Where Next for MLS? 3. New York City
They could have sold-out the 25,000 soccer-specific-stadium ten times over tonight. We’re in the borough of Queens, New York City; it’s April 2012, and soccer is big news in the Big Apple once again. New York City FC are about to play their inaugural match.
David Beckham walks out on to the field. The crowd cheers. He’s wearing a suit — he retired at the end of last season — and he’s flanked by Posh and four other important men who along with Beckham have brought soccer to Queens. Next to him is his close associate pop impresario Simon Fuller, one of the most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, and on the other side is Fred Wilpon, an owner of baseball’s New York Mets and who has finally realised his dream of making soccer part of the redevelopment on the site of the now demolished Shea Stadium.
There’s a third Englishman there, too: David Dein, a former owner of Arsenal, is part of the investment group. And he’s helped bring over another former Arsenal man to kick things off: Thierry Henry is New York’s flagship star and captain, signed to MLS’ second largest ever contract, behind only Beckham’s own monstrous deal that finally expired the season before.
And in the background stands MLS Commissioner Don Garber, looking pleased as punch. In recent days we’ve looked at two of the candidates MLS is considering for the next expansion franchise, Miami and St Louis. New York City is one that seems to have been overlooked in the discussion, but it’s not because MLS doesn’t want it to happen, as we’ll explore.
Background
Is that scenario wild fantasy? Perhaps. But New York City expansion is a puzzle MLS is desperate to put together, as these words from Don Garber in the New York Times last year make clear: “The league’s original plan always was to have two teams in New York”.
We all know about the history of the Cosmos, of Pele, of the size of the New York market and the importance to the sport here of having a team in its most globally visible city. The question isn’t whether there’ll be a new New York team, but when it’ll arrive, where they’ll play, and who’ll be behind it. Let’s look at the most realistic scenario, close to that outlined above.
Stadium
Though Manhattan would be more glamorous and Brooklyn would have a strong appeal, it’s as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the site around Shea Stadium that MLS is most closely exploring.
SoccerTimes received some confirmation of this a few months ago:
SoccerTimes was told off-the-record by an MLS official that the top candidate would be New York City with a soccer-specific stadium built adjacent to Citi Field, the Mets’ new stadium, set to open next to Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens, in 2009. The league envisions a bitter rivalry between this club and the New York Red Bulls, who are based in New Jersey. League sources admitted, however, getting this done would be hugely complicated and largely dependent on the development of Citi Field.
The mention of the Mets and their owner, Fred Wilpon, in that article is significant as he is known to be interested in MLS, and should have the means and the sway to get a soccer-specific-stadium built as part of the redevelopment underway. The details, as the article suggests, are where the devil lies though. We simply don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.
But as we can see in the image below, Citi Field has been developed immediately behind Shea Stadium, which could be demolished and replaced by a soccer stadium.
Supporters
There seem to be plenty of people jonesing for a team inside the boroughs, with many expressing an antipathy to the New York Red Bull franchise located over in New Jersey. Several hundred people have signed a petition calling for MLS to expand to the boroughs, with the New York City FC blog a comprehensive advocate of the idea. The Borough Boys Supporters Club announces themselves as “the official supporters group of a second Major League Soccer team in the New York City Area.”
They even have scarves planned.
There’s an interesting interview with the Borough Boys on Soccer Source, in which they further emphasise their alienation from the Red Bulls:
Most supporters feel that the Red Bulls are not their team. This is probably based on the fact that they have always played in New Jersey. While the Jets and Giants both play in Jersey as well, they also once played games in New York. A lot of New Yorkers have a sense of pride when it comes to the New York, New Jersey dispute.
Also, I feel a large part of the soccer community in this area lives in the Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island area and it would be easier for them to access games on a weekend. While the Meadowlands might only be about 15 miles away, getting there on your average summer weekend for a 4PM or 7PM match can take about 2 hours – even longer if you are from Long Island.
Access and attention on the Red Bulls ought to improve when Red Bull park finally opens in Harrison, New Jersey in 2009, but the feeling is they still won’t become New York City’s team.
Adam Spangler of This Is American Soccer told Pitch Invasion that “Red Bull and the Metrostars before them have always felt distant from the city, both physically and figuratively. Maybe that will change. when Red Bull park opens, but it’s no secret that over the last decade there has been little to no connection with the NYC community, so that market is still largely untapped.”
Backing
Fred Wilpon is the person most associated with a potential NYC team, and Pitch Invasion has also heard that former Arsenal part-owner David Dein is interested in becoming an investor in it, a move that would make perfect sense given his global ambitions (he was once the head of the G-14) and connections to MLS already via Stan Kroenke, owner of the Colorado Rapids and an investor in Arsenal.
The news that David Beckham has an option to purchase the right to operate an MLS franchise is also of considerable interest. We know Beckham and his associates have a long-term vision of being at the heart of growing soccer in this country, and he certainly has the financial resources to be involved and the passion to do it. From MLS’ perspective, putting Beckham’s name all over the NYC expansion project (even if his actual involvement was minimal) would be a dream come true. Brand it like Beckham.
Overall
Let’s strip away the hyperbole with which the article began. Let’s forget Beckham’s involvement, perhaps the most tenuous connection made here. There is still an awful lot to do to get a stadium in place — I don’t think it would be hard to find the investors to back a team in New York City — which is why MLS has awarded two franchises elsewhere in the months since Garber confirmed to the NYT that he wanted a second NYC franchise ahead of other cities. It could still be a while before we see the likes of Thierry Henry in New York City FC colours.
In the coming weeks, Pitch Invasion plans to look more closely at the details of this possible expansion, so stay tuned. But in principle, would you welcome a new, New York team as the next addition to MLS?
About the Author
Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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Well, of course, the Red Bulls are so well supported…I have an idea, they can even brand it after a rival energy drink! Think of the marketing possibilites! Yes, that should be it…New York City Rock Stars? New York City Kroniks? We may as well try to fit as many teams into as few cities as possible, you know with the small size of the country.
Countdown to the groans of grief from people in other parts of the land, who have no sense of the NYC area, the sheer provincialness permeating the place, whatsoever and think “there’s already a team nearby, New Yorkers should go support that one”: in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….
I cannot wait to hear their bellyaching from those folks when NYC actually does get their team. As you’ve written, beyond the TBD stadium situation (whose activity or lack of is cloaked in secrecy anyway, so let’s just leave that aside) it’s really a question of when, not if it happens in NYC. And the crying from the provinces will be delicious when that comes down.
Don’t know any of the Borough Boys personally, but gawd almighty, do they (or at least a couple of their most vocal members) come off terribly online. I wish I could feel like taking up the NYC cause alongside them, but it’s the exact opposite right now; they might be all right in person, but online they seem really, really hard to take. There’s only one word I can think of to describe the BBs from what I read, and I don’t use it to come off all mockney, but because it fits – “naff.” Can’t say I want to drop everything and get down with that, personally. No wait, there’s another word – bass-ackwards. In my opinion they’re just terribly, naively misguided as to what they should be about *at this point*. They think they’re being the next Sons of Ben. Whatever impact the Sons of Ben actually had on the Philly expansion (I don’t imagine it was all that much, beyond being nice for Garber’s PR concerns), it’ll be a shame if from now on, wannabe-MLS-supporter-groups start thinking their sole raison d’etre is to “show potential owners that we want MLS soccer,” because it worked for the SOBs. Fred Wilpon certainly couldn’t give a flying f### about 20 or 100 or even 1000 guys with a website, making up logos and selling scarves – it’s about whether the figures figure. If they do, and if a Forest City Ratner-type shitstorm isn’t in the cards (not so likely in that part of Queens) then it will most likely happen.
