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How popular will soccer become in the U.S. as a result of the plan to spend huge amounts of money to build a New York soccer team that can rival the best teams in the world?

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    The new team in New York will not be able to rival the best teams in the world, and they will not be able to spend huge amounts of money- at least not by world-leading club standards. MLS is a league with a very tight salary cap.  The cap is presently just under $3 million dollars per team- an amount that would fall short of covering 1/3rd of the salary of an average team in the English second division, the Championship. (The average player salary in the Championship was approx $340,000 in 2012, according to this article: http://soccerlens.com/finance-in-english-football-wage-disparities-between-the-divisions/92692/ ) And the English Premier League, considered by most to be the top league in the world?  Well, the same article I linked to above says that the average player in the EPL is making $1.8 million a year. So just TWO players in the EPL make more than the entire roster salary cap for an MLS team. Now, in MLS, teams are allowed to pay as much as they want to "designated players", but each team is only allowed to have 3 of these "DP"s.  So even if the new owners of NYCFC went out and blew the bank on 3 DPs, paying (say) $5 million each, their total roster salary would be $18 million dollars (3 at $5million plus another $3million for the rest). And $18 million is barely a third of a roster in the EPL, and certainly wouldn't cover the average roster in the German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, or Spanish La Liga, either. So.  The original question had, as a premise, the notion that Sheikh Mansour would spend massive sums of money... but in reality, he's not going to be spending grotesquely more than other MLS owners. His franchise fee of $100 million is more than others will pay; for example, if I had to guess, I'd say that Arthur Blank will pay $60-75 million for a franchise in Atlanta. And Mansour will obviously have higher stadium building costs than other MLS teams have seen, simply because he's going to build somewhere in New York City that is well-accessed by mass transit... and that's expensive real estate that's more or less fully developed (meaning he's going to have to buy someone out).  (It remains to be seen how much money he'll have to actually spend, and how much the city of NY will chip in.) Still, the point is that overall, his costs aren't anywhere near what he's spent on Man City, and even if he wanted to spend massively on players, he can't in MLS's structure. With that in mind, how much will having a team in New York City proper help MLS?  Some, but not as much as MLS seems to think, in my opinion. I believe that MLS is repeating a mistake they made already in allowing the NYCFC identity to be closely tied with Man City. The previous mistake was Chivas USA.  The notion sold to MLS was that Chivas USA would be the "Mexican" club in the Los Angeles area (which, of course, has a fairly huge Mexican-American population). The reason this was dumb is that for one thing, by tying CUSA's identity to being "the Mexican club", the semi-implied message to anyone who's not Mexican (white, black, Asian, and even non-Mexican Latinos/Hispanics) is that it's not THEIR team. Additionally, and this is definitely poorly understood by MLS executives... there are 18 teams in Liga MX, the Mexican top soccer league.  Only one of them is Club Deportivo Guadalajara (the much-older Mexican version of Chivas). While Chivas-Mexico has a large following, the number of Mexican people who do NOT follow them is far larger. So in LA, Chivas USA is a subset of the Mexican population, which is a subset of the overall population. Soccer is not popular enough in the USA for ANY team to intentionally limit their potential audience. And MLS is doing the same thing with NYCFC. The best thing they could do is to intentionally make NYCFC very independent of Man City.  They can do deals between the clubs "under the covers", but if the identity of the NY team is tied to the identity of the ManCity club, it's a huge mistake. NY area fans of Chelsea, or ManU, or Tottenham, or one of any of the other clubs in the English Premier League aren't going to follow NYCFC.  That's excluding a huge portion of your potential audience right out of the gate, which is (I know I'm belaboring this point) a very very very stupid thing to do. In other words, I'm really happy that the city proper will have a team (NY Red Bulls are actually a New Jersey team, not a NYC team).  But I think MLS won't see nearly as much glamour and glitz and increase in overall viewership and fandom from NYCFC as they all seem to have convinced themselves they're going to see.

Paul Cox at Quora Visit the source

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On the surface the new NYFC is kind of a strange direction for the MLS. However when I looked at some of the numbers, it makes sense. 1. Attendence: Below I have created a table [1]. As it shows, the league is running nicely at a 88% (although some stadiums artificially reduce their capacity for some games. A look at NY shows they were running on average at 73%. I haven't found anything about season ticket holder waiting lists, but that I don't think is a problem. 2. TV: Although the TV ratings for MLS games are not as as popular as Mexican and EPL games [2], with this investment, it could go along way to improve the ratings (and the subsequent tv contracts that will come with it) [3].  3. Comparisons with other leagues As the above table shows, currently the MLS ranks third among the five major leagues in average attendance [1] (although it is last in aggregate attendance). So as it shows, the league is growing. It has work to do with TV ratings. It has work to get aggregate attendance up. So how can they do that? 1. Get more star players. With the investment by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansour_bin_Zayed_Al_Nahyan that should provide more funds to allow this. 2. Since the stadiums are currently at 88% capacity, it makes sense to have a new team. Although it is possible to increase the capacity of the existing stadium for the NYRB, this is very risky as a team proposition. In England for instance, it is common to have alot of teams, with smaller stadia than several big ones. This is why the EPL strategy makes sense. When Portsmouth went bankrupt in 2011 [4] did it take the league down? Of course not. 3. With more stars, and more stadiums, the tv viewership should improve. So the tv contracts should improve as well. 4. TV landscape. NBCSports Network is getting competitive  with having the NHL, EPL, Formula 1, Indycar, and some MLS games. CBSSports Network is right now a blip, but there. Fox is changing the Speed channel to a new Fox Sport1. With Fox Soccer losing the EPL to NBCSports Network in the fall, and of course there is ESPN and the networks, there is alot of money chasing content. With all of these factors, the future looks bright for the MLS and for soccer in general.  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance [2] http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/One-thing-Major-League-Soccer-can-do-to-get-better-right-now.html [3] http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/57153/are-more-people-watching-mls-in-person-or-on-television [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_F.C.

Greg Beck

Considering there are teams in the NYC area that consistently win, but still have a relatively small fanbase, the success of Soccer in the NYC area is far from a sure thing. One example is the New Jersey Devils, who have been perennial winners for two decades, with 3 Stanley Cups and a fairly new arena, but still struggle with attendance.  Also, the Red Bulls, who have a nice stadium in NJ, but are probably hurt by the location and their lack of interest in staging concerts at Red Bull Arena.  If Red Bull had more concerts, it would get more people into the venue, that would otherwise not go there, and convince some that it's not that much of a hassle to take the PATH there for a soccer match. Soccer in New York can be successful, but a winning team is only part of a successful promotion.  One team that could be a model for NYCFC to emulate is not necessarily their Yankees and Manchester City parents, but the Brooklyn Nets.  The Jay-Z-infused Nets brand exploded once they moved to Brooklyn.  They might never be as big as the Knicks, but people care much more than they ever did in their NJ days.  People care more about the Brooklyn Nets than Red Bull or the New York Liberty. Soccer can be a big deal in NYC, but the NYCFC (and Red Bull) teams need to get people to care, through winning and marketing.

Ian Isanberg

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