Open Letter: November 6, 2017
November 6, 2017
Hello all; this is another open letter in my ongoing
campaign to get the Tampa Bay Rowdies into Major League Soccer (MLS), as
documented in my blog.
Updated. The letter
writing campaign so far:
http://supportyourlocalfootballclub.blogspot.com/2016/11/updated-letter-writing-campaign-so-far.html
We are getting close to the MLS expansion deadline in
December, and some of us Rowdies fans are getting a little worried about the
lack of any encouraging news for the #MLS2StPete bid, while other candidates
keep making news, for instance:
Ford family joins
Detroit's MLS bid, offers Ford Field as venue
It would be very encouraging if local Tampa Bay Area sports
team owners and other local Tampa Bay Area and other investors helped the
Rowdies #MLS2StPete bid and joined Bill Edwards’ ownership consortium. Time is
short. The Tampa Bay Area has squandered its rich history in pro soccer several
times already: in 1984 with the demise of the original NASL, in 1993 with the
demise of the original Rowdies, in 1994 with losing World Cup host city status
to Orlando, in 2001 with losing the Mutiny, in 2009-2010 with losing the chance
to find a permanent home for the Rowdies in Tampa, etc. It would be a shame if
the Tampa Bay Area wasted this chance for MLS as well.
The Rowdies have been making slow but steady progress at Al
Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg over the past six years, something which people
should take notice of given the instability of minor league soccer in this
country:
Rowdies Home
Attendance Thread - Game 16 vs. New York Red Bulls II [10/4]
(self.TampaBayRowdies)
6 straight years of
attendance growth for the Rowdies - a pretty impressive run.
The Rowdies have done this without a centrally located large
urban university stadium where they can sell cheap tickets to local college
students, as well (unlike certain other cities that have certain built-in
advantages in pre-existing infrastructure); the Rowdies don’t draw spectacularly
large crowds but these are still very respectable numbers for minor league
soccer, especially in a very large major urban area (the Tampa Bay Area is the #11
TV market, the largest TV market not in MLS) with lots of other sports teams
and other entertainment options and distractions. The Rowdies have also done
this in a very small stadium with some of the most expensive tickets in USA
minor league soccer. Since the ticket prices won’t have to go up much if the
Rowdies go to MLS, and the stadium location won’t change, this bodes well for
potential Rowdies MLS ticket sales.
Personal anecdotes: I know people who were Rowdies season
ticket holders back in the 1970s-80s who were rabid “Fannies” who went to every
Rowdies home game and some away games, who I see on Facebook nowadays, attending
Rays games in St. Pete on the same night as Rowdies games are in St. Pete, and
who show absolutely no sign of being aware that the current Rowdies team even exists.
MLS has already burned soccer fans in the Tampa Bay Area once, so it should not
come as a surprise that fans might be wary of supporting a minor league soccer team
given that past experience with MLS.
And has been shown with big cities like Toronto, Seattle,
Atlanta, etc., what a city draws in minor league soccer has no relation to what
that city can draw in MLS. The aforementioned cities all had very small crowds
for their minor league soccer teams before joining MLS. In a similar anecdotal
vein when I visit St. Pete and Tampa and wear my Rowdies hat, I constantly have
strangers tell me “I really should go out to Al Lang one of these days, and
catch a Rowdies game”. This is frustrating but not unexpected; the Rowdies are
simply not going to be taken seriously by most locals until they are in MLS.
Nancy Bataille, the retail manager at the Rowdies team
store, told me that she hears from people who flat out state that they won’t go
to a Rowdies game until the Rowdies are in MLS. This is a self-defeating and
regrettable attitude, given the rich soccer history in the Tampa Bay Area, but
it is an understandable one, given that the history of soccer in the Tampa Bay
Area has created higher expectations and a more educated, more demanding soccer
watching population than exists in many other comparable or smaller cities. The
current situation that the Rowdies are in, in minor league soccer, simply
creates an insurmountable barrier (in a market the size of the Tampa Bay Area)
to getting greater exposure and support. Only getting the Rowdies into MLS can
break through this barrier.
MLS really should think hard about reversing the contraction of 2001, and bring Tampa Bay and Miami back into MLS together, and not simply assume that Orlando and Miami are “good enough” for MLS in Florida. They are not; and MLS would be missing out on a golden opportunity to reverse the stigma of the 2001 contraction, and revive a very important historical USA soccer brand name (the Tampa Bay Rowdies), and create one of the most intense three-way soccer rivalries in Florida, similar to what exists currently in Cascadia. Florida soccer in the 1970s-80s has a lot of resemblances to Cascadia (Portland-Seattle-Vancouver) soccer from that same era:
Cascadia's soccer
craze boosted by NASL roots and community outreach
In brief: the
original North American Soccer League buried the grassroots deep into the soil,
inspiring a generation of players, coaches and fans who kept the flame of the
game going throughout the dark decades after the NASL folded and before MLS
came this way.
