urbanMSP

Uff da

I think this is the first time Glen Taylor had spoken at length about the team.

http://m.mankatofreepress.com/news/loca ... l?mode=jqm

Speaking of the stadium, billionaire co-owner Taylor says “a lot of it would be paid for by private funds.” Goodness. I hope he and billionaire co-owner McGuire can eke out a down payment.

Maybe we can help them out with a kickstarter? Sorry I couldn't resist.

Hard to imagine someone pay $100 mil to get into a league where your cut of the TV is worth $4 mil a year. It might make some sense if more into someone else's market to pay a fee, otherwise its nonsensical. Businesses fib all the time to make themselves seem more important, thus more worthy of public subsidy.

Is anyone else surprised that the MLS hasn't tried to rename the team Minnchester United?

Merchandise and various other stadium space rental earn anything substantive?

The point is the when looking at third party, arms length transactions (media deals, player salary) the MLS is a modest league. Yet they maintain that huge sums of money change hands when the transactions cannot be verified. It's suspect.

stadium space rental earn anything substantive?

For what it’s worth. The Minnesota Multipurpose Stadium is owned by the public. And the Minnesota State High School League gets to use it for free. So all high school playoff games - including soccer - will always be played there, and not at the new MLS facility. Not that those games represent a huge amount of revenue, but it’s something.

^It's entirely possible that the MN United ownership group will ask a public entity like Hennepin County to officially "own" the stadium in order to avoid property taxes, so it's possible MSHSL could move stuff to The People's Soccer Stadium.

Possibly. But MSHSL would likely still prefer an all-weather facility with artificial turf. My local high school’s soccer teams conduct all their practices and play virtually all their games on turf. That’s increasingly typical, and it’s what high school athletes are used to.

True. Many high school varsity football fields (where varsity soccer plays) are being converted to artificial turf because of maintenance costs. Practice still out on the grass, but varsity play is on turf.

Hard to imagine someone pay $100 mil to get into a league where your cut of the TV is worth $4 mil a year. It might make some sense if more into someone else's market to pay a fee, otherwise its nonsensical. Businesses fib all the time to make themselves seem more important, thus more worthy of public subsidy.

What are you even trying to say here? Expansion fees exist in all sports, and ownership groups have already paid $100 million to get an MLS franchise.

Possibly. But MSHSL would likely still prefer an all-weather facility with artificial turf. My local high school’s soccer teams conduct all their practices and play virtually all their games on turf. That’s increasingly typical, and it’s what high school athletes are used to.

No reason they can't use one or the other depending on weather, right?

Related: My old high school plays football and soccer on the same field and it's real grass. But man did that get muddy on some days.

Hard to imagine someone pay $100 mil to get into a league where your cut of the TV is worth $4 mil a year. It might make some sense if more into someone else's market to pay a fee, otherwise its nonsensical. Businesses fib all the time to make themselves seem more important, thus more worthy of public subsidy.

MLS signs television deal with Globosat of Brazil,

http://mlsmultiplex.com/2015/03/27/mls-in-brazil/

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2 ... ches-live-

I would say this is pretty important. There's no reason to believe that more markets around the globe won't join in too.
larger market = more money.
It helps to remember that la MLS isn't just working with the US television market.

Interesting side note, the Portuguese and Spanish communications of this deal use the, a and la respectively, before MLS. So I guess anyone who writes "the MLS" is just being a latino hipster.

Sky Sports recently signed on to broadcast MLS games in the UK, too.

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2 ... artnership

No reason they can't use one or the other depending on weather, right?

Hmmm. I don’t know about that. Each stadium has it’s own staff of concession, custodial and ticket office folks, right? You’d have to make work schedule decisions hours before game time. Would either stadium operator want that sort of arrangement?

^Don't a lot of these concessions use outside groups/nonprofits/etc. to help fill concession? As in, these groups can offer up bodies to do the work and then get to keep a portion of the proceeds from concession revenue. I know Xcel does that at least some of the time. Presumably if that was the case at any MSHSL function, they'd just have to let volunteers know ahead of time that, hey, you've gotta move to the other side of downtown.

Concessions usually are run by third parties, but what you're describing is a bit over-simplified. Really the only way it might work would be if both stadiums had the same management and vendors, but even then you'd have to block off dates for two stadiums when only one would get the event.

It might be possible to change the agreement so the state soccer tournament was at the MLS stadium, but as someone else mentioned, the high school league might prefer to keep it indoor just because of the potential weather.

Pat Borzi on the history of tension between the Twins and Vikings.

http://www.minnpost.com/sports/2015/03/ ... -franchise

I'm surprised that this is the first mention (that I've seen, at least) of Target Field. Given that NYCFC is playing in Yankee Stadium indefinitely at this point, a temporary home at Target Field seem much more likely than MLS rescinding the offer. I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if MLS granted the team to start in 2017, playing in Target Field, while a new stadium is built.

The Star Tribune just wrote another full-length story about whether or not the team will ask for public money. The justification this time was apparently this quote:

“I’ve told them they don’t have to worry about extensions and stuff, because all they have to do is write a check,” Salmen said. “And they say, ‘Well we have to go through the Legislature.’ ”

Salmen said he believes “this whole deal is contingent upon government money.”

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/298086811.html