They're supposedly going to "transfer their rights," unlike what has historically happened, where the team just disappeared in a sea of red ink. The owners will find someone who wants to get in on USLC, but where that will be remains to be seen. It doesn't have to be California. And you know SLO's metro area only has 123,000 people in it, right? Santa Barbara's metro is even smaller than that. Whether people turn out in the much, much larger areas of Oakland and Monterey County isn't really an indicator of what might happen in the two areas you mentioned. Holy cow, man, it never ends with you, does it?
Santa Barbara County and Monterey County has around the same population. Cardinale Stadium at the old Fort Ord location in Seaside is nice but freezing from May to August. Frank Yallop's people told me they have big plans for Monterey Bay, even wanting to go to MLS but I doubt that would be possible as Ray Beshoff would need a lot of help.
Yes, but much of Santa Barbara County's population is in and around Santa Maria or Vandenberg Air Force Base, both more than an hour's drive from Santa Barbara. The team should look to market toward Ventura and Oxnard, outside the county but closer to town.
Maybe but Watsonville, Salinas, Monterey and Santa Cruz isn't any better and their towns are pretty much spread out as well with a bunch of artichoke, lettuce, tomato and apple orchards in between. All they have for tourists would be Pebble Beach, Carmel or Pacific Grove with a total of 18,000 poeple.
Monterey Bay has to cobble together a bunch of communities in various directions, but it ends up with about 300,000 people within a 30 minute driving radius. Small market even by USLC standards, but something to work with.
The Monterey Bay area is so much better than Oakland -Alameda County.. Just looked it up and that SB team will play at 10k seat La Playa Stadium at Santa Barbara City College. That is where UCSB coach Tim Vom Steeg used to coach. I can see him being involved somewhat. He used to have a great coaching system and tactics for the Gauchos.
So SD has rights to go elsewhere. Any clue how that works? I remember being at a Charlotte Independence game and a staff person said they were going to be allowed to relocate once MLS came in. Any word on that? I know there have been a lot of teams in a lot of places, has this ever actually happened before?
SD Loyal sells the license to somebody, then that somebody starts up a new team somewhere. For the public it would be indistinguishable from a regular expansion team.
Just like Austin shut down but was going to restart in Fort Worth until that stadium deal didn't go through.
Would the new owners assume any multi-year contracts that the Loyal still have or does the whole roster become free agents?
With two new teams expanding next year in North Carolina and Rhode Island, I’m assuming players would go through a dispersal or expansion draft. On the other hand, if the Loyal end up winning a trophy this season, it would be kind of sad to see them break up.
https://www.frontrowsoccer.com/2024...DeTWOaOP30bxHr5hyITrQI2DELQsGghFA4EtXKgTa65Eg BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The United Soccer League announced on Thursday that Brooklyn Football Club will make debut in the USL Championship in 2025. In June 2023, the USL awarded New York-based North Sixth Group a USL League One franchise in Brooklyn, and most recently, a USL Super League (women’s) franchise
It is. They're actually fielding their women's team in the Super League this fall and they've already got the stadium deal worked out.
So NYC will have 3 professional teams.... a ways to go to catch up to London though ! NYCFC and Brooklyn will be closer to each other than NYRB, so I see Open Cup matches in the future or maybe some other ways to play each other.. Only other area of country with 3 teams would be So Cal with LAG,LAFC and OCSC.
https://www.fcbuffalo.org/club-stat...avVTOoEbeB85mlQUNbi-y1SsBHlE3JihAGhRWVZtDNFfS USL announced Thursday an agreement with Buffalo Pro Soccer, a group led by former FCB player Peter Marlette, aimed at building a new soccer-suitable stadium in Buffalo and securing the proper ownership to drive a USL Championship team by 2026.
https://www.uslchampionship.com/news_article/show/1305140 An exclusive negotiation period through the end of this year.
------------------ Interesting. Super League beats NWSL to Atlanta? (was ATL on NWSL list- I know Boston is coming) How well does USL-C do against ATL United?
USL League One coming to Westchester, NY and aiming to play in 2025. https://www.uslleagueone.com/news_article/show/1309517
If, and it's a big if, all the current teams return and all the proposed teams start next season, USL1 would go from 12 to 19 teams in a single year.
Which would not be the biggest increase in a single year at the D3 level, either by sheer numbers or percentage. When the Great Reset happened in 1997, D3 went from 27 teams to 39 (increase of 12) and USL Pro went from 14 to 24 from 2014 to 2015 (increase of 71%) thanks to the MLS2 teams coming in. (And went from USL Pro to just USL to boot.)