This is from an exchange I had with Dave Clark, who runs Sounder At Heart, a most excellent independent blog on Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer. The basis of this post was the divergent paths of two minor-league soccer clubs that faced each other in 2007 for the USL First Division (aka USL-1) Championship - the previous incarnation of the Sounders, and the Atlanta Silverbacks. The Sounders were given a de facto promotion to MLS shortly after that match, where they've led the league in attendance, made the playoffs every year since joining the league, and also won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup every year since joining MLS. Meanwhile, the Silverbacks have struggled both on and off the field, even going inactive for two seasons while the USL First Division endured a rebellion by several clubs (the Silverbacks being one of them) which led to the creation of a new second-division (according to FIFA - soccer's international governing body - MLS is the First Division league for both the US and Canada, and USL-1 was merely the top flight of that organization) league that took on the mantle of North America's previous top professional soccer league, the North American Soccer League, while the USL dropped out of the second-division altogether, and took the USL-1 clubs that remained and formed the third-division USL Pro League. Here's why I thought the Silverbacks were failing while the Sounders flourished:
Blame Atlanta.
"Atlanta is widely considered the worst pro-sports market in the US in terms of fan support. Even the NFL is second- or third-fiddle to college football and NASCAR there, the Braves and Hawks don’t get noticed until the postseason no matter how well they play, and they’ve given up on the NHL twice. And Atlanta’s previous history with pro soccer is spotty at best – its greatest impact was felt in, of all places, South Africa."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: That effect was the formation of Kaizer Chiefs FC of the South African Premier Soccer League, formed by former Atlanta Chiefs (NASL) player Kaizer Motaung. Ironically enough, another former NASL player from South Africa, Jomo Sono, took inspiration from Motaung's formula, and created Jomo Cosmos FC, who also play in the South African Premier Soccer League.
After Dave responded and asked about all the other minor-league clubs that failed, I came up with this:
"I stated that Atlanta was a terrible market for pro sports of any stripe or spot. But in general, minor-league sports have always been a fly-by-night-affair in North America. Even Minor League Baseball isn't entirely immune. Look at the recent movement in the PCL, with teams moving from Tuscon to Reno, and (thanks to PTFC) Portland to.... somewhere. The San Diego Padres' AAA affiliate is a refugee at this moment, temporarily based in Tuscon while the Padres' owner is shopping the team around after failing to get a stadium built in Escondido.
What can cause a club to fail is pretty straight forward. Let's focus on ownership first. You either have owners with money but no understanding of what they've gotten into (who often spend themselves into oblivion), or they have the understanding, but not enough money to survive in the long run (who run shoestring operations that eventually peter out unless another owner can be found). And unlike major-league sports, the odds of being able to sell a club for a profit is very small.
Then there's the market that club is located in. Is there really enough interest in that area to sustain a full- or semi-professional squad? In the South there are pockets of interest large enough to support PDL, USL-PRO and NASL sides, including some with significant history (like the resurrected Tampa Bay Rowdies) and with good money (like Orlando City SC and Fort Lauderdale Strikers - the latter being owned by the American division of the Brazilian sports-media conglomerate Traffic) but is there really enough interest to sustain the sport at that specific level for the long term?
The landscape is littered with the remains of failed minor-league soccer clubs - anyone remember the Columbus/Ohio Xoggz, for example? The problem is that the game itself still needs to be sold to populaces that still don't quite get the idea of professional soccer at any level, let alone the grassroots level needed to support and develop the future generations of talent. And even now there's still some hostility towards the game - google 'soccer + socialism' if you think I'm kidding."
Showing posts with label Soccer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soccer. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Soccer In The South?
