Somebody, can you clue me in on why USL A-League soccer failed in CA? Are there any plans to bring it back? Has this been hashed over a thousand times and I'm too lazy to hunt down the answer?
All I can do is guess. # 1 - Costs way too much to field a pro team in California. Labor, insurance, finding a suitable field when California's recent history is not to shell out public funds for a stadium (see what the Galaxy went through to get HDC built). # 2 - Placement. San Diego lasted the longest. Otherwise, the teams that try keep popping up in the LA or SF metro areas. There's NO way you can afford to market in mega-markets for the budget you're going to have for USL-1. Now, if Fresno makes the leap, I'm intrigued to see what happens... however, I though Sacramento could make a going concern at this level. Note that #1 and #2 are rather related. # 3 - It's not major league. Of course, that also relates to #1 and #2, something that Fresno may not have a problem with. (Thing is, where Fresno goes, Bakersfield might manage to follow... then Stockton. Santa Cruz, anyone? ) # 4 - Mexican influence? Serious hedge here... but many of the fans, either immigrant or native (lines are very blurred here if you understand the history) follow Mexican teams. Makes it harder to establish in American leagues. Hope that guessing helps.
Thank you Paul and SwedCrip. There is a ton of football wherever I move to in CA. Pub teams,Sunday leagues and the like. It seems that the PDL would be able to flourish here on a local (read: western conference/not much travel) level. The best of those would grow into A League, as a hope and dream, with top notch planners involved. There are 2 pro teams to feed into. There is $BANK$ in socal (Maybe I can get Drew Carey to fund it ). I know there are top notch executives that have a passion. Is there some other impediment? I grew up here, played footy my whole life and would really like to take my son to a local team to support. He may have to be a Gals fan, but, I really enjoy USL whenever I can watch it. What can I do to help USL expand into SoCal?
I don't know everything that went wrong economically with the Flash, but I do know that their attendance suffered big time when they moved their games from Southwestern CC to Mesa CC. The first couple years, the Flash were averaging 3-4,000 at SWCC and when they moved to Mesa their attendance dropped under 1,000. They had a nice little niche carved out for them in the South Bay (with several players from Tijuana, and of course, Jimmy Conrad and Joe Cannon), but when they moved up north, any of that momentum crumbled. Yan Skwara had big plans for the Flash that revolved around opening the franchise up to public investment (like the Packers), and building a soccer-specific stadium. The team was in big debt, so none of that, obviously, came to fruition. I'll see if I can dig up any artifacts on the webs from those plans...
here are a couple of links that might give you some leads or insights: http://www.a-league.com/chat/chat02292000.shtml http://www.a-league.com/features/fea,2000,0051.shtml The best person to talk to on bigsoccer on matters of the SD Flash would be FlashMan, if you could find him, but I haven't seen him post on soccer-related subjects for a while.