3687: MLS Diary: Two New Stadiums

by : Bill Urban

For a young league with a future still best characterised as uncertain, Major League Soccer has gotten a good deal of positive news from a permanency standpoint in recent weeks. The league office has adopted a business plan centered around getting as many of the league’s franchises playing in the buzzword “soccer-specific stadiums,” although “revenue-specific” might be a fairer appellation. Good news on both broad fronts spells positives for Major League Soccer, alongside the usual caveats about a business running the league rather than the league running a business.

The Shangri-La of MLS stadia has, since Day 1 in 1996, been the building of a stadium in New York. Or New Jersey. Somewhere thereabouts. The spectre of the old New York Cosmos, Pele, Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, et al, and the glory days of the NASL in the mid to late ‘70's, has hung over the Metrostars, now the Red Bulls, since the league’s formation.

Interlude: Metros supporters, and their Red Bull brethren, will have noted that, in my brief listing of Cosmos aces above, I left out one, an individual of an epic ego who would place himself before all others in the Cosmos pantheon and other celestial aggregations of footballing talent.

Giorgio Chinaglia, Welcome to the House of Et Al.

The drawing power of the Cosmos, the international competition and “star” players, made an act very difficult for the more prosaic Metros to follow, playing in the decrepit, field-turfed Giants Stadium in front of crowds charitably labeled as “sparse.”

The Metros pursued a stadium deal, in New Jersey rather than New York for presumably cost-cutting measures, but the Byzantine nature of New Jerseyite politics combined with some less than intelligent decisions and public posturing from Metros execs meant that the stadium in the “most important market in the country” remained an elusive will o’ the wisp of a facility, repeat club promises about “an announcement in 60-90 days” morphing into league supporter, street-cred mockery.

“When will the BBC give its Panorama evidence to the FA? In 60-90 days. When will Tony Blair resign? In 60-90 days.”

The supreme irony of the stadium impasse in New Jersey is that, where an American entertainment powerhouse, Anschutz Entertainment Group, could not get the deal done, the Austrian company that purchased and re-named the Metros, Red Bull, accomplished the seemingly-impossible in less than a year. And the league website as a terminally-cute picture with as many be-suited front office big-wigs as can be crammed shoulder-to-shoulder holding shovels full of the broken ground in suitably impressive posture.

Done deal, as it were, with proposed completion scheduled to take place in the summer of 2008. Plus or minus 60-90 days, for sure. Like the other “soccer-specific” stadia, the problems created by the new stadium will cause at least as many headaches as purses it fills, for the stadium will be used for activities certainly not soccer-specific,” such as concerts, and also for matches not Red Bull-specific, such as summer international friendlies that assume more importance than a typical MLS summer league contest for the simple reason that the league’s marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing, stands to make more money from that sort of match than a league contest. Nevertheless, having control over revenue from concessions and parking, combined with control over the league schedule, will prove to be a benefit to the league from a long-term standpoint, particularly in the all-important New York metro area.

And presumably so in the massive, but less chic, Toronto area.