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It seems that a significant obstacle to MLS in Detroit is the lack of a large enough soccer-specific venue. There doesn’t appear to be much appetite for building one, either.
What do you think an MLS-worthy soccer specific arena would cost? $500 million?
I’m no expert on such things, but FC Cincinnati built theirs for $250M.
One big question would be where to put it. Ideally it’d be near LCA, Ford Field, and Comerica. Is there an open parcel big enough nearby? Besides what the Ilitches are sitting on, that is?
They were going to play at Ford Field the last bid. Wouldn’t be shocked if they try that again considering more clubs sharing with American Football have come in since (Charlotte, San Diego, Nashville (temporary), Cincinnati (temporary).
Seattle Permanent
That was before the Detroit MLS bid though. Or at least the Ford family backed one.
Am I recalling correctly that, at least in the past, MLS was requiring dedicated soccer facilities? I realize that’s not a thing these days as previously mentioned.
They used to but backed off with Atlanta and Seattle and have seemed okay with it as long as it is a good venue like Atlanta or Charlotte. They have also let a lot of teams in that used another stadium temporarily (Nashville, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Orlando, NYC) and in the case of NYC that temporary has last more than a decade. I don’t really think MLS cares as long as it is a state of the art venue
I believe Atlanta was designed to accommodate the width of a soccer field though. What allegedly sank the Ford Field plan was that MLS didn’t want an indoor field and the ownership group balked at the cost of making the roof retractable
I feel like part of this is on the USL. I think the league needs to do more to differentiate itself from the MLS and attempt to draw fans to clubs for the long haul. Adding pro/rel and trying to intensify regional rivalries are two ideas. Puff pieces about how great the league is won’t do it.
Pro/Re would ruin USL
How do you figure? Do you think it would cause clubs that go down to fold? I think the competition is similar between the two leagues, and I'm not sure people care which league their non-MLS team is in. There are definitely kinks to be worked out, but I really do see it as a draw for fans. I understand why ownership groups don't like it, though.
How is pro/rel a draw for fans?
If you're a lower league team, you can work your way up to the top. You can't just buy your way up. That's a huge plus for fans of teams just starting or at the bottom of the pyramid.
Most of the time, the worst teams in the league are at the bottom of the table because of lousy ownership/management. If you're a fan of a shit club, pro/rel is helpful because your owner has consequences for being a shit owner. It can send your club into freefall if you have a really shit owner, but generally, it holds management accountable.
Additionally, it raises the stakes, which makes things more exciting for fans and as a neutral. If you're at the bottom of the table, the last few weeks of the season are boring as shit. I'm not saying anyone wants to get relegated, but it's more exciting if you have something to play for. It makes the whole system healthier because there are consequences. I watch Prem games I have no reason for watching because I want to see the battle at the bottom all the time.
All just my opinion. Getting relegated would suck. But I do think it makes the whole league healthier and more appealing.
How is it good for fans that bad management will cause the team to go into a free fall? Isn’t it better if your club has a chance to succeed?
Most pro/rel soccer has basically no stakes, teams aren’t competing for a championship and are happy in 17th place in the EPL.
Most pro/rel soccer has basically no stakes
This is one of the worst takes I've ever heard. The impact is so huge that the Prem offers parachute payments to soften the blow of getting relegated. It wouldn't be as huge in USL, but it would still affect operations on a significant level.
You took the worst-case scenario out of my comment. It's meant to entice owners to do better so they don't get relegated. Most of the time, that's how it works. On some occasions, they'll be an owner who is treating the club like a cash cow (unlikely in the USL) or falls on hard times financially who will not really care about getting relegated.
There are only a handful of games each year with implications on relegation. All it does it drive fans away because they can’t really compete
Ah, yes, Everton's average attendance of 39,241 last season would have been much closer to Goodison's capacity of 39,572 if they hadn't been in a relegation battle. Every game has an implication for relegation. That's literally how it works. If Leicester wins one of the 22 matches they lost last season, they're still in the Prem. They all matter.
