North American Pro Soccer 2020

[Gothamite]

Soccer first, second, third, and foremost. 
 

If they want to rent it out after that, sure.  But only as a tertiary tenant. 

[GDAWG]

15 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Soccer first, second, third, and foremost. 
 

If they want to rent it out after that, sure.  But only as a tertiary tenant. 

 That's good to know because DC United fans are in an angry rage that the XFL DC Defenders are going to ruin Audi Field.  

[Digby]

I've been impressed with what LAFC's done with their stadium, hosting e-sports events and concerts and conventions, etc. Stadiums are inevitably going to be used more than 20 times a year, as they should be. Haven't heard much field-ruining angst from there.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

10 minutes ago, Digby said:

I've been impressed with what LAFC's done with their stadium, hosting e-sports events and concerts and conventions, etc. Stadiums are inevitably going to be used more than 20 times a year, as they should be. Haven't heard much field-ruining angst from there.

 

Indeed. CenturyLink gets used ~10 times by the Seahawks, ~17-20 by the Sounders, ~5 by the XFL Dragons, plus concerts, motocross, etc.

 

This is in stark contrast to Husky Stadium, which hosts Husky football, graduation, and that's it. It's an enormous waste.

[Digby]

Universities generally get the privilege of not giving a :censored:. Harvard Stadium drives me nuts. Gorgeous, historic structure that gets used 7 times a year for Harvard football, and they only ever draw more than 10k every other year when they play Yale. Other than that it gets used for Crossfit people to run up and down the stairs. Stupid!

[GDAWG]

43 minutes ago, Digby said:

I've been impressed with what LAFC's done with their stadium, hosting e-sports events and concerts and conventions, etc. Stadiums are inevitably going to be used more than 20 times a year, as they should be. Haven't heard much field-ruining angst from there.

 

Toyota Stadium is used for concerts, the FCS National Championship, the Frisco Bowl college football game and Frisco ISD Football.  

[Dilbert]

6 hours ago, Digby said:

I've been impressed with what LAFC's done with their stadium, hosting e-sports events and concerts and conventions, etc. Stadiums are inevitably going to be used more than 20 times a year, as they should be. Haven't heard much field-ruining angst from there.

Havent heard anything wrong with the field in LA. Only thing I ever saw was a plumbing issue during the FC Cincinnati game last year in which one of the bathrooms flooded out onto a concourse.

 

Several of the soccer specific stadiums are built primarily for soccer but host other things as well including football (HS,NCAA,Pro), concerts and other events. Its nothing new. DC is just salty because they had RFK to themselves (minus the three Nationals seasons) and they dont want to share their nice new facility after being in the RFK dump.

[DEAD!]

6 hours ago, Digby said:

Universities generally get the privilege of not giving a :censored:. Harvard Stadium drives me nuts. Gorgeous, historic structure that gets used 7 times a year for Harvard football, and they only ever draw more than 10k every other year when they play Yale. Other than that it gets used for Crossfit people to run up and down the stairs. Stupid!

 

Why would it drive you nuts? Harvard owns the stadium, had billions in endowment, they can afford to keep it that way. 

 

[Dilbert]

In more news from the Nashville stadium debacle from what Ive heard is if construction doesnt start on the new stadium by March 31st, MLS will then have the option to revoke the franchise. Now they likely wouldnt revoke the franchise a month into the season but likely a one and done type of deal. If Nashville falls through it will look bad for the league, and Nashville. But it will definitely help the other cities trying to get a team if they get their stadium deals taken care of.

[dfwabel]

10 hours ago, Digby said:

Universities generally get the privilege of not giving a :censored:. Harvard Stadium drives me nuts. Gorgeous, historic structure that gets used 7 times a year for Harvard football, and they only ever draw more than 10k every other year when they play Yale. Other than that it gets used for Crossfit people to run up and down the stairs. Stupid!

Harvard also has $56M in athletic endowments alone before anything regarding the stadium.

 

The campus has $40B in the bank via endowments, so why F with small potatoes like MLS?

[DG_ThenNowForever]

BWP to LAFC.

[Digby]

4 hours ago, DEAD! said:

 

Why would it drive you nuts? Harvard owns the stadium, had billions in endowment, they can afford to keep it that way. 

 

 

Because it's a huge waste of space in a place that could use plenty more of it. But no one has ever mistaken Harvard for a good neighbor.

[GDAWG]

3 hours ago, Dilbert said:

In more news from the Nashville stadium debacle from what Ive heard is if construction doesnt start on the new stadium by March 31st, MLS will then have the option to revoke the franchise. Now they likely wouldnt revoke the franchise a month into the season but likely a one and done type of deal. If Nashville falls through it will look bad for the league, and Nashville. But it will definitely help the other cities trying to get a team if they get their stadium deals taken care of.

 

So if no deal is made and they are one and done, do they relocate?  Or do they fold?

[tBBP]

I'm no sports business expert, but I'm guessing they probably fold if that happens.

 

12 hours ago, Dilbert said:

In more news from the Nashville stadium debacle from what Ive heard is if construction doesnt start on the new stadium by March 31st, MLS will then have the option to revoke the franchise. Now they likely wouldnt revoke the franchise a month into the season but likely a one and done type of deal. If Nashville falls through it will look bad for the league, and Nashville. But it will definitely help the other cities trying to get a team if they get their stadium deals taken care of.

 

This whole thing gets better.

 

Right now the main snag in all this is a group called Save Our Fairgrounds, which took Metro to court over saving the fairgrounds (and thus barring stadium construction from beginning). That case is now headed to trial, further delaying progress.  In response, NSC itself has filed an injunction to intervene in that trial process, claiming that it stands to lose millions in investments if the stadium does not move forward. So right now there's a political and legal tug of war between people who want to preserve the fairground lands, and people (and the club) who want the stadium (and no doubt all the extra $, people and traffic it'll bring) to go forward.