A group whose main mission seems to be to put a bug in Wilpon’s (or any investor’s) ear is just wasting time and energy and giving me (taking the stance of a NYC neutral) nothing to grab on to. Those guys – and this is just my opinion, again – should center on something tangible, concrete and real right *now.* Build up a group with a real culture and real relationships and a real history, leveraging whatever links and social capital they personally have in the vast NYC soccer culture. Screw the merchandise (at least get off the ground first!) and the imaginary future rivalries. Not wanting to associate with RB is no crime – neither do I, and if NYC is startin’ before RB is departin’ then I’m likely to be there too. But instead of rattling sabers stupidly these BBs could worry about the future…later, and right now begin working from the ground up – go all out right now for the Brooklyn Knights or whatever PDL team is there now. It may be small and lack the glory of MLS (ha) but it’ll be real.
No doubt there’s a lot of passion there; it’d a shame to spend so much of it on a fools’ errand.
I wonder to what degree Chivas’ failure to draw the expected interest has made MLS think twice about putting two teams in the same metro area.
A prerequisite for sports franchise success is that it represents a particular constituency (generally a geographic area) that people strongly identify with. Tom’s piece makes it sound as is if Red Bull would essentially represent NJ in this setup, while the other team would represent the city. However, insofar as I understand New York, people don’t strongly identify with New Jersey, even if they live there. They identify with this much larger mass called “New York.” This is why the Nets are moving to Brooklyn.
That’s not to say that the team couldn’t hold its own. Simply by virtue of its 20 million (or whatever) people, NYC no doubt has enough folks to make a second team work, by some minimal definition. The question to me is whether NY can support two *good* franchises, two teams that inspire passion and support. If it can’t–if one team is doomed to be the Mets to the other’s Yankees–wouldn’t MLS be better off putting a team in a city that doesn’t have a team, where all that city’s soccer-attention will be directed to one club, rather than split?
“If it can’t–if one team is doomed to be the Mets to the other’s Yankees….”
What a doom that would be. The Mets have a huge fanbase throughout the NYC metro area, never mind the carefully-constructed pinstripe “tradition.” They are most certainly not the Clippers to the Yanks’ Lakers, which seems more the comparison you’re aiming for.
And to your first question about Chivas, I think the answer to that is “not at all.”
The outright failure and dissolution of the Fusion has not deterred MLS from looking again at South Florida. I imagine MLS looks at both cases as problems of implementation, rather than anything inherently wrong with the ideas behind either of those teams. So I don’t think Chivas’s struggles in LA mean much here.
Like someone (was it Tom?) said somewhere else this week, if you had the requisite billions to invest and the will MLS would likely let you put a second team in Kansas City.
NO NO NO NO NO NO. The whole “but the Giants and Jets used to play in NY!” is bullshit. They haven’t played there in over a generation so most people simply equate them to the Meadowlands.
People like Metrologist like to find every excuse possible but the failure of RBNY is telling. People from NY WILL come out to north Jersey it’s been show time and again. Until RBNY can show that their are people who actually are willing to support a team this should be a non-starter.
Look no further than LA Galaxy and Chivas. They are further away both in real miles and traffic time from the population center of LA than RBNY is from NYC (it takes me almost 2.5 hours at noon to get down there and I’m basically in Hollywood) and yet Galaxy LOADS the stadium every day even pre-Beckham.
Chivas is not in the same boat and LA is a FAR more futbol mad city than any other in the US. People actually talk about soccer on the street here. All leagues around the world. I have people ask me about that stuff even if I’m not wearing anything to indicate that I’m a soccer fan.
IF they move Chivas to the SFV or Hollywood area and they start packing em in, then MAYBE the idea of splitting another market given distance makes sense. Until then…
Also interesting is that you don’t mention the ‘other’ NY foilable. If they don’t think they are watching something that is the ‘best’ (even though they often take a lesser product and dillute themselves to think otherwise) they won’t come out. Do you REALLY think they are ready right now to support 2 teams that never win and have no immediate prospects to win? Uh, no.
Let’s put it this way, I’d rather see Miami try and fail again than see another crap NY team with 7K attendances. At least a team in Miami would increase the national media footprint.
Why New York?
Why not a city that has shown they will support their teams? Chicago, who has a great crowd at all of their sports, including the Fire, could support a second team. Why not a second team in Boston, or even Toronto? I just don’t see what the point is in putting another team in New York right now. Later, once the league is solidified nationwide, sure. But they are missing out on open markets.
Admittedly, the reason I say this is partly out of selfishness. I am a 2 year old convert to the beautiful game, and have sense become completely enthralled by it. However, I live in south Alabama, where soccer is a four-letter word. I watch EPL and MLS games, I buy DirectKick, and I even buy jerseys. But I have no chance of watching a game in person. The closest team is 700 miles away, FC Dallas. Lucky for me, I have family there, so that’s who I root for. But an Atlanta team would be nice, as everyone here supports all Atlanta teams.
So I beg of MLS to give Atlanta a shot, as they have already given Miami one.
“People like Metrologist like to find every excuse possible but the failure of RBNY is telling. ”
It’s actually not telling at all. There isn’t a team in North America less “telling” of anything; that franchise represents a unique, perfect storm of fan-alienating awfulness, unlike anything else in MLS. The NYC area – primarily NJ, as the franchise under Sakiewicz shifted its efforts to identify itself with Jersey – supported Metro way above and beyond what it deserved for years. Go look at the attendence numbers for some very underwhelming teams. Despite Nickflation of the numbers (get ready for THAT, Philly!), what fanbase there was for Metro, without ever seriously tapping NYC, was relatively strong well into the 21st century, even after the gruesome ‘99 season. But whoever wasn’t slowly chipped away, slowly repelled by a decade of bad-to-mediocre soccer, farcical, pompous and shiftless management, endless empty promises, thuggish security and a difficult-to-reach, inappropriate venue then got suddenly enlisted as part of a bizarre (and thus far, unsuccessful) post-modern marketing experiment. Unsurprisingly, THAT move nicked off yet more people, and they won’t be back. I say this as one of them. This is probably a smallish group, but an important one because in it are people who were there from near the beginning, who did, to quote Hristo Stoichkov, “believe in MLS” when it wasn’t nearly so much worth believing in. They’re your acolytes and your human capital, the roots of your buzz, and they have been systematically decimated in the Swamp. Nothing has come along from the taurine peddlers to compensate for that loss.
The problem in Metroland wasn’t never necessarily attracting fans, it was retaining them – I only wish we could determine a percentage of diehard supporters in, say, DC who have been there since the mid-90s, compared to that among Metro supporters – because back in the day the two fanbases were very much on par with one another. My personal sense is there’s far, far less of those old-timers still kicking around in NJ. Lots of people have moved off, grown up, and Metro/RB never proved that it was worth the continued presence in their lives when they have so many better things to do. They’ve been churned and burned. There comes a point where it’s just not worth the bother anymore – especially when you’re being overtly or covertly told you’re not desired.
So good luck building a whole new fanbase from zero, RB. Especially when everyone’s got FSC and Sopcast to get their fix – this is not the soccer desert of 1996. Starting year three of the experiment, they show no clue. At this point, the fanbase you have left is mostly comprised of really, really solid fans who have been in so deep for so long that they simply can never get out whatever the team is called (anyone who went through all of ‘99 saw the heart of darkness, MLS-style), whatever youth and ethnic groups they can scrabble together from week to week to make up the numbers, and…I don’t know who. Who’s genuinely excited about this team, this organization now? I think they must be fooling themselves, or have shit for brains. I’d consider anyone who’s just jumping hardcore on the RBNY bandwagon at this point in time as having an awareness of which way the wind was blowing that parallels, say, Germans finally deciding to join the Nazi Party in early 1945. To put it less caustically, it’s like boarding a sinking ship, or at least one with big gaping holes in the side. You’re either a true believer in miracles or lost, at that point. God bless you either way.
