Now that would be awesome. And Vancouver would have some good Canadian players, and tough players, like Tancredi. Foz roster (Florida) Los Angeles Portland Vancouver WNY That's five super teams, and the ideal five super teams you would want for this league, for its long-term growth and survival.
I don't see much evidence for the bay area being an especially good soccer market. I don't know how well San Jose is doing this time around but Cal has a small fanbase. And Stanford is good for Stanford, but it's nothing compared to the fanbase for Portland. And Gold Pride fared miserably in terms of attendance and fan support. I don't think LA is ideal but the Sol drew reasonably well. The question in LA is, if you can't play at the Home Depot Center, where would you play and would the fans go there?
My theory is that you go where there are women's college teams that have the best fan attendance. Stanford, Cal, and Santa Clara together provide a pretty good fan base. I don't see it in LA, especially with the travel issues there.
Yeah I figured that was the theory. So what are the top college teams attendance-wise again? I don't think the theory is all bad but I think it's of limited use. It helps explain Portland... and that's about it. No one else comes close to selling out a 5000 seat stadium on a regular basis. (Utah? BYU?). When you're talking about the difference between average attendances between 500 and 1500, it doesn't matter. It doesn't reach critical mass. *** and besides, we can play the hometown angle, too: Alex Morgan. That would be a potential game-changer, attendance-wise, publicity-wise. This would be the league's chance to really crack the LA market.
So even though the Sol had the highest attendance in the WPS in their only year of playing, you'd rather have a team in a region that historically did not support their team? Brilliant! That's what this thread's discussion is about. I think there are some decent alternatives, if they're cheap enough. Of course, if AEG were to commit again to women's soccer (and this time for more than 1 season), that would probably be ideal so they could play at Victoria Street. But, realistically, I don't think that will happen, and I wouldn't really trust them to follow through anyway.
I've previously mentioned the LA area as a possible location, with the question whether travel time issues would be too severe to allow the women's soccer fans that are out there to gather at a single game location. I don't know the answer to that question, and I don't make assumptions either way. What do you think about this in terms of a possible LA team that would be subject to the same budget restrictions as are currently in effect for all NWSL teams? Brainstorm: What if Vancouver, Seattle, Bay Area, and LA followed the Portland Thorns-Portland Timbers model -- separately incorporated men's and women's teams under common ownership sharing stadia and staffs? With the women's teams subject to the budget and other restrictions to which the current NWSL teams are subject?
So by you're own attendance chart, you can see that's completely unfounded. Bay Area CollegeAverage Stanford1582 Santa Clara789 Cal700 Total3071 LA & OC Counties CollegeAverage UCLA1152 Long Beach698 Fullerton649 USC601 Irvine570 CSUN527 Pepperdine489 Total4,686
Sure traffic in LA sucks, but we're used to it and traffic in the Bay Area can be bad as well. The distance between Oakland and Berkeley is further than Downtown LA and Anaheim. And if you're talking public transit: although there is BART in Berkeley, there is no BART in Palo Alto or Santa Clara, they have to take Caltrain which isn't any different than Metrolink (heavy rail/diesel locomotives) which can take someone from Ventura County all the way to Orange County. I don't think the smaller budget will have any affect on weather people will travel or not. It's whether or not LA has enough star power to draw fans in. If they had two big names like Portland does, I'm sure they would draw well. But if they have no big names like KC, they probably won't draw as well. I think that would be the best scenario. I mean, didn't Portland go through their Timbers season ticket holder list to get season ticket holders for the Thorns? That's the benefit of the two teams being under the same umbrella. In regards to sharing stadiums, even after the Earthquakes move to their new stadium, Buck Shaw stadium would still be a better location for a bay area team than Hayward.
And two words can take care of that: Alex Morgan. Yeah, Baby Horse! As for cpthomas list (thank you by the way) - as I said, I don't see much difference between say, 1000 and 1500. The only outstanding attendance figures on that list are Portland and BYU and, possibly Texas A&M and New Mexico. So we're talking Provo, College Station and (I believe) Albuquerque. I dunno. Portland is a special case. Not only attendance-wise but they've churned out some really topnotch players who are important players in the league: Sinclair, Rapinoe, Sophie Schmidt and some others who look like they can fill solid roles: Winters, Kerr, Foxhoven and Elli Reed for example. I don't think BYU, Texas A&M and New Mexico can say the same. Allocate Baby Horse to LA in a year or two (if she wants to play in front of her hometown crowd) and let's see what we can do.
Certainly Morgan would be the best option. But I don't think she's the only one that would work, I think Press (from LA) or Leroux (went to UCLA) would still be a good draw.
