March 3, 2017
Hello all; this is another in a series of open letters
urging Miami Beckham United (MBU), David Beckham’s project to launch an MLS
club in Miami, to consider talking to Bill Edwards and the other owners of the
Tampa Bay Rowdies, as an alternate backup plan if the Miami situation does not
work out. As I mentioned in my previous letters I am documenting some of this
letter writing campaign in my blog (http://supportyourlocalfootballclub.blogspot.com/). This is my
eighth letter; the first letter was sent September 7, 2015.
As anticipated, Bill Edwards has recently announced (this
past Dec. 6th) his intentions to move the Tampa Bay Rowdies to MLS,
and to expand Al Lang Stadium (privately financed). The Tampa Bay Rowdies were
one of 12 markets to put in a bid for MLS expansion spots 25-28, by the January
31st deadline. Some of you may have seen this:
Tampa Bay Rowdies
Drop Off MLS Expansion Application
Published on Jan 31,
2017
Take a look at the
highlights from yesterday's trip to New York City, where Bill Edwards submitted
an official expansion application to join Major League Soccer (MLS).
Edwards handed off
the application to MLS President & Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott, who
thanks the Rowdies delegation for making the trip to the league offices.
MBU recently passed its third year anniversary (Feb. 5,
2014) of David Beckham’s MLS to Miami announcement. Although we continue to be
told that Miami will have a team playing in MLS by 2019, at this point most
fans who have been following this story greet with extreme skepticism continued
talk by MLS and MBU that any kind of deal in Miami is close to happening. The
implied talk that additional MLS expansion might be further delayed due to the
Miami situation is not popular with MLS fans, either.
I began this letter writing campaign with the idea of
bringing David Beckham’s and MLS’s attention to the Tampa Bay Rowdies, but now
that Bill Edwards has announced his MLS intentions my main purpose is seeing
that the Tampa Bay Rowdies get into MLS; also Bill Edwards has officially
announced his invitation to David Beckham both directly and through Joe Cole:
Rowdies Contacted
David Beckham About Possibly Partnering in Tampa Bay
In an interview with
EoS, Rowdies Owner Bill Edwards acknowledged he’d more than entertained the
notion of calling up the former England star after his well-documented
struggles in finalizing a deal in Miami – he actually dialed the English star.
“That’s come up so
many times and there have been so many letters saying ‘Why doesn’t Beckham come
to St Petersburg?” Edwards said. “The answer is yes, we have. We’ve tried to
reach out to no avail, but [Beckham] should just come visit and take a look.”
Edwards even relied
on some help from another former star of the England national team to get in
touch with Beckham. According to Edwards, current Rowdies midfielder and past
Premier League champion Joe Cole has been in contact with Beckham recently.
“We’ve got one of
[Beckham’s] former teammates here — Joe Cole,” he said. “They played for years
together. Joe’s reached out. They’re old friends. I can’t tell you what Joe and
he said to each another, but we do know that Joe has done that.”
Since this idea is now all out in the open, my letter
writing campaign is now probably just about over. I will however make a few
more points, for the record, about the Tampa Bay Rowdies and #MLS2StPete. I
should also note one other smart move that Bill Edwards has made recently:
Rowdies add key
former Orlando execs – with eyes on MLS
Rowdies Owner Bill
Edwards tells EoS that he has secured the services of former Orlando City SC
executives Brett Lashbrook and Forrest Eber – both who played important roles
in bringing MLS to Orlando a few years ago.
I encourage Brett Lashbrook and Forrest Eber to continue the
good work they did in Orlando, by getting the Rowdies into MLS, and I also
encourage them as part of that process, to research the history of the Tampa
Bay Rowdies, and to learn what made the Rowdies such a success story back in
the 1970s. I lived in Tampa at the time and it was quite an extraordinary
experience.
Speaking of Orlando, one of the points against #MLS2StPete I
often hear is that “Orlando is too close”. I went on MapQuest and looked up the
distance between some existing MLS stadiums and some proposed new MLS expansion
market stadiums, and here is what I found:
107 miles from
Orlando to St. Petersberg. (Orlando City Stadium to Al Lang Stadium.)
110 miles from
Columbus to Cincinnati. (Mapfre Stadium to Nippert Stadium.)
111 miles from LA
(Carson) to San Diego. (StubHub Center to Qualcomm Stadium.)
116 miles from San
Jose to Sacramento. (Avaya Stadium to Sacramento Railyards Project.)
