Should MLS expand to Canada?

We could use some cool-weather venues for July and August. How about a team in Halifax?

Sean makes a lot of sense -- and covers ground that many of have visited here in support of Canadian teams -- and that stadium looks to be a beauty. The only thing against Toronto is that bringing it into MLS makes too much sense. We don't hit the nail on the head very often, not when there is a thumb waiting to be bashed.

 

The fact that we'll have an SSS AND a local ownership group for Toronto makes their bid practically unstoppable in my opinion. Furthermore, I think Maple leaf sports may be looking even more seriously into MLS now that the NHL is having problems.


Toronto/Houston or Toronto/Vancouver for 2007 would be awesome.

 

The difference being that Garber told a (Canadian) national soccer audience that Toronto was number one on the expansion list. Take that as you will.

This is not exactly true. The Leafs are an incredibly big fish in a small pond where the NHL is concerned, and they play in probably the biggest hockey market in North America (if not the world).

The fact that they were able to purchase an NBA team (the Raptors) and an arena with ease (not to mention that they were rumoured to purchase the Argos and, at one point, the Blue Jays/SkyDome) should tell you the pecking order of the Leafs in comparison to other teams in Toronto. They are king here, everything else is competing for second place.

 

Having Canadian teams in MLS will permanantly kill any reason to form and sustain a league in Canada. Every Canadian city that is admitted results in one less opportunity for an American city. I know there are many that say that the cities that deserve a team are the ones that have ownership, stadium and money in place. This is short sighted. It is quite possible that over the next couple decades enough American markets will have all the criteria necessary to fill out a 20 team league. I would not be so opposed to Canadian teams entering the league if I thought it would be possible to have promotion/relegation in at least two divisions. That, however, is unlikely. Therefore we will relatively quickly reach a saturation point of teams in MLS.

 

This is a simple question.

No.

Why should mls go to Canada if there is, at most, just one city thats even on a relatively equal playing field with most other US cities... then you mention the Canadian Dollar exchange then you say just forget it. WHY???

I'm not saying it won't work.(Toronto ONLY) But why even try. It sorta makes reminds me of why baseball ever went to Montreal when there was always enormous interest in ,anywhere USA, to have a baseball team.

Also, having JUST one MLS team in Toronto is not going to help Canadians improve their game, nor will the team be marketed as Canadian...even less favorable for overall success.

Then there may be some issues with Fifa etc ect ect...

I tend to use the motto "Keep things simple" there are pleanty of US contender cities. Why make things more complicated if you don't have to.

Let Canada take care of their issues and we'll bother with ours. MLS still isn't exactly a mainstream US league why then go to a country which its popularity is even with the US, at best!!!(and I think thats a bit generous).

 

How much has having the Expos/Blue Jays helped "Canadian Baseball" develop?

 

The Blue Jays were huge in southern Ontario until baseball went on strike and the Expos initially drew big crowds in Montreal as well. In the mid-70s soccer and baseball were getting off the ground in major league pro terms in Toronto about the same time and despite a huge ethnic Italian, Croatian, British ex-pat etc population baseball proceeded to blow soccer out of the water over the following 20 years. Then came the strike. Baseball has never really recovered from that summer in Canada and a lot of people say it is what finally killed off interest in the Expos in Montreal:-

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?p=204202#post204202

Youth soccer registration started booming after that while baseball's nosedived maybe because the baseball strike was the same summer as the World Cup being held next door in the USA. MLS IMO would help consolidate that breakthrough for soccer in Canada in participation terms by giving the kids a team to look up to and watch on cable during the summer months. I suspect hockey will be in for a similar tough time of it in most of the US although it will bounce back quickly in Canada.

 

"Big" in a Yankees/Sox sense might be a stretch, but they drew 2 million one year. The 'Spos of the early 90s were not the pathetic club people remember from the last years. I do think it's fair to say it was the strike more than anything else that killed them.

. . . and I suspect you have a point about hockey in the (non-northeast) US.

It would be interesting to see how many youth baseball players there were in Canada at the peak.

