Timber to play Sounders, Whitecaps

onetouchfutbol wrote: The west coast and Canada are going to earn the lion's share of the league's money for many years to come...

But as a single entity, the MLS distributes revenues collectively. At least as far as I know, but I am new to the league.

VillaGorilla wrote:

onetouchfutbol wrote: The west coast and Canada are going to earn the lion's share of the league's money for many years to come...

But as a single entity, the MLS distributes revenues collectively. At least as far as I know, but I am new to the league.

As far as I know, they do as well. They have to do that to survive financially. All I'm saying is that Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal (in the future) are most likely going to be carrying the rest of the league financially. No one else will be able to compete with the attendance of those teams, and the league is running out of financially appealing areas for expansion in my opinion.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/soundersfcblog/2014537195_mauro_rosales_officially_signe.html

Mauro Rosales is officially a Sounder.

Wow. Well. Tonight was a wake-up call. MLS players will punish you for mistakes. We had defensive issues all night and couldn't get much offense going.

But hey, at least we have a goal in our first game (not mentioning any specific clubs here DTR... )

Yeah, the Sounders are still without a goal. Hopefully that will change as Mauro Rosales begins to get more minutes and work his way into the mix with Montero. Both teams have played very tough competition by MLS standards. PDX got the defending champs, and we got two playoff-calibur teams. It's nice to see Conor Casey continue to have success...

By the way, what was the attendance at the PDX game?

Colorado got about 17,000. Their best opening crowd, still not quite a sellout. There were about 400 Portland fans on the trip.

Colorado (and Dallas for that matter) both have the problem where they built these really nice soccer specific stadiums BUT built them way out in the burbs (Following the NFL/NBA business model). It will be interesting how they over come that, I mean they can't just put the stadium on rollers and move it into downtown...

Perspective: Colorado and Chicago's stadiums are like the Timbers playing in Hillsboro or Troutdale. Going to Frisco from Dallas is like going to Salem. Something for folks to think about when seeing some of the attendance numbers around MLS.

Yep, not to mention the Home Depot Center, 16 miles outside downtown LA or even PPL Park, which is 17.5 mi outside Philly... Heck the NY Redbulls play in Jersey! (And thats just counting the newer soccer specific stadiums)

I guess our little Cascadia fans should all be lucky that our stadium situations are all very nicely situated right into downtown (Although, hahaha it isn't like Merritt Paulson or Joe Roth had anything to do with the actual stadium placement, they kind of lucked out in that regard)

It is definitely a case of different strategies. I think that the stadiums in Colorado, LA, and Dallas were built not only to provide soccer specific stadiums for other organizations in the MLS to emulate, but also with an eye to start the youth development programs the MLS is currently trying to get a grasp of. All 3 of these stadiums feature massive complexes with tons of fields that host a lot of youth tournaments and such. They had to build them in suburbs because they needed all of the space in order to do so. Now that Seattle and Portland (hopefully) will have thriving cities in downtown areas, I think MLS may have realized they made a mistake in building these complexes because of attendance issues. However, Colorado in particular has a pretty good "academy" and has made progress in developing prospects. I think it'll be interesting to see how Portland and Seattle handles developing youth players to bring up through their first team...

Having stadiums in the suburbs was one mistake, however, I think that a bigger mistake in the beginning was the choice of locations (in terms of cities) for franchises. The commissioner and the league have now realized that choosing cities with a lot of former players who grew up and became fans is with disposable income is important. But, I don't think it was like that in the beginning...

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Sounders finally get a point with a 1-1 tie with the Dynamo. We seem to have a very good possession team that can't finish...just like last year.

There is no doubt that perhaps the league itself was started a little bit carelessly in terms of organization (especially seeing teams like Tampa Bay and Miami being contracted only a couple years after their establishment), but Garber knows his stuff and now very careful planning and consideration seems to be put into a lot of the decisions made by the league.
I think it's kind of hard to argue with the placement of the original teams though, most are in pretty large cities that had existing stadiums the teams could play in. Just curious to know where you think it would have been better for them to place teams at the beginning?

Well... NOT Kansas City and Columbus for one... But without Lamar Hunt you have no league, and Columbus was the first to really break away from the shove soccer in a football stadium model. (The soccer mom model was very short sighted, but as a Sounders fan I recognize that without the soccer mom vote Seahawks stadium never gets built and the Sounders are unlikely to progress to the MLS when they did.)

It made perfect sense to start in the larger cities, IN stadiums designed for football since there weren't soccer pitches just lying around or money to build them. It has just been unfortunate that markets like Boston and NY have had their stadiums so far away from the markets, and some of the cities like Dallas, Los Angeles and the Miami clubs really missed the boat on appropriately marketing to the Hispanic populations that could have provided a boon to the league. (Or even Houston... Trying to name the team Houston 1836, yeah Mexican fans are gonna flock to a team whose name celebrates Texas seceding from Mexico...)