So that’s the Cliff’s Notes version. Like I said, put it all together, and it’s nothing like anything any other team has had to deal with. It tells us nothing. The best case you have to make is that the NYC market for MLS has been irreparably spoiled, or at least lost for a generation or two. There’s a case to be made there, but it’s not a pretty thought for MLS enthusiasts. NYC expansion has to be looked at as an attempt to start fresh, not as something connected to the NJ franchise and its fortunes. Personally, there is simply nothing that RBNY can do to bring my money and interest back until the RB is completely struck off. As long as NYC-FC doesn’t come about, and RB doesn’t realize they’re never getting anywhere with this and get lost (both will happen eventually), MLS as a whole can go hang as far as I’m concerned. The NJ franchise is going to need a lot more time, and a lot more than just a new stadium, to put itself right in any event. A decade or more. MLS is not going to wait that long if Wilpon or anyone is talking investment and a new building.
And of course the NYC soccer culture is every bit as strong as LA’s and then some.
“But instead of rattling sabers stupidly these BBs could worry about the future…later, and right now begin working from the ground up – go all out right now for the Brooklyn Knights or whatever PDL team is there now. It may be small and lack the glory of MLS (ha) but it’ll be real.”
One step ahead of you buddy:
-Long Island Rough Riders outing
The Borough Boys will be going to the Long Island Rough Riders match on May 17th vs. Ocean City at 7:30 PM. If you are interested in joining us, please email events@boroughboysnyc.com
As an organization we dont think that we will massively sway the opinions of any interested parties,but if we can add even 1% to the reasons why there should be a team here we have done our job.
Een Draght Mackt Maght-In Unity There Is Strength
A short list of cities deserving (I think) of an MLS team: St. Louis, Montreal, Portland and Vancouver.
If New York REALLY wants another team…then give it to the state and not the city. Add Rochester to the league, then.
The only way I see New York City getting an actual team on the island is if the Red Bulls win a title and draw out there…meanwhile, at least two of the aforementioned cities get a club and show they can draw out there.
I’m just not buying New York getting a second franchise at this time.
The new stadium in Harrison, NJ will be easier to access than the Meadowlands. Public transit will drop fans off a short walking distance away from Red Bull Park (ist that what it’s called?). If New York cared that much they would have gotten things rolling in the beginning and put the team in NYC to begin with or they could have had the new stadium built in NYC. Sorry guys. You’re stuck with Jersey.
The Job of the Borough Boys is only to show intrested parties that a second NYC
team would be well supported. Just the city of New York has 8 million plus people, Queens and
Brooklyn combined about 5 million plus. That is more than the entire metro populations of many current
MLS teams. You have to understand that it doesn’t make sense that considering our city, our rabid base of soccer fans, our population, and the attendance records of RedBull NY….you have to see that there is more at play here. It’s not that new yorkers don’t like soccer, we have more soccer fans than any other city in the US besides possibly LA. New York is a complex situation, and an MLS team will eventually come here. Maybe not in the next couple years, but eventually…and we will be waiting.We currently support 3 PDL teams in the area, L I rough riders, Brooklyn, and Westchester and we willexist even if Garber tells us to our faces that we will not get a team. Our mission is to raise support for soccer in the city, at every level. And maybe if the RedBull supporters didn’t hate us so much, we would through a little support there way now and again.
Een Draght Mackt Maght
“If _______ cared that much they would have gotten things rolling in the beginning and put the team in ______ to begin with…”
Philadelphia, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Portland, Rochester, Boise, Augusta, Tacoma, Albuquerque……
Yeah, exactly.
Metrologist, why don’t you come down some time to one of our viewing events and meet us all in person. I’m sure that the roughness and hardness of our posts will pleasantly dissolve as you see and meet us in person. You might even have fun and join the cause. lol Worst case you had fun with a bunch of idiots, drank some beer and watched some soccer. What do you say? Get in touch with us either on the boards or by email at events@boroughboysnyc.com
Good point Boro. I think you would be ill advised to judge a group b/c of message board posts.
boroughboysnyc.com
A second club in New York smacks of hope more than any reasoned planning. They can’t even get one soccer-specific stadium up and running and they’re going to give the MLS another club? Echoes of the end of the NASL.
The Montreal Impact have had the highest gates in the USL, and there is a massive football culture in place there already. Olympic Stadium was full for the U-19 tournament, 50 000 seats for Brazil v. Poland. Toronto FC has already proven that Canada is club football country. I’ve read the NY Times faithfully over the past three years and the MLS coverage is beyond pathetic. Try reading about European club football there either. There are only so many soccermoms left who are going to shell out to see football played on the gridiron, basball diamond, whatever…
I WANT TO BECOME A SOCCER PLAYER IN MY COUNTRY NATIONAL TEAM
@Richard Whittall:
Are you kidding me? There are probably about as many European football fans in NYC as in the entire rest of the country combined. That they don’t go to the Times is a statement about the Times, not the fans.
Secondly, they’re not going to put a team in NY on hope. They’re only going to do it if a sound plan is in place to build a stadium and support the team.
Cold-eyed capitalism knows the economic opportunity sitting untapped in the NYC market. Frankly, it’s the people promoting other cities, (where tickets are dirt cheap and sponsorships are tax deductible because it’s a charity) are confusing what they’d like to be for what is. They’d like to believe that “deserves” comes into it somewhere, when what really comes into it is ownership, venue, market size.
Memo to MLS and to the soccer fanatics of New York: Build the soccer specific stadium for RedBull New York to play in AND fill it out on a regular basis BEFORE you start looking at adding a second team in New York! Why screw an original franchise just to satisfy a wet dream of the league’s to see two teams in the same market? There wouldn’t have been a second team in the Los Angeles area if the Galaxy were’nt a strong franchise to begin with. RBNY need to be just as strong a club.
Allow for St. Louis and Montreal to join the league as they are far ahead of NY2 in their expansion proposals.
“Memo to MLS and to the soccer fanatics of New York: Build the soccer specific stadium for RedBull New York to play in AND fill it out on a regular basis BEFORE you start looking at adding a second team in New York!”
There isn’t much to say at this point other than that you just don’t seem to get it. You think the league wants a second team in NY because it would be neat to say it had two teams in NY, not because it’s a huge, largely untapped market. The mere fact that NYC would be the best possible place to put a team market-wise seems to register no impact. As long as you think this way, the league’s decision-making will always be a mystery to you, and the annoying thing is you’ll keep thinking that’s on the league and not yourself.
Amen, Stan.
I would posit that a good part of the issue here arises from the sense that a large part of the support for a “NYC2″ franchise has its roots in the absolute trainwreck that has been/is the MetroStars/Red Bulls. The logistical issues were if anything worse during the Cosmos’ heyday (I should know, having seen them at Randalls’ Island and Hofstra before ever venturing to the Port Authority to catch the bus), but didn’t see as daunting because the Cosmos were worth going out of one’s way to see.
To the extent that soccer fans outside the NY metro area perceive the NYC2 movement as being essentially a request for a do-over because the league has so massively and persistently screwed up NYC1, it will always be a very hard sell, especially given the essential scarcity of new franchises.
Not only that, ursus, but NYC2 would make RBNY’s horrible situation even worse.
You say that as if it is a bad thing . . .
But seriously, if RBNY is not viable, then the responsible thing to do would be to move or contract that franchise before granting another one to the NY metro area. Failing to address the problem and hoping to “get it right the second time” would send exactly the wrong signal to the rest of the country.
But that’s my point, ursus: RBNY (or some version of that franchise) isn’t going anywhere. There’s been far too much money and time invested in the Harrison stadium. So, MLS’ first priority in NY is and will be making sure that the existing team there is less of a disaster. Adding a second NY franchise at this point would only compound that disaster, and for that reason has no chance of happening.
MetroStars have maneuvered themselves into a situation almost all of their fans come from NJ. Newark, as it’s own Metro area has ~2 million people, and it’s more than that if you consider all of North Jersey. They have enough to suppport a team to at least minimum standards on their own. With all the history, a second NY team is a net help to them by giving them a rival.