They don’t all matter to fans. Fans aren’t going to show up in November because they might be in a relegation battle in March
They are definitely going to continue trying.
If they want to, yes. NGS keeps saying they fought off MLS when in reality Gilbert killed the deal himself when he decided not to build a stadium.
He never wanted to build a stadium. He wanted to block the Apostolopoulos’ from building a stadium among other things since they owned one of the very few pieces of downtown real estate that Gilbert doesn’t.
The Greeks were going to build a stadium and more office and residential buildings with a TON of parking so they could offer it to their tenants in the Penobscot and shuttle them like how Gilbert does it with his buildings.
And Ficano - who was in a lot of hot water at the time had no choice but to give it to Gilbert because he gets what he wants.
This is correct, Greek owned and Toronto based triple properties proposed the idea of the mls stadium on the fail jail site years before the Detroit based ownership group stole the idea to strong arm the county into selling them the land that they had been trying to obtain for like a decade.
Here’s an article from 2013 about it. 4 years before the Detroit based MLS bid proposed the same thing at the same site. https://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/2013/07/1_billion_mixed-use_developmen.html
Ehhh this is only a quarter of the story and ignores an extremely mobilized fan effort to control the narrative locally, nationally, and internationally. An organized effort for public comment to deny any MLS Detroit team name trademarks to the USPTO for infringing on DCFC’s already registered marks. It ignores the fact that the investors stole the idea to build a stadium on that property from a previous attempt by a Canadian based development company. And that the Detroit investment group never intended to put a stadium on that property anyway. They just wanted to strong arm the county into selling them that land after 10 years of trying (it worked). It ignores the company working on the renderings for the stadium being forced to apologize for stealing the DCFC fans likenesses and imagery.
Any fan base who doesn’t want mls needs to start taking some pages out of our playbook. Because while fans aren’t the main reason or even only reason the deal fell through. Very public organized resistance scares investors who just want to make a quick buck while no one else really pays attention.
NGS are the most egotistical group of losers I have ever seen in soccer
They may have egos but it’s earned. The club would not still be here if NGS didn’t have the egos they have.
I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I think MLS officials know the interest in the sport for our market is heavily tied to DCFC, otherwise I don’t think we seem like a particularly good candidate for expansion
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1mo
No it can’t, Indy Eleven have a good following but 99% of those fans would happily jump ship to an MLS club. Indy Eleven’s identity has never been hating on MLS the way DCFC does. I doubt the majority of fans noticed the switch from NASL to USL. Indy Eleven also tried to get an MLS bid for years and I doubt the fans have the same positive feelings towards Ozdemir that DCFC has toward being a community owned club.
No not remotely. It’s not hometown bias, DCFC fans are a complete 1/1 for USL and just American pro soccer
I’m from Indiana and lived in both Detroit and Tampa which have some of the stronger USL clubs and fanbases. DCFC is absolutely the only lower league club that has managed to have such a rabid fan base that is club specific. Most USL fans support their local club and would love for them to be in MLS or be replaced by a different organization in MLS. The only club in the country that I’m aware of that comes close is Chattanooga and I haven’t experienced anything there first hand and they are obviously such a small market that MLS aspirations aren’t even possible.
Wait till DCFC announces a new stadium in chaoots with Gilbert at the Fail Jail site in Greektown. Then MLS will freak out and try to get in on the action. I for one would never attend an MLS game, even if they came and would happily keep on renewing my DCFC season tickets.
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1mo
We would be. No USL market has ever survived an MLS invasion. And we do not have the financial backing to survive it either.
It would be interesting if the USL and MLS had a relegation partnership. MLS obviously has the numbers and budget, relegating MLS teams to the USL would bring more attention and revs to teams in the USL, it would be a win win.
We just need to turn Duggan into a DCFC fan /s
They’re always going to try and people who believe in City will continue to push and fight back.
Maybe they’ll even steal our images in renderings again.
What’s with the MLS hate? I’ve never really understood it.
What’s with the MLS hate?
