Tampa a Contender for MLS?

A. San Jose has consistently had one of the best %Cap in the league and their total average is only hindered by the small size of the baseball stadium.

B. demographics are only ONE SMALL part of attendance and attendance potential. antagonistic anti-fan ownership that actively despises their MLS team and runs it like an utter clown car joke would seem to superceed any good demographics that Boston might have ... oh, and the fact that the Revs don't actually play in Boston near all of those good demographics.

 

you really aren't too bright are you? fortunately for me i've never said any such thing. i have never said having a young educated population GUARANTEES attendance success nor have i ever said that not having one INSURES attendance failure.

you understand that no single factor is the be all and end all? you understand the term "cumulative effect"? as i have said many many many times demographic factors are only ONE of many factors that can contribute to good or bad attendance. nobody ever has claimed that just young people = awesome attendance or just well educated people = awesome attendance. only you have done that as a strawman for your pathetic arguments.

you unfortunately have your facts completely wrong. feel free to use the us census bureau web site (with the 2011 ACS Factfinder):

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces...iew.xhtml?pid=ACS_11_5YR_S1501&prodType=table


as you can see Seattle has over 830K people between 18-34 and Denver only 600K; Seattle has 29.1% of the people between 18-34 who are college graduates and Denver only 29.3%. now this is the hard part, it involves math ... a bigger number times a percentage is a bigger number than a significantly smaller number times an infinitesimally larger percentage.

and apparently you weren't even be able to read the chart you linked to which clearly shows the college educated 18-34 year olds of Seattle at 242.432 which is HIGHER than Denver's 188,265 (and San Jose's 155K) and Portland's is 130K is more than Columbus' 125K. you try and make a claim based on a chart that directly contradicts your claim ... that is some classic clownishness.

so you are wrong on your most basic fact, shall we just ignore the rest of what you have to say shall we?

i know all the games at BuckShaw weren't sell outs ... try actually reading my posts ... it was part of the point i was making in fact, that because (while they do well) they don't in fact sell out every game in the very small BuckShaw but can manage to draw 50K in San Francisco that tells me that not very many of their BuckShaw fans are from San Fran. but they still do have a very good %Cap even tho it isn't 100% or above ... for this season in BuckShaw it was 97% which would have tied them for 4th.

 

They have sold out a majority of games at Buck Shaw for each of the last two seasons (since a front office shakeup and new club president coming in) and 17 of the last 25 games.

 

The only game they drew 50K (actually 60K) in San Francisco was a Barcelona doubleheader in 2009. It tells you exactly zero about the demographics of the Buck Shaw crowd.

 

they drew 50K last year at Stanford, which is much closer to San Fran.

 

only a jerk moderator would go back and quote the original unedited post and not the "edited almost immediately later after further reflection removing unnecessary personal invective" post. but of course as a moderator you aren't beyond abusing your powers to make yourself look better ... i expect such petty things from BS moderators.

actually, you're wrong. if MLS had determined that their fan base was very high Jell-0 consumers than the more of them you had in a market the more potential fans you could have. not WILL have ... COULD have.

maybe i am using too big a words or something. there is NO 1 to 1 relationship between any one demographic and high attendance. or even a multitude of demographics. but just as with any business who knows the profile of its customer base you look for markets that have a high number and concentration of your potential customers. and for MLS that is young, affluent, well educated people (among other things) according to the last published demographic data about MLS fans. saying having more of those people in a market isn't a good thing for an MLS team is simply beyond foolish. i have never claimed that you could predict or guarantee having such a group you'd have high attendance but that isn't the same thing as it not being a factor at all.

doesn't matter? making a claim, quoting a data source, and having that data source say the exact opposite thing you are claiming? in my neck of the woods we call that utter incompetence (or fox news/conservatives) and grounds to exclude your opinions from further future consideration. maybe they do things differently where you're from.

and actually i've been following soccer since the late 80s and cut my teeth on english soccer of that period and so grew up with soccer as a working man's, punters, hooligans, sport. not for the affluent or well educated at all. only in america where soccer is seen as mostly a suburban white sport (in the 80s-90s) and was often castigated as a soft, effete sport by the mainstream public. now with the influx of latin/mexican influence soccer in america is beginning to more reflect that working class ethos that i was most familiar with when growing up but we are still a long way off from that.