Besides, they’re not putting a second team in NYC “at this point.” They’re doing it in 2011 at the earliest, by which time RB will have their own stadium, a youth system ready to produce prospects, and a new DP to replace Reyna. They’ll have years worth of head start over NYC as a first year expansion team.
Unless Red Bull suddenly abandons ship, the state of footy in the New York area will change dramatically once the palace that will be Red Bull Park opens in less than 2 seasons. The Harrison location is walking distance from the Path train, a direct subway link to Manhattan proper (about a half hour ride), with the Newark/NJ railroad hub also real close. The design of the new stadium is a classic Euro look with full roof, close seats, no stage, real grass pitch, etc. The experience of the match day will be transformed. RBP will be the new mecca of US soccer and the “spare no expenses” might of the Red Bull corporation will finally bear fruit.
All this being said, I do acknowledge completely the decade plus of Metro/Bulls ill will/fan apathy that exists now and it is a result of mismanagement, location and the dislike of a team moniker being a product. I do think a Queens club could work for sure someday, attracting vast legions of untapped NYC/Long Island fans, but this will not happen until after St. Louis and perhaps Montreal or even Miami get teams. Look for NYCFC as maybe MLS club 18 or 19.
Yeah Stan, that’s the kind of thinking that allowed MLS to overlook their own expansion criteria in soccer specific stadiums and allowed Seattle to join the league with the monsterous QWest Stadium as their home pitch. Any more of these short sighted decisions will come back to bite them on the ass in a big way.
It makes more sense to put teams into rich, untaped markets in St. Louis and Montreal, which are far ahead of their respective plans for entry into MLS, than it is right now for a second New York team to come in and divide a market that has yet to be handled properly.
I suggest guys like you and The Meterologist start supporting the existing New York team that you have (it’s not called RedBull New Jersey, btw) before you start whining and crying about wanting a second team in your area.
“Unless Red Bull suddenly abandons ship, the state of footy in the New York area will change dramatically once the palace that will be Red Bull Park opens in less than 2 seasons.”
Oh, how I wish I could put a bet on this!
There may well be a frisson of excitement when Harrison finally does open. But how far is it going to extend? Soccer fans who don’t think much of MLS to begin with, or who are antipathetic to NJ and the NJ franchise are still not coming en masse – especially when the ticket prices at the new place go up (they always do.) As for the attention of casual NYC sports fans and (maybe more importantly) the city media, there could not be a less opportune time to make a splash by opening a *soccer* stadium in *NJ* than the next two years. The Mets and the Yankees are opening their new buildings in 2009, the Giants and Jets their shared stadium in 2010. All will inevitably make Harrison look a bit spartan by comparison, and all will absolutely swamp Harrison in terms of press attention and corporate money. No wonder RB cut out a lot of suites from the earlier design – how were they going to move those in a crowded market? But then again, how are they going to make their numbers on ticket sales alone? That’s the rub. And I still haven’t heard a good answer. I’m sorry, I just don’t see them selling out consistently, all season, right off the bat, just because there’s a new building there. And the evidence from Chicago, Dallas and Colorado supports me on that.
It will be a good thing when that stadium opens in Harrison. It will stabilize the franchise, if everything breaks right. It’s not going to be a revolution. Any serious change of course will take years and years and years.
I supported the Metros for 12 years, Chris. Season ticket holder, travelling supporter, the whole bit. Don’t tell me what I “should” do.
“And the evidence from Chicago, Dallas and Colorado supports me on that.”
I think this is an important point people are forgetting somewhat. It’s not just a case of build-it-and-they’ll come. It took Chicago a year to start selling out Toyota Park, and that was more to do with an improved team and the arrival of Blanco (which garnered them massive media attention within the huge Hispanic market locally) than just the building. Don’t get me wrong — Toyota Park’s a great venue, and not as far from downtown Chicago as it seems people often think, at least by car. But it’s about much more than a building. It’s about a team people can identify with and support. A winning team also helps that, part of why Toyota Park was filled and had a good atmosphere by season’s end in 2007.
Local marketing is massively important. When the Fire first launched in 1998, they spent over six figures on a campaign in the six months before to sell the team. It worked. When Toyota Park opened, not enough marketing was done to sell-out the stadium for the first few games, spoiling the buzz. Peter Wilt would have understood how to sell-out the stadium, but AEG had fired him, unfortunately.
Season ticket numbers are still nowhere near where they should be (Section 8 is just about the only area of the stadium to have grown substantially in season ticket sales in the past year, much of that down to grassroots self-marketing by Section 8 Chicago), and in my view that’s down to poor marketing and poor communications from the front office.
Hopefully that is changing with the new ownership — there are signs of it — but AEG messed things up in more than one place.
“…the “spare no expenses” might of the Red Bull corporation”
This is the most stunning little bit of bullshit going, and it’s shocking that so many people continue to echo it as if it were true. Then again, we are talking about us American soccer fans, who are so often so desperate to believe that they leap headlong into credulousness.
RB spares expenses all over the frigging place. They’re good at spending a lot on selective flashy things for the PR value, but they don’t follow up. Their F1 teams are mediocrely-equipped and mediocre; someone more up on F1 can speak to this, but I read their teams didn’t even have a top-of-the-line simulator, like the true “top” teams have. Where’s that big spending now? Their MLS team is a mediocrity as well – not that their money could do a whole lot there under MLS rules, anyway. Their only real “success” was the purchase of a title in a third-tier European league. Hardly a epic accomplishment when you think about it, and its not like they’re running away with that league again or going anywhere in Europe.
“RB’s Big Spending” is right up there with the Yeti and Nessie. It’s simply incredible that people still believe all that.
There’s more to it than marketing alone. The MLSE basically left TFC to simmer with a barely visible poster campaign before the start of the season, and the web culture took care of the rest. The rest of the momentum was grassroots. Football culture requires more than a front office pushing product, it requires an open-minded population with a working knowledge of football…don’t see that yet in NYC.
“Football culture requires more than a front office pushing product, it requires an open-minded population with a working knowledge of football…don’t see that yet in NYC.”
Actually you might have heard, NY has a fabulous football culture. The Giants just won the Super Bowl, in fact.
Seems they are a bit behind TFC supporters in the condescension department, though.
Show me a another market that sold out every home game and season tickets six months before kick off, and then I’ll gladly get off my perch.
“Yet?” Been there, done that Richard. You would have seen it if you were looking in 1996. Back when the Metros were on their honeymoon too, drawing crowds that made TFC’s look pretty ordinary in comparison.
The comparison will be more apt in 2020 or so (and even then, not really, but that’s the best we can do.) Let’s see where you’re at then – especially if you’ve just enjoyed a decade like 2007.
Richard, there’s a big difference between getting coverage and grassroots momentum behind an existing team that’s been mismanaged launching a new stadium years into their existence (as in Chicago and New York’s cases), and a new team launching in a new stadium after a decade of MLS establishing itself.
Chicago is a much more relevant example for the Red Bulls opening a new stadium than Toronto. It’s great and all that BMO sold out, but the two situations aren’t anywhere near as similar. I don’t see why this has to turn into a pissing contest.
The culture in Toronto was there stretching back to 1982 when half the downtown was shut down when Italy won the World Cup…it’s true the MLS didn’t register back in the 1990s, but the MLS wasn’t the focal point of Toronto’s interest in the club last year, it was the prospect of a local clubside with a dedicated stadium. This case holds true in Montreal as well, where almost no one can name another team in the USL, but can name the starting roster for the impact.
Anyway, I’ll stop taking the piss now…
Richard, you’re still not grasping my point. You can’t tell me Chicago and New York don’t have enough soccer fans to fill a 20,000 seat stadium. In Chicago, the first expansion year was also very successful, despite not having a dedicated stadium. The stadium sold-out in the last half of 2008 once Blanco had provided the requisite attraction to a large portion of the existing soccer culture in Chicago. But it didn’t sell itself just because it existed in the first twelve months.