 

This whole thing is not only a bad look for Nashville and NSC, but also for Don Garber (and thus MLS) for getting all starry-eyed at the proposition of the [supposed-to-be] "It" city blitzkrieging itself into the limelight of the national conscience, not to mention Ingram's wealth (which again, I remind, was the first thing Garber mentioned when asked why he approved NSC's bid so quickly), without paying mind to all the other legal and political factors involved--all of which, save for this latest development (NSC's intervention filing), had been present from the jump.

 

(For more info, follow this link.)

[SFGiants58]

Revoke! Revoke! Revoke! Or move into Al Lang Stadium as the new Rowdies.
 

This is amazing. It’s terrible for MLS, but funny as an observer.

[Digby]

I cannot stop cringing at this.

 

Are these ultras high on smoke-bombs or what?

 

[Red Comet]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

Revoke! Revoke! Revoke! Or move into Al Lang Stadium as the new Rowdies.
 

This is amazing. It’s terrible for MLS, but funny as an observer.

 

You know, if you're someone who wants soccer in the US to be taken seriously, this has to be about the worst thing to happen when Las Vegas with a Southern accent is basically saying "Thanks, but no thanks" to your league. 

 

They have the infrastructure to succeed, but I think another future league is going to take advantage of it, not MLS.

[Walk-Off]

8 hours ago, Buc said:

This whole thing is not only a bad look for Nashville and NSC, but also for Don Garber (and thus MLS) for getting all starry-eyed at the proposition of the [supposed-to-be] "It" city blitzkrieging itself into the limelight of the national conscience, not to mention Ingram's wealth (which again, I remind, was the first thing Garber mentioned when asked why he approved NSC's bid so quickly), without paying mind to all the other legal and political factors involved--all of which, save for this latest development (NSC's intervention filing), had been present from the jump.

 

(For more info, follow this link.)

 

That linked article is one more report that mentions what I have come to view over the last few days as the elephant in the room in this whole dispute -- the present Nashville mayor's continued entertaining of that offer by Speedway Motorsports to renovate the city's Fairgrounds Speedway, located a few yards away from where Nashville SC hopes to play soon, to have at least the potential to regain races in any or all of NASCAR's three US national touring series.  Never mind that

• Speedway Motorsports has yet to propose moving any of the Cup Series, Xfinity Series, or Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series races held at any of the company's existing tracks to Fairgrounds Speedway;
• the schedules of all of those NASCAR series are too heavy at the moment to be likely to accommodate even one new race; and,
• in the meantime, Nashville SC's investors/operators have offered to spend at least 54 million of their own dollars to cover costs related to delays in the construction of the team's desired stadium at the fairgrounds, but Mayor Cooper has so far refused to take Ingram et al. up on that offer.

 

If Cooper is stalling deliberately on the Nashville SC stadium matter for the sake of Speedway Motorsports and its plan(s) for Fairgrounds Speedway, and particularly if the stadium deal does fall apart completely (on March 31 or whenever) and then Cooper turns around and seals a deal with Speedway Motorsports, I fear that he will end up making a glaring political miscalculation.  As I understand it, the changes in the city of Nashville proper's ethnic, religious, and political demographics since 2000 (when what is now Fairgrounds Speedway hosted its latest races in the Busch (now Xfinity) Series and the then-Craftsman Truck Series) and especially since 1984 (the year of the track's most recent race in the then-Winston Cup Series) have tended to disfavor stock car racing and favor soccer, and the seemingly very limited overlap between stock car racing's demographics and soccer's demographics in the United States only intensifies that issue.  So, is Cooper really willing to risk alienating the increasingly ethnically and religiously diverse, increasingly socially and culturally cosmopolitan, and increasingly economically and politically progressive populace within Nashville's boundaries by rebuffing Nashville SC and MLS just so that he can gain a payoff from Speedway Motorsports and, at best, make Nashville a bit more appealing to a few dozen visiting rednecks from Buffalo Valley, Bell Buckle, or Bucksnort for a weekend or two each year?

 

5 hours ago, Red Comet said:

They have the infrastructure to succeed, but I think another future league is going to take advantage of it, not MLS.

 

When I first learned about the impasse on the Nashville SC stadium project, I thought, and certainly hoped, that a downfall of the deal might allow Music City Baseball -- a group that is campaigning to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Nashville and has offered to spend its own money to build a stadium across the Cumberland River from Nashville's downtown for such a team -- to shift its attention to the city's fairgrounds complex and swoop in with a plan for a major-league-specification baseball park at the fairgrounds, complete with a multi-use development akin to both what is proposed to accompany the Nashville SC stadium and what MCB itself desires to be adjacent to an MLB park on the riverfront.  However, if Nashville's current mayor is so determined to try to bring national-level NASCAR races back to Fairgrounds Speedway, then a hypothetical Nashville MLB club would have at least as tough a time as the actual Nashville MLS club is having with regard to securing a permanent venue within the fairgrounds campus.

[tBBP]

I completely forgot to mention about the racetrack stuff; thanks for bringing that up, @Walk-Off. Talks had been going on for a few years about the speedway trying to lure some NASCAR races back there (but not in its present condition, no way). You're right in that probably about 0.2% of current Nashvillains care anything about stock car racing, but we all know how the "good ol' boy" attitude works. (And if you're going to mention Bell Buckle and Bucksnort, you'd have to throw in Christiana, Parsons, Counce, Lobelville, Dyer and Paris, too! ) 

[DG_ThenNowForever]