urbanSTL

Us outsiders can only speculate. There are so many ways to read into Stan's actions. His silence makes it very hard to tell what he will do. IMO, it would seem odd that he would be pursuing only an MLS team in LA. Why own a team in LA, when the market is saturated and owned primarily, by one of the biggest franchises in the MLS, the LA Galaxy. It would seem to me, that he would have to be working on a grand plan, to include a mulit-use venue, the Rams and the Gunners assuming rumor is true.

I know he has a big ego and wants to collect sports teams like some collect baseball cards, but it seems crazy to buy the LA Gunners and keep the Rapids. If anything, I'd rebrand the Rapids as Arsenal's little MLS brother, versus building a venue and buying a team in LA. Then again, I'm not worth $5.4 Billion!

DogtownBnR wrote:Us outsiders can only speculate. There are so many ways to read into Stan's actions. His silence makes it very hard to tell what he will do. IMO, it would seem odd that he would be pursuing only an MLS team in LA. Why own a team in LA, when the market is saturated and owned primarily, by one of the biggest franchises in the MLS, the LA Galaxy. It would seem to me, that he would have to be working on a grand plan, to include a mulit-use venue, the Rams and the Gunners assuming rumor is true.

I know he has a big ego and wants to collect sports teams like some collect baseball cards, but it seems crazy to buy the LA Gunners and keep the Rapids. If anything, I'd rebrand the Rapids as Arsenal's little MLS brother, versus building a venue and buying a team in LA. Then again, I'm not worth $5.4 Billion!

If he wanted to (not required in the case of the MLS), he could transfer the Rapids to his son as he has with the Nuggets and the Avalanche.

Yes, that is correct. MLS does not have the ownership restrictions that the NFL has. He could own the Rapids and any other franchises he wants. I would assume, MLS , until recent years, had a hard time finding billionaire owners. Why put restrictions, if owners of other franchises want to buy in. . .

DogtownBnR wrote:Us outsiders can only speculate. There are so many ways to read into Stan's actions. His silence makes it very hard to tell what he will do. IMO, it would seem odd that he would be pursuing only an MLS team in LA. Why own a team in LA, when the market is saturated and owned primarily, by one of the biggest franchises in the MLS, the LA Galaxy. It would seem to me, that he would have to be working on a grand plan, to include a mulit-use venue, the Rams and the Gunners assuming rumor is true.

I know he has a big ego and wants to collect sports teams like some collect baseball cards, but it seems crazy to buy the LA Gunners and keep the Rapids. If anything, I'd rebrand the Rapids as Arsenal's little MLS brother, versus building a venue and buying a team in LA. Then again, I'm not worth $5.4 Billion!

One of the few positive images from last Sunday's disaster of a SB was watching Paul Allen lift the Lombardi trophy - He built a team in his hometown and was thrilled with it - He is worth billions also, the team is what he does for fun, not a business- The DeWitt's take a lot of abuse for BPV - but honestly they were up front with the city about the stadium, did it with less public assistance then most stadiums (if not all of the new ones) and have brought benefits that are intangible to this town, Stan seems not interested in any of this, he is not vested in the city.

^I agree totally.... Based upon the fact that he is more than willing to alienate the STL Rams fanbase, proves he does not really care about STL. He loves money, power and sports teams. He does not seem loyal to St. Louis. I think he was awarded legal fees from the CVC, from the arbitration and took the award. He is cut-throat.

To play devils advocate. Some believe he is showing STL some tough love. He is making moves now, that alienate the fanbase and City on the short term, but are in our best interest for the long haul. In essence, he is lighting a fire under local leaders, so this process gets moving. If that proves to be the case, Stan will be a hero and all will be forgotten. I am not an alarmist, but I do not think this theory is reality. I think he is motivated by power and money, as I mentioned. He may have a lot of ties here, but I do not think he is loyal to his home state or STL. His actions to this point, say that.
Time will tell!

EDIT: Just realized this is the Soccer thread. It's started to overlap the Rams thread, which is fine, I think. However, to avoid further digression, I'm moving this content to the Rams thread.

http://urbanstl.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 13#p223713

3 months ago Florida had no teams - It now has 2

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2 ... -franchise

Press conf is just awful, they say there will be no public money used, Beck's group will finance

Meanwhile in StL we have an NFL/EPL/MLS owner who, if the rumors are to be believed, might be in forging a relationship with his EPL team into a market that he has no relationship with, that has 2 existing teams, one failing, while at the same time he refuses to even speak to a city where he has an existing relationship in the cradle of American soccer.

He does have the connections, name and charisma, to attract world-class players to play in a very nice (and warm) city. I think the franchise will be very successful. Who knows, maybe someday, he'll talk Sir Alex out of retirement. (even though he denies he has any interest now).

He also forgot that being the Miami Heat of something means having an incredibly fickle bandwagon fan base that only shows up when the team is winning championships and the center of pop culture.

