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Thread: Soccer in Cincinnati

  1. #721
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    They don't have to be a soccer federation
    They literally do in order to operate a truly open system. You're pretending they should do something that exists nowhere else in the world. I'm saying we should have the thing that exists everywhere else in the world. The opportunity to start hundreds of clubs rather than claim the last few remaining MLS slots is how you get massive, widespread investment in the game. Then new clubs can make investments with a reasonable expectation of long-term ROI. Being the soccer equivalent of the USFL, CBA or WHA is a dead-end proposition.

    And I suspect you know USSF league sanctioning requirements are pure horse hockey designed to insulate MLS owners. If you could do some sort of community ownership model or if the sanctioning was predicated upon location, Columbus could keep its franchise and Precourt would have to go start an expansion team in Austin. Again, you're sidling up to the thing that's screwing you. Yet in the system under which we currently operate, the team is fully attached to the owner (who is a subsidiary of the league itself). None of us actually have a club. We have an owner who either does or doesn't want to stick around. Like I said before, it's a country club ... and we're not members.

    That's fine for leagues that grew up here, but we're not getting fully professional soccer until we've got an open club system. In the meantime our top young talents have figured out they need to avoid our domestic league altogether, and the foreign players that come here know better than to take it seriously (win if you can, lose if you must, enjoy life outside the game). Most of all, fans of the sport will continue to increase and the vast majority of them will be following leagues in countries far from here.
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  3. #722
    Are we not men? Yachtzee's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    They literally do in order to operate a truly open system. You're pretending they should do something that exists nowhere else in the world. I'm saying we should have the thing that exists everywhere else in the world. The opportunity to start hundreds of clubs rather than claim the last few remaining MLS slots is how you get massive, widespread investment in the game. Then new clubs can make investments with a reasonable expectation of long-term ROI. Being the soccer equivalent of the USFL, CBA or WHA is a dead-end proposition.

    And I suspect you know USSF league sanctioning requirements are pure horse hockey designed to insulate MLS owners. If you could do some sort of community ownership model or if the sanctioning was predicated upon location, Columbus could keep its franchise and Precourt would have to go start an expansion team in Austin. Again, you're sidling up to the thing that's screwing you. Yet in the system under which we currently operate, the team is fully attached to the owner (who is a subsidiary of the league itself). None of us actually have a club. We have an owner who either does or doesn't want to stick around. Like I said before, it's a country club ... and we're not members.

    That's fine for leagues that grew up here, but we're not getting fully professional soccer until we've got an open club system. In the meantime our top young talents have figured out they need to avoid our domestic league altogether, and the foreign players that come here know better than to take it seriously (win if you can, lose if you must, enjoy life outside the game). Most of all, fans of the sport will continue to increase and the vast majority of them will be following leagues in countries far from here.
    No they don't. They just need to join together with enough investors who want to start teams in other cities to give it a go. They start a Boston team and could pull in Tom Ricketts, who is starting that USL team with plans for a Chicago stadium. They could try to poach Gilbert, Gores, and the Ford Family to bring in Detroit instead of risking being on the outside of the MLS expansion race. They could bring in investors from Tampa, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Antonio and other cities that might get left out of the MLS expansion party. They could even look to put teams in places like Dallas and Denver if they can find a way to finance soccer stadiums near the city rather than way out in the burbs. There are plenty of fans in MLS 1.0 markets who might very well flock to a non-MLS competitor in their city because they're tired of Garber and his bull. Put together an attractive league that maybe starts out at D2 status and build your brand and status to the point where owners of USL teams start looking to being involved with your league pro/rel style instead of playing around at being the MLS Reserve League. The US has quite a few markets out there that can support a D1/D2 soccer team that either aren't being served by current MLS teams or are being disserved by MLS teams.

    USSF is going to do what the people who actually invest their money, time, and effort into Soccer in the US want. They aren't going to upset the apple cart just because people who aren't investing their money, time, and effort into soccer in this country say they might consider it if you force your top division league bend to their whims. The way to get rid of the single-entity, closed off MLS is to build a better league and push it out by putting a better product out there, attracting fans and TV money, and starving out MLS. Right now, USSF is still the alpha dog in that SUM relationship with MLS. If a rival league with better financial backing and a more profitable model challenged MLS, I guarantee you USSF would say "Hello, new friend." They aren't going to blow through all that money they get for USMNT TV rights just to prop up a money losing MLS against a league that could actually bring in new investment.

