Virgin territory for pro sports

Absolutely. When the roof caved in at the Hartford Civic Center, the Whalers played home games at the Springfield Civic Center for a year or two. I think the fan club called itself the I-91 group or something like that. And I'm almost sure Bradley serves Springfield as much as Hartford.

 

I can't imagine an MLS franchise staying at SAS too long. It's a small venue, even for MLS.

 

Wonder how hard it would be to add seating. The wikipedia entry says it's expandible to 10,000 with temp seating. Looks like if they wanted to, they could add a second tier to bump it up to 20K?

 

I could see a time when a franchise (probably the NBA, but maybe the NHL and MLB) splits its schedule between two cities like the KC/Omaha Kings did to make the economics work for two metros that don't quite measure up on their own.

 

Easily. I wouldn't see where that would be a logistical problem.

But until an MLS franchise were to arrive, why spend extra money on seats that wouldn't otherwise be used? The facility and the market - a surprisingly soccer-crazed one - should put it ahead of many other expansion prospects.

The drawback, though, is that the Triangle is small by major metropolitan standards. The NHL has been consistently complaining about that in reference to the Whalercanes.

 

Maybe to keep the College Cup, which does pretty well there, if I remember rightly.

Triangle's small, relatively speaking, but soccer takes place in a pretty dead area for sports (minor league baseball in Durham and Zebulon -- a +30-minute drive either way for many), but that's about it). And soccer's bigger there than most places in the mid-Atlantic.

 

I know, MM. If anything, that's exactly where I feel the Triangle could be the best fit with a major professional league. I don't think the area will struggle to piece together a legitimate fan base if Major League Soccer will give the Triangle strong consideration.

 

Springfield is definitely closer. When I flew in to Bradley a few days ago, I noticed that many of the flights into BDL were listed as Hartford/Springfield.

 

The Kings dumped that experiment a few years before setting sail for Sacramento, and dropped the "Omaha."

The "regional franchise" concept had a brief vogue in the mid-70s (mainly in the ABA) and I think the general consensus is that when you split a season, you reduce the incentive for corporate support, luxury-box tickets, etc etc. Plus as far as the players are concerned, you're playing 3/4 of your season on the road.

 

It's also pretty hard to get fans in, say, Norfolk to get excited about the Virginia Squires when two-thirds of their home games are taking place in Richmond or Roanoke.

 

Birmingham doesn't want a pro team. It has proved that more than once.

 

All true, but to combine a couple of ideas here, what if you had a Seattle-Anchorage NHL team? Play maybe 10 home games in Alaska and I bet the folks up there would go nuts for it. Whether or not it would create more revenue than a team that just played in Seattle is a good question though.

If I had to make a prediction I would guess than in the next 30 years or so there will be a bunch more "major league cities" with one franchise, but not many cities with more than two.