What will happen to these new stadiums when Soccer becomes huge?

Reason #458 why newbies shouldn't start threads

Nice problem to have.

We'll deal with it at that time.

 

The NFL will play in them.

 

...

We don't need huge stadia. Not now, not ever. I heard some Mexican stadium holds in excess of 100,000 people. I hope we never strive for that. We need soccer to be profitable in this country, and the way to do that, at least in part, is to have stadia of realistic size. The Columbus Crew facility, for example, is fine as is. BEAUTIFUL as is!

Let's follow the example of the Dutch. Their stadia have a huge range in size. I think Ajax's is pretty huge, but the rest of the Eredivisie, if I'm remembering correctly, has stadia with 8,000 to 22,000 capacity. Pretty pragmatic, but it works very well for them.

 

#1. let's hope that soccer becomes as huge as you think it will. i know that i do, but it's not a guarantee.

#2. i think that most of the stadiums that are planned, are being done with an eye to being expandable in the future if demand rises. so i think this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

build a new stand...

 

When Columbus Crew begin to outgrow their stadium in about 20 years after having sold out games for 10 years running, the Hunt's will tell Columbus they need $650,000,000 for a new stadium to remain profitable. The city of Columbus will balk and the Hunt's will threaten to move the team. An election will be held and the residents to Columbus will agree to a 3 cent sales tax increase to pay for the stadium and to keep their beloved Crew in Columbus....

 

Let's hope that MLS's stadium's stay in the 25,000- 40,000 range. I think that these are reasonable sizes. I personally don't like huge stadiums. Stadiums like the Azteca or the Nou Camp are way to big. When these stadiums are not filled to capacity the atmosphere suffers.

 

of course, people have been saying that since the 70s and we're still waiting.

 

The average stadium capacity of the 20 teams currently in the English Premier League is 36,913..
The Valley, for example, is the same size as the HDC.

 

Re: ...

Yes the Amsterdam ArenA has approx 52.000 seats (Ajax' home venue) as well as the Rotterdam Kuip wich is the home venue of Feyenoord. The rest of the stadiums ranges between 20,000-35,000. PSV's Philips Stadion has a capacity of approx. 33000.

Very sporadic I see MSL's highlights overe here and it's really awfull to see empty stadiums with some crowd scattered here and there without an atmosphere. It's better to begin small I think and perhaps when possible expand the stadium.

 

CCS seems that it will be able to expand on the North End. Possibly on the South End too, but there is the video board. If they get really desperate, they could add a third tier to the side, but I don't think that would look too hot.

HDC doesn't look like it has a lot of room. However, on the non-roofed end, perhaps they could bleachers upon Lalas Hill. But, I thought I heard that Carson will not allow the Galaxy to have more than 27,000 people at the stadium at once.

Dallas' new stadium is all lower bowl I think (built into ground). Maybe it has upper deck on one side, but I believe it will have plenty of room for expansion (IF they ever need it).

Rochester looks expandable, but like CCS, the lightpoles may get in the way. Seems like someone could plan a little better and avoid that.

...covers all the ones I can think of right now. I'll post my thoughts on the MetroStars' possible new stadium in 60-90 days....

 

My two cents

What SHOULD happen to these new stadiums once they are expanded to 28K or so, is that expansion becomes even more attractve, and another team gets added. I would seriously prefer 3 teams in smaller stadia representing different parts of L.A.(maybe South Bay+Long Beach/ San Fernando Valley/ Downtown+Hollywood+Westside) than the Galaxy playing in something the size of the Rose Bowl and *everyone* in L.A. making the trek to Carson.

I wonder if that's the MLS's long term M.O. That's the only way we will develop to something on par with a European leagues. Mid-size stadia, hyper-localized teams.

 

now I'm all excited. . .

This is really how Baseball developed early on, and how Baseball continues to have MLB, and three minor leagues.