 

Definitely would be worth seeing the trends in registration over the last 30 years or so. May look into that a bit next weekend. Basically this article tells the story of what has happened across southern Ontario over the last decade:-

http://www.parrysoundnorthstar.com/story--1057759415

There was an attempt to get a Canadian Baseball League off the ground recently:-

http://www.canoe.ca/SlamBaseballCanadaNews/021121_jen-cp.html

but it failed miserably despite being pushed extensively by the sports media and having a national cable contract and folded midseason after just three months:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Baseball_League

 

I'll back expansion into Toronto,
ONLY IF, players are paid in Canadian Dollars.

The leauge would be commiting the NHL financial suicide move that made the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames have to put out a lottery contest
to pay for those Alberta team's expenses. This was recent, too. A reason why no team will be etching its name on the Stanely Cup this year.

If 17k Canadians fill a Toronto stadium paying Canadian dollars
and the players are being paid with American dollars, no matter if its a $0.15 difference, thats a big difference in the scheme of things. If a player from Toronto FC gets traded to the Fire, his contract would still be in Canadian Dollars, if a player gets traded to Toronto FC, his contract would be converted to Canadian dollars.

This would GURANTEE Canadian cities don't go crazy in the idea of popping up with teams when they can't make a profit because their spending more than their earning, because all i have to say is OTTAWA Senators & WINAPEG Jets.

EDIT: Forgot QUEBEC Nordiques. Cool Jerseys btw.
If MLS, is going to with a Canadian # minimum rule - paying them Canadian dollars shouldnt' be a problem.

 

How so when their players would mainly be Canadians who would have to compete with players from all over the world if they wanted one of the import slots on the other franchises? The proposed setup does not directly compare with MLB or the NHL where there is an unrestricted market for all the player's services.

 

The league is likely to dole out its paychecks in the currency that will work at tha local grocery store or car dealership. That'll be Canadian Dollars unless they become so weak that those outlets actually prefer the greenback (if they take them both on an equal basis, it's worth noting the post office prefers loonies).

It's amazing that this perception persists. Things don't work that way.

The strength of a currency is not in the exchange rate, but in the direction it's moving. And it ain't moving in the direction it used to.

Lately, the loony has been stronger than the greenback, meaning that if you spent $1000 US to buy loonies two years ago, you'd have gotten almost 1500 of them. Today, you could walk into the same exchange store with that 1500, and get yourself a little over 1200 US bucks. A tidy little profit. Anyone in the know would want to have done exactly that.

And it won't change tomorrow, though it might change some day. As long as the US persists with high trade and budget deficits and our central bank {or foreign central banks} doesn't intervene to prop the US dollar up, it will not be a more desirable currency than the Canadian dollar.

Now, there is a cost every time you exchange one currency for another, no matter which currencies we're talking about. But the bigger the average transaction, and the more often you do it, the better a rate you're likely to get from your bank. For a reasonably sized business like we're talking about here, the exchange costs aren't the huge concern.

It's a bigger concern that Canada tends to draw more revenues out of various taxes than the U.S. does over time, but even there, the top nominal corporate tax rate in Canada is lower than the U.S.

Exchange rates are built into contracts, otherwise it would be difficult for anyone to do any business, and yet an absolutely astounding amount of business gets done accross the US-Canadian border.

Canadian teams have been challenged in the past by the following factors:

1- Traditionally, the Canadian currency has been weaker
2- Traditionally, Canadian taxes have been higher
3- Canada is not quite as rich a country as the US.
4- Many of the Canadian markets are smaller than most of their US counterparts.

1 has not been true for the last couple years and won't be for at least the next couple and probably a good deal longer than that, though there's always some risk. 2 is not as true as it used to be, though considering that Canada still spends more of GDP on government than the US, but US debt is higher, it must be coming from somewhere. 4 is not relevant as long as you're only talking about Toronto.

That leaves 3, which is still true, but Canada is still pretty darn rich by world standards, and Toronto being as big a city as it is, there's still a lot of cumulative disposable income out there.

And finally, the SES will do a lot through revenue sharing and through the player rules to counter the economic imbalances that have come up in other sports. What's been hard for Canadian teams in US league in the past has been that they have not been as competitive for free agents and such, which has in turn hurt them at the gate. In MLS, this is not a concern.

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Summary: Toronto is not as good an expansion market financially as a hyopthetical US market that has the same number of people. Unfortunately for MLS, there is no US market with as many people as Toronto that does not already have a team. And Toronto is better financially than a US market the size of SLC or Columbus (whose virtue is a relative lack of summer competition).

