Exactly the point I was making. 'You really need to stop bringing facts and realities into this debate. They mess with his statements and that's "mean"'. Apparently.
We had two in Atlanta for a brief period of time. One in MLS and one in NISA. Too bad the NISA Atlanta team folded.
Yippee we have two teams in each of two conurbations with populations of over 10 million. Now how about Oakland? Why would the concept of "territorial rights" even exist? That's just so... cartelesque and anti-competitive.. What's so wrong about giving the market aka pro/rel decide?
If one local team is permanently locked out of a major league and another permanently locked in, it must make it pretty tough for the former.
Its a tough sell, the NISA Atlanta was managed poorly, nobody noticed or cared too much. Pro/rel won't fix that. Moving to the first division or second division won't fix the club internal problems. There's teams who's done a better job at outreach, like Louisville City or Detroit City.
They weren’t in the same league and had no possibility of that changing. The Vipers playing there didn’t mean Tampa had two NFL teams or ever will.
I don't think Atlanta or Houston deserves a second team in the same league. For starters, you have to look at the big picture and do some critical thinking. Cannibalization isn't always a good thing. There's not enough support warranted. Who's going to fund a second team? Where would they play? You already see that fans in Atlanta won't show up for a lower division professional team...think they would show up in droves for a second team in the same city in the same first division league? Houston fans don't show up to Dynamo matches (much do to their cheap owner) I get that rivalries and city derbies are cool and all, but let's be realistic here. Cultivating support matters. Spending matters and it involves a lot of capital. Not that feasible.
Because the market doesn't decide in pro/rel. That's the point. Teams can win promotion and still not be promoted, because financial health is a requirement. This has been pointed out over and over and yet we keep coming around to the idea that play on the field alone is what drives promotion. Its not. It never has been.
Purchasing franchise rights for a metro area is not the same as cultivating support. Houston and Chicago are not apathetic to soccer, just their crappy MLS teams. The franchise system effectively removes any agency from fans or communities to support teams that align with their ideals or ambitions. There’s no guarantee that another club would appear in Houston or Chicago, but the owners would have to be responsive to the possibility. You’ve already given reasons why people didn’t show up for Atlanta SC: if they knew they existed at all, they sure didn’t know where they were playing. But this misses the point anyway: plopping another franchise, with no history or community in the Atlanta metro is almost certainly doomed to fail. Atlanta is actually probably a pretty bad example for this: imagine if club started in Boston proper, resonated with Bostoners, and performed well enough to move up, eventually, to the first division.
It almost always does. Exceptions don't prove a rule. 25 years and counting in English professional leagues, for example. Yours is just another "both sides do it" argument, and just as inane.
Indeed. In a pro/rel pyramid, teams tend to rise and fall to their level of competence and incompetence both on and off the pitch. In a closed league system, you're stuck with the Detroit Lions forever.
*Points to the Celtics, Packers, Lakers, etc When you purchase an expansion fee to MLS, the existing teams will get a return from that fee to spend on the squad. The valuation from the expansion fee is higher than 10 years ago because of the increase of support. Chicago is a tough place to create a second professional soccer team, regardless of which league they're in. Two previous attempts in NASL and USL determined that. My same point implies here, with Boston replacing ATL or Houston.
What happens if people like to stick with one team? What happens if people like to stick with their NFL team, than a XFL team nearby? This is literally one of the reasons why XFL 2.0 died.
It is contradictory to "sporting merit" or "decide on the field" or any of the other ways some pro/rel supporters suggest all that matters is who wins the games.
Certainly. Although anyone that doesn’t consider the FO as a component towards the “sporting merit” is either hopelessly naive or is mistaking pro leagues for amateur. I realize plenty of these people exist.
Sunderland being a classic example of how poor management off the field led to a decline of performances on it. That absolutely is sporting merit and I would have thought most Americans would get that. Meanwhile, the Detroit Lions....
I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Somebody notify the Houston Dynamo of this. This is a mixed bag: MLS certainly made some savvy expansion choices with Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, LAFC, but the enthusiasm in those markets (which, absolutely, is driving up the expansion fee) has yet to make its way back to Dallas or Chicago or Houston or Columbus. It's key that they don't let more slide into that pile, like Orlando.
THEORY: pro/rel provides it more/better/whatever. REALITY: Our system provides this as much as a pro/rel system does (especially in the modern era where $$$ > everything to the point that the outliers are exactly that) The San Fran MSA (of which Oakland is a part) has multiple teams in pro sports Funny, because around here the pro/rel championing folks don't seem to understand that.
I don't think that's true at all. It's why the Fire or the Browns are frequently used as potential relegation examples. I think most people understand the reality of what "sporting merit" means, and that is more than just convincing Kaka to suit up for your D3 team or whatever and playing at a youth rec complex and the FO running out of a PO Box. It doesn't necessarily mean pouring money into the operation (although that's worked so far for The Miami FC) but it certainly means maximizing your resources (marketing, recruiting/development, coaching) and being able to maintain it. I don't think anybody is so blind to think Temecula FC or Atlanta SC or Michigan Stars is somehow going to pull their operations together enough to move up the pyramid: even if they manage to beat whatever level of competition they're at, the FO will eventually get exposed. OTOH, for a well run club, like DCFC or Louisville or Phoenix: the FO is absolutely as much a part of their success as their play on the field their organization's performance shows it.
Still don't see any relevance to my post whatsoever? Perhaps you could enlighten me? The point I made still stands too, those clubs have jumped 3-4 leagues, they're not the first, they won't be the last either. Of course if the question is when was the last time a club jumped 4 leagues over a period of 3 months then you've got me there - but clearly that's not how it works is it. Also you haven't answered my question, when was the last time a club in the US won promotion 3-4 leagues?
Anschutz already paid the fee, the league retained the Earthquakes IP, the "new" Earthquakes owners bought into the league. Well Dallas and Columbus were founding members of the league. They are worth more now than in 1996. FC Dallas youth academies are among the best in the nation. Columbus was sold to new owners pumping more cash into the team. New squad, new stadium, new training center, etc. Chicago was recently sold to a more ambitious owner.
My reply was in response to: The Dynamo are consistently the smallest player playroll in the league. Wow. So is my house. So is my 401k. Appreciating assets. Really makes u think. I guess there's not a damn thing FC Dallas and Columbus can do better than they already are. Or maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, there's no incentive to, because the single entity tide will lift even the most ramshackle of boats. Yep, and good luck to him. Do you not wonder how that $400 million could have gone towards building a soccer club if it wasn't the only way for him get a D1 soccer team in Chicago, though? If it wasn't for artificial scarcity, Andrew Hauptman should not gotten much of anything for how he ran the Fire into the ground.
That isn't a symptom on the expansion fee, their cheap owners chose not to spend that much on roster. There's nothing wrong with single entity, heck I want NISA to have it, instead of "every man for himself" and "pure" Europhiliac soccer. It keeps control of things, it provides enduring representation of soccer, something that we never had before. Hey man, professional soccer is a business now. If you think that $400 million is too much for D1 soccer, wait 'til you see the once-proposed plan for an USL D2 team in Chicago. It seems like...building a professional soccer club takes a lot of effort and capital... Hmm... (Also, artificial scarcity implies that MLS is operated as a monopoly or a cartel which isn't true, no matter who many times you guys regurgitate it)