Give the south a team, Mr. Garber.
68 days until USA vs. Ghana…are you ready? Midweek musings for your soccer Wednesday, with more Champions League on the afternoon menu. It is going to be difficult to top yesterday’s drama. Somewhere in London, there are still Chelsea fans singing songs in a dogpile about Demba Ba. Is it Atletico Madrid’s turn to stun the soccer world today? Should be fascinating.
Today’s column will only focus on one issue:
The MLS to Atlanta notion appears much closer to becoming reality.
Arthur Blank, the Home Depot businessman who owns the Atlanta Falcons, says that a deal is “almost finalized” that would bring MLS to Atlanta. The thinking is that the franchise would play in Atlanta’s new football stadium, scheduled to open in 2017. There’s actually a map somewhere– you’ll have to do the Google search yourself, sorry– that shows how Blank envisions this working out– but the idea in place is to have the venue function equally well for either football or soccer. Before you say that’s silly, remember this works fine in Seattle, and despite the fact that the Sounders are one of MLS’ premier franchises, it isn’t fair to discount Atlanta’s MLS hopes simply because the stadium won’t be entirely soccer-specific. What you can do (in fact I encourage it) is have a good laugh at Don Garber’s “ironclad rule” that any new MLS franchises must have a soccer-specific stadium in place first. This hasn’t applied to New York FC or David Beckham’s Miami and it would appear it will only half-apply to Atlanta. Only Orlando hasn’t gone rogue.
As for an Atlanta MLS franchise’s prospects for success, it’s a worthwhile debate. The caveat here: I’m a proud ATL-ien. I’ll always consider Atlanta home and I probably am biased about the city’s soccer passion. But I think I have a good grasp on the fundamental criticism and risk of an Atlanta franchise, and as noted, it’s worth discussing.
The argument against Atlanta being a MLS expansion city is- broken down to bare bones- as follows: “Atlanta’s not a good sports city, they hardly support the teams that are already there and the soccer club will be no different.”
Empty seats for the Hawks, and other Atlanta sporting teams, are too common. That’s true.
This is half-true, and worth more detailed, though cursory, examination. Atlanta has been a far different city since it was awarded the 1996 Olympic Games. Young professionals from the best universities in the southeast began flocking to Atlanta around 1990, and the population has expanded exponentially since. The result is a relatively young city (generally, good for soccer) that is highly transient (generally, bad for athletic team support because so many sporting identities are forged at a much younger age and people tend to support teams they most identify with “home.”) In terms of professional sporting support, the criticism that “Atlanta isn’t a good sports town” certainly applies to the NBA’s Hawks and the now-departed NHL franchise, the Thrashers. In the case of the latter, meager support absolutely contributed to the departure of the team for Winnipeg in 2011.The Hawks have their own set of issues, with attendance in the bottom-third of the NBA, but at least some of the problems are associated with the product itself– the Hawks haven’t contended for a championship of any kind in nearly three decades. That hurts fan support regardless of city, but Atlanta is singled out because the problems exist in other sports. Presumably, the lack of strong support for these two professional franchises is a referendum on fans of “less-popular sports” in Atlanta, and the thinking is that soccer will be no different. It’s a niche sport and unless the team is highly competitive, support will suffer. I understand that thinking, but don’t find it a compelling reason to exclude MLS from the city.
NFL support follows this trend, but to a lesser extent. The team has improved drastically under the ownership of the passionate Arthur Blank, and the city, which remains demographically and residentially one of the most diverse and integrated cities in the United States, embraced the Falcons after they drafted Michael Vick. Attendance skyrocketed and the television blackouts common to Falcons football in the 80’s and much of the 90’s ceased. After the dog-fighting arrest and incarceration of Vick, the fans left for a short period, but have returned as the product again improved, largely due to the NFL Draft selection of Matt Ryan as quarterback. The team has competed for the NFC Championship under Blank’s ownership, and still drew quite well last season despite a horrendously disappointing campaign. The old adage used to be that the fans would go if the Falcons were good; this remains somewhat true but less so today.
