Stadium talk, especially of the soccer-specific stadium variety, has been dominating North American soccer circles in recent weeks. It began with the announcement that the Seattle Sounders had extended their lease at football-specific CenturyLink Field through the 2028 season. It continued with the bashing of the pitch at Yankee Stadium during New York City FC’s home opener last weekend (search up #ThingsWiderThanTheNYCFCPitch on Twitter if you want to have a laugh, but just remember that at 70 yards wide NYCFC’s pitch is only five yards narrower than the widest fields in MLS).
And down in the lower leagues, stadium renderings from the NASL’s San Antonio Scorpions and Indy Eleven, as well as the USL’s Sacramento Republic continue to entice fans who remain hopeful about promotion into the top tier. The folks in Minnesota can’t be overlooked either, since their expansion efforts have been all but officially deemed successful. Better yet, because the Minnesota United FC group appears to have overtaken the Minnesota Vikings group in the fight to bring soccer to Minneapolis, the expected new club won’t be playing in a football stadium.
That means more stadium renderings for us to look forward to, and fewer turf-laden caverns for players to be forced to drag their feet into.
In summary, the side best armed to take the soccer-specific stadium concept to another stratosphere chose not to, while MLS’ most hated club sold over 40,000 tickets for its home opener and still got attacked for its stadium situation. Three lower-league clubs are pushing for MLS-sized soccer-specific stadiums, and a fourth is set to join the fun. And the folks in New England, Miami, and Atlanta have all snuck out of the conversation when nobody was looking.
When it comes to the expansion and growth of soccer in North America, the soccer-specific stadium has long been viewed as the key catalyst. Matt Pollard’s recent piece on the evolution of the soccer-specific stadium, the best written piece to ever go onto the Last Word Soccer Club webpage in my opinion, gives excellent background.
But with all eyes on the future, we need to make sure we don’t lose the “specific” in “soccer-specific stadium”.
Major League Soccer has long cited four criteria when determining the viability of awarding the rights to expansion franchises: a committed ownership group, a market that has both the demographics and the corporate sponsorship potential to support a team, an established soccer fanbase, and, most pertinent to this piece, a stadium (or concrete plans for one) that the team owns and controls revenues from.
MLS 2.0 expansion followed the stadium guidelines well. From 2007 to 2012, seven expansion clubs joined Major League Soccer. Of them, six began play in soccer-specific stadiums (Buck Shaw Stadium, the home of the San Jose Earthquakes from 2008 to 2014, may be small but it is soccer-specific nonetheless). Today that number is actually down to five, as the Vancouver Whitecaps began their 2011 expansion season in the soccer-specific Empire Field but moved into the multi-purpose (a pseudonym for football specific) BC Place once renovations were completed in the fall.
Empire Field was built by a group of Swiss construction wizards in a miniscule 111 days. The Whitecaps called it their home for 197 days. The first number is beyond impressive, especially considering how good the stadium was. The second number is downright pathetic, but it’s representative of the shift that has happened in MLS 3.0.
Neither of 2015’s expansion outfits, Orlando City SC or New York City FC, have debuted in purpose-built venues. Orlando City SC at least has a venue under construction and set to open for 2016, but having it arrive a year later than originally anticipated takes away some of the allure. As for NYCFC, they say they’re trying to determine a stadium location. I believe them, but the fact of the matter remains that Yankee Stadium will house this club through at least the 2017 season, longer if you make like the rest of North American soccer fans and shed all optimism you have about this club.
Come 2017, MLS will be welcoming two new clubs in Atlanta “to-be-named” and Los Angeles FC. Atlanta’s following the Vancouver Whitecaps mold of playing in a downsized football stadium. Their numbers look good so far, but the stadium is being downsized to roughly 30,000 rather than 21,000 like in British Columbia. That means Atlanta needs to pull and sustain Seattle-lite numbers to make it work. Is it possible? Yes, just ask Seattle! But is it probable? That’s definitely up for debate.
Recent reports suggest that LAFC could be on its way to building a soccer-specific stadium in downtown Los Angeles. That being said, there are other factors to consider. The land has yet to be secured, which as D.C. United and Miami fans will know means long negotiations with city council await. The land isn’t a blank canvas either. The old, tenantless Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena sits on the land that LAFC want to use. The fact that’s the arena isn’t being used helps, but it’s still a big pile of building that has to be torn down.
Nobody on LAFC’s 22-member ownership battalion is a city councillor, and the Swiss guys that built Empire Field only specialize in temporary venues. No amount of favouritism from league executives will give LAFC the power to sidestep the usual stadium timelines, so as positive as recent news has been, expectations need to be kept in check.
It’s clearly possible to play in Major League Soccer without a soccer-specific stadium. Of the 20 teams currently in Major League Soccer, only 14 play in soccer-specific stadiums (the infographic says 15, but again, I don’t count Vancouver).
That statistic may not say much, especially considering that by 2017, two of the six teams (Orlando and D.C.) that don’t currently play in purpose-built venues will be.
It’s also important to consider that New England has been around for longer than the soccer-specific stadium and has tried to escape their current Gillette stadium situation multiple times.
On the more positive note, Seattle and Vancouver have made non-soccer-specific stadiums work very well.
So a deeper look behind the numbers doesn’t help my case. What does help my case is that when you divide the number of soccer-specific stadiums by the number of teams, the resulting number is lower than one.
Until that number reaches one, Major League soccer will have trouble become “one of the world’s top leagues,” as they have so often stated to be the goal.
Only so much can be done about current teams in non-ideal venues. Some of them (New Englad) need some gentle prodding along. Others (New York Blue) some a bit more, um, motivation…
But what MLS can easily do is re-establish a standard for expansion sides. It might not have been worth it a while ago, seeing as the league said they would stop after 24 teams. But with that number up for debate according to the commissioner, lines have to be drawn.
The double standard for big markets has to be removed. True, there may not be many big markets left without a team left, but there’s still at least one big one (Miami) that’s on everyone’s minds. If David Beckham can’t get a stadium deal done (he’s been denied at least twice already), don’t loosen the “no stadium, no team” stance. If Beckham is so focused on becoming an owner, he can take his business to another city. Manchester wasn’t a particularly sexy city, but he played there nonetheless.
The same thing has to go with every other expansion market. If there isn’t an agreement to have a purpose-built venue, a soccer-specific stadium, constructed, no team gets awarded. But hopefully with the recent proposals that lower-league clubs have been preparing to present to their city councils, that shouldn’t be an issue.
What might become a problem is which needs to happen first: city councils might not award land and money to build a stadium without the guarantee of a franchise, but MLS might not award a franchise without the guarantee of a stadium.
But that problem gets solved with a phone call and some co-ordination on the part of event planners to simultaneously announce the franchise and the facility.
And as with any good solution in MLS, it allows for a range of transparency options. For the league known to be as transparent as the palm of your hand, an offer like that is hard to refuse. League and city officials could literally work in the same boardroom to hammer out deals with each other and with expansion groups. Because everyone would be working together, there would be clearer rules about what could and couldn’t be revealed to the outside world. If things are going well, you could get local media to eat it up. If things aren’t going well, Garber and Co. can just pack their bags and fly over to the next city without a word.
You can be as open as a balcony window or as closed as a Jermaine Jones blind draw.
Wait, scratch that. Nothing’s more secretive than a Jermaine Jones blind draw.
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