Seriously, all you Metrostars fans: Would you rather have 1 team in NJ selling out the Meadowlands, or a team on Long Island, a team in Manhattan, and maybe a team in North NJ in 24-32K seat stadiums.

Hmm. A team in Manhattan. . . How about the "Central Park Rangers" (CPR!!!)

 

Should soccer ever become huge, then soccer can do what every other sport in this country does. It can use its popularity and power to pit community against community inorder to extort money from state and local governments for the construction of new stadia!

 

Comedy!

 

It'll be a long while before football becomes huge in the US. By then, the SSS's will probably be out of date or obsolete.

 

I've posted about this a million times.

I really don't care about Columbus or other minor cities. I think the U.S. should have large stadiums in just a couple of locations. New York is number one, of course. It deserves to have the greatest and grandest of everything. Hopefully, the new Jets/Olympics stadium on the West Side will become a reality and we'll have the "crown jewel" big stadium here. The Europeans would be killing themselves to travel over here to show-off for those of us derided as snobs. They won't have to say "Open Sesame" to me twice to have me open my wallet.

Los Angeles blew it, with only 27,000 capacity. I know they can fall back on the older stadiums for special events, like the Coliseum, but really...for the de facto home of the USMNT? Missed the boat, sorry.

Do any of you think the World Cup is going to be coming back here with these little, tiny dumps?

 

Spanish league stadiums average about 25,000 to 30,000 capacity, with stadiums in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla at 50,000 or more. Basically, they've built to what they need, which is what is being done in the US right now.

The HDC might be obsolete in 20 years, but until then, there are plenty of stadiums for the USNats to play big games (especially WCQ's, where I doubt the US will play many matches because of the lack of home field advantage against the majority of the Central American teams.)

The US is overflowing with quality stadiums, soccer-specific or not. We'll be fine if another WC comes calling again, I believe every venue in '94 sold out (an then, we didn't have SSS. We may not need them next time around either....) Most of the large stadiums that would be used for a World Cup would be vacant during the months that the competition was staged, anyhow.

 

They built 10 new stadiums in Portugal for Euro 2004. Benfica's new stadium seats 65,400 people, while sportings and porto's seat about 50,000. All the other new stadiums seat 30,000. So I think 30,000 seat stadiums for MLS teams are good enough for now.

 

I can see FIFA saying "Hey, I know we made a jillion dollars on that event in 1994, but since they're going ahead and building small stadiums for their domestic league, let's not give them a World Cup event again, even though we could play the games in their bigger stadiums and make jillions again."



America has built these "big" stadia since the World Cup was last played here:

Ericsson Stadium, Charlotte
FedEx Field, Washington DC*
Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia
Raymond James Stadium, Tampa
Seahawks Stadium, Seattle
New Soldier Field, Chicago*
Alltell Stadium, Jacksonville
Cleveland Browns Stadium, Cleveland
Gillette Stadium, Foxboro*
Heinz Field, Pittsburgh
Invesco Field at Mile High, Denver
M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore
Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati
Reliant Stadium, Houston

*Replace a venue used for the 1994 World Cup.

Other venues used in 1994 were the Rose Bowl (which could still be used for the final), Stanford (getting old, but big), Giants Stadium (unless the Jets get their stadium built between now and then, would make sense as a venue), Pontiac Silverdome (unlikely), Orlando Stadium (still a possibility, I guess, but would be down the list), and the Cotton Bowl (maybe, but would be down the list as well).

I don't think we'd have any problem finding modern stadia to play a future World Cup, or that we wouldn't be able to generate even more revenue than we did in 1994, or that the size of our MLS stadia will have any bearing whatsoever on our chances of being awarded a future World Cup.

 

Out of Kenn's list, I can think of one venue (FedEx) that might not exactly fit the 75 yard wide field. EVERYONE else (I may have missed another one, but I doubt it) prepared a stadium with a World Cup or USNT appearance in at least the back of their minds.

 

FedEx Field might be narrow, but it's hard to pass up that many seats.

 

This may be the dumbest post ever.