College football is king, but what does that have to do with MLS?
Atlanta’s true loves are college football and the Atlanta Braves. College football support in Atlanta speaks for itself, and is predominantly motivated by geography and the demographic composition of the city: when you are in the South where college football is already king and you are the city the young professionals flock to after they attend their football-lovin’ university, the sport is bound to be adored. It is. This passion is unrivaled and it is year round. It will always be that way, but here’s the thing: soccer was never going to affect that anyway. College football fans may not flock to see autumn MLS matches in Atlanta- that’s true– but devout soccer fans probably will go anyway. The battle isn’t zero-sum.
As for the Braves, they’ve been in Atlanta longer than any of the other professional franchises and they’ve always had the best support. Even in lean years, and despite how difficult it is to get to Turner Field, people will go. When the Braves are good, the only reason the stadium doesn’t sell out is that it is a renovated Olympic Stadium and the capacity is too large. Baseball attendance in Atlanta ranks in the top-third in Major League Baseball and it is unlikely to change, even when the team makes a silly move to suburban Cobb County. The good news for MLS fans is that Atlanta soccer fans won’t have to deal with Braves traffic when the teams have overlapping home games: the Cobb County venue is in the opposite direction of Blank’s proposed downtown MLS/football stadium. Navigating the downtown connector will be the primary concern.
So can MLS work in Atlanta? The thinking here is yes, but I found a couple of strong tweets from the great Steve Fenn (Follow him @stathunting on Twitter and please check out his new website at www.stathunting.com. Here’s one:
Per Google Trends & relevant to potential MLS Atlanta expansion:
Georgia 19th state in soccer-related search per capita, 28th in MLS ones.— Steve Fenn //\ Mast: StatHunting@skrimmage.com (@StatHunting) April 9, 2014
Here is the other:
To be fair, Georgia is 7th for Liga MX searches, so there is definitely real soccer interest there.
— Steve Fenn //\ Mast: StatHunting@skrimmage.com (@StatHunting) April 9, 2014
I use both of these because I think they demonstrate two things. First, there is passion for soccer in Atlanta. It’s a hotbed of talent anyway, and it makes zero sense for MLS, a league that is priding itself on a talent development model, to not house a franchise in a city that is a talent hotbed. I wrote about that problem when Orlando was awarded a franchise and the argument hasn’t changed because MLS is returning to Florida. It is closer for some fans in the south to go to a DC United match or see one of the Texas teams than it will be to see Orlando City FC play, and that’s a shame. But I digress. The point is, there is talent in Atlanta, and as is often the case, with high youth participation and talent comes fans. Anyone who saw the Gold Cup matches last summer in Atlanta saw full venues; this repeated itself for Mexico and Nigeria this winter. Even the USWNT drew fairly well, in the middle of an ice-storm. People like to see high level soccer in Atlanta, at least on the international stage.
There’s a reason the Mexican FA loves playing in Atlanta.
The second argument is perhaps more important: the largest level of support for soccer in Atlanta comes from its very large Mexican-American population. I have been ringing the bell on the argument that David Beckham’s Miami franchise will need to tie itself to the culture to be successful. Any model where Beckham brings in old English buddies looking to have fun on South Beach will likely fail– rather, Beckham should approach high-level Colombian players and gauge their interest first, and then make sure the team has role players of Haitian and Honduran descent second. A team that plays a Latin/South American fusion brand of football will absolutely draw in Miami. The same will be true in Atlanta, except because of the talent on-hand in the suburbs, the youth team may develop quicker. This presents Atlanta with a tremendous opportunity: sign Mexican players away from Liga MX and fuse them with local products– and my educated guess is that many of Atlanta’s Mexican-Americans, who are predominantly middle class folks, will support the club. There’s a reason the Mexican FA so often comes to Atlanta. Identify with those folks and a MLS side in the ATL will be off to a great start.
The bottom line is Atlanta deserves a chance.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @nwb_usmnt.