North American Pro Soccer 2020

[Digby]

Man Coney Island would’ve been such a good spot if they had beat the Cyclones to the punch 15 years ago. Maybe NYCFC can help nudge minor league baseball over the cliff and steal that spot. 

[Dilbert]

11 minutes ago, Digby said:

Man Coney Island would’ve been such a good spot if they had beat the Cyclones to the punch 15 years ago. Maybe NYCFC can help nudge minor league baseball over the cliff and steal that spot. 

There is still hope for Staten Island. I dont think the Staten Island Yankees are suposed to survive the MiLB contraction if it goes through.

[GDAWG]

3 hours ago, DG_Now said:

I kind of also think expansion is a little too much to think about before all of the teams with outstanding stadium issues get sorted. New England, NYC FC, Dallas and Denver need new places to play. Their stadium weaknesses are more glaring when you see just how impressive Cincinnati, Minnesota and others are.

 

EDIT: Seattle is off the stadium poop list, but only barely. The Sounders could certainly benefit from an SSS and it's a shame we don't have one. CenturyLink is fine. Something unique would be better.

 

Some people think that eventually FC Dallas will move to Globe Life Park, where their USL League One team, North Texas SC will play and that both teams will switch places because of the fact that the Soccer Hall of Fame is there in Frisco.  I don't see it happening though.

[GDAWG]

 

 

[Gothamite]

2 hours ago, DG_Now said:

I kind of also think expansion is a little too much to think about before all of the teams with outstanding stadium issues get sorted. New England, NYC FC, Dallas and Denver need new places to play.

 

I don't think one has anything to do with the other.  None of those teams are going to move, so expansion isn't impacted at all.

[GDAWG]

 

 

 

The rumor is that Lyon is buying Reign FC of NWSL

[Red Wolf]

3 hours ago, DG_Now said:

I kind of also think expansion is a little too much to think about before all of the teams with outstanding stadium issues get sorted. New England, NYC FC, Dallas and Denver need new places to play. Their stadium weaknesses are more glaring when you see just how impressive Cincinnati, Minnesota and others are.

 

EDIT: Seattle is off the stadium poop list, but only barely. The Sounders could certainly benefit from an SSS and it's a shame we don't have one. CenturyLink is fine. Something unique would be better.

 

I don't think Dallas has any ambitions of moving from their current spot. They did a renovation and built that National Soccer Hall of Fame there. I believe @dfwabel has talked about Frisco growing before as well (I assume it was him, he's the human google here). They could really use a roof or something there. I went to a game there against Chivas USA and it was almost a full crowd because it was kind of cold and at night. Whereas a lot of those games I see on ESPN+ (or formerly MLS Live) were games being played in the middle of July in the sun. Southern summers suck and it really gets to a point where it's dangerous (or at least miserable) to go outside.

[Digby]

9 hours ago, Dilbert said:

There is still hope for Staten Island. I dont think the Staten Island Yankees are suposed to survive the MiLB contraction if it goes through.

 

I would imagine that would be a fun venue for a USOC match or something but not regularly. May as well play in New Jersey.

[dfwabel]

14 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

 

I don't think Dallas has any ambitions of moving from their current spot. They did a renovation and built that National Soccer Hall of Fame there. I believe @dfwabel has talked about Frisco growing before as well (I assume it was him, he's the human google here). They could really use a roof or something there. I went to a game there against Chivas USA and it was almost a full crowd because it was kind of cold and at night. Whereas a lot of those games I see on ESPN+ (or formerly MLS Live) were games being played in the middle of July in the sun. Southern summers suck and it really gets to a point where it's dangerous (or at least miserable) to go outside.

I just know that Frisco, along with neighboring McKinney, TX are still two of the nation's fastest growing cities.

 

That said there is something which came along on Monday which may get MLS to 32 faster than previously imagined or suburban teams moving closer to their CBD*.  This could also go in the other North American pro sports threads, but since the soccer one is getting the majority the conversations, I'll post it here.  It looks like borrowing money for projects is going to get cheaper.

