I'm not from Oklahoma, I'm from Miami-FL, but I remember reading plenty about how dedicated Oklahoma was to bringing an MLS expansion team to its suburbs near a University. I knew with everything the Oklahoma organizers we're saying that they would be the best candidate for an expansion team in 2005. After all, Oklahoma does not have any professional sports team of the 5 big sports leagues and they show a strong fan base in the collegiate level... so any news updates when they will get a team?
Hopefully soon. There was a self-imposed deadline of the end of Feb. to get a local investor group together (and the rumor is that they have appearantly). There will be a MLS exhibtion game on April 4th at UCO and hopefully by then they will have announced OKC as an expansion franchise. We're all trying to fing out the latest news so we'll keep you posted on what's happening. www.MLSinOKC.com
Excellent. Thanks for keeping me updated. That was a great website by the way. Everything seems to be in place! I voted for "Drillers" as the best nickname for an expansion team. Its unique, has a nice ring to it, and sounds like a soccer term, as opposed to "Barons". I like the first logo on the left-hand side with the oil drill. I like the fact that its not too cartoonish like some of these NHL, NBA logos. I'm not really sure what the third logo on the right-side is suppose to be. And buffaloes sounds a bit boring. As far as the jerseys, I really like the first upper-left-side sample. It has that vertical thin green line down the center of a white shirt and a black shirt. Looks sharp! But I'm not too fond of any advertisements on any of the shirts. Not my preference. I'm not too sure exactly why the stadium proposal is set for within a University. It seems strange at first, but if it packs the house I'm all for it. I really hope you guys get the expansion team for 2005, it would be pretty sad if you didn't.
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www.ussocceruk.com is reporting today that as Cleveland bobbles their MLS chances, OK has better chances. It sounds like it is between Rochester and OK right now for the second 2005 expansion slot. Keep the hope alive!
This is really very old new. No new quotes really to speak of. Just stuff Garber talked bout last year. Simple fact is, if OKC gets the financing for a team, they'll get in for 2005 over Rochester. Rochester's owners still aren't sure if they want to afford buying their way into MLS. Also, OKC as more potential over Rochester in that, while Rochester has a great and large fanbase, it's pretty much isolated only to Rochester. Their TV demographics are horrible (somewhere in the 70's I think) and they're going to get very few people from other cities in New York to go to games. People from Buffalo aren't going to go and people from Toronto definitely aren't going to pay for a ferry ride over to go. OKC has Tulsa and other cities in Oklahoma to draw from, which the are more likely to than Rochester. There's also a nice proximity to Dallas and Kansas City. I'm sure those two teams would love to have another team that's closer to them.
Buffalo and Syracuse are close to Rochester... Syracuse now has a nicely successful A-league team. Fan support won't be a problem in Rochester-- at least in the short term... OKC on the other hand will be starting from scratch.
If you build it they will come! There is a million +, That have pro-team to cheer on national T.V.!!!
Syracuse is 87 miles from Rochester, Buffalo is 73 miles. Who knows if people in Buffalo will be like, "we already have NHL and NFL. we don't need to drive to a smaller city to see soccer".
I'd be shocked if it weren't that way. People from San Francisco don't go to San Jose for Sharks and Quakes games, people from New York don't go across the river to Nets and Devils games, people from LA don't go to Anaheim for Ducks and Angels games, and the list goes on and on. And all of those places are a lot closer than Buffalo is to Rochester.
I live in Tulsa and will be a season ticket holder. About a 2 hour drive. Most of my friends in Tulsa will be great fans as well. I can only see success for our Oklahoma squad.
Yeah, but those are examples of the metropol, and the mentality is even more drastic in a megalopolis like NYC or LA. Smaller markets and markets w/o top-flight competition function a bit differently. Seattle teams (especially the Mariners) draw from all over the Cascades: Vancouver, Portland, etc.
From what I can find, Rochester is the 52nd largest media market in the US (It's the 44th largest metropolitan area). Yeah, some hardcore soccer nuts will drive from "nearby" cities to attend the occasional match, but I doubt it'll be enough to matter. Rochester could well succeed as an MLS franchise, but wouldn't do much to increase the "national footprint" that MLS HQ likes to talk about. But neither would OKC, which is the 48th largest MSA and is just about equal to Rochester in terms of media market size (right around 50). Whatever. If cities like Rochester and OKC can reliably put 15,000+ butts in the stadium (and I'm not necessarily convinced that they would, mind you; no one's sharing detailed demographic analyses of these soccer markets with me); if they own their stadia or at least control revenues and scheduling, then both places could end up being fine homes for MLS franchises. They might not make MLS investors rich, but they wouldn't be money losers either.
I'm not sure where you're getting your info. The DMA of Rochester (the demographic area defined byt he Nielsen ratings) is 75, not 52. That's a big difference. OKC's DMA is 45, right below Buffalo at 44, Memphis at 43 and New Orleans at 42. And according to the latest MSA numbers I could find Rochester is at 49 and OKC is at 47 though there's not a whole lot of difference from 40 through 50 that would make any kind of noticeable difference.
It might have something to do with how one defines "media." Obviously, population's fairly straightforward; you either measure the city population proper (which doesn't tell you much) or you measure the regional population of an urban center. But even that number must be analyzed. For example, the Chicago MSA stats include Kenosha, WI and Gary, IN. Fine, but if you want to guage an area's eagerness to support, say, a pro sports team, crossing state borders might have a real, negative effect on that portion of the MSA's interest in suporting said team. By the way, the 2000 Census table I'm looking at shows Rochester at 47 and OKC at 49: http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/tab03.pdf. But you're right, they're almost identical and OKC's growth rate is faster. Regarding media size, I was looking at Media Info Center (http://www.mediainfocenter.org/index.asp) stats that measure the Top 50 newspaper, TV and radio markets by population, plus some other sites that I can't dredge up. For newspaper, Rochester is 46th, OKC 48th; TV, OKC is 45th, Rochester doesn't crack the top 50; radio, neither city makes the top 50 (a different site shows Rochester as being no. 52). The Neilsen DMA ranking only looks at TV market size: "What is a market area? Nielsen Media Research, the company that determines the viewership ratings for television programs, divides the U.S. into 210 non-overlapping Designated Market Areas -- regions of the country the company uses to determine ratings. According to Nielsen, counties are assigned to the market area their residents most often get their television signals from. Market areas are named after major cities within their borders, but are usually larger than that city's limits. For example, the New York City market area spreads halfway through New Jersey to the south, encompassing several other large and small cities. But a majority of the people in the New York market area watch broadcast television stations whose signals emanate from New York City. For the purposes of this report, we examined the top 50 Nielsen market areas in the country. Those market areas are highlighted in yellow on the map to the left and listed by population size in descending order in the menu to the right." That's fine, I suppose, but I wonder just what it tells you. Presumably, it might give some insight into how many people might watch on TV an OKC MLS franchise. But that seems a bit simplistic, to me. And when you're talking markets in the 50s to the 70s, with about equal populations, well, I stand by my earlier statement that neither place would help MLS much re: expanding that national footprint. Again, though, I very much like the idea of Rochester and OKC in MLS. They're not Philly, Seattle or St. Louis, but they seem to be large enough cities to support a franchise.