The point is, an existing team that’s had problems moving to a new stadium isn’t the same thing as putting a new team in one. Moreover, MLS might not have been the appeal, but Toronto fans knew they were committed to something that’s on solid ground, more appealing to international soccer fans (no shoot-outs, less glitz) than in the 1990s, and has more media attention. Toronto is great, well done, but not really relevant to my point.
On the question of ’solid ground,’ you should have been here in 2006 when everyone was expecting a massive financial flop for TFC in their inaugural year, mostly because seasoned second generation immigrant football followers would stay home. My point is, in Toronto, they DID stay home.
Unlike the Chicago Fire, whose fans at the start were largely made up of Chicago’s vibrant Polish community (later to be overtaken by the Hispanic following with Blanco), the make up of fans at BMO Field was largely twenty and thirty somethings of any and all ethnic/homogeneous backgrounds who grew up watching the game on basic cable, via Sportsnet, TLN, Champions League on TSN. Football is a close cousin of hockey, the number one sport in Canada, and so European football was by and large a ratings success in this country on mainstream television with mainstream Canadian audiences. The idea that Toronto’s multicultural makeup was somehow responsible for TFC’s initial success is a myth.
My point is, all the progressive blogs in the world can’t change the fact that mainstream American culture is largely dismissive of soccer as a sport. It’s great that Blanco brought football to the Hispanic population, but what about your average Bears or Giants fan or Bulls and Knicks fan? If they’re not interested, the sport will always suffer. I’m not in doubt that there are many, many more avid football supporters in major American cities than there are in the whole of Canada, but they’re not going to shell year in and year out out to see an MLS club, they’re going to watch Azteca, or Boca Juniors, or Locomotiv, or you name it…
@The Metrologist on March 21st, 2008 at 10:42 pm:
thank you for busitng out the second trough of ‘why NY doesn’t draw’ platitudes. ‘the FO doesn’t love us!’ being my favorite.
Marketing is no doubt a great help to teams. Chicago marketing Blanco managed to get 5k more on a consistent basis, but the hunger of the fans always brought out a pretty consistently good nubmer in a crowded sports market to see a team that for it’s population catchment area does less to promote themselves than anyone else in North American sports.
There are bigger issues than ‘no FO love’ for NY.
Look at yourself, you continue to support the team despite the Fo ignoring you people. Why do you comeback?
“And of course the NYC soccer culture is every bit as strong as LA’s and then some”
Spoken like someone who’s never spent significant time in LA. I’ve been to NY for extended periods of time and trust me, that no place in the country comes close to the soccer culture in LA. I’ve seen stations cut into NFL games to give FMF results for Christ’s sake.
Go into ANY store on a Saturday or Sunday and there is a soccer game on. There are 5 ‘fine dining’ retaurants on my street in a ‘white’ neighborhood that play FSC/Gol on the HD sets in the bar waiting area all day unless the Lakers are in the playoffs.
Soccer is pervasive in LA. You can talk to ANYONE about it becaue they almost all follow it. You simply can’t do that in NY or anywhere else in the US. Stop 10 people on the street in NY and start talking soccer to them and 8 of them will tell you to stop throwing the “faggot’s” sport in their face and walk on by. Stop 10 in LA and you’ll get at least 7 who will engage you in a lengthy conversation on the subject, 1 who used to play a bunch but really isn’t into sports anymore and 2 who used to be from NY who don’t want to hear about the “faggot’s” game.
It’s one of the big reasons the NFL continually fails here and no one has been all that serious about bringing it back especially since USC is the only American Football team anyone half cares about here. Futbol is co-king (along with basketball) in LA. Hell, go to any park here and you won’t see baseball diamonds all that much, you get a bunch of pickup soccer games with several teams waiting in the wings to get ‘next’ and that is in ANY neighborhood.
LA Galaxy has sucked for 2-3 years and has virtually no marketing done for it locally (I know I live here in LA now) and they consistently jam 25K+ for every match;even mid-week, in a stadium that is a good 40-50 miles from the population base. There is no other team close to that in the league. TFC could possibly do it, but I have to wait for the ‘2 year expansion bounce’ to pass before that is made ‘official’
Good point Papa bear. I think that vancouver, montreal, and and heck even miami deserve one before the nyc area gets a second. I want to clear something up. RBNY is just not “jersey’s team”, it is all of northern metro area team. I live in a town called Marlboro, in Ulster County,NY, about 60 miles from the manhattan, and for me Jersey is much easier to get to then NYC or Queens. Heck, I am a mets fan, and hate the traffic and travel to get to Shea. The reason that RBNY fails at the gates, is that Giants stadium sucks, unless the place is full and even when it is full, it still sucks. The field sucks, it is always cold, even an sunny days. No one wants to go see a game in 80 thousand+ stadium, there is no atmosphere with 25,000 people in the huge cavenous giants stadium. I got to occasional game but I plan on buying season tickets once they are in their new home. Whenever i try to convince my father to come with me to a game, his reponse is “I ain’t going to game in Giants stadium unless it is the Jets.” That is the view of many fans, Once the new home opens up and is more accessible via mass transit, crowds will pick up and on top of that it will be like going to a european socccer game, in that the stadium is not in a suburb but right next to Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, and everything is in walking distance. So, i challenge the borough boys to become official supporters of RBNY and show MLS that Queens deserve a team by following in the Sons of Ben’s footprints. But on top of that, the FO still fails the fans and a second NY team is ill-advised.
Patrick, I really believe you are spot on in citing that the behemoth that is Giants Stadium is the “real” reason the Metro/Bulls have failed to draw crowds. Artificial turf and its location kill it, and notorious tough-guy security jerks have turned many people off. Sure, marketing is shoddy, no championships have been won and a carousel of coaches have left or been dispatched at the rate of almost one per season. When this new stadium arrives it will create not only permanence but splendor. People will go to the games because it will be a pleasure and not a problem. Prices may rise, but I’d pay a little more for my match day experience to be that of a proper soccer ground as opposed to the abomination that is Giants Stadium for MLS. TFC has indeed scored big with its college crowd (something the New England Revolution people should copy with a hoped-for Boston park) and BMO’s fine location with good mass transit is what has hurt Toyota Park which supposedly has no direct bus or train service from the Chicago city center.
The wildcard for the Red Bulls is the nearby Ironbound district that has a heavy Portoguese and Brazilian flavor. Will those people come and make the team their own? With a team literally within walking distance for many it hopefully will happen.
Patrick C is spot on.
First of all, I’m offended by the Metrologist’s remarks about RBNY fans. I’m a die hard fan. I go to every game. I support the club and have only been on board since 2006. Am I crazy? I might be. But don’t call out my fandom as a lack of intelligence. Despite the lack of atmosphere, I have a great time at the games. It’s a joy to watch Jozy Altidore and Juan Pablo Angel play the game, even on the worst of surfaces.
The point is, this team has appeal, and will have infinitely more appeal when the new stadium opens. I still think MLS should wait for results on the Harrison Stadium and take the pulse of the team before diving into the New York market again.
“I supported the Metros for 12 years, Chris. Season ticket holder, travelling supporter, the whole bit. Don’t tell me what I “should” do”.
So you get pissy with the whole RBNY experience and decide to abandon ship in hopes that MLS will give you guys a second NY team to start fresh. Buddy, you come off as a spoiled crybaby who doesn’t like the toy daddy gives you and whines enough about it in hopes daddy will give you another toy to play with.
Pathetic!
All you’ve done is convince us why you don’t deserve another team. No other city would ever have the gall to demand another team to replace the one you don’t like. So I WILL tell you what to do: continue supporting the team you have through good times and bad and quit your sniveling whining!