Sorry if I've neglected you here on this other side of my brain. Nothing has really grabbed me that much, enough to put it into this blog. But as I wrote this post on the comment threads at ESPN's website, I realized that I had a good blog post here, so here's what I wrote:
What nobody is really talking about is why there won't likely be any expansion in MLS beyond 20 franchises. It isn't a matter of what cities would make good homes for potential franchises. It isn't stadium issues, dilution of talent pools, promotion/relegation, or anything like that. Here's what the issues are, in no particular order.
1.) FIFA is mandating that domestic first-division leagues limit themselves to no more than twenty teams, in order to ease schedule congestion for clubs and national teams alike, and to ease demands on players. This mandate came up about a year or two ago, and didn't get noticed much beyond a few press reports. In theory, MLS could potentially expand beyond twenty teams because of the multinational nature of the North American soccer structure - MLS, NASL, and USL clubs represent five FIFA member nations (US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Antigua & Barbuda) - therefore requiring a need to expand beyond twenty first-division teams to encompass those nations. But I don't think MLS would want to risk incurring the wrath of FIFA over the issue and risk penalizing the leagues and national teams. FIFA has already been pushing MLS to move to a traditional (fall-to-spring) schedule for several years now as it is, and its quite likely that had the Russian FA not offered to, and did move its top two divisions from their usual summer schedule to the traditional fall-to-spring schedule, FIFA may not have awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
2.) Past failures loom large in the MLS front office. Remember, the entire concept of MLS as a single-entity organization instead of an alliance of like-minded individual organization is because of the spectacular flameout of the original NASL. The structure of the league was created with the specific purpose of spreading out financial losses and gains as widely as possible, so no single organization could either dominate or decimate the league as a whole by its financial superiority or lack thereof. And MLS' folding of Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion FC was arguably the league's nadir, when nobody was really sure if the league would last much longer - even those within the MLS front office. Since then, the league has improved, largely due not only sound leadership, but to the number and quality of investor/operators (don't call them owners) brought into the fold, people who understand the game and understand that success doesn't just come overnight - unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, of course. That said, there really hasn't been that much interest from the kind of people who can afford things like MLS franchises in the Southeast, outside of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who has publicly stated that he was interested in joining MLS and bringing a franchise to Atlanta. Fans can say whatever they want about what city is most deserving, but fans can't pony up the US$100m expansion fee MLS is supposedly asking for the rights to that 20th franchise.
3.) Here's the big one for me: Can an MLS franchise draw in more than just the hardcore soccer fan in the Southeast? You might think I'm full of it with my other points, but we can all agree on this - in the Southeast, SEC football and NASCAR are king. Even the NFL plays second- or even third-fiddle to the SEC and NASCAR in most of the South. If you think I'm crazy, I've got two words for you: Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami and Tampa Bay have had attendance problems as well, and the only reason New Orleans and Atlanta are succesful in the stands is because they're successful on the field. (NOTE: I'm not really including Carolina here, because as past commenters have noted, North Carolina is really more mid-Atlantic than Southern, though NC is the heart and soul of NASCAR) What I'm getting at is this: would an MLS franchise in the Southeast be able to lure in the average sports fan, a man who's heard of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo from SportsCenter, but likely wouldn't be able to pick either out of a lineup of Buddhist monks?
To close, MLS returning to the Southeast reminds me a lot of the NHL's expansion into the Sun Belt in the 90's. While it's worked in some markets, like Dallas and Tampa Bay, it's been a miserable failure in others (I'm looking at you, Phoenix and Atlanta). It will have to take the right owner in the right city. For the time being, my money is on none of the above. the more likely option for the Southeast won't be getting a 21st or 22nd franchise - even if MLS chose to expand that far. MLS returning to the Southeast will also not likely be something along the lines of its recent expansion, cherry-picking the most successful second-division clubs from the NASL and USL - if that were the case, either Rochester or Charleston would be in MLS by now. Instead, it'll likely mean an existing franchise moving to an Atlanta, New Orleans or a Florida market. I'll go out on a limb and say that Atlanta would be the best place, with ownership and facilities already in place.