    As far as me and my support for Columbus Crew go, I support the club and the players, but not PSV and MLS. If I woke up in the morning and suddenly MLS adopted the 50+1 Member Ownership rule from the Bundesliga, I would send in my check that day, but I've actually cut back my MLS viewing. I'm also a realist in that, at this point, if USSF implemented pro/rel tomorrow, that's not going to stop the Crew from becoming the Austin MK Dons. The only hope in that regard is 1. a wealthy group of investors with more money than PSV and a plan for a downtown Columbus stadium puts in an offer to buy the Crew, 2. the Modell Law is somehow successfully used to block the Austin Move, and/or 3. the Austin stadium deal falls through and PSV is forced to sell by MLS for bringing shame upon them.
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  4. #723
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    No they don't. They just need to join together with enough investors who want to start teams in other cities to give it a go.
    You can insist this until you're blue in the face, but this is a sport organized by national and continental federations that ultimately form a world federation. Whoever has the federation wins in a battle of rich guys. Period. You'd have to find a bunch of people who hate their own money. All I can tell you is a couple of heavy hitters near me would be in if the system opened up. They will not be under the current setup, and no one wants to buy the Revs and pay rent to Bob Kraft.

    Anyway, here's Gianni Infantino from today talking about MLS: "As it is, in the world, maybe it is No. 20 or 30, the league and football movement in general? I don't know. It should be one, two or three." He's got a point. We are a sleeping leviathan. England has 12 metro areas of more than 1 million people and another six above 500,000. The U.S. has 53 metro areas above 1 million and another 54 above 500,000. If we ever dropped the artificial scarcity act would be kind of awesome.

    I agree there's no undoing MLS' screwjob of Columbus, but we should recognize how obscene it is and how it's a feature of the system we currently have.
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  5. #724
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    Anyway, here's Gianni Infantino from today talking about MLS: "As it is, in the world, maybe it is No. 20 or 30, the league and football movement in general? I don't know. It should be one, two or three." He's got a point. We are a sleeping leviathan. England has 12 metro areas of more than 1 million people and another six above 500,000. The U.S. has 53 metro areas above 1 million and another 54 above 500,000. If we ever dropped the artificial scarcity act would be kind of awesome.
    England doesn't have 4 other multi-billion dollar sports leagues competing for attention. It isn't as simple as "Wake the sleeping giant," and it never will be.

    Also, the USSF ultimately just blesses a league with sanctioning. They have published criteria for D1 sanctioning. If a bunch of billionaires got together tomorrow and started a new federation with pro/rel that met appropriate D1 criteria, the USSF would have no choice but to sanction the league pursuant to it's own bylaws.

    The reason it hasn't happened is because no one sees money in doing so.
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  6. #725
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    Also, the USSF ultimately just blesses a league with sanctioning. They have published criteria for D1 sanctioning. If a bunch of billionaires got together tomorrow and started a new federation with pro/rel that met appropriate D1 criteria, the USSF would have no choice but to sanction the league pursuant to it's own bylaws.

    The reason it hasn't happened is because no one sees money in doing so.
    Is there any precedent for a country having more than one so-called top-level league? I honestly don't know. But it's worth remembering that USSF's sanctioning power derives from being the FIFA-sanctioned governing body for the United States, and whatever its bylaws might say, they can't play around too much with FIFA regulations without risking having its own card pulled. If the rules say "only one top-level league per country," USSF isn't going to sanction a second one.

    The more likely occurrence would be for this rival league setup to apply for sanctioning, get turned down, and then a whole bunch of lawyers will make a lot of money, at the end of which USSF may or may not be forced to accept pro/rel as a condition of avoiding antitrust damages. It could work. But like M2 said, you'd have to have a bunch of rich guys who are willing to risk a lot of money to pry open that door.
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  7. #726
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    England doesn't have 4 other multi-billion dollar sports leagues competing for attention. It isn't as simple as "Wake the sleeping giant," and it never will be.

    Also, the USSF ultimately just blesses a league with sanctioning. They have published criteria for D1 sanctioning. If a bunch of billionaires got together tomorrow and started a new federation with pro/rel that met appropriate D1 criteria, the USSF would have no choice but to sanction the league pursuant to it's own bylaws.

    The reason it hasn't happened is because no one sees money in doing so.
    England's not running short on sports. Rugby's big there, cricket is too, as are individual sports (tennis, golf, track). It's not like everybody plays/watches soccer and that's it. The reality is the U.S. has 107 metro areas that easily could support pro soccer clubs at various levels. Canada has 13. We are a giant, and we're still awfully sleepy.

    The USSF sets up the sanctioning requirements. They're currently farcical (again, not one single Bundesliga club would qualify) and they've been shifted over the years to insulate MLS. It's shady as hell (par for the course for a soccer federation I suppose). You can't start an entire new club-based pyramid from scratch. It's preposterous. That's about as magical as thinking gets. Billionaires aren't magnificent, supernatural creatures. Sort of the opposite, really. A good system would rein them in from their worst impulses (hello Columbus) rather than turn the whole thing over to them.

    What we could do is open up the system and make it club-centric (like in real professional soccer). Then everybody would have a predictable path for where you enter and how you climb.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

  8. #727
    Are we not men? Yachtzee's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    Quote Originally Posted by IslandRed View Post
    Is there any precedent for a country having more than one so-called top-level league? I honestly don't know. But it's worth remembering that USSF's sanctioning power derives from being the FIFA-sanctioned governing body for the United States, and whatever its bylaws might say, they can't play around too much with FIFA regulations without risking having its own card pulled. If the rules say "only one top-level league per country," USSF isn't going to sanction a second one.