I think the development of teams like Colorado and Dallas way outside the population centers kind of fed off the mentality seen for NFL/NBA franchises gearing to greedily create their own entertainment centers. (Think SBC Center outside San Antonio, Gillette Stadium 40 miles outside Boston and every Dallas franchise building out in Arlington.)

Now said I think the league finally knows how to market/locate teams, it is just unfortunate for the teams that already invested in stadiums in terrible locations... They will always be fighting an uphill battle against clubs correctly situated to grow a fan base.

Totally agreed, it's certainly going to be an uphill battle, but as long as teams like Seattle, Toronto, Portland, LA are making money, I think the league can afford to try and help out some of the teams that made poor stadium decisions. It's kind of unfortunate because if these stadiums were in downtown areas in Colorado or the like, it would draw more attention to soccer from the more casual fan and continue to promote the game at a faster rate. Hopefully soccer continues to take more of a hold in the American sports scene and attendance rates steadily go up, and these teams can build new stadiums down the road in 20 years or so in downtown areas
It's possible that the addition of teams like the Sounders and Timbers with such a frenzied and loyal fan base could in a sense spark similar passion in other cities, trying to replicate the atmosphere and such

Although it's very easy to lambast the MLS on their initial soccer mom marketing approach, of which I have done more than my fair share, something I haven't seen touched upon is how many of the coveted (and now converted) 18-34 year old crowd grew up going to games in the early days of the MLS. I dunno, maybe it's zero, but maybe it's more. In many ways single-mindedly pursuing the family approach to the exclusion of the supporters was short-sided, but there is something to be said for raising kids on the brand.

As for the match that occurred yesterday, SWIWS.

What I am most concerned with is that Merlo is not sold-out for the Tuesday game. We could conceivably be faced with the ignominy of not selling out an Open Cup play-in match, a la every other MLS team (even ones which sell out the lower bowl of an NFL stadium, cough , cough).

" . . . Where ever you are playing
we will always follow you . . ."

Come on now, step up and buy a ticket.

I think that's a fairly solid point, I think that as generations are now getting brought up where almost everyone plays soccer during at least their younger years, there is definitely more of an appreciation for soccer nationwide. I think that is something that will continue, as MLS continues to expand and become more influential, more and more people will become at least interested in going to games.

Selling out the Tuesday match will also help out the Pilots and the athletic department!

UPPilots wrote:Selling out the Tuesday match will also help out the Pilots and the athletic department!

Does UP get a portion of the gate receipts? Or concessions? Speaking of which, I have heard it suggested that there won't be any beer poured on site - true? I don't remember what we did in the Vancouver playoff tie in October.

I don't think they are allowed to serve beer at the games, although I think that's something UP should explore!
I believe the Timbers have probably paid UP in order to use the field, not sure about if they are going to share gate receipts, but I would think UP makes money of the concessions since Bon Appetit is most likely running it

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the soccer specific stadiums. On the one hand, it should hypothetically be easier to fill them to capacity. On the other hand, in many cities it never seems to happen...whether that's due to location or not.

I think that the MLS front offices are still learning about how to best market the league. I remember attending a Sounders vs. Guadalajara Chivas game last season. In the game programs there was a big write up about the Chivas and their storied past. It's tough to deny that they are a more storied team than the Sounders. However, the only history written about Sounders FC was the recent MLS history as if nothing before ever happened...and some of the more legendary players did not exist. I don't get it. It takes years and generations to build a brand, but, instead of the New York Cosmos (where there's actually a movie about Pele now) we have the New York Red Bulls. Not a great move in my opinion...

Red Bull was willing to fork over the $ to name a team. I don't think that MLS was in a position to turn them down.

VillaGorilla wrote:Red Bull was willing to fork over the $ to name a team. I don't think that MLS was in a position to turn them down.

They actually bought the team and have put in the money for a SSS and big signings so I think MLS is just fine with them.

Not to mention they also own clubs in Brazil, Germany and Austria... Not exactly a fleeting enterprise, especially considering SC Red Bull Salzburg was in the Champs League this year.

Plus RB came into the picture WAY before some marketing firm decided to attempt to resurrect the Cosmos name and bring one of my personal favorite soccer loons into the picture...

I'd rather look at La Signora Catona

Congrats to Timbers and their fans on the 2-0 win at Merlo. Though I'm a Sounders fan, I did watch the game via live streaming. The team looked pretty good. US Open Cup is always interesting though; the majority of the MLS doesn't take it too seriously.

Man U. is coming to Seattle next Summer, and we actually get to see the game on real grass: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sounders/2014627706_sounders30.html