Dammit Chris, I am so tired of rehashing this for the oblivious, and this takes the discussion way off course, but I can’t let that go.
I didn’t abandon ship to wait for MLS to give me a second team in NYC.
I had the team I followed for over a decade, supported, sang for, suffered with and so on dispatched in a matter of days, without any consideration for those who had literally kept it alive. Whether it was for 10 years or 100 is really unimportant. It got changed into something I find reprehensible and crass and quite dangerous for the game, something totally at odds with what the sport and the culture is about to me (even by MLS standards), something I couldn’t ever believe myself singing for. And what else do you have as a supporter, other than that belief? Nothing. I also read it as doomed to fail on and off the field. As it is failing.
I could give a damn what MLS does now, really. I’m not haranguing them, they can sink or swim without me. Without me, at a time when they need all the fans they can get. That said, it might be nice to have a team in my region, if it were set up right – that’s the thing I’ll wait and see with in NYC. Stan is one of the very few here who grasps that it isn’t about what you want or what you think other cities deserve, it’s about the untapped market. And the market IS untapped, and RB won’t/can’t tap it. Your telling NYers what they *should* do don’t mean a thing, up against that. Anyway, three teams in the NYC area would make sense before one in dusty outposts like St. Louis.
I’m amazed you’re posting on a site dedicated to football culture around the world – especially this one, which celebrates the agency that supporters possess – as it is plainly obvious from what you just wrote that you don’t have a clue what it is all about.
Ok, now back to the discussion of the potential team in NYC, not the current marketing experiment in NJ.
@papa bear
Come take a ride with me in Queens and I’ll show you soccer like you have NEVER seen in your life. FMF? lol lol Come with me to Hell and Ill show you all you want to see and more. I can take you to several places to eat where, if you overhead the conversation between the staff and patrons you would swear it was Estudio Futbol.
Better yet, stay in LA, Live in the FMF world. We are happier here with ‘real soccer’
@ chris
He didn’t leave the MetroStars. He is the MetroStars. He was the team along with all his fellow supporters. The league allowed the unthinkable to happen and he left because his team was no longer on the field.
I personally never connected with the MetroStars and to a lesser extent with the corporate drug pusher that is REDBULL but I can understand the sentiments of the MetroStars supporters. ITS NOT THE SAME TEAM.
You may want to call Metrologist spoiled, I just call him smart and NOT GULLIBLE.
@ Patrick C
I just read your last post and now I’m convinced that your brain downloads its information from the RBNJ marketing server. WTF are you talking about? You father wont go to see the REDBULLS because it’s in Giants stadium? lol lol But he will go when they are farther away in Harrison, in RB’s new house, nice and cozy (bc it’s smaller) with this suspected GREAT ATMOSPHERE!?!??!?! What are you smoking?
They have fed you that line of crap so that you can support the idea. So that their very fans dont do against them. They then can build a new stadium, control more revenue and make more money. All the while neglecting the team and its fans.
Have you finished your download from Redbull servers today? If not you may want to DL a little before you answer me. It might help with the retort.
Yo Boro boyz, Its not that i dont go to RBNY games, its that i cant get my father to go with me. He hates Giants stadium and has the same feeling i have, its a crappy place to see a soccer game. My rebuttle to your statement that i download my brain from RBNY marketing servers, you are wrong. Lets look at the facts, Giants Stadium holds 80 thousand+ people and when its full, it still has no atmosphere. I have been to Jets games and they are blackhole, the place is never loud and always cold. Lets look at the new Red Bull Park, it will hold much less than Giants stadium, about 25 thousand, oh, and on top of that it will have a roof which will keep the sound in. So, i think in a smaller facility, the atmosphere because it will seem more full and has a real field for soccer, unlike the crap field they have a giants stadium. On top of that the stadium will be place in heavily populated, urban area, unlike the other new mls stadiums. I will agree with you that they neglect the team and the fans but what american sports team doesn’t? I hate it just as much as you but they will be more open in their own facility. Oh, dont count on your second nyc franchise, why would they place a team in an area when the current team is failing? Answer me that. If you want a second team, come to red bulls games and show the league that new york can support 2 teams.
Oh, dont count on your second nyc franchise, why would they place a team in an area when the current team is failing? Answer me that. If you want a second team, come to red bulls games and show the league that new york can support 2 teams.
According to sources close to the deal, I would say you are completely wrong.
With regarding to the failing team in NY. I completely disagree with you in that RB is not in the NYC market. NO TEAM IS.
And as far as this goes, that by supporting RB, you show the league that a 2nd franchise is viable. Who brainwashed that idea into your head? lol That’s either someone in RB/AEG or someone from another part of the country, with less people in their city than NYC, that wants a team.
Boro boys, New Jersey is in the NYC area. I live on the northern most part of the metro area. My father is from long island, New jersey is easier to get to for most of the metro population.It is simply economist. If one team attendance average is one the lowest in the league, why the hell put another in the same area? I say lets wait it out and see what happens when the stadium opens and dont get me wrong i would love another team but i think other areas deserve it more than we do. I say ask more, i love discussions like this.
@ Patrick
Being that your dad is originally from Long Island, then you should know what the trip from Long Island to NJ is like? I would say about, what, 3 or 4 hours? Now do you understand why the MetroBulls were a NJ team. Even Upstate NY team, where you are from is easier than coming from Long Island or points east.
I’m not going to go into the marketing disaster that the MetroBulls have been but suffice it to say that the results show in the seats.
I’m also an original Metrostars fan, and my move to another city was coincidentally the same week as the “re-branding.”
Not that he needs it, but I’ll vouch for the Metrologist’s dedication and passion for the Metros. I also wholeheartedly second the description of the mismanagement of the team: I cannot conceive of a single sports marketing cliche that was not employed to attract an elusive– or non-existent– family fan base at the expense of the supporters groups’ attempts to create atmosphere and excitement in the tomb that is Giants Stadium.
The number of soccer fans who have sampled and then spit out whole Metrostars/RBNY experience, swearing never to return, is frankly mind-boggling. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t return: the putrid play; the unendurable trip from the door of the Port Authority, onto a bus in the exhaust fume-choked “Area X” followind by 90 minutes of stop-and-start Lincoln Tunnel traffic, THEN the return trip; the sorry sight and empty sound of even an average-sized MLS crowd of 20k filling only a quarter of Giants Stadium; ridiculous marketing gimmicks that wouldn’t even fly in the New York-Penn League of minor league baseball; the lack of any coherent effort to build value in the side because every GM is so desperate to meet New York-sized expectations, they trade off the best players for a promise of a very faded star; and then the Red Bull takeover.
It sounds like shifting excuses, but they’re not shifting when EVERY SINGLE REASON IS PERFECTLY CORRECT, just weighted differently by different people, depending on the depth of their experience. Tolerating the miserable game day experience merely gives you enough points on a timeline to realize that practically everything has been done as badly as possible. The team has simply been the most mismanaged ongoing sports operation I have ever come across in the US.
I am still a Metro supporter. I am an ESC member, even if I’m not in NY anymore. For me, right now, that means I never, ever refer to the team by “Red Bull,” and that I hope that the money that Red Bull decides to sell the team, the stadium, and the practice facility to someone more committed to building something that does not taint nearly every bit of the supporter experience.
But I will continue cheering for the Metro– and here’s where I differ from Metrologist– because my belief in the ESC and in the idea of the team transcends the reality of the name, the shirt, the cans of Red Bull at every press conference. I can’t fault anyone who can’t or won’t agree with me, but neither are the ESC who support “Metro for life” dupes or gullible or sell-outs, which is how some (not Metrologist) feel, or pretend to feel.
