With SKC announcing their own USL team, the affiliation with OKC is over. Overall thoughts? Aside from Mikey Lopez playing 2 or 3 games, the Energy did pretty well with next to no help from SKC.
I believe those details will be released during tomorrow's press conference. Both teams social media accounts have confirmed this to be the reason for the split.
Since it was only 434 out of a total of 27720 regular season available minutes, its probably not much of a factor for those "affiliates are bad!" opinions. And maybe "its probably not" should be changed to "it shouldn't be".
As an FC Dallas fan (and a resident of OKC), I really hope they affiliate with the Energy for next year. That would be awesome!
I see that as a lateral move | Like choosing whether to rent a room in your house to John Wayne Gacy or Jeff Dahmer
FCD will probably launch a 2 team of their own, or keep their affiliation with Arizona. Energy really lose nothing on the field from this - in their first season, the Sporks spilt their loan deals between OKC and Orlando, and this season they only had cameo appearance from Mikey Lopez. The only thing that may hurt is in the FO - SKC shared best practices with Prodigal, and were a better partner in that capacity than Edmonton ever was to the Barons. Also: SKC2 will be known as "Swope Park Rangers," which is actually pretty great.
I googled Swope Park. Unless they areplanning a MAJOR overhaul of the "Championship Field", they look to be playing in front of <1,000. Looks awesome
It's listed at ~3500, FCKC of the NWSL averaged a little over 3k there this year ... there's a job site trailer in the background and there is room to add some seats. I think they'll be just fine. Not a bad 2nd/cost effective option in Kansas City ... keep trolling though !