It's pretty simple. MLS is a billionaire's club with a goal of eradicating lower league soccer. Have a successful club? They'll set up shop to drive you out of business. MLS next pro, San Diego, and now Indy (and very likely Detroit) are all examples of their monopolistic tendencies. It's a group of people who recognized the potential for soccer in the US early on, who now want to control the market.
If you support MLS, you're supporting the death of DCFC.
Would you still support DCFC if they teamed up with a billionaire and joined MLS?
“Club > League” has always been the mantra of NGS. While I can only speak for myself, I can’t stand MLS but love Detroit City more than I hate MLS so…..yeah. But I would never do anything to advance the goal of getting DCFC in MLS, nor would I root for a Detroit based MLS team that is NOT DCFC.
That's a tough question to answer. Would we still even be DCFC in that scenario? It's not that far removed from what we went through with the move to USL, and I know a lot of people were uncomfortable with the results.
As the banner at Keyworth says, club > league. If we made that jump and somehow retained our values, yes, I'd still support the club. I just doubt it would be possible, though, and I doubt anyone willing to shell out half a billion dollars on expansion fees is going to be willing to listen to the supporters.
I will say though that there is a decent precedent for this with the Green Bay Packers in the NFL. Team owned by the locality along with pro sports ownership types guarantees support and attendance so the billionaires are just there to spend money to let the Packers hang with the rest of the league more or less.
A model that the NFL quickly banned. It happened due to a unique set of circumstances. Long before the current valuation of NFL teams and TV contracts. Green Bay and Chicago are the only two cold-weather teams playing in open stadiums. They are a direct connection to the narrative the NFL is built on.
Modern stadiums are the worldwide trend to have high-status centerpieces for private owners that suck money out of local economies. The ML$ demand for a near downtown added $500M to the cost. The growing pushback of public money going to wealthy owners is part of their decision. SG are a different culture than other sports fans.
Many fans of the Prem are going to local club match. Mainly price but the atmosphere kept them. Still follow the clubs of their youth and family tradition. Modern Football is dehumanizing historic relationship clubs are built on. Investors, not supporters.
Simply put, MLS is bad for the game. Their expansion efforts have killed numerous lower league clubs. They're currently attempting to slowly strangle the US Open Cup. They don't operate by the rules of pretty much every other league/federation in the world (pro/rel, anyone?) because reasons. The league's structure strips clubs of their independence, prices supporters out, and eventually sucks the soul out of clubs. If you support an MLS club, you're essentially saying "I'm supporting this McDonald's franchise vs all of the other McDonald's franchises."
It's not just an MLS problem. The USSF is at fault for a lot of the bigger problems with football in this country. They don't stand up to MLS at all, to the detriment of grassroots efforts everywhere.
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1mo
I assume it stems from the grass roots effort to build the club, but at the end of the day I’d like to see the best quality product. Right now that’s MLS
The “best quality product” is in Europe and South America. The best you can hope for here is something you can invest in emotionally
Of course but I live here, and I didn’t mean watching on TV. I’d like to experience a major league experience in person on a regular basis
Ok but you’re basically asking to kill your local single-A baseball team in hopes of a double-A team. Soccer is a global game and just because it’s called “Major League” Soccer doesn’t mean it’s not a minor league
Best quality product you can go to, take your family, or go with friends. Watching it from tv is a different experience.
Maybe the city should have at least one affordable option for professional sports. Not every night out with a family of four should cost $300.
I guess I'm built different. I prefer college sports to pro-sports (well, until very recently). And if I wanted to see the best, I'd watch European leagues.
Imagine owning a franchise and having to help pay the salary of another team's best player so he can beat you. What a cowardly league.
There’s no longer college sports. Nowadays thanks to NIL they are pretty much ‘employees’.
We should welcome the competition.
Detroit DESERVES to have an MLS club to call their own. So does Tampa. Would love to see both markets make it to MLS. The Rowdies would be one hell of a draw for the MLS.
I know this is unlikely/impossible though I hope what might happen when Detroit does eventually get an MLS team is that DCFC be the first club to be promoted to MLS. Bring on the downvotes!