    The more likely occurrence would be for this rival league setup to apply for sanctioning, get turned down, and then a whole bunch of lawyers will make a lot of money, at the end of which USSF may or may not be forced to accept pro/rel as a condition of avoiding antitrust damages. It could work. But like M2 said, you'd have to have a bunch of rich guys who are willing to risk a lot of money to pry open that door.
    M2 wants pro/rel and I'm just spitballing ways that it might happen. What's not going to happen is that the people who have invested their money in the current system are just going to declare an open system just so that the West Mass Pioneers or the Des Moines Menace have the opportunity to bring pro-soccer in high school football stadiums to Division I soccer. The only way pro/rel is going to happen in the US is if there are a bunch more billionaires who want into Division I soccer than there are spots to accommodate them. As the saying goes, money talks and bs walks.

    If you want to see what a billionaire with money and determination to get into Div I Soccer can do, look no further than Carl Lindner III and FC Cincinnati. If someone said 4 years ago that Cincinnati would not only have an MLS team coming, but it would have some of the most energetic supporters in America, I think most of us would have thought they had lost their mind. At that point, the only soccer Cincinnati had going on outside the collegiate level involved the Cincinnati Saints and the PDL Cincinnati Dutch Lions, which most people pretty much ignored. But Lindner came with Jeff Berding with a plan to start a USL team and hopes to make it into MLS someday. I started this thread in 2015 when Berding and Lindner had just announced the desire to start a USL team (at that point still Div 3). But Lindner put his money where his mouth was (or at least Berding's mouth, Lindner doesn't seem to say much). They put a team together, cultivated a supporters culture, generated buzz and started drawing big numbers at Nippert Stadium. Then they did just about the impossible and worked out a deal to build a soccer specific stadium in one of the most Anti-sports stadium cities in the country. They did everything so well that it forced Don Garber and the MLS Board of Governors to accept them, even though Cincinnati was probably one of Garber's least favored markets in the list of 12 cities that applied for expansion.

    What should be interesting is to see what Tom Ricketts does in Chicago. If he gets his Chicago USL team off the ground and is able to build a stadium in Chicago itself, it could spell real trouble for the Chicago Fire, who are locked into a pretty much ironclad lease with the Village of Bridgeview. If a guy like Ricketts is selling out a stadium in Chicago for a USL team, I highly doubt some of the MLS owners, like City Football Group, Arthur Blank, Maple Leaf Sports, Red Bull, and some of the other more well-healed owners are going to protect putzes like Andrew Hauptman to keep him out. If someone like John Henry were serious about pro soccer in America, or even just in the Boston area, he could do it. He could start a USL team and he might even have a pretty good shot at getting a land deal to build a soccer stadium in Boston, considering he already has a major sports team that plays within the city limits and I'm sure he has plenty of ties with the local politicians. And if that team took off, would MLS try to keep John Henry out to please the Krafts? Maybe, but I think it's also possible that they might make accommodations in order to get that sweet John Henry money. If MLS has shown anything over the years, they've shown a willingness to change their own rules if you throw enough cash at them. So if John Henry isn't investing in American soccer, I'm more inclined to think he's using lack of pro/rel as an excuse when it's really that he's not interested in having to build something from scratch.
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  9. #728
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    To be specific what I want is professional, club-driven soccer in the U.S. Pro/rel is just part of the package. My personal endgame is a club I can really get behind that's part of something bigger.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

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    Re: Soccer in Cincinnati

    ---WCPO

    FC Cincinnati could have a practice facility by next summer -- but why won't it pay taxes?

    MILFORD, Ohio -- FC Cincinnati on Wednesday cleared the final hurdle between the team and a 2019 opening day for its Milford practice facility.

    The Clermont County Port Authority announced an agreement that will allow FC Cincinnati to avoid paying property tax or taxes on construction materials for the $30 million facility. Instead, the port authority will finance the cost of building the facility through bonds and will then lease the land -- 24 acres on U.S. 50 in Milford near I-275 -- to the team.

    Those bonds, which FC Cincinnati will purchase, will also fund construction materials estimated to cost about $1 million, according to the port authority.

    In addition to sidestepping taxes on building materials, FC Cincinnati will also not have to pay property taxes because the Port Authority -- which, again, is leasing the land for the practice facility through bonds to FC Cincinnati -- is tax exempt.

    To make up for the lack of property taxes going back to Milford, the port authority will pay Milford School District a one-time fee of $105,000 and an annual fee of about $9,000, most of which will support various county levies, according to a press release from the county port authority.

    "The structure of the lease answers all of the questions related to what the economic impact will actually be and if it is worth the level of incentives being provided," said Andy Kuchta, executive director and secretary of the Port Authority. "The Port Authority will have the choice to not renew the lease every 360 days for any reason. This is not a 20-year deal but a 360-day deal, full stop."

    The soccer complex will include a 30,000-square-foot training facility and a 6,500-square-foot youth academy.

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