2015-09-07

2015-09-07

An open letter from a Tampa Bay Rowdies fan, to Bill Edwards and the owners of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, to David Beckham and Simon Fuller of Miami Beckham United, and to Don Garber and MLS.

As you know, David Beckham and Simon Fuller, together with Marcelo Claure, are trying to get a stadium deal done in Miami, so as to bring MLS to Miami.

We have not heard much news about this deal recently, and, in case this deal eventually falls through, some of us Rowdies fans have been thinking that Beckham and Fuller and Don Garber and MLS might want to look to the Tampa Bay Rowdies for a solution to their quest for a second MLS team in Florida.

The Tampa Bay Rowdies are celebrating their 40th anniversary. The Rowdies won the NASL Soccer Bowl in 1975 and have a rich history and tradition in the Tampa Bay area. Huge crowds used to fill Tampa Stadium to watch the Rowdies back in the 1970s, and many popular players have worn the Rowdies shirt and/or coached the Rowdies: Rodney Marsh, Derek Smethurst, Steve Wegerle, Roy Wegerle, Clyde Best, Stewart Jump, Mike Connell, Winston DuBose, Oscar Fabiani, John Gorman, Tatu, Jan van der Vee, Wes McLeod, Arnie Mauser, Eddie Firmani, Gordon Jago, etc.

If you have watched the movie "Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos", you might have noticed that the team mentioned most often, after the Cosmos, was the Rowdies. The Tampa Bay Rowdies name is still widely known inside and outside of the USA.

The Rowdies are currently in the NASL and are playing at Al Lang Stadium in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida (in the Tampa Bay area, just across the bay from Tampa). Bill Edwards, the owner of the Rowdies, has a 4 year deal with the city of St. Petersburg to manage the Al Lang site, and currently the Rowdies are averaging over 5,000 fans a game, which is close to stadium capacity. The location, however, could easily be redeveloped and support a new 20,000 seat soccer specific stadium suitable for MLS.

The idea has occurred to a number of us Rowdies fans that, if MLS and the Beckham-Fuller-Claure group (Miami Beckham United) are unable to come to terms with local authorities in Miami to get a stadium deal done, that they might consider talking to Bill Edwards about forming an ownership consortium to move the Tampa Bay Rowdies to MLS.

Beckham has something to offer Edwards in such a deal: a chance to use Beckham's contract with MLS to get an expansion team in MLS at a reduced expansion fee. Edwards has something to offer Beckham and his partners, and MLS as well: a downtown, urban, centrally located city stadium on the waterfront - on the harbor shoreline - the kind of location that they have been trying to get in Miami and have not been able to get so far.

Downtown St. Pete is not quite as centrally located in the Tampa Bay area as downtown Tampa would be, but, downtown St. Pete is in a nice walkable urban location with lots of nightlife, bars, restaurants, and other urban attractions (for instance, the Mahaffey Theater and the Salvador Dali Museum are right next door to Al Lang Stadium, on the waterfront), and which is comparable in many ways to what makes Portland or Seattle or other recent urban stadium locations success stories in MLS - a location that is not just attractive to "soccer moms and dads and their kids", but also attractive to the young, urban, hipster 20- and 30- something crowd that MLS has been trying to attract.

If Miami does not work out soon, think about talking to Bill Edwards and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. You guys might be able to work out a deal. There will always be a chance for MLS to work out the right deal in Miami sometime in the future; but the Tampa Bay Rowdies are ready now. All we need is a chance and we could provide a very lively in-state rival with Orlando City in MLS. We could build a truly world-class soccer specific stadium on the waterfront at the Al Lang Stadium location in St. Pete.

Anyway, these are some daydreams that some Rowdies fans are having. If things don't work out in Miami, please consider looking at the Tampa Bay Rowdies: we have history and tradition and an eager fan base that would expand very quickly in concert with Beckham and MLS, if such an opportunity presented itself.

Also, we Rowdies fans have an owner in Bill Edwards who is very ambitious, and MLS is the top soccer league in the USA, and we would very much like to see Bill Edwards put the Tampa Bay Rowdies back on top of USA soccer in MLS, and perhaps one day on top of the CONCACAF Champions League, and perhaps even the FIFA World Club Cup, and make the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the Tampa Bay area, and St. Pete a widely known brand name in world soccer, just as it once was back in the 1970s, only better!

We like to dream big!

Regards,

P.S.: Please excuse this mass email/snail mail. If you can, please forward this on to the interested parties mentioned in this open letter. Thanks in advance!