rider
04-15-2007, 08:04 PM
Reasons why I think this way:
1) Posters think that how much lacrosse a city has perfectly determines how well an MLL franchise will do. We've seen cities with "great" potential lacrosse fanbases struggle to show up for lacrosse matches (Philadelphia for example), and cities that seemed questionable do better than the east coast lacrosse cities (like San Francisco). Having a bunch of high school teams isn't a big deal, and the popularity of a college team doesn't automatically translate to the professional side (or else the WNBA's Connecticut Sun wouldn't be embarrased by UConn Women). At the same time, a savy marketer can bring fans to a city with little lacrosse exposure, just by actually spending money on advertising (something many lacrosse franchises don't seem to be able to do).
2) Too many people think MLL is a big deal. What I mean is, I've seen too many posts where people use the successes of major league sports teams in a city to determine if an MLL team will do well. That is comparing apples to oranges. Major league sports are well known to everyone, so if a team is very successful but not many people come out to watch, then it might not be a great sports market. However, you can't do the same for MLL, because about 0.1% of a city's population even knows about MLL, you can't blame the "sports market" for not coming out to watch something they don't know about.
3) A lot of people don't seem to get the basic concept of how cities get an MLL franchise. MLL doesn't just pick and choose cities it wants to and place teams there. Rather, MLL doesn't even think about expanding to a city unless there is an ownership group interested in buying a franchise there. So maybe a Seattle expansion would be cool but the fact is, there's no one that wants to own a team there, so it's a moot point.
4) Everyone seems to have this map of the United States set up where teams are evenly distributed across the country, so that every corner from Florida to Idaho is touched. That kind of mentality is unrealistic, MLL probably wants to have a very diverse base, but just spreading the franchises just for the sake of it will kill the league. It is far safer, and wiser, for a league to grant franchises in the same vicinity to stable ownerships than to just force Manifest Destiny. As I said before, MLL can't just pick and choose franchises, so they have no power over this.
1) Posters think that how much lacrosse a city has perfectly determines how well an MLL franchise will do. We've seen cities with "great" potential lacrosse fanbases struggle to show up for lacrosse matches (Philadelphia for example), and cities that seemed questionable do better than the east coast lacrosse cities (like San Francisco). Having a bunch of high school teams isn't a big deal, and the popularity of a college team doesn't automatically translate to the professional side (or else the WNBA's Connecticut Sun wouldn't be embarrased by UConn Women). At the same time, a savy marketer can bring fans to a city with little lacrosse exposure, just by actually spending money on advertising (something many lacrosse franchises don't seem to be able to do).
2) Too many people think MLL is a big deal. What I mean is, I've seen too many posts where people use the successes of major league sports teams in a city to determine if an MLL team will do well. That is comparing apples to oranges. Major league sports are well known to everyone, so if a team is very successful but not many people come out to watch, then it might not be a great sports market. However, you can't do the same for MLL, because about 0.1% of a city's population even knows about MLL, you can't blame the "sports market" for not coming out to watch something they don't know about.
3) A lot of people don't seem to get the basic concept of how cities get an MLL franchise. MLL doesn't just pick and choose cities it wants to and place teams there. Rather, MLL doesn't even think about expanding to a city unless there is an ownership group interested in buying a franchise there. So maybe a Seattle expansion would be cool but the fact is, there's no one that wants to own a team there, so it's a moot point.
4) Everyone seems to have this map of the United States set up where teams are evenly distributed across the country, so that every corner from Florida to Idaho is touched. That kind of mentality is unrealistic, MLL probably wants to have a very diverse base, but just spreading the franchises just for the sake of it will kill the league. It is far safer, and wiser, for a league to grant franchises in the same vicinity to stable ownerships than to just force Manifest Destiny. As I said before, MLL can't just pick and choose franchises, so they have no power over this.