for good or ill, MLS fan base, demographically, has a high proportion of well educated, young, affluent fans ... NOT every fan of course ... but higher than the national average and higher than other sports (on par with hockey).

and the point of all this was when looking at a potential expansion market you have to use some sort of objective measures to compare one to another. otherwise you are simply arguing about how much one person loves their home town versus another person.

there are certain things we known make MLS attendance success more likely. some of these things are not something you can know about an expansion city like Tampa right now. like quality soccer ownership. could Tampa get a kick ass soccer saavy ownership group that gave away free limitless beer and blowjobs to every season ticket holder and spent the 3 years leading up to MLS starting building up local fan support and Ralph's Mob to a 5,000 strong Supporter Group like the TA? i guess ... but that isn't probable or even something we can know.

so a fair minded rational person looks at the factors we CAN know from just the market and that have objective associated data ... historic pro sports attendance, current lower division attendance, current supporter group size, certain demographics of the MSA ... NONE OF WHICH ... ON ITS OWN OR COLLECTIVELY GUARANTEES ABSOLUTE SUCCESS ... but which allow us rather to fairly compare one market to another at this very early point where other even more influential factors like ownership and stadium location are not yet known.

otherwise we are left to debating potential MLS markets based on how much you just love Market X so much and you think it would be swell for there to be an MLS team in your hometown Market X then i can't really argue with that emotional anti-rational drivel ...

 

You mad, bro?

 

Stanford is much closer to San Jose than to San Francisco. And the reason for that big crowd was not thousands of San Franciscans who will show up at Stanford but not Buck Shaw. Also, your usage of "San Fran" shows you have nothing useful to say about this area.

 

ElJefe - The Auguste Rodin of Snide.

 

AT&T Park to Stanford Stadium = 34.7 miles
Stanford Stadium to Buck Shaw Stadium = 16.4 miles

 

Stop saying that that was the ONLY reason why so many people went to the game at Stanford! God, what a bunch of straw-man-builders you guys are! It's only one of MANY reasons to defend a preju....er, reach a logical conclusion, no need to go parsing them like they all count for something or anything.

 

As a bay area resident I find this conversation to be quite amusing... Stanford closer to "San Fran" than to San Jose... small size of the "baseball stadium"... although I'm not even sure what exactly is being argued here and why?

I'd guess very few fans come down from SF on a regular basis... certainly the game vs Houston at phonebooth park was DEAD despite being a doubleheader with the Mexican Olympic team.
If there was a separate MLS team up there it would probably have close to zero impact on attendance. Heck it might actually get folks in the area talking about MLS if there was a decent rivalry (I saw a quote from SKC management saying they want a team in St. Louis for similar reasons)....

 

Shit. I just realized this was the Tampa thread.

 

I really wish the San Fran Giants had moved to Tampa...

 

I am pretty sure I have the Trib from that day around here somewhere.

 

We wouldn't have been crying too hard had that happened.

-Signed,
Oakland A's fans

Then again, we Quakes fans don't wish anyone to lose their team, so 'yay' for SF keeping their VaGiants. [The team that accepted South Bay rights from the A's, who extended that olive branch to allow that other Bay Area team to stay since they needed the potential revenue to finance phonebooth park, rather than move to Florida. The team that now refuses to allow the A's to build a ballpark in SJ, which is probably the only way the team can stay in Bay Area. Nice.]

On topic:
That VSI proposal, with all the tax loophole/charity manipulation sounds, as is often said of a long-range shot, like a very "optimistic" one. Probably one that will sail well over the crossbar. Hopefully, Tampa eventually gets an MLS team, but a more realistic proposal is likely in order.

 

Stanford is closer to San Jose than it is to San Francisco. Like San Jose, it is within Santa Clara County.

Edit: I see that this point has already been raised by others.

 

That's twice this week I've come back to this thread thinking there may be some on topic news. Cut it out already!