And as I have been trying to explain in these open letters,
the Tampa Bay Area in general, and St. Petersburg in particular, has a lot of
similarities to Cascadia besides just soccer history. MLS is interested in
attracting millennials, young professionals, “hipsters”, and the like, and is
trying to repeat the MLS success stories of Cascadia elsewhere. St. Petersburg
is a potential “hipster soccer city” for lots of reasons besides just the Tampa
Bay Rowdies history in the area:
How a dinner helped
woo a San Francisco tech company and 100 jobs to St. Petersburg
PandaDoc Opens East
Coast Headquarters in St. Petersburg Florida
PandaDoc recently secured
a $15 million Series B round of funding and chose St. Petersburg because of its
reasonable cost of living, beautiful environment and ability to attract young
talent. Fuller added, “St. Pete had the right amount of weird for us, it
felt much closer to a young San Francisco than most Eastern cities.”
Keep Portland weird? Keep Austin weird? Well, more than two
can play at that game! The image people have of St. Pete as a retirement home
with green benches is decades out of date. St. Pete is an art, culture, and
museum capital in its own right, with some connections to Seattle, Washington (the
Chihuly Collection in downtown St. Pete) and Spain/Europe (the Salvador Dali
Museum, a short walk from Al Lang Stadium). Downtown St. Pete has a certain hipster
Cascadian “vibe” that west coast tech people can appreciate, albeit the weather
is warmer, there are beaches and palm trees, and even feral parrots and
parakeets giving the scene a decidedly tropical feel.
As we all know, there are a lot of cities currently campaigning
to land Amazon’s second headquarters. Some people are pitching the sports
stadium angle combined with this as well:
Amazon Stadium?
Chicago developer hopes it's the ticket to HQ2 (chicagotribune.com)
One suspects that this might partially explain St. Pete
Mayor Rick Kriseman’s mentioning of the Tropicana Field site as a possible MLS
stadium location for the Rowdies, in spite of the fact that Al Lang Stadium is
the center of the current #MLS2StPete proposal. In my opinion the Al Lang
Stadium location is a far preferable location for a soccer specific stadium
(SSS), and the complaints we hear from fans that it is too small and should not
have an open side and isn’t expandable, show a lack of understanding of the
political situation of the Al Lang Stadium location.
Already we hear that the 18,000 seats in the Al Lang SSS
proposal isn’t a maximum and that the plans can easily be tweaked to 22,000
seats. And if we look at the Rays proposal for the Al Lang Stadium location
from a decade ago, considerably more seats could be possible in future expansions
(using landfill and moving Bayshore Drive a little further east to close off
the open side with additional seating), but that would involve local politics
which could only happen after the Rowdies have been in MLS for a few years and have
built up more local popularity and positive reputation. As we see in Portland,
a bright, shiny, newly-built-from-scratch SSS isn’t always necessarily the
answer. Every situation is unique.
Could the Tampa Bay Area’s campaign to attract more tech
investment, including Amazon, also be a tie-in to the Rowdies #MLS2StPete bid?
Could be; some Rowdies players were involved with one of the recent promotional
videos, in addition to local Tampa Bay Area business leaders:
Florida's Business
Climate Can Help Tampa Land Amazon's HQ2
Tampa Bay’s Amazon
pitch features LGBT leader Nadine Smith, Rowdies players
Tampa-St. Pete Amazon
HQ2 proposal video
Mayors Bob Buckhorn
and Rick Kriseman have put a proposal video out on social media platforms as
part of their bid to get Amazon to build their second headquarters in the Bay
area.
Amazon to Tampa Bay:
Quality of Life
Tampa Bay’s
world-renowned quality of life and tolerant, diverse communities helped
companies like Raymond James to attract and keep the best talent. Raymond
James’ Tom James, Equality Florida's Nadine Smith and Tampa Bay Rowdies
midfielders Marcel Shäfer + Justin Chavez share with Amazon.com what makes life
in this region so perfect.
Amazon to Tampa Bay:
Ashley Furniture
The Tampa-St.
Pete-Clearwater community is ready to offer Amazon the full support necessary
to open its HQ2. Ken Jones, Chairman & CEO of Third Lake Capital highlights
the Tampa Bay region's cooperative local government that allowed Ashley
Furniture Industries, Inc.' U.S. e-Commerce Headquarters to get up and running
so efficiently in Tampa Bay.