Are we really going to quibble over an extra 3, 4, or 9
fewer miles? It seems ridiculous. This close proximity is good for MLS; it
means bigger local rivalries, more travelling fans, more local media coverage.
Tampa/St. Pete is a distinct market; it is in no sense the same market as
Orlando. Also, the Tampa/St. Pete market is not only the largest TV market
(#11) not yet in MLS, it is the fastest growing market (#8) of the 12 markets
(13 if you include Miami) currently trying to get into MLS:
Full List: America's
Fastest-Growing Cities 2017
6. North
Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL
8. Tampa-St.
Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
Sarasota and Bradenton are just to the south of Tampa-St.
Petersburg-Clearwater and are often included in what people loosely refer to as
“the Tampa Bay area”, since the Sunshine Skyway Bridge connects them to St. Pete.
Bradenton also happens to be where the US Soccer Residency Program is located.
Other than the proximity of Orlando, people often object
that the Tampa Bay Rays in MLB don’t draw well in St. Pete, so therefore the Tampa
Bay Rowdies in MLS will not draw well in St. Pete either. This is erroneous. It
is an easy half hour drive from downtown Tampa to Al Lang in St. Pete on
weekends; MLB’s problems in St. Pete stem from the fact that they play so many weeknight
baseball games, when traffic over the bridge from Tampa to St. Pete is bad.
This will not be a problem for MLS in St. Pete as most games are on weekends.
The Rays attendance problems really don’t map on to other sports; for instance
the Tampa Bay Lightning in the NHL originally played at Tropicana Field in St.
Pete and drew record crowds there. Every city, market, stadium location, sport,
league, and team are different.
Another “objection” that drives me crazy are the constant
references to the MLS contraction in 2001; this was due to the fact that the
Tampa Bay team at the time had no owners and was run by MLS; as such it was
inevitable that they would be contracted when MLS ran into financial troubles
way back then. But, if one looks at the average attendance figures from
1996-2001, Tampa Bay was far from being the worst supported team in MLS. Teams
with much worse attendance records were not contracted, because they had owners
willing to support them. That was a vastly different situation than what exists
today with Bill Edwards and the current iteration of the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
In regards to the current MLS expansion situation, in spite
of the current insistence from MLS and MBU that something is going to be worked
out in Miami very soon, a number of people are noticing and commenting
negatively on the Miami situation (and not just us MLS fans, either), i.e.
this:
Three years on and
David Beckham's Miami MLS dream still looks light years away
Regardless, MLS has
waited a long time for Beckham’s ambitious plan in Miami to come to fruition,
but it won’t wait forever, even for someone like him.
And this:
Lure of Beckham,
Miami no longer appealing for in-demand MLS
As investors line up
for expansion franchises, David Beckham's heavily discounted Miami bid looks
like bad business for MLS.
Understandably David Beckham and his business partners want
to make things work out in Miami, but if this does not happen soon, it will be
time for MLS to move on and give the 24th spot in MLS to someone else. And I
suggest that “someone else” should be the Tampa Bay Rowdies, as they are also
in Florida, and have all of the advantages that David Beckham could have wanted
in Miami: excellent downtown waterfront urban stadium location, billionaire
investors, supportive local politicians, a growing, young, hip, urban,
Millennial fan base and diverse population, etc. Suggestion: MBU should join
#MLS2StPete!
What Miami has going for it, is that everyone outside of the
USA has heard of Miami; it is “sexy”; but as I have been trying to demonstrate
in these open letters, the Tampa Bay area has everything that Miami has, it
just isn’t as well known by outsiders. If David and Victoria Beckham are
interested in art museums, for example, downtown St. Pete has a lot of them,
with more on the way: the Salvador Dali Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the
Morean Arts Center, the Morean Center for Clay, the Chihuly Collection, the
James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, the Museum of the American Arts and
Crafts Movement, etc. Local events of note include Gasparilla (in Tampa), the St.
Pete Art & Fashion Week, the Grand Prix St. Pete, etc. Local
businesses/venues owned/controlled by Bill Edwards include the Mahaffey
Theater, Sundial St. Pete (premier shopping & dining center), Big 3 Studios,
and of course Al Lang Stadium itself. Simon Fuller should note Bill Edwards’
interest in recording music as another point of overlapping interest between
the Tampa Bay Rowdies owner and the MBU ownership group.