What nobody is really talking about is why there won't likely be any expansion in MLS beyond 20 franchises. It isn't a matter of what cities would make good homes for potential franchises. It isn't stadium issues, dilution of talent pools, promotion/relegation, or anything like that. Here's what the issues are, in no particular order.
1.) FIFA is mandating that domestic first-division leagues limit themselves to no more than twenty teams, in order to ease schedule congestion for clubs and national teams alike, and to ease demands on players. This mandate came up about a year or two ago, and didn't get noticed much beyond a few press reports. In theory, MLS could potentially expand beyond twenty teams because of the multinational nature of the North American soccer structure - MLS, NASL, and USL clubs represent five FIFA member nations (US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Antigua & Barbuda) - therefore requiring a need to expand beyond twenty first-division teams to encompass those nations. But I don't think MLS would want to risk incurring the wrath of FIFA over the issue and risk penalizing the leagues and national teams. FIFA has already been pushing MLS to move to a traditional (fall-to-spring) schedule for several years now as it is, and its quite likely that had the Russian FA not offered to, and did move its top two divisions from their usual summer schedule to the traditional fall-to-spring schedule, FIFA may not have awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
2.) Past failures loom large in the MLS front office. Remember, the entire concept of MLS as a single-entity organization instead of an alliance of like-minded individual organization is because of the spectacular flameout of the original NASL. The structure of the league was created with the specific purpose of spreading out financial losses and gains as widely as possible, so no single organization could either dominate or decimate the league as a whole by its financial superiority or lack thereof. And MLS' folding of Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion FC was arguably the league's nadir, when nobody was really sure if the league would last much longer - even those within the MLS front office. Since then, the league has improved, largely due not only sound leadership, but to the number and quality of investor/operators (don't call them owners) brought into the fold, people who understand the game and understand that success doesn't just come overnight - unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, of course. That said, there really hasn't been that much interest from the kind of people who can afford things like MLS franchises in the Southeast, outside of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who has publicly stated that he was interested in joining MLS and bringing a franchise to Atlanta. Fans can say whatever they want about what city is most deserving, but fans can't pony up the US$100m expansion fee MLS is supposedly asking for the rights to that 20th franchise.
3.) Here's the big one for me: Can an MLS franchise draw in more than just the hardcore soccer fan in the Southeast? You might think I'm full of it with my other points, but we can all agree on this - in the Southeast, SEC football and NASCAR are king. Even the NFL plays second- or even third-fiddle to the SEC and NASCAR in most of the South. If you think I'm crazy, I've got two words for you: Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami and Tampa Bay have had attendance problems as well, and the only reason New Orleans and Atlanta are succesful in the stands is because they're successful on the field. (NOTE: I'm not really including Carolina here, because as past commenters have noted, North Carolina is really more mid-Atlantic than Southern, though NC is the heart and soul of NASCAR) What I'm getting at is this: would an MLS franchise in the Southeast be able to lure in the average sports fan, a man who's heard of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo from SportsCenter, but likely wouldn't be able to pick either out of a lineup of Buddhist monks?
To close, MLS returning to the Southeast reminds me a lot of the NHL's expansion into the Sun Belt in the 90's. While it's worked in some markets, like Dallas and Tampa Bay, it's been a miserable failure in others (I'm looking at you, Phoenix and Atlanta). It will have to take the right owner in the right city. For the time being, my money is on none of the above. the more likely option for the Southeast won't be getting a 21st or 22nd franchise - even if MLS chose to expand that far. MLS returning to the Southeast will also not likely be something along the lines of its recent expansion, cherry-picking the most successful second-division clubs from the NASL and USL - if that were the case, either Rochester or Charleston would be in MLS by now. Instead, it'll likely mean an existing franchise moving to an Atlanta, New Orleans or a Florida market. I'll go out on a limb and say that Atlanta would be the best place, with ownership and facilities already in place.
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