St Louis, Sacramento Among Leading MLS Expansion Candidates
RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber called St. Louis and Sacramento, California, "front-runners" for the next round of expansion, which could occur as soon as 2020.
He said other candidates, in priority order, were Detroit; San Diego; San Antonio and Austin, Texas; and Cincinnati.
"What held us back in St. Louis for 20 years is we never had a viable stadium," Garber said Thursday during a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. "Now we're talking to a group of investors and we're able to capitalize on the Rams have left. So there is a site where it's ready. ... St. Louis is a very, very high potential market, and one of the things that makes it more strategic for us is its proximity to Kansas City."
Garber visited California last week, and the Sacramento Republic of the third-tier United Soccer League released renderings of a proposed 25,000-seat stadium. The team also held a rally to show support.
"Sacramento is MLS ready," Garber said. "They've got 9,500 season tickets, good in any pro sports league. ... There's not a lot of competition there, and we seem to do better in those markets with less competition. There's an ownership group that's solid."
He said he told the Republic "the last piece of the puzzle" was for the team to obtain commercial commitments and sponsorships.
Garber said he received a call this week from Cincinnati FC owner Carl Lindner, whose team started play in the USL this season.
"He said, 'When can we come into MLS?'" Garber recounted. "I said, 'you've got to wait a while. We've been at this a few years. Just two good weekends doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a sustainable fan base.'"
The league, which started play in 1996, currently has 20 teams, with Atlanta due to join in 2017 and a second Los Angeles team the following the year. Minneapolis-St. Paul also has been awarded a team and could open in 2017, and the league hopes David Beckham's tentative Miami team could start play in 2018.
Owners have voted to expand to 28 teams. Garber said the next round likely will see teams added two at a time.
Garber remains confident Beckham's group will finalize a stadium deal and said it is working to complete its investor group.
"If it doesn't happen, it would surprise us, if not shock us, that they weren't able to cross all the T's and dot the I's," he said.
Still, he added Miami and Los Angeles have "got to get busy fast" with stadium construction to meet deadlines. There were no significant updates on the search for stadium sites by New England and New York City.
On other topics:
ON U.S. MEN FAILING TO QUALIFY FOR 2016 OLYMPICS
"It hurt when we didn't qualify for the Olympics," he said. "I know the rest of the world in our sport, in the men's side, doesn't view it the way they view the World Cup, but America loves the Olympics and they love the red, white and blue. ... I think it speaks to, at the youth level, we're just not good enough and not as good as we need to be."
ON U.S. COACH JURGEN KLINSMANN ENCOURAGING PLAYERS TO JOIN FOREIGN CLUBS
"I have a very different view than our national team coach does," Garber said, explaining MLS gives "players an opportunity to play day in and day out and lead a team and get lots and lots of reps, as opposed to going overseas to test their courage and test their mettle and maybe not playing." Garber added each player is different and cited 17-year-old Christian Pulisic, who is playing regularly for Borussia. "What could better than that?'"
INCREASING SPENDING
MLS is increasing payrolls slowly in an effort to improve quality of play, but teams are "still in investment mode."
"It would be very easy for many of our owners to have teams that look like Chelsea in Major League Soccer," he said. "It doesn't make economic sense for us because the revenues would not be able to cover the increased costs of being able to have a $100 million roster."
MATT MIAZA
Garber confirmed MLS received a $5 million transfer fee for selling New York Red Bulls defender Matt Miazga to Chelsea in January.
UNIVISION
"Univision has 15 percent of their viewers watching on SAP," Garber said, referring to the Spanish-language network's secondary audio program in English. "Our Univision games, our rating is as high, plus or minus, as our ESPN and our Fox broadcast. Tends to be a different audience, but we have some of our English-speaking fans, watching Viernes Futbol, watching that Friday night game on Univision in English, which is a game-changer for Univision, because it exposes them to new audiences."
REPLAY
MLS hopes to persuade the International Football Association Board to allow an experiment with video review at a USL match in Red Bull Arena in July.
(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
