It's Philly, not Phili. I had a huge high school school class. Many of them would have beaten you up for saying Phili.
An owner can just decide to close up shop, relocate to a different city or buy another team's rights to stay in same division...just like...Liga MX with pro/rel...
I live here. Haven't forgotten them. I guess they're about the biggest market they have. That said, they're still playing in an erector set in the parking lot of an abandoned greyhound track that they share with a swap meet. And there are lots of empty seats. MLS could have had the market at any time in the last 10 years. I'm not 100% sure it's that great a market, or one that you can take to war with you against MLS.
I was a USFL fan. They used to play in the spring in the 80s. The New Jersey Generals owner wanted to move to the fall. The other owners trusted him. The USFL won their lawsuit against the NFL. They only won a total of $3.76. They suspended the fall 1986 season. I wonder what happened to the owner of the Generals.
If the owners had tried pro/rel with the NFL instead of trying to compete with them, they'd still be around.
What about Leeds? They spent 15 years out of the top flight but guess what teams don't have a god given right to be good. Of course the casual fans drift away but if your life revolved around Leeds United then you still had them at Elland Road every other Saturday. What? Not sure what you mean? In England you can't (anymore) so that's not going to happen in Shef W.'s situation. In the US you can, although a league could, and do, put things in place to restrict this. But my point was that the Shef W. situation is mostly about a deadbeat owner. The threat, or reality, of relegation is often the thing that pushes a deadbeat owner out the door. In a closed league where they are guaranteed certain levels of revenue you lose that leverage.
I think a league that tried to restrict that would be on shaky legal ground, even a single-entity. If Kroenke decided to build the Rapids a stadium in El Paso I don't think there's a lot the league could do.
If you are talking NFL Jerry Jones would have a lot to say about that. US leagues already have rules and restrictions about movement. Now of course these rules are in place to protect the owners not the fans but they are still in place. And these are billionaires with armies of lawyers on retainer so of course they could try and sue their way into a move but it's far from guaranteed.
Great. We are not England though so I apologize if I compared it to a North American sports model point of view.
In private? Sure would. In Public? He'd toe the company line. Sports Team owners in the US protect one another (unbless they are/become a Donald Sterling/Daniel Snyder). They also don't want to box themselves into a corner should they be faced with the same situation.
Although NFL requires 24 of 32 owners to vote in favor of a relocation. we still don't know what sort of legal hell would unleash if a relocation was actually denied. It's more a case of getting all the ducks in a row than denying a move on principle because of the impact on a fanbase. I guess technically they voted against Chargers to Carson in favor of Rams to Inglewood.
Didn't that already happen? When they were talking about the Chargers and Rams moving to LA and Raiders to Las Vegas, I remember it being mentioned that there was a lawsuit when another team moved... It may have been Davis suing to move the Raiders to LA.
What I meant is if a team wanted to move and the owners voted against it. The example I found was the Seahawks in 1996 but the league was aided by an injunction filed by King County.
That only worked because Behring was an idiot and didn't tell anyone that he was going to move the team. That allowed the NFL to issue him daily fines and for Paul Allen to stepped in and buy the team. If Behring hadn't been an idiot and tried a fly by night move, he could have moved the Seahawks to LA just as easily as the Rams, Chargers, and Oakland did recently.
The LA case in the NFL points to both sides of the argument. The NFL was able to keep the LA market open for 20 years so their owners could leverage a move to LA in new stadium negotiations. They also wanted to make sure that whatever team moved there would be able to compete for eyeballs in the LA market. I also think they were actually a little concerned that all the franchise moves in the 80's and 90's were hurting the brand. So they put in a whole set of criteria that a team would have to meet in order to even be considered for the LA market. And it worked for 20+ years. But then Kroenke came along and just said he was moving without following the criteria, and made it clear he was willing to sue to get the move. But it's not as simple as the league caving. The reporting at the time claimed that a group of owners led by Jerry Jones pushed to allow the rams to move anyways, not because they were fearful of lawsuits, but because they thought it was good for the league, particularly because Kroenke was building what became SoFI Stadium. So basically it's both. I think can limit the movement of their clubs. At the end of the day a league can make it's own rules. But they don't really want to because the priority is the owners not the fans.
Yeah they voted against the Chargers in favor of the Rams because Kroenke is richer and he had a much better stadium plan. BUT Spanos, the Chargers owner, was friends with a group of old school owners who felt bad that Spanos had lost his leverage in his negotiations with the City of San Diego. So when they denied him they put in a clause that allowed him to move as soon as the next season if a suitable stadium in San Diego wasn't approved. From what I read the owners expected Spanos to work something out in San Diego, but instead he put forth a half baked "convention-adium" idea which was rejected, and then high tailed it up the freeway. So again this whole saga shows to me that leagues could restrict movement but choose not to.
Related, but unrelated due to the MLS schedule flipping. If a team really takes a dump in attendance, would MLS entertain moving a team (again)? Pulling Tampa and Miami in years past was "easier" as the teams were not playing in their own SSS. Now with most MLS teams playing in SSS, would it seem harder to move a team? Maybe a more likely scenario is the current owner sells if he doesn't like the season switch or the way the league is running the scheduling etc.. Other question, with MLS flipping seasons, does that make teams more valuable? Does it make other investors want to invest in MLS rather than elsewhere?
I'm still to be convinced that if an owner really wanted to move that the other owners could stop them. If Kroenke wanted to move the Rapids, MLS would probably capitulate then offer Denver the next expansion slot. USL appears to be completely powerless in this regard.
USL has membership licenses that have to be paid annually. An owner can simply decide to let their membership expire and walk away.