Another point that Don Garber and the MLS expansion
committee should consider is not only the rapid continued growth of the Tampa
Bay area, as previously mentioned, but also the growing numbers of young people
who are moving to the area. I have noted in my trips down south to St. Pete and
my conversations online, how many young people in the Tampa Bay area have
recently moved there from somewhere else and have discovered the Tampa Bay
Rowdies; the Rowdies are not just supported by old fogies such as myself who
remember the original Rowdies from the 1970s. I have also noticed a lot of fans
of other teams who are really looking forward to a visit to St. Pete and the
Tampa Bay area:
STLFC Fan here --
Where to go in Tampa (self.TampaBayRowdies)
Me and 4 buddies (but there will probably be about 20 or so of us)
are driving down on May 26th for the game. Any recommendations on where to grab
a beer and food before the game? Also where's the best place to stay if we're
trying to stay near the stadium?
Well for one, you'll be in St. Petersburg and not Tampa. A few good
bars to go to beforehand are MacDintons and Yard of Ale on 1st Ave. There's a
strip of bars on Central and 1st Ave. though so you should just check them out
and see what you like. There's usually never any cover. There's also a small
Irish pub right across the street from the stadium called Courigan's. When it
comes to hotels, I'm honestly not too sure what your best bet is. I know
there's a Hilton and a Hampton Inn that are very close to the stadium, but I'm
not sure what they're like price wise compared to other hotels downtown.
I lived in downtown
St. Pete (a block from Al Lang Stadium) for 2 years and other parts of Tampa
Bay for several others.. here are my recommendations...
Food : Red Mesa
Cantina, The Ale & The Witch BBQ/Brewery, Avenue Burgers, Engine #9
burgers, Roccoco Steak House, Bodega (Cuban Sandwiches).
Bars : The Bends (Hip
but non-sports), Playerz (The name sucks but good sports bar), Otherwise go
with the irish pubs on central and 1st.
Breweries : St. Pete
rocks for local craft beers! Green Bench Brewery, St. Pete Brew Co., Cycle
Brewery, Urban Comfort, and 3 Daughters Brewery all have great beers and cool
atmosphere.
Other Entertainment :
Check out a Rays game at Tropicana Field and hang out on the captain morgan
deck in center field. (Cigar Bar close behind). The Sundial is a cool little
outdoor mall downtown. Take the trolley to the beaches on the gulf side for the
day... Cool beach bars like hurricanes, caddies, and PCI.
All of these places
are walkable if you stay in downtown St. Pete. Tampa and Clearwater are the
other big cities in the Bay area and they have their own lists of places to go,
but will not be near the Rowdies stadium.
Last note: The team
used to have their own pub next to the stadium, Rowdies Den, it was awesome but
it has been sold. :-(
List is really good, going to add a few more. The Grand Central
District (not too far from core Downtown, about 5 minutes by car - closer to
Tropicana) has a bunch of great places...Urban Comfort, Kings Street Food, Red
Mesa Mercado, Engine Rose.
The Ralph's Mob home pub is Thirsty First on 1st Ave. N., really close
to the stadium. We start our March to the Match from there...
I can’t emphasize enough how many things there are to do in
the Tampa Bay area in general, and in the downtown St. Pete area in particular,
that are very attractive to the MLS fan demographic (or to USL and NASL fans,
for that matter). As the above Reddit conversation demonstrates, there is a lot
to do; St. Pete looks a lot like Cascadia (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) in
terms of hipster urban Millennial demographics and interests, but with warmer
weather, palm trees, warm sandy beaches, and suntans! Also we have flocks of
noisy feral parrots/parakeets who inhabit the area around Al Lang Stadium in
downtown St. Pete; I’ll bet Cascadia doesn’t have that either!
Pardon my obsession with ETFE, but as I am sending these
letters to MLS execs I can’t resist mentioning, one last time, articles like
this. Someday all MLS soccer specific stadia (SSS) in appropriate climates
could have roofs like this, allowing grass to be grown inside, while protecting
from inclement weather:
Winnipeg’s Leaf
conservatory to have unusual roof
The developers of a
new conservatory in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park are banking on an unusual
lightweight roofing material called ETFE to make a significant expanse of
indoor growing space financially feasible.
This works not only for year-round use in cold climates
where snow is a problem, but would be useful for Florida MLS stadiums where
rain and lightning is a problem. Also, the current renders of the expanded Al
Lang don’t show enough roof; the roof should cover every seat! There is also
the matter of the obstructed view, due to the light poles, from section 300,
Row 19, Seat 1, and other seats in that area. Well, that is all for now; MBU
and MLS please choose the Tampa Bay Rowdies! #MLS2StPete
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