Why MLS needs Las Vegas
August 4, 2008 by f4denz.
So with RSL having some time off, except for the Meet the Team day later this week, I figured I would take a look at a couple MLS issues. First up expansion and a topic close to my heart a MLS team in Las Vegas.
First up is the news that the Franchise fee has jumped (or may jump) yet again this time up to $50 million dollars, this means that at the very lowest level Dave’s investment of $10 million will have jumped 400% in just 5 years. Good thing that soccer is just a bad investment and that the league is close to folding any day now as some local cynics would have you believe. According to Garber in his most recent comments, these are the cities the league is looking at “Atlanta, Las Vegas, Montreal, a second team in the New York area, Ottawa, Portland, St. Louis and Vancouver”, but another article mentioned that any team that submitted their proposal by October 15th would be considered.
For some reason there is a lot of thought that any team in Canada would recreate the numbers that have show up in Toronto, and it might be true, but it is far from a sure thing. Recently Martin Rogers did an article for Yahoo Sports in which he mentions what he thinks the odds are for particular cities. The top 3 on his list are Montreal, St. Louis, and Vancouver
So the recent announcements by Don Garber have lead to some news in Las Vegas,
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jul/24/las-vegas-still-running-mls-expansion/ which makes it sound more like a surprise that LV is still in the running, but somehow they come away with the thought that St. Louis and Las Vegas as the front runners in the 2011 expansion.
Over the past year the buzz about a team in MLS has been very much hit and miss, and the thing that I see lacking is a fan movement to support the efforts of the biz side of things recently it came to light that part of the reason for a lack of news is due to restrictions placed on parties by a non-disclosure agreement, but the very nature of this article leads me to be a bit more optimistic Las Vegas likely to receive MLS Team.
It was just as the season was wrapping up last year when the press in Vegas stated odds of cities likely to get a MLS franchise, and they were very close. They picked Seattle as a 3-2 pick and Philly as a 6-1, while they had picked St. Louis as a 4-1 pick, but without a finance group to pay for the team or a stadium they simply stay at the top of the passed over list. Montreal wasn’t even in the running then, but Vegas was listed as a 10-1 pick, for more details read the article here. This was before all the hype about Canada and TFC, I think perhaps the success of Seattle and Philly show that teams in the US can put up great numbers and show great enthusiasm for the sport as well.
Meeting with commish and talking about a franchise is no sure deal just ask the Vegas group, who meet with Don last year in Colorado during the All Star match, there was plenty of hype a year ago. Read that article here.
So why do I think that Vegas is a fit for MLS? A number of reasons:
- At just under 2 million people in the greater Las Vegas area, they have no top level professional sports team to support. They have minor league baseball and minor league hockey, it is only fair to say that the abomination of the AFL recently had a troubled franchise pull out of Vegas for the bright lights of Cleveland.
- Las Vegas is a very diverse city, with roughly 23% Hispanic, 10% African American, and 69% White, the city has enough diversity to support the worlds game, Las Vegas is the 28th largest city in the U.S.
- Las Vegas has a good median income of over $50,000, higher than Denver, Salt Lake City, or Dallas
- Las Vegas is a destination city, with over 39 million tourists last year, MLS may find the one city that supporters from around the league will travel to.
- Las Vegas is a top 40 TV market, this despite the many attractions.
So despite many being cynical of Las Vegas getting a team, can you think of a city you would be more likely to travel to in order to support your team? With a 40K seat stadium with a retractable roof, is there a better setting for international friendly matches?
I am not sure what will happen, but I think MLS would do very well in Las Vegas and what better place for the All Star match in 2011?
OFF MY SOAPBOX