See St. Petersburg,
FL YouTube channel for other related videos. I would encourage both MLS
sports investors and tech company investors to give the Tampa Bay Area a closer
look.
So, in summary, what does the Tampa Bay Area offer MLS, and
tech companies, and why should the Tampa Bay Rowdies bid for an MLS expansion slot
be given more serious thought?
- The Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater TV market is the largest TV market that does not have a team in MLS.
- The Tampa Bay Area is a very fast growing urban area, and its growth is not slowing down; it is still one of the fastest growing markets currently vying for an MLS team.
- The Tampa Bay Area, and St. Pete, have a growing millennial, young professional population, precisely the kind of young, well-educated population that is more interested in soccer than in sports like baseball or football; soccer fan demographics in the USA are similar to hockey fan demographics and it is not a coincidence that the Tampa Bay Area also supports a successful NHL team. The Lightning originally played and drew large crowds at the Tropicana “Thunder Dome”, as well. It isn’t true that St. Pete can’t draw sports fans from both sides of the bay.
- Problems with MLB attendance in St. Pete don’t translate at all to soccer, with its far fewer, mostly weekend games. The Lightning drew well in St. Pete back in the day and there is no reason why the Tampa Bay Rowdies in MLS could not draw well playing in St. Pete. Traffic over the bridge from Tampa to St. Pete is very easy on weekends.
- The proximity of St. Pete to Orlando is a bonus, not a minus, and is similar to distances between Columbus and Cincinnati, San Diego and Carson (LA Galaxy), San Jose and Sacramento, not to mention the close proximity of NYRB and NYCFC or LAG and LAFC. In fact if anything the rivalry is too intense (with Orlando City fans starting fires and provoking fights), but on the whole this is another potentially fantastic atmosphere similar to rivalries in Cascadia and New York City.
- Bill Edwards has good connections with the St. Pete city government (regardless of who is elected Mayor) and the local business community. St. Pete city government is very pro-Rowdies and pro-MLS. Local businesses and neighborhood groups are very pro-Rowdies and pro-Al Lang Stadium expansion, as shown in the St. Pete referendum last May.
- The citizens of St. Pete voted 87% yes for an extended lease of Al Lang Stadium to the Rowdies, if the Rowdies get into MLS; it would be a shame for MLS not to take advantage of this.
- No local taxes or other public funds are going into #MLS2StPete or the Al Lang Stadium expansion, ensuring continued local political goodwill and lack of local, political, or NIMBY resistance. Given current politics and controversies that MLS is involved in, not taking taxpayer money for a stadium is a very serious pro-#MLS2StPete consideration that shouldn’t be ignored.
- The Al Lang Stadium expansion is not expensive and is a good use of existing resources.
- The Al Lang Stadium location, on the waterfront, in a centralized downtown location, in a walkable urban environment with lots of parking garages, hotels, restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, music venues, theaters, cinemas, shops, malls, museums, art studios, and other things to do, all within easy walking distance of Al Lang Stadium, is a unique opportunity which MLS would be foolish not to take advantage of. Opportunities like this do not fall into your lap more than once. Take advantage of this while you can, MLS.
- Though not a traditional tech capital, the Tampa Bay Area has always had an industrial base going back to the 1880s, including cigars, guavas, phosphates, and shipbuilding. The notion of the area as simply a retirement capital and tourist attraction is incorrect. More recent tech growth is encouraging, and shows no signs of slowing down. There are lots of potential synergies to be had in sports and corporate sponsorships that could tie the Tampa Bay Rowdies in MLS to things like, potentially, Amazon’s second headquarters, or similar tech business opportunities, if the right people decide to seize the opportunities presented.
- The Tampa Bay Rowdies are a historic American soccer brand, since 1975, and were one of the top drawing teams in the old NASL, setting Florida soccer attendance records at the time, with several crowds of over 40,000 at Tampa Stadium, and one crowd of over 56,000, and were averaging 28,000 a game by 1980. There was a good reason why MLS put a team in the Tampa Bay Area market in spite of having no owner. The Rowdies logo and green and yellow hooped sleeve jerseys are still widely known around the world, especially in the UK. It would be a shame to leave this historic brand languishing in obscurity any longer; adding the Tampa Bay Rowdies to MLS brings a greater historical depth and sense of history to MLS, similar to what the San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps have done for MLS.
In short: Come on you Rowdies! Onwards to MLS! #MLS2StPete
#MLS2TampaBay #Rowdies2MLS #COYR
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