From: marco@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (Marco Petroni)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.soccer
Subject: Re: Rothenberg's new US pro soccer plans
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:00:49 GMT
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines, Montreal, Canada

In article <9210161410.AA07928@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu> CSALLEN@uga.cc.uga.edu (Christopher S. Allen) writes:
>
> [stuff deleted].
>
>I do agree that more than 8-12 teams is necessary, it has to be nation -- if
>not continent -- wide and should include all regions in the US and Canada.

Agree here. A minimum "critical mass" of teams is necessary to get things
started; then other cities could be added.

>You might not have seen this, but there is considerable sentiment now
>for several of the strongest Canadian Soccer League teams to join the
>APSL now. In fact, Vancouver 86ers have agreed to join as of next year with
>perhaps Montreal Supra and the Toronto franchise to follow.

If memory serves me correctly, I believe that the deadline for applying
for the new league is November 1. To date, Vancouver is the only CSL
team that has applied and paid the bond ($100,000?). Montreal is supposed
to apply real soon now, with perhaps Winnipeg following. Toronto and/or
North York are apparently going to take a "wait and see" attitude with
the new league and will play in the Ontario Regional League, at
least for the following year.

>One further advantage the collective corporate approach is that it would
>allow a relegation/promotion system that might make a corporate sponsor
>of a relegated team think twice about long term commitment.

Well, I don't know about the rest of the CSL or old NASL teams but
I know that the Supra were owned for a while by a Canadian brewery,
the same one that owned the Manic, before being sold to some local
Montreal corporations, so there definitely is a tradition of corporate
sponsorship/ownership in this city. In the old NASL days, the brewery
stood behind the franchise even though it was losing millions every year.

In so far as the promotion/relegation scheme is concerned, it would
never fly here IMHO. First, there are not enough teams to do this,
and even if one day there were, it still wouldn't be done as this is
a concept that is not in use in other major North American sports.
Second, I think that a team that got relegated would lose all of its
fan support, leading to an eventual folding of the franchise. People
want to follow a competitive, entertaining team contending for
the top prize. I'm speaking from a Montreal perspective, but I can
tell you that the average fan would not shell out the money to go
see a relegated team here. Looking at the other sports teams that
play in the city, whenever the team does poorly, the fans stay
away from the games.

>Your choice of cities is a good one: World Cup cities, APSL & CSL franchises,
>and former NASL cities with strong histories.

As said above, I would start the league with a strong base of cities
that will have strong fan support. This can be determined from either
looking at how current cities are drawing fans with their current
teams or how they did in the past in the NASL.

I am looking forward to seeing a joint US-Canadian league which promises
to be more competitive than the CSL. I'm sure that more fans will
go to watch games if the league proves to play a good calibre of soccer.

Regards,

Marco...
--
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- Marco Petroni - VE2VTN - "Forza Milan! En ROUGE et BLACK." "Forza Ancona!"
	-- McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines (McRCIM), 
                         McGill University, Montreal, Canada.  
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