 

Wow! Stan, that's a brilliant assessment of the currency-related issues surrounding the expansion of Major League Soccer to Toronto. Kudos to you, sir. One of the best posts I've ever read out here.

 

I vote Toronto and Vancouver. But it is an uphill climb.

 

One thing Garber has said that I might disagree with is that there's enough MLS-quality players for two Canadian teams at this moment. There are certainly enough for one (especially since you can augment for foreigners) but two might be hard, unless and until the first one comes along and helps grow the talent pool.

 

I'm firmly against the MLS expanding into Toronto, or Canada in general, for the following reasons:

1) TV RIGHTS FEES. What I haven't heard discussed yet on this topic is the issue of television rights fees as it relates to expanding outside of the US. The big money in US sports, the reason that the NBA, NFL, NBA and NHL are considered the absolute best leagues in their respective sports is because of television money (be it national with the first three or local rights fees and some national with the NHL). The fact is that when the Canadian teams play on US television the ratings are generally poor. It's no different than when I spent a semester in Canada and read about NHL games involving southern US teams receiving lesser ratings on CBC or TSN than matches involving Canadian teams. What if Canadian teams become powerhouses? That won't help ratings.

Some will instantly dismiss what I'm going to write here next, but if the MLS can simply one day gain the prominance that hockey once had in the States in the early to mid 1990's, it doesn't even have to challenge the big three, then the league could challenge any league in the world for top talent. Look at the salaries of top soccer players in the world and look at what hockey players make in North America. The potential upside for the soccer product on the pitch in the US is huge!

2) QUESTIONABLE SUPPORT IN TORONTO FOR THE MLS PRODUCT. So Toronto has a large immigrant population who love soccer. So the game has certainly increased it's profile in Canada. Why do the Lynx struggle to draw well then? The arguement I hear from friends in T.O. is that the soccer fans don't show up because the level isn't up to the standards of their home leagues. Well, the Dallas Burn aren't exactly Roma or AC Milan. So the "inferior" MLS will be viewed differently? Believe me, the US isn't short of people from soccer-mad countries, but their fandom is for their own homegrown leagues and other top world clubs. not the MLS.

Also, as for fans suddenly going because they want to support Canadian homegrown talent, well I went to a Canadian World Cup Qualifier game recently and the attendence was about equal to that of a NCAA soccer match. Not a ringing endorsement by any means.

Finally, other than the NHL's Maple Leafs, Toronto hasn't distinguished itself as supporting other major sports teams. Both the Jays and Raptors play before plenty of empty seats. The Argos, while very good on the field (last year's Grey Cup winners), have been struggling for years at the gate. The AHL hockey team folded after one season.

3) HOW DOES EXPANDING INTO TORONTO ACTUALLY HELP MLS? As a business deal it is extremely risky (see above). As a means of developing US players for the national team it fails, instead it seems to help a CONCACAF rival. The only thing it seems to do is give the MLS one more team. If the league just wants more teams then just give Chicago another team when it's stadium is built, give Dallas a "hispanic" team when it's stadium is built, and give each city that builds a stadium two teams so that they can have crosstown derby matches. It saves on travel, both teams can save a lot of money by consolidating many of their expenses. If you focus on expanding to important strategic US cities and each has two clubs you can then reasonably expect that one will be competitive. Leagues LOVE when the largest cities have a team in the championship mix. With more home dates filled, a soccer-specific stadium becomes more economically viable. Plus you have more teams. If you can play on local rivalries then all the potential is there for some interesting derby contests. You could also offer discounts to fans who buy tickets for both local teams. If one team gets popular enough to warrant a new, and bigger stadium of their own then the second team could take over the SSS as the sole tenant. Ah, and with a pretty good guarantee that the bigger cities will have at least one high-level team, could we please get some promotion-relagation going at some point in the future? Didn't think so.


AS FOR CANADA AND SOCCER... Seperate from MLS, I would love to see a seperate Canadian league. I think it works best for Canadian soccer in that more Canadian teams means more Canadian players playing in a high level league. This allows Canada to develop it's own style and approach to the game, and promotes the game accross the ENTIRE country and not just the Greater Toronto Area.

