is "losing" and then there is losing. The Cubs are usually a strong team, they just blow it every fall... compare to a team like the Pirates who haven't made the playoffs in over a decade and draw flies to their games and don't do much better in the ratings. In fact, looking at attendance numbers, you start to see a pretty obvious trend. Teams that miss the playoffs regularly are always near the bottom! Ditto for TV ratings. The idea being that fan support is directly related to performance. Please show me one American (ie not a Canadian NHL team) team that continues to be a huge draw while losing repeatedly. I can think of exactly one and it's the New York Knicks. I "learned to love the European system", too. For soccer. Any suggestion that it's inherently better or should be used in American sports, though, is just loltastic.
Exactly. They love hosting Euros and stuff... coincidentally that's where the government starts building and renovating stadiums for teams to play in. Pot, kettle, etc...
Not a real good comparison. NFL plays a total of 267 games(including playoffs) D1(BCS and FBS) college football gets that amount of games in just over 2 weekends. (NFL still would avg more per game than College Football I agree. Try telling someone like Bob Kraft who paid $175 million for the Patriots in 1994. Most people believe he paid about $75 million more than they were worth at the time. In that purchase the stadium was not involved, he had already bought that in 88. So now he built a $325 million dollar stadium with his own money. His team is now worth over 1 billion.
Let me know the next time a European team threatens to move to a different part of the country unless local taxpayers fund a new stadium for them.
Quote: Originally Posted by M Let me know the next time a European team threatens to move to a different part of the country unless local taxpayers fund a new stadium for them. It's been done. It's been done where? Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes to become the MK Dons is the only example I can think of & that was a very special case (Wimbledon were homeless, had no possibility of building a stadium, and were technically insolvent; a Division IV team being folding in mid-season is one thing, a Division II/Championship team is quite another). I can't think of a single other instance in the UK, Europe or South America, except for Mexico,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relocation_of_professional_sports_teams#United_Kingdom Scroll through and see there are numerous examples all over the world. Atlante F.C. moving to Cancun from Mexico City is especially jarring... a move of over 1,000 miles.
that atlante move isnt that strange. Atlante was in a bad spot playing in the cavernous Azteca. they never could fill it up. im glad to see they have a fan base in cancun
of course they had their reasons... it's not like popular, well attended American teams in nice stadiums relocate constantly. I think that's a European misconception. The point was that it happens in pro/rel Euro style leagues, too.
Shit, if you only knew what goes on on liga de acenso (second division in Mexico). My own Veracruz have bought teams that won promotion and moved them to Veracruz and renamed them Tiburones Rojos. This used to happen a lot, it has gotten better, but it still happens. It is mostly due to government money and interference. There are teams that are actually owned (or partially) owed by the government (municipal or state) Jaguares Chiapas was owned (50%) by the state of Chiapas, it was sold to the TeleAzteca (meaning they now have 2 teams in primera).
Well, to be fair, the guy explicitly made an exception for Mexico so let's not focus too much on that league (which has a lot of issues relating to team location, absolutely)
This is all of 3 weeks old. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/05/tottenham-hotspur-olympic-stadium Not sure what came of it of if it's still on the table, but they did publicly threaten to leave if the local council didn't vote their way on a stadium they'd move from North London to East London; so M, I'm letting you know. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...ondon-says-West-Ham-owner-David-Sullivan.html
IF this ever happens, Spurs are moving about 10 miles/6 stops on the subway - within the same city. At the utmost this is moving from Brooklyn to Queens and much more like South Boston to Roxbury. Also, the council "voting their way" relates to planning and construction permits. And the council giving permits isn't the problem pushing the Olympic idea; infrastructure costs (the teams have to pay a part) and English Heritage (preserving historical buildings) are adding about 10% to the construction cost. Moving to the Olympic site gives Spurs a blank canvas to build the stadium they want, one they can rent to AEG for concerts, in an area with the most up-to-date infrastructure in London, and with extra land for building other venues. Oh, and the stadium will be cheaper to build - no English Heritage and infrastructure.
Numerous examples?? Not really. Most of that list includes moves of teams from one stadium to a new stadium down the road (e.g. Bolton moving some 5 miles to Reebok Stadium or Nottingham Forest leaving Forest to move all of a few hundreds meters away). It's not exactly what we were talking about here.
Ahem, I said " threatens to move to a different part of the country unless local taxpayers fund a new stadium for them". Looking at your list for the UK, I can't see a single example of this happening, with the possible exception of Livingston (?). Some teams have certainly moved, but they have typically funded their own stadia in doing so rather than getting local taxpayers to pick up the tab. And anyway in the last century or so all moves bar Milton Keynes, Clyde (marginally) and Livingston have been local. That was the point I was making: namely that being able to bribe local taxpayers to fund stadium construction on the threat of moving away/not moving away is largely a peculiarity to American cartel-based leagues that can use the leverage of being able to create a "false shortage" of "Major League" teams.
Indeed. I'm struggling to understand the relevance of Flyin Ryan's post as well. Now, if Spurs were asking Haringey council to fund White Hart Lane's development, he'd have a point.
There are numerous examples in that article of teams moving much farther than a few miles away, particularly in the sections on Germany and the Rest of the World.
All I see in the German section are three moves dictated by the East German government prior to the fall of communism, and a statement that such moves are unusual in West Germany (and, by extension, Germany). So there you go: the US has something in common in the way it runs its sports with the failed communist model.