The fact of New York City MLS is that, if the profit motive is there, the stadium will happen, no matter how many times opportunists who want to gloat about the Metros’ failure want to attack the idea. I have absolutely no idea where “Papa Bear” went in New York, but his description of meatheads disparaging the sport on every street sounds like total fiction to me, and I lived in the city for 14 years, playing in leagues, in parks and on the street, going to games, watching matches in bars and New Yorkers’ apartments. The audience is there in huge numbers, and whether you or I like it, someone will eventually exploit it and put a team in NYC, no matter what puristic standards people in other cities advocate.
As for the Toronto guy, again with the self-mythologizing. The description of neighborhoods shut down with celebrations of the world cup could be applied with no changes to East Williamsburgh, Roosevelt Avenue, Crown Heights, and many other parts of town, when Italy or Argentina or Jamaica play. Special details of hundreds of cops are assigned to parts of Queens during the Copa America, for christsake. I don’t know how you can feel so comfortable making assumptions that so nakedly expose your ignorance, but it’s that sort of misplaced high-handedness that gives Toronto supporters their arrogant reputation.
I didn’t imply that New York doesn’t shut down during major cup competitions. My point was that football is closer mainstream sports culture here than in the United States. As for your charges of arrogance: I’m happy to be called arrogant, but Toronto FC supporters as whole? Arrogant for what? Not paying respects to the small but vocal group of diehard MLS supporters in other cities envious of a new club’s unsuspected success?
Have fun with your second club NY. Be sure to catch all those tumbleweeds; they can be a nuisance during corner kicks…
“My point was that football is closer mainstream sports culture here than in the United States. ”
Foolish generalization.
In some cities, and New York is one, soccer is part of the mainstream sports culture.
In others, it is not.
Should Toronto be responsible for the fact that I couldn’t find a place to watch a Champions League game when I was on vacation in Charlottetown?
Maybe I should hold NY accountable for the fact I couldn’t watch the CL FINAL on basic cable when I was an hour outside of New York City. I’m done. “Foolish Generalisation” indeed. What are, my grade school teacher?
Do tell us when and where this was, Richard – Ulster County,1983? Because I’m from an hour outside NYC, and we’ve had the Deuce for ages.
Petty tit for tat.
Your ego seems very much tied into how you believe that Toronto FC demonstrates cosmopolitan Toronto’s passion for soccer is, and how unique that is in North America. Which makes me think you’re a rube.
Everyone — and I’m not assigning any blame — can we stop the name-calling and sniping? If you have substantial matters related to NYC expansion to discuss, go ahead. There’s been some good stuff in many comments by numerous people. But let’s keep it civil.
A lot of the case against a NYC team does seem to come from somebody wanting a cookie for some other city, whether that be Toronto, Miami, Montreal, or wherever. It would be nice to have this conversation without that kind of canard.
“There’s more to it than marketing alone. The MLSE basically left TFC to simmer with a barely visible poster campaign before the start of the season, and the web culture took care of the rest. The rest of the momentum was grassroots. Football culture requires more than a front office pushing product, it requires an open-minded population with a working knowledge of football…don’t see that yet in NYC.”
This was my own innocent remark, I’ll admit supplemented by some sniping provoked by the accusation that all Toronto FC supporters are arrogant, that seems to have caused the furor. But I think it’s by and large supported by the facts.
Two things. This is a great site Tom, but it’s a bit nanny-statish to referee comments on your blog. I don’t think anything here, outside of some friendly ribbing, has come close to crossing the line. This is one of the side effects of democracy right? Isn’t that we progressives are all about?
I think my comments ARE relevant to the conversation, because let’s face it, you can’t stretch the league forever, and determining which urban area is worthy of expansion means another area won’t get a club, unless we all want a repeat of the end of the NASL. I just think it would be a grave mistake to expand NY to two MLS clubs when there is a large, indigineous football culture in Quebec, which is why I made my little case for Canadian soccer culture. If that’s not relevant I don’t know what is. But, this is your blog, whatever you want is fine with me. Sorry anyone if I offended.
Honest, non-snarky question here, Richard: if there’s SUCH a fantastic indigenous football culture in Toronto AND Quebec (beyond Montreal? the whole province, you’re saying?) AND Vancouver and god knows where else, hows about getting your own league?
@BOROBOYZ: @papa bear
Come take a ride with me in Queens and I’ll show you soccer like you have NEVER seen in your life. FMF? lol lol Come with me to Hell and Ill show you all you want to see and more. I can take you to several places to eat where, if you overhead the conversation between the staff and patrons you would swear it was Estudio Futbol.
Better yet, stay in LA, Live in the FMF world. We are happier here with ‘real soccer’
I’ve been to Queens, chief. It’s not even in the same universe as LA. It’s not ALL FMF in LA. La Liga is a regular topic of discussion as well. You’ve obviously never spent more than a cup of tea in LA or else you’d know this.
Look at our national team. 80% of them are from the LA area. Its not a coincidence I promise you. Many people grow up living and breathing football in LA. There is no other place like it in the US. SD and NorCal are more football savy and fanatical than anywhere in NY would ever imagine being.
So you remain in NY and keep believing the hype. NY deserves no second team until the one on the doorstep actually draws anything that resembles a fanbase.
@Metrologist “Anyway, three teams in the NYC area would make sense before one in dusty outposts like St. Louis.”
you really need to step away from the crack pipe. A St. Louis team would outdraw RBNY immediately and any other team tossed into NY.
Typical New Yorker blind (utterly unjustified) arrogance.
It was hyperbole, papa bear – I actually have heard that St. Louis has paved roads and indoor plumbing. Of course a new team in a place like St. Louis would be odds-on to outdraw RBNY – I’ve already said multiple times that RB is a failure in my book, and that I don’t think they’re coming back anytime soon. (outside of the unpredictable magic world of Beckham and Barcelona games, and creative season-ticket-equivalent accounting). I’ve scratched the surface of why that is, historically, having been there for a good chunk of it, and it’s certainly not “NY fans suck”. Others have done the same. You can get the deeper version when someone writes a book about it someday – it will be one of the funniest, saddest, most infuriating stories about American soccer yet.
What you’re offering is not even remotely close to the correct comparison, though, and Tom already explained why, against the example of TFC. So let’s try and be a little fairer – would a new St. Louis team beat the 17k+ average that the Metros have had over their entire existence? Possible, but I wouldn’t bet the stimulus rebate on it. Would a St. Louis team in its first year beat the 23k the Metros drew in their first? Not a prayer.
And for the record, I’m from Connecticut – my arrogance is innate and justified.
Papa Bear, do you expect assertions like “80% of [the US national team] are from the LA area” to go unchallenged? The percentage of national team players in a given squad from the LA area varies, depending on the game, from 10% to 25%. And that counts localities that are very distant from LA itself, like Redlands, as “LA area”– I don’t have a problem with that, but by the same token, is sixty-five miles a reasonable distance for every city’s catchment area? Certainly it’s disproportionate, but notice that the USMNT players from the LA area are from more spacious, better-off suburbs, and NOT the inner city. And accordingly, NY area national team players have tended to be from Long Island, northern suburban counties in NYS, and north Jersey. There’s nothing in what you wrote that implies you were talking about Irvine and Alto Loma, instead of East LA, and that urban vs suburban distinction is not something to be smudged in this context– after all, we’re talking about NYC vs NJ.
As for assertions about Queens: where were you? Howard Beach in 1985? Queens is more than 2/3 foreign born or children of foreign born. I don’t want to rile the Toronto guy up again, because I know many Torontonians to love to tell people they live in the most diverse place in the world, but in the 2000 census, 54% of Queens residents spoke a language other than English at home, and according to the NYS Comptroller, 138 languages are spoken by the borough’s residents. If foreign birth/recent family immigration is correlated to support for soccer, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that, Queens has no problem. That’s not to say LA isn’t a great soccer city, but what on earth would lead you to defend your indefensible proposition that soccer is not very popular in NYC or part of the culture? Don’t you realize that there are actually people who live/d in NYC who will call you on it? Do you think a more and more strident set of assertions is going to carry the argument?