 

Bolded by me.

https://newrepublic.com/article/156023/trumps-plan-let-big-banks-get-piece-stadium-scam

Quote

A pair of regulators appointed by President Donald Trump are attempting to overhaul the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 bill that was meant to ensure that America’s financial institutions and their governmental regulators were at least nominally trying to serve nonaffluent customers and their communities. Three federal agencies are tasked with holding banks to whatever the current CRA standards are: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve. The CRA classifies traditionally underserved communities as low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods, and it is under this guise of helping such neighborhoods that the Trump administration hopes to refocus the scope of the CRA. (OK, you made it.)

 

Now, among the changes included in its proposal is a particularly vexing update: Under the new CRA, banks would potentially receive lucrative tax breaks for helping to finance sports stadiums, as the Trump administration posits the existence of stadiums uplifts poor communities. The language of the proposal, as first reported by Bloomberg, lists ways banks can meet standards, including: “Investment in a qualified opportunity fund, established to finance improvements to an athletic stadium in an opportunity zone that is also an LMI census tract.”

Summary Fact Sheet on the OCC and FDIC CRA Proposed Rule

 

*-Moderators:  Remove link if this violated any Forum Rules.  .

 

 

[GDAWG]

 

 

[Gothamite]

On 12/18/2019 at 7:50 AM, Digby said:

I would imagine that would be a fun venue for a USOC match or something but not regularly.

 

Absolutely.

 

On 12/18/2019 at 7:50 AM, Digby said:

May as well play in New Jersey.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far.  Staten Island at least has the free ferry from the Battery.  Which would actually be awesome for a pre-match “march”. 

[Digby]

The ferry is cool but I'm thinking in terms of travel times and transfers; I think it'd be worse than the PATH transfer for a lot of folks.

 

Of course now that I think about it, RBA and Yankee Stadium are about equidistant from where I typically go in Brooklyn, and the SI ballpark might actually be closer to that part of the world, on the outer R train reaches.

[GDAWG]

 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

5 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

 

 

 

That's cool. Will there still be weekend games on FS1/2 and ESPN?

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Answered my own Q:

 

 

 

[Digby]

This is maybe better suited for media topic but is there still much difference between ESPN and ESPN2? The other channels I realize are more niche but everybody's got both of those at this point, right?

[MJWalker45]

2 minutes ago, Digby said:

This is maybe better suited for media topic but is there still much difference between ESPN and ESPN2? The other channels I realize are more niche but everybody's got both of those at this point, right?

They're pretty much standard cable/satellite channels now rather than sports channels.

[dfwabel]

47 minutes ago, Digby said:

This is maybe better suited for media topic but is there still much difference between ESPN and ESPN2? The other channels I realize are more niche but everybody's got both of those at this point, right?

 

44 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

They're pretty much standard cable/satellite channels now rather than sports channels.

It's a difference of under 300K subscribers in most estimates.

ESPN: approximately 86.7M households

ESPN2: approximately 86.5M

FS1: approximately 83.7M

 

And now they are all in less than 75% of US households per Nielsen projections plus they lose the households at the same rate.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

7 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

 

It's a difference of under 300K subscribers in most estimates.

ESPN: approximately 86.7M households

ESPN2: approximately 86.5M

FS1: approximately 83.7M

 

And now they are all in less than 75% of US households per Nielsen projections plus they lose the households at the same rate.

 

I'm surprised FS1 has that much penetration! I thought they were way under.

 

I think one of the biggest gets of the new MLS broadcast schedule is games is Univision broadcast. That must be way more homes than UniMas, right?

[dfwabel]

1 minute ago, DG_Now said:

 

I'm surprised FS1 has that much penetration! I thought they were way under.

 

I think one of the biggest gets of the new MLS broadcast schedule is games is Univision broadcast. That must be way more homes than UniMas, right?

Yes, because in most markets, both Univision and Telemundo are over the air, so no cable needed.  Univision is in 6% more households than Unimas.

More importantly for MLS, over half of the soccer watched in the USA in 2019 was on one of the Univision-owned channels: Univision, Unimas, Galavision, TUDN (formerly Univision Depsortes cable network)