I haven't heard any rumors, but what kind of in would a guy working for the Pirates have on MLS?
Expansion Rumors Megathread
- Thread starter MagnusPax
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21Architect
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He's in the front office of a pro franchise. That's not a big club. I'm hoping he's wrong. He did say that he's not 1000% sure Miami is dead.
ferrarinycfc
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Some expansion news about St Louis and Charlotte, two markets MLS would really like to be in.
http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/...souri-governor-jay-nixon-discuss-potential-st
http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/...nce-local-officials-discuss-potential-stadium
http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/...souri-governor-jay-nixon-discuss-potential-st
http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/...nce-local-officials-discuss-potential-stadium
Developments in St. Louis...
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...5-b25d-9fded19aef89.html#.VrP04EovHJk.twitter
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...5-b25d-9fded19aef89.html#.VrP04EovHJk.twitter
Or Ottawa! But wherever in Canada, all future teams there should be name the Roughriders, not enough teams named Roughriders in Canada.
Canada is supposedly in the process of launching it's own top division. It's a partnership between the CSA, some CFL teams and apparently even some CHL teams. Speculation has been that the Canadian NASL teams are likely to jump over to said league, while the MLS teams will stay put.
BossNYC
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I always thought Calgary would be a good addition if the league goes to 40 clubs. Really stitch up the league as a US/Canadian league.
Don't think it's possible any time soon as the Canadian federation is really, really pissed off at MLS right now.
I was thinking, which cities really need/could support MLS clubs going forward (assuming we are at 23 clubs now with Minneapolis all but in):
(population and population growth percentage from 2010 to 2014)
1. Miami (5,929,819 +6.56%)
2. San Francisco (4,594,060 +5.97%)
3. Phoenix (4,489,109 +7.06%)
4. Detroit (4,296,611 +0.01%)
5. San Diego (3,263,431 +5.43%)
6. Tampa (2,915,582 +4.75%)
7. Baltimore (2,785,874 +2.78%)
8. St. Louis (2,806,207 +0.66%)
9. Charlotte (2,380,314 +7.37%)
10. Pittsburgh (2,355,968 -0.01%)
11. San Antonio (2,328,652 +8.69%)
12. Sacramento (2,244,397 +4.43%)
13. Cincinnati (2,149,449 +1.65%)
14. Las Vegas (2,069,681 +6.07%)
15. Indianapolis (1,971,274 +4.42%)
16. Austin (1,943,299 +13.23%)
17. Nashville (1,792,649 +7.29%)
18. Milwaukee (1,572,245 +1.05%)
19. Jacksonville (1,419,127 +5.46%)
20. Calgary (1,406,000 +12.6)
21. Memphis (1,343,230 +1.39%)
22. Oklahoma City (1,336,767 +6.69%)
23. Ottawa (1,318,000 +9.1%)
24. Louisville (1,269,702 +2.75%)
25. New Orleans (1,251,849 +5.21%)
When I look over this chart, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see MLS go past 32 teams.
I mean the likeliest 9 expansion cities are:
1. Miami
2. Phoenix
3. San Diego
4. Tampa
5. St. Louis
6. Charlotte
7. San Antonio
8. Indianapolis
9. Nashville
but I think there's too many up and coming cities for MLS to tap into to not tap into them. 40 seems possible.
If we get to 40 teams we might need promotion/relegation in just the MLS.
MLS will never let a team in the league for a smaller fee than the valuation of it's least valuable team. Forbes pegged the Rapids at $105 million last year, which is right about the same as the current expansion fee: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissm...rs-most-valuable-teams-2015-2/2/#78f348c26389
Why? Because that's the baseline for what all the other franchises are worth. They are worth the value of an MLS franchise, plus their brand value, plus their assets. The value of an MLS franchise will always be pushed up when selling new franchise to new ownership groups.
That means the expansion fee will continue to rise, and the quality of the available markets will continue to fall. Eventually, the two will intersect and it will no longer make financial sense to expand. For all other sports leagues in America, the equilibrium sits at 30-32. There's little reason to think MLS will be different at this point.
Though I just stated I don't think we'll ever get much past 30-32, even if we got to 40, this is not true in the slightest. There are tons of ways to organize a larger league that doesn't involve the devaluing of your franchises.
