some canadian guys writing about soccer

Thanks to the folks at MLS Rumors who brought an interesting link to my attention… according to the folks at Portfolio.com (and with a URL like that, they must be legit), Canada is “economically primed” at this moment to play home to six (6!) additional Major League Soccer franchises. As for hockey… uh, nope. Apparently we’re full on that front.

Yep, their neato infographic, showing which North American cities have the “capacity” (or “capaticty”, as they spell it) for a team in the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS, claims that top-flight pro soccer is ready to work in Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. But NHL franchises? There are evidently 15 potential markets for those, but none of them are north of the border.

What are we to make of this?

Well, the easy answer is, nothing. This same website also claims that the NHL should set up shop in Austin, Texas and Bimingham, Alabama, while Major League Soccer’s next inroads should be made into spots like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Omaha, Nebraska.

Though in a fascinating (but possibly unsurprising) twist, the research behind this infographic indicates that St. Louis (considered by many to be a hotbed of soccer support and a favourite to enter MLS soon) has an “MLS capacity score” of zero, indicating they have an inadequate financial base to support a franchise (to put things in perspective, though, Honolulu received an “MLS capacity score” of 100… hell, Calgary received a major-league baseball capacity score of 21, for God’s sake.)

Oh, and if we’re doing the soccer vs. hockey thing — Hamilton received an MLS capacity score of 100, but an NHL capacity score of only 79 (if you’re curious, Phoenix didn’t receive a score, as they already — for the time being — have a franchise.)

So, sure, it’s easy to mock this list, ignorant as it is of non-economic realities like climate and sporting culture in many different locales. But it is interesting to note that of the five leagues, MLS has the most markets with the capaticty [sic] to host a team: 37. The rest of the breakdown:

• NFL: 16 potential markets — including Montreal but, strangely, not Toronto, where an NFL game was played less than a week ago.
• MLB: only 2 potential markets — again, including Montreal. Who wrote this list, Youppi?
• NBA: 15 potential markets — again including Montreal… and Oxnard, California? WTF?
• NHL: 15 potential markets — including three in California, one in Nevada, two in Texas, two in Virginia and one in Kentucky. I’m guessing Gary Bettman will be quoting this report at the next Board of Governors meeting.

So from this, we’re to understand that soccer has unlimited growth potential on the continent! Hooray! And hockey is doomed to fall out of favour in Canada, resigned to the dustbins of our collective historical memory like so much fur-trading and monarchy-praising. Hooray?

Well, no. Like I said, the findings of this study come across as pretty preposterous in many cases.

But at least someone, somewhere, who presumably knows more about business and market analysis than I do, took the time to look at this and thinks that there are plenty of places that could — at least from a strictly economic point of view — support a professional soccer franchise, on both sides of the border. And that is actually worthy of a muted — but not entirely ironic — “hooray”.

So, y’know, hooray.

This entry was posted on December 10, 2009 at 4:22 pm and is filed under MLS with tags canada soccer, major league soccer, mls expansion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.