If I were in position to start a league in Canada, I would try and base the individual teams around nationality identities. For instance a team in Toronto that appeals to Italians and others that appeal to other groups for instance. Even if a league was province-specific at first, and the attendence expectations weren't too great, it could work. The limited travel would significantly curtail expenses since players could be bused to games and sleep in their own beds at night rather than pricy hotels. Maybe a playoff could involve the whole of Canada with it's seperate provincal leagues - a sort of Canadian Champions league. As the sport grows then a full-blown national league could take root, if that is prefered.

 

Actually Ted Rogers, the owner of the Rogers Communications, the Blue Jays and the SkyDome is reportedly interested in bringing the NFL to Toronto. Just before the last Super Bowl, at a press conference in Jacksonville, NFL commisioner Paul Tagliabue stated that after Los Angeles gets a team he'd like the league to focus it's expansion plans outside of the US. A reporter from Toronto asked about Toronto and the commisioner smiled and spoke very highly of T.O. He said he hoped that he would one day be in Toronto to kick off a new team for that city. A representative of Rogers was then quoted as saying he was enthusiastic about the news and that they are definitely interested. If you search the net you'll probably be able to find the Daily News or Star coverage of the story. Both said basically the same thing.

By the way, I mentioned in a previous post how I would like a seperate Canadian and US soccer leagues. Well, the NFL is another matter. I would LOVE to see a team in Toronto and, from my time there, I think it would be a huge success. Montreal would also be great, but I would be afraid of too much expansion into Canada doing immense damage to the CFL. Toronto isn't exactly the best CFL city as you know, when I was in TO everyone I met would dismiss the CFL and talk about wanting an NFL team. But Montreal is such a strong market with their new stadium that the CFL really needs them.

I would expect Toronto to be second on the expansion list to Mexico City, though. The sport has a following in much of Mexico (the exhibition games have drawn very well) and their isn't a CFL to worry about. If LA is awarded an expansion team instead of another team relocating to LA, that would leave an uneven amount of teams. I would then expect either Mexico City or Toronto to get the second club. Also, the game is getting pretty big in Germany and Austria, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland could be potential spots down the line with the influx of fan support in these countries. A European division would be great.

 

It will be a very long time until MLS gets significant TV money like baseball, basketball or football. The NHL as the fourth major league has never quite made it as a network televised sport in the United States and currently has the same sort of television contract as Arena football.

Is the support of the Lynx any more questionable than that of the Sounders in Seattle. At least we have an A League franchise with a bit of longevity. Didn't Houston's fold before even playing their first game?

It has already been tried but the market for that sort of soccer based on the late 60s immigration wave has steadily diminished. There used to be a league called the National Soccer League that drew crowds in the thousands across southern Ontario and had two franchises Italia and Croatia that could give the Blizzard a run for their money in terms of attendance. At various points they tried to hook up with similar teams in Quebec and British Columbia. Italia, Croatia and the Greek community team Panhellenic were deliberately excluded from the CSL (started in 1987 two years after the NASL went under) because of their ethnic names and appeals and the subsequent competition between the CSL and the NSL in southern Ontario helped to kill off interest in both in the Toronto area.

A combination of MLS and USL can be used successfully promote the game across Canada in both the smaller centres e.g. Abbotsford, London, Sudbury and Thunder Bay and the larger ones like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. There are not enough large cities for a viable league even with A League level budgets any time soon.

 

Indeed. There is no reason to use the A-League as a yardstick for soccer support in any US market, and I fail to see why it should be used for Toronto.

On the issue of a Canadian League, sure, I can see why you'd like the idea, but how long do you sit around waiting for it? Simple demographics suggests that with the respective populations, a Canadian league could support faw fewer clubs of full professional quality than the US, unless they somehow got to the point where soccer was much more popular in Canada. And as BringBacktheBlizzard points out, that ship has probably already sailed.

FIFA does have the right to block such a move as a transnational league. If they felt Canada had a decent shot at its own domestic top flight, they almost certainly would (similar to the way they blocked the Benelux league and other such ideas). But I have a strong feeling they won't feel that way, and won't do it.

 

And what does this say about Canada?

 

That professional soccer in the country is best served - and most viable - in the form of one to three Major League Soccer franchises operating in Toronto, Vancouver and/or Montreal, rather than in the launch of a full-fledged Canadian domestic competition.