Many clubs have moved from lower divisions to MLS. DCFC would not be close to the first.
Thanks for this, I didn’t realize!
Well, they would be far from the first club promoted from USL to MLS. IIRC, that was either Portland or Seattle. My club, Orlando City, was promoted in 2015 after winning USL (x2) and USOC in a four year run. That said, the league made the club jump through a crazy number of hoops just to get in but since then they've let other clubs buy in without even mentioning the "requirements" we had to meet (looking at NYCFC, Charlotte, and some others).
Bottom line: DCFC would have to _want_ to join and would need to find investors with a huge dumptruck of cash just be be considered. The league would probably want a new stadium (not an NFL stadium - that only worked for ATL for two seasons and now they play in an empty cavern), so that would be yet another dumptruck of cash.
Just seems unlikely for DCFC to make the jump, even if they wanted to.
Atlanta averaged 47k last year….
And it seats 71K
You’re aware that in that 1st year you speak so fondly of they averaged 48k?
I don’t think anyone would prefer they play in a 30k seat soccer stadium when they sell 50k a game.
Oh I didn’t realize thanks for the info!
Honest opinion: If DCFC’s youth systems starts producing quality players and getting kids scholarships and other doing what we’re hoping it does, then DCFC’s chances of survival go way up. It would be really tough for an MLS side to go up against an established local pipeline like that.
Beyond that, don’t forget that Detroit is a declining media market since we’re still losing population around here. Unless there’s a big population surge, I think we will be low on their list honestly
This really depends on the owners of DCFC. The first thing MLS is going to do is approach DCFC about becoming an MLS side. We all know about the fees required for clubs to join MLS but if the owners don't have the cash on hand MLS can off subsidies if they want this market enough to entice the owners to make the move. If the DCFC owners say no all together on MLS then MLS will look for other owners willing to invest in a new Detoit expansion franchise. That's where the problems start.
I lived in Dallas for a long time and still follow FCD, but I always hated the owners becasue that is where the real direction and experience of the club came from. The Hunts, the owners of FCD, have always been and will always be interested in making money first, not winning or creating a good fan experience. And that's the larger problem with MLS, it's full of gimmicks to attract casual fans. If the owners of a club move into MLS but commit to winning and putting a quality product on the field all while appealing to thier long term fans then MLS won't kill DCFC. Look at the Sounders (not recently but in the early stages) or Austin FC. Great fan experience at both clubs so people become dedicated supporters. MLS can be good but then as with FCDallas it can be awful. It depends on if the owners want to fight for thier original vision and values.
I'm ignorant on the topic but if the opportunity arrises for MLS to subsidize some of the costs for DCFC to become a MLS team, why would DCFC owners say no at all? Isn't that the end goal at some point for our club?
Yeah, dunno. Unfortunately I’m newer to Detroit and come from an MLS market… I really enjoyed attending mls games. I was surprised to find the vitriol but I guess it’s not unexpected
It’s bizarre. I would LOVE for DCFC to join MLS. I’m a DCFC season ticket holder and have been for 6 years. I don’t understand the hate some fans have for MLS, no matter how much they explain it. MLS is the best product in the country, I want my team to be a part of that.
It’s like saying, no I really don’t want my ufl team to join the NFL because we’re better than them…
I mean, maybe, I guess, but you’re leaving massive exposure, money and resources on the table for what? Pride? Again I guess, but I feel like beating the best teams in the country would bring a greater sense of pride ?
Exactly. Again, truly bizarre to me and something I will NEVER understand.
You can Google mls Detroit and find dozens of articles and YouTube videos and podcasts about why DCFC fans don’t want mls in Detroit. It’s worth taking a look.
MLS subsidizing a team? Never again.
In the distant past the league operated some teams during a very embarrassing contraction phase but since then it's on the franchise operators to find their own funding.
Subsidizing the entry fee, not the team friend. Ie waving the entry fee to get into a market they want which very much does happen
They've tried before, I'm sure they'll try again.