“It’ll evolve slightly for some of those teams over the coming seasons, I believe. We’ll find the right solution that makes sense for some of them if they’re not achievingtheir goals already.”.”
— USL president Jake Edwards on the challenges MLS-owned teams face in his league. Two MLS-owned teams, New York Red Bulls II and Swope ParkRangers, will play in Sunday’s USL final but none of the 11 MLS teams averaged more than 3,000 fans per match in 2016. (
With all of these teams being relatively brand new, it will take a little time for them to start building up fan bases.
Not so sure. There is a real tension between MLS clubs using their USL sides as development sides or to generate profits. From a development perspective you would like to have the USL teams sharing the same training grounds and administrative complex as the big club. The LA Galaxy led with that model. Proximity creates enormous training and development advantages. From an economic perspective, it will always be a tough sell to get local fans to show up for games of their USL minor league sides. Much easier to do this if these teams are located in a regionally close middle sized market. The Dynamo paved the way with this approach and took it one step further by outsourcing the USL team business aspects. Next season their partners will open a mini-version (much better sized) of BBVA Compass Stadium in the Rio Grande Valley. A dedicated stadium like this never would have happened in Houston and, as a result, there will be a much bigger, dedicated fan base for RGV in the Valley than there ever would have been in the Houston. Economically this will prove to be a much better model and most MLS clubs, except the richest who won’t care about attendance, should gravitate to this approach.