The heat, largely, have terrible fans. They just happen to have the best player on the planet with a strong supporting cast, so the arena is full. Go back a few years between the Shaq/Wade championship and the "Big 3" era. It's not good.

The Panthers have essentially no fan base. Some of that's due to putting their fans in bad situations. As I understand it, the arena is located way outside of anything, and the team has been largely bad or medicare other than a strong run early in their existence. The fans just don't exist.

The Marlins. Everyone knows their plight, right? The worst owner in all of professional sports. Jobbed the pubic out of funds to pay for the stadium. Fields cheap crappy teams. Twice they've progressed to the point of being decent and then lucked into championships (they were the Wild Card both times—have never won a division championship), and he's responded by selling off their assets to get cheaper and crappy again. Nobody goes to their games. It's a sparkling new (if weird) ballpark that was publicly financed and is always empty. I'm not suggesting there could never be fans of a Miami baseball team, but there certainly haven't been for the past 20 years.

The Dolphins are stable. They are the one good fan base in Miami. They've been around forever and have had enough success to cement a foundation.

The other three fan bases are horrible, and Miami already blew a chance in (admittedly a very different MLS). I'm not surprise Garber is buying into star power and money, but this is a gamble.

I wonder why Miami is such a terrible sports market...

-Weather, beaches & tons other things to do
-Transplants, many from other countries, that have no interest in sports
-Disconnected and uninterested fanbases

Wow! This almost sounds like LA....

Good blog post out of the UK -

quote-

"Each time the MLS has expanded, they’ve missed one city, for more flashy markets like Miami and Atlanta. Atlanta and Miami aren’t confirmed for the 22 or the 23, but all signs are pointing towards them. St. Louis needs to be in those next three spots. Historically speaking, there are very few towns in America that have produced, and love the sport as much as St. Louis. The town is basically the hot bed and the origin of the sport. But they have never had the right management team, or people behind the effort to get a team there. AC St. Louis proves that. -"

Read the whole thing -

See more at: http://natterfootball.co.uk/2014/02/st- ... Wj8Aj.dpuf

More from the MLS - on the efforts of the Tony "Pocket Rocket" Glavin (when I was 11, I thought that was the coolest nick name in sport, today I doubt anyone would want it)

They site the RFT article still nice to be picked up by MLS feed - someone is paying attention -

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2 ... -mls-entry

beer city wrote:MLS has bought Chivas USA - and will sell it to a person or group committed to keeping the team in LA -

They currently play in the same stadium as the LA Galaxy. I don't know if a separate stadium is considered a benefit. If so, maybe there comes more merits to the Kroenke thing. Or maybe not.

Adam Serrano (covers the Galaxy) tweets a quote from Garber -

Stan Kroneke is not a candidate to purchase Chivas USA according to Don Garber. "Those days for us are over," says Garber.

Interesting comment from the Don - makes you wonder what kind of relationship he has with Stan

STLEnginerd wrote:What days are over, what does that mean?

No more Owners with multiple teams. Also said no families so his son can own Colorado and he own another.

“He [Kroenke] is not a candidate to purchase the team, those days are over,” Garber said, referring to the days when multiple MLS franchises were owned by the same families or organizations. “We are not interested in any other owner owning multiple teams. Stan’s been a great owner of the Colorado Rapids. I’m not familiar with what his plans are on the stadium site, we haven’t spoken about that. But all those rumors that I heard about him ‘buying the land so he could launch a second MLS team’ are unfounded.”

http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/2014 ... ture-plan/

^ I love that comment. Essentially Garber telling a billionaire NFL owner (sole owner) what can or can't do. Its one owner trying to convince the other thirty one other owners to go along with a change at end of day.

Sorry, but any businessman of Stan K nature would have an army of people crunching numbers on what to do with that property in LA. I have a tough time believing that Stan K's organization wouldn't even run the numbers on buying the MLS team, finance/building a stadium to weigh against expected revenues for this site. The numbers might killed the idea of an MLS team from the get go and Stan K might have given Garber a green light to that for all we know.

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber says Atlanta, Minneapolis, Sacramento, San Diego and Texas sites are under consideration as expansion cites.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer ... ansion.ap/

Not surprising. At this point St. Louis is clearly on the slow track. It's worked for other cities, but we'll have to hope there's still room by the time it could work for us.

Good piece (though a bit depressing) from Dave Lange on why we are not a candidate for 23 or 24

http://www.soccernewsday.com/usa/a/1661 ... -expansion

It comes down to this - we have no rich guys here who want it, and this is no longer runoff the mill millionaire territory at 100 million franchise fees - which is as frustrating as it is true.

Best course now Glavin's USL Pro team starts play in 2015 - is well attended and attracts some big money attention - MLS will probably not expand again till post 2020 (geez!) so by 2021-2023 we might be in a good position - if everything goes right - too many improbables at this point - and in 2020+ there will be a lot of competition.