How does a 20-team MLS sound to you as a stopping point? Enough? Too many?
Don Garber clarifies MLS expansion policy
Either way, you might just need to formulate a personal opinion on this matter, because it looks like official MLS policy is leaning in on the big 2-0.
MLS commissioner Don Garber was in Dallas over the weekend for the Red Bulls-FCD contest. It was a prearranged visit, but Garber also used the opportunity to add his condolences to Bobby Rhine and his family on a night of honoring and remembering the highly respected former player and broadcaster.
At halftime, Garber held one of his impromptu, informal meetings with reporters and bloggers. So I asked about Mark Abbott’s comments from earlier in the week, and some agitated reactions that followed. Abbott, the MLS president and someone who has long sat just beneath Garber in the organizational hierarchy, told the Sporting News’ Brian Straus that a 20-team MLS looks just dandy to him and others in the league’s corner offices.
“Our focus right now is the 20th team in New York and we have not yet set a timeline for expansion beyond that, or even (determined) if we’re going to expand beyond that,” Abbott told Straus. “There’s no place we need to be. Even at the size we are, we have a tremendous national footprint and are at the size that soccer leagues typically are. We feel good about the size we’re at. Other markets could be very successful as MLS markets, but (expanding beyond 20) wouldn’t be out of need. We don’t need to grow beyond where we are.”
Major League Soccer is currently an 18-team operation. Montreal joins next year as No. 19. The league is working hard to add a second team in New York. That’s never been a secret. From there …
Garber seemed surprised that fans and media found Abbott’s comments newsworthy. But I certainly did. I always assumed, like so many others, I believe, that MLS would continue to expand at roughly the current pace until it reached 22 or 24 teams at least. After all, it’s a big country. Plenty of untapped markets look ripe for the tapping. Other U.S. leagues are taller trees, by far; The NFL has 32 teams. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL have 30 each. No, MLS isn’t in the same forest just yet with the NFL, baseball or NBA. But it’s not too far behind NHL now, and presumably has ambitions of moving incrementally closer to the Big Three of American team sports. Still …
“I was surprised at some of the social, some of the media reaction to that,” Garber said. “We never said we were aggressively trying to go anywhere, including aggressively trying to pursue a 20th team. We’d like to have a 20thteam. We’d like that team to be in New York and we’re gonna work hard to try to make that happen. At some point after that, we’ll expand at the right time. We have no number in our mind as to how many teams that will be. At the right time, we’ll make those decisions.”
Garber said the league has had “recent discussions” with Las Vegas and Minneapolis, and just a little further back with Miami. They are in “almost daily” discussions with more than one group in New York. (Yes, the Cosmos is one of them … but reading between the lines, it sounds like the Cosmos group isn’t anywhere near ready for prime time.)
So I asked Garber if this was a calculated chess move? At the risk of sounding cynical, I told him, it might seem like MLS is just trying to goose the market a bit here, using some well-placed PR to add pressure on potential new owners. He insisted there was no market manipulation at work.
“Honestly, we’re really not,” he explained. “I made this comment to the staff earlier today: There was a time when expansion was a core, strategic priority. It’s not that now. We’ve got many priorities, but expansion is not one of them.”
What about the economy, I asked? Perhaps this public pronouncement of conservative growth is tied to the fact that so many folks are about two lost paychecks from a bread line. Could it be that MLS will turn more aggressive when expansion prices could reasonably be set higher? Garber says that’s not the case, either.
“We have put a $100 million price tag on a New York team. We haven’t sold it to anybody yet … but I don’t believe the fact that we haven’t closed a deal has anything to do with price.”
So what’s the deal? It’s just about a stadium, the commish says. On this point, I couldn’t agree more. We see it over and over, how the right facility in the right part of town arranges the best chance for success. This ain’t 1996, after all. MLS is past the point where new clubs are content to be renters in the nearest NFL stadium. (And, pretty please, let’s never go back to those intractable days.) As Garber put it, they can’t just put down lines and throw up grandstands in Central Park.
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