Since 2002, when the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion ceased to exist, Major League Soccer has had a gaping hole in its plans to establish itself as the top football league in the United States.
MLS, firmly entrenched in the northeast and West Coast, was almost a non-entity in the South. Fans who wanted to watch matches in person had FC Dallas and DC United as their closest options, with the addition of the Houston Dynamo in 2006 only slightly improving matters.
Now, the league – buoyed by rude financial health and an expansionist mind-set – is filling that gap in its sphere of influence. In addition to Manchester City-backed New York City FC, MLS next year will welcome Orlando City into its fold, and David Beckham is using every bit of his considerable charm to secure Miami's return to the league.
Sunday brought the latest round of MLS expansion news, a development that at once felt new and yet eerily familiar. Jonathan Tannenwald of Philly.com broke the news, later confirmed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that Atlanta will be awarded MLS' 22nd franchise later this month. An official announcement is expected next week. The new team will operate in association with the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League. Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who founded Home Depot, a major sponsor of MLS and the United States Soccer Federation, has been in extended talks about joining the league.
At first glance, this makes eminent sense for MLS. Atlanta is the only one of the top 10 US population centres without an MLS team, and there is clearly an appetite for football in the area – last month’s friendly between Mexico and Nigeria at the Georgia Dome drew more than 68,000 fans, a record crowd for the sport in the city.
In addition, being able to play in the Falcons' new, US$1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) stadium when it opens in 2017 removes any uncertainty over where the team will call home. The stadium will be in downtown Atlanta, across from the Georgia Dome, and having a public transit stop just more than a block away should not be underestimated in an otherwise car-oriented city. When searching for homes of a more suitable size, MLS teams often find themselves out in the suburbs – for example, the Chicago Fire (Bridgeview, Illinois), New York Red Bulls (Harrison, New Jersey), Colorado Rapids (Commerce City, Colorado) and FC Dallas (Frisco, Texas) – far from public transportation and much of their fanbase.
As clear as the positives are, though, the negatives are equally apparent. Playing on artificial turf in a cavernous NFL stadium with the upper deck covered by tarps hearkens back to the early days of the league – MLS 1.0, as the cool kids call it – when attendance was sparse and MLS struggled to get national exposure. With the roaring success that is league expansion into the Northwest and the influx of stadiums more suited to the crowds and needs of MLS teams, it is a strange time to go back to that old formula. As the New England Revolution can attest, it is no fun being a second-class citizen in your own stadium.
Then there is the matter of Atlanta as a sports market. Fans in Atlanta have a not-entirely-undeserved reputation as a lukewarm bunch. Consider the Atlanta Braves, the city’s most successful professional sports team. During a 15-year stretch from 1991 to 2005 in which the Braves won 14 division titles (the 1994 Major League Baseball season was cut short by a players’ strike), they led the National League in attendance just once. When the winning stopped, they struggled to crack the top half of NL attendance table. The Atlanta Thrashers never finished higher than 21st in the National Hockey League in attendance before being relocated to Winnipeg in 2011.
The Braves plan to leave their current home, 50,000-seat Turner Field, for a new stadium in suburban Cobb County in 2017. That will create a sporting niche that Atlanta’s new MLS team should exploit. The MLS 1.0 approach of banking on the youth football community, families and a large Hispanic population does not cut it anymore; meeting the high standard set by other recent additions requires tapping into the kind of young, urban professional fanbase that has helped the likes of the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders become the new public face of MLS.
With its committed ownership, considerable regional drawing power and wealth of Fortune 500 companies, Atlanta has the ingredients for success in MLS. Its ability to secure a consistent core of fans and replicate the raucous in-stadium atmosphere that is the league's new calling card is essential for the team to go beyond being a mere tool to fill dates in Blank's new stadium.
pfreelend@thenational.ae
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