For shits and giggles, let's say they go all the way to 48 teams. They can just do four conferences of 12 each, play double round robins within each conference (22 games) and then play one other conference (12 games) for a total of 34 games - and rotate the conference so everyone plays each other once every three years. There's no way they would choose pro/reg over a straightforward setup like this.
Imagine supporting a club in a 40-team league. Winning championships would be so hard, even for the big spending clubs, reducing interest in the league at some point. Personally, I was hoping they would stand pat at 24 for a while. Focus their energy on revamping under-performing clubs like Chicago and Colorado, stadiums, television and talent.
I personally think they should emphasize conference titles - e.g. Western Conference Supporters Shield and Eastern Conference Supporters Shield. Especially if we split to 3 or 4 conferences as we are likely to do for scheduling purposes when we hit 25+ teams.
It would make winning silverware a bit easier, which as you point out, might be important in a larger league.
Hopefully this is allowed to be posted here:
Atlanta released their season ticket prices yesterday. They look pretty reasonable for a brand new stadium.
Account Manager told me this morning that over 30% of the Founding Members are from nearby states (Mississippi, Alabama etc) which was eye-opening but she said they are people use to driving 4+ hours for SEC Football. She also said they have added 900 new Founder's Club Members since Thursday morning. They will reach their goal of 30k STH in 2017 - my prediction.
Atlanta released their season ticket prices yesterday. They look pretty reasonable for a brand new stadium.
Account Manager told me this morning that over 30% of the Founding Members are from nearby states (Mississippi, Alabama etc) which was eye-opening but she said they are people use to driving 4+ hours for SEC Football. She also said they have added 900 new Founder's Club Members since Thursday morning. They will reach their goal of 30k STH in 2017 - my prediction.
2019 - Miami
2020 - Sacramento
2020 - St. Louis
2021 - San Antonio
2021 - Detroit/San Diego/Charlotte
Garber recently said "St. Louis as soon as 2020." Which has me thinking they are going to try to squeeze 28 teams in before their next TV contract in 2022. That would be some super rapid expansion, but if the investor candidates are there, they might go for it.
They'll slow way down afterwards though.
Hopefully this is allowed to be posted here:
Atlanta released their season ticket prices yesterday. They look pretty reasonable for a brand new stadium.
Account Manager told me this morning that over 30% of the Founding Members are from nearby states (Mississippi, Alabama etc) which was eye-opening but she said they are people use to driving 4+ hours for SEC Football. She also said they have added 900 new Founder's Club Members since Thursday morning. They will reach their goal of 30k STH in 2017 - my prediction.
Well we expect smaller cities to charge less, but I'm confused by the map. Are those upper sections only a few rows deep or luxury boxes (doesn't make sense by price coloring)? Interesting how they charge more as you get closer to the center line. Our stadium seems to have a different pricing approach which I like better.
BossNYC
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Far too often I think people apply traditional North American sports thinking to MLS and sometimes you just can't.
1) MLS clubs can win Conference titles, MLS Cup, US Open/Canada Championships, Supporters Shield, Champions League.... and probably even more trophies going forward (Anglo-American Cup, SuperLiga are both on the radar). So there's a lot of trophies for teams to win between winning MLS cups and I think that will sustain fanbases nicely. We saw Philadelphia nearly win MLS Cup. RSL and Montreal nearly won Champions League. The fanbases showed strong support of both of those competitions.
2) As for the valuations, I should point out Manchester's entire county only has 2.68 million people. Merseyside only has 1.39 million people. Yet they hold 4 clubs worth several billions of dollars. The sport is such a global game that to suggest to me that the league can only hold ~30 teams like the other leagues, which aren't nearly as global, just can't possibly be true. Its the same as people that complain about there not being enough talent. That's impossible, there's thousands of clubs on planet Earth. Probably hundreds of millions of players. If you have the money, you always have enough talent around. We should have more than enough money to make the talent problem someone else's problem if the league is run right.
The comparison of English cities to American cities is worthless because English soccer teams don't compete with four other sports with larger fanbases and more money. Cincinnati is 1.6 million urban area, and they already have two professional sports teams. You're just not likely to get the level of support in an area like that to support a team of the same quality as Seattle or Los Angeles.
Shawn Ryu
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Came to post this as well.
Not enough money to go around to support English football system type of deal.
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