Re: Somerville Soccer Stadium
doesn't NYC already have a team?
The Red Bulls are doing okay for themselves at this point, but they are very much a niche in the NYC pro sports scene. Playing in NJ means that they are out of sight, out of mind, even though they have a gorgeous stadium. Numerous missteps in that franchise's history haven't helped.
The league isn't doing as well in the major media markets of the Northeast. Expansion to NYC is happening in part to help rectify that. Also, NYC is massive and can support two teams. It's not like the Red Bulls get many fans from the Outer Boroughs as it is. It's a long and arduous journey from Queens to Harrison, NJ by any form of transportation.
The MLS needs to be smart about their expansion and realistically should cap the number of teams at 22-24. They don't want to spread the talent too thin.
I agree that expanding past 24 teams while simultaneously attempting to significantly improve the league's quality will be difficult. But with the kind of expansion fees that are now rolling in and the pursuit of ever-larger national TV deals, I wonder if it will be difficult to turn down additional franchises. I'd definitely support slowing down after 24, but I'm starting to doubt that will happen.
I don't think Miami should have been an expansion given the city itself is not a good sports city and they've already had a team once. The MLS would be better served giving Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, Minneapolis and St. Louis teams and calling it a day. Or at least not adding in any new teams for a decade or so.
Miami is very low on the list of quality sports towns, but we'll see. Beckham's project down there is getting a huge amount of press and has generated quite a bit of enthusiasm.
having a team in Miami and another nearby in Orlando seems pretty redundant.
I don't know about that. Miami and Orlando have distinctly different identities and don't have much overlap in sports fandom. The truth of the matter is that there aren't many metros in the South that are big enough to be viable MLS markets, but three of them are in Florida. There are worse things than having a built-in local rival.
Orlando is on the small side for expansion right now given some holes that have yet to be filled (Atlanta, Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Diego are all at least 1m larger -- to say nothing of the most underrepresented MSA in pro sports -- by far -- the Inland Empire). Orlando was helped a bit by the support for their USL Pro (third division) team, which is the best-supported club in the US minor leagues.
The teams you listed are all located in cities where they have little competition (there's 2 other major league teams in KC, but only one plays during the summer and they're quite a ways from the Kansas side of the river. If you look at MLS, teams seem to work in 3 places:
A) Metropolises with lots of Latino residents
B) The Pacific Northwest and Canada
C) Medium-sized cities underserved by high quality MLB, NBA or NFL teams
Of the 19 MLS teams, the top 10, ordered by 2013 attendance, are:
Seattle (B), LA Galaxy (A), Portland (B and C), Montreal (B), Vancouver (B), Houston (A), KC (C), NY (A), SLC (C), Toronto (B). Those same 10 teams were the top ten in 2012 as well, albeit in a slightly different order, so it's pretty clear that that's the top half.
In the bottom half, you have Philly, Chicago, Colorado, Columbus, Dallas, NE (not last!), DC, San Jose and Chivas LA. Chivas and San Jose have stadium issues holding them back. All the rest are the cities which don't fit any of the 3 categories. The Revs are about on par with their counterparts in Dallas and Chicago. Those are pretty good sports towns and both have soccer-specific stadiums.
According to the
2010 census, Chicago has 1.9m Hispanics. DFW has 1.7m. Not sure why they don't count.
What Colorado, Columbus (until just recently sold), Dallas, NE, DC, San Jose, and Chivas USA (also just recently sold) have in common, actually, are owners who have other sports holdings they care about more.
Colorado -- Kroenke (Arsenal, St. Louis Rams, Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets)
Columbus & Dallas -- Hunt family (KC Chiefs)
DC -- Erick Thohir (Inter Milan)
NE -- Kraft (NE Patriots)
San Jose - Lew Wolff (Oakland A's)
Chivas USA -- Vergara (C.D. Guadalajara)
To me, this is revealing.
Sensibly, MLS has realized that Latino-heavy areas are where the fans are and are expanding to Florida and New York instead of, say, Minneapolis or Charlotte. MLS in Boston is fighting the demographics of the city, the demographics of the area around their stadium, and the fact that they've gone almost entirely without success during the best decade-and-a-half any city has ever had in American sports.
MLS expanded to Florida and New York because they are trying to (a)expand the national footprint to the South, where they had no presence prior to Orlando/Miami and (b)win over the NY market, which has been a challenge with the NYRB franchise for various reasons.
I'm not sure that Miami's Cubans and NY's Dominicans and Puerto Ricans really matter, since none of those three groups are particularly interested in soccer.
Also, you have to understand how expansion works. MLS HQ doesn't just call up the city of Miami and tell them that they think putting a franchise there is a fine idea. There has to be an interested and deep-pocketed ownership group and a clear plan for a stadium. These markets had owners who stepped up to the plate. (NYC is an exception to the stadium rule, but MLS had their reasons for making it.)
A soccer specific stadium in Somerville won't really change that. The Krafts selling the team won't either, since all the rosters in MLS are basically controlled centrally. The best you can hope for is bumping that attendance number a little while creating a new, very valuable venue for concerts and such.
Contracts are held centrally, but rosters are definitely not "controlled centrally". In constructing a roster, individual teams are constrained by the salary cap and by the quota on foreign players, but otherwise have free rein to construct their roster as they see fit.
The Revs have a reputation for being cheap and for being an organization that players don't really want to play for, which is an accusation that was thrown around in that Boston Magazine article. Certainly, the Revs have left the impression that they didn't do all they could do to address roster needs over the years. They never adequately replaced stars like Clint Dempsey or Taylor Twellman, nor did they bother to fill empty roster slots during playoff runs that ultimately fell short. This season is the same old story on that front.
It's a poorly run franchise. It will never be optimized in Foxborough, but it could still be so much better than it is. There are a lot of soccer fans in Boston. Very few of them follow MLS or the Revs. And who can blame them?