Not yet. Maybe - because both could become breakout stars in the next World Cup cycle. Especially Press (hometown > Leroux college UCLA I'm sorry to say. Ditto for Cheney/UCLA) Right now? Not close. Baby Horse by a country mile.
I'm not denying Morgan would be the biggest draw (I did say she's the best option). I'm just saying I think Press or Leroux should still be good enough. Morgan and Wambach are probably the two biggest names, followed by Solo and then Rapinoe. But I think Press and Leroux are next on the list after them. (BTW, I didn't mention their hometown/college as to how they would draw, but rather whether they would be willing to play there. Sorry for not making that clear).
The other thing happening in Portland and Seattle is that women's soccer is essentially cashing the check Clive Charles left for us. I'm not sure there's a similar piggy bank of women's soccer interest and goodwill within the mainstream soccer community available around Santa Clara or in LA.
Oh, I know Portland is something special and I don't think anywhere else will duplicate that. I just mean having a connection between the men's and women's teams will be beneficial. Even if not every men's team season ticket holder were to buy season tickets for the women's team, it would at least increase their awareness of the team and might lead to them buying some single game tickets or mentioning it to friends or family who might buy some tickets and thus spread the word.
I'm really not wanting to get into a battle with you over this. I've been to games at Stanford, Santa Clara, and Cal and also at UCLA and USC. From my own experience, the travel in the Bay Area was much easier than in the LA area, but that could have been just for the particular games I went to. This is why I asked the question about travel issues in the LA area, where I have much less experience. I was aware of the numbers. For the Bay Area, I think the three teams' numbers are moderately reliable as a potential fan base for a team, taking into account the travel issue. For the LA area I don't know if it's reasonable to treat all the teams' numbers as a potential fan base for a team. My experience with UCLA was for a Friday night 8:00 pm game, and for that particular night I'd say the travel issues were pretty severe. On the other hand, maybe Saturday or Sunday afternoon or Saturday evening would work for a major portion of the schools' fans to get to a game at a particular facility. You tell me, you know better than I do.
Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, I'm not trying to be an argumentative know-it-all or anything. It's just I've lived in both the bay area (both in the East Bay and on the Penninsula) and LA, so I'm trying to relate my experience with traffic (though I am originally from LA). I've experienced terrible traffic traveling on the 880 from Oakland to San Jose. As well as terrible traffic traveling on the 101 from San Mateo into San Jose. And terrible traffic going into SF from both sides. Although, admittedly the 92 usually flowed pretty well (which is probably why they though Hayward would be a good location as they could try to draw in the East Bay and Peninsula fans). Now I'm not saying it's worse there, just that there is bad traffic in both regions. But traffic in LA has been terrible for longer than I've been alive, so residents are used to it. And LA has a lot of new public transit being developed (just recently the Expo line opened carrying passengers from Downtown LA to Culver City and construction has already started on the 2nd phase into Santa Monica; and the subway is planned to be expanded which will take passengers from Downtown through Westwood - where UCLA is - into Santa Monica; and those are just the projects in West LA). I just don't think it's that big of a difference for garnering attendance. That said, I do think the Stanford + Santa Clara numbers by themselves are still impressive and those two are fairly near each other. If you can get the Earthquakes ownership on board, with their stadium in Santa Clara (and the new one just across the street) plus any Quakes ticket holders, it could be a good situation. But similarly, if an AEG owned team were to use the stadium in Carson, there's no reason to think that all of the LA and OC college fans wouldn't want to travel to games just because traffic was bad. If they were to play downtown, though, you would probably see less OC fans making the trip.
Got it, especially what you Cali folks are used to in travel. It sounds like both the Bay Area and LA/OC are viable. A string of teams from Vancouver to LA would be great. I think the fan competition could be fierce.
Yes, I would love to see that (I've got family in Vancouver so it would be a great place to go for a game or two). It might also be interesting to have a San Diego/Tijuana team thrown in the mix (the WUSA's SD Spirit seemed to draw 5,500+ pretty consistently all of their existence so if they could pull that in now it wouldn't be too bad for the NWSL).
I'd had that very thought. Six teams along the Pacific Rim. I'd also thought of a team in Japan, but that might be stretching it in travel $$. Although if the Japan federation would pony up for its national team players it would be fantastic.
You might as well just put a team in Alaska too and make another league along the pacific and call it "The Ring of Fire" and just have all the pacific teams.
Rumors has it the NWSL is looking to put a club in the Los Angeles area for the 2015 season. Most likely this club will play its home games at Titan Stadium at California State Fullerton. Which for me would be great since I live only a few miles away. Anyway it's hope this becomes a reality. To spur the fire, I like to offer up the following club name and logo for the "Southern California Sun Soccer Club".