Now the idea that ethnic diversity doesn’t necessarily result in MLS support is a different proposition, and I’ve heard Torontonians make a credible case that a significant amount of TFC support (especially from the SGs) is NOT from Toronto’s large immigrant communities, though Richard makes the case very well that diversity contributed to more local knowedge of the sport, and that helps TFC.
But it seems to me that the perception that MLS teams are scarce, and must be competed for by FANS as opposed to bazillionaires, has led people to make absurd generalizations about relative interest in the support in cities they know little to nothing about. The claims made about New York City are completely off-base, and difficult to respond to, because they’re patently untrue. I’ve been to Toronto a few times, and I had no doubt that there was great interest in soccer, even though I didn’t see anyone playing or any on television, PRECISELY BECAUSE it had similar, uh, demographics (shorthand for “kinds of people”) that I saw in NYC. There may be a competition for MLS teams, but let’s not make it a competition in which we deliberately engage in distortion of facts.
As for Papa Bear, obviously he’s trying to get some licks in on NYC. I’ve seen this sort of thing from him elsewhere. Dude, you’re bringing down the tone of the discussion, so step it up or be gone.
Sixty-nine comments and counting…looks like all this sniping has brought about an interesting debate, but one by my own admission that may not be appropriate for the original article.
The crux of the issue seems to me to be deciding what sort of criteria the MLS should be using to determine appropriate markets for expansion. This is a touchy subject in North America because we all know how this ended up the last time around when anyone with a sack of cash could pony up and provide collegiate-level soccer to empty stadia.
The MLS perspective will be whether there’s a financial market for football, and our perspective is what sort of fans should the league be catering to. Soccer moms? Ethnic enclaves? General multi-purpose sports fans? The modern elite urban gentry courted by the likes of economists like Richard Florida?
The case of New York is an interesting one because there’s a little bit of everything. In theory the greater NY market might support two clubs, but it seems to me that it would be prudent to wait and see if new digs might transform the pull of the NYRB, who at least in terms of the squad itself should be pulling in more fans than it is right now (at least I’d shell out to see JPA and Altidore play). I also know that for hardcore football afficianados, it’s a tough sell to watch soccer on the gridiron. North American supporters deserve much, much better (yes art. turf at BMO, I know, I know).
My own belief is that it takes more for a traditional target market like those ‘wacky soccer playing immigrants’ to build a fan base for a club. I understand that talking football culture to the converted is a waste of time, but the game needs a broad appeal to really catch on. I respect, I really do respect, that TFC was not alone with its successful first season. The difference though was the team has garnered regular coverage in every single national newspaper, every television sports cast, radio etc. Canada’s major cities hosted the U19 tournament and drew the second highest turnout in the tournaments history, topping a million spectators, the vast majority Canadian. And even with the bungling of the CSA, we have a disproportionate number of players plying their trade in Europe relative to the size of our population. This is part of why I think TFCs success will continue, although, granted, in two years time I could be eating my words…
For the post above, I meant Montreal but apparently a good number of small towners travel to see the Impact play, some as far as Riviere de Loup.
Richard, I have little doubt that TFC will continue to draw well, and I wouldn’t imply otherwise.
And the single semi-legitimate point I hear is that New York already has an MLS team and it isn’t well supported, so MLS should not place another team in or near the city until local soccer fans demonstrate their willingness to support MLS in some form.
But this point has been, I think, fairly well refuted, here and elsewhere. I’ll go through yet ANOTHER iteration of the argument so if anyone wants to try to pick it apart, they’ll have the opportunity. But I would hope we can discuss this on the merits.
1. The primary (and cynical) case is that the interest on the part of the league and, allegedly, billionaire investor Fred Wilpon demonstrates that from a free-market perspective, Metro/RBNY has failed to attact an existing huge soccer market.
So the free-market take is that the league is in the business of making money, and if NYC is prioritized over other markets it’s because there is an investor who believes he will make money and the league believes overall that it will succeed more with NYC than with any other market. I know this blog leans way left, and I don’t think free markets rationalize economic decision making as much as the right thinks, but this is a pretty simple case. I haven’t heard a single OTHER positive reason why NYC is under consideration, only negative reasons why it shouldn’t be… but that ignores the harsh fact that MLS is a business, and a pretty cruel one (witness the shit deal that many players get).
2. “Untapped soccer market”: You can quibble with the existing huge soccer market point, but the ONLY case I’ve heard is either anecdotal, like Richard’s “I couldn’t get the CL final on basic cable an hour north of the city, ergo NYC doesn’t care about soccer” or Papa Bear’s claim that he was in Queens and 8 out of 10 people surveyed said that soccer is for “faggots,” or actually circular and outright fallacious begging of the question: “New York isn’t a good soccer market because it doesn’t support the remote MLS team that exists at the periphery of the area, and supporting the remote MLS team that exists at the periphery of the area is the only way to define a good soccer market.”
Anyone who has spent any time away from the most tourist-oriented, bland parts of NYC or the parts that are culturally indisposed to support soccer (Puerto Rican, Dominican, African American, and a few old and very conservative white working-class enclaves which care for nothing but the Yankees) will find the idea that soccer is culturally a part of NYC to be self-evident. It’s the linchpin for the idea that there is money to be made off MLS in NYC. Without this fact, MLS wouldn’t care and no one would be interested.
What sort of evidence, short of going there, do people need? TV ratings: http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article.main&articleId=51236 (2006 ABC World Cup final, not including Univision)? Setanta’s venue finder, where you can type various zip codes to demonstrate that there is a very large number of NYC area bars and restaurants who see a business opportunity in paying for soccer content, comparing very favorably with other localities(http://www.setantanorthamerica.com/venue_finder.aspx)? There are ways to get real metrics around this, you realize. As for me, I lived there and know how high the demand for soccer is in NYC.
3. Why don’t all these soccer fans then go to MLS games? Well, as the Metrologist has pointed out, they DID go to MLS games, despite the holy nightmare that is Giants Stadium (see my post above– the only reasonable counterargument I’ve heard is that the Giants and Jets draw well, but as it has been said, they play relatively few games a year, on fall and winter Sundays, have a long history including many years in NYC itself, and have the TFC advantage of sold-out games feeding more demand– you have to buy tickets for ALL games to go to one– AND they play in the NFL, which is so huge and makes so much money that it bends light and other comparisons do not apply).
Moreover, the team drew best when the league was at its worst, with horrible glitz and shootouts that were a deterrent to attracting the core soccer audience, and with 90% of the players being worse than the worst current MLS players. It was a stomach-churning fraud, and most people saw right through it and didn’t return– I was a rare case of a Brooklynite who found perverse pleasure in the Metros, but I could fault none of my friends for giving up. And then Red Bull took over and gutted the little tradition that had evolved.
The team’s history is a litany of failures, missed opportunities, cynicism, and total shit. MLS cannot “fire” Red Bull as investor/operators and give the team, stadium, practice facility, etc., to someone who would do a better job. Instead, the league seems to have the approach that RBNY will be consigned to the role of New Jersey teams in other established professional sports leagues, the Nets (who may yet move to Brooklyn and destroy my old neighborhood) and the Devils (who are moderately successful and have their own new arena a mile from Harrison’s stadium: teams who are on the other side of a geographic and maybe cultural divide, but still exist in a quasi-independent “market” of almost five million people and as such can succeed and maybe even thrive.
Fire away.
What’s wrong with Atlanta! The people from the lower South don’t have any soccer teams, SC, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. We’d all like a chance to have a team way down here. Put one kinda central maybe in Atlanta and we could all go since it is not to far from either place.
A soccer stadium in NYC would be great.
YOU ALL ARE GAY, NYC IS GAY FUCK NYC FUCKING JEWISH MONEY WHORES, TAKE YOUR NY/NJ REDBULLS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT TO CALL IT AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR DEAD GRANDMOTHER’S ARSE