The new Crew, same as the old Crew

(by Dan Loney bigsoccer.com 10-12-18)

Literally as I type this, rumors have tsunamied that the evil men who want to convert the First Team into Austin FC have been thwarted. As you may or may not care, I believe that the soul of the league is at stake here, but also the wiser business path. I consider the franchise blackmail game that the NFL plays to be sinister and ultimately self-destructive.

As Terry Pratchett reminded us, evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Unless that was Neal Gaiman's line. It was in "Good Omens." Maybe they got it from somewhere else. I should look it up someday.

The math that drives franchise relocation is that casual fans watching television, and ads, are more valuable than fans who attend games. I think that's sloppy math, but I also think the NFL believes it wholeheartedly. So as long as nationwide interest stays constant, and the individual owners can sucker cities into competing against each other – well, why not move.

The premise is, of course, that hardcore fan attendance is not by itself a driver of casual fan interest. There's a reason pro teams put city names on the shirts in the first place – to tap into civic loyalty. Whether the NFL is correct in its devilish calculations, though, is not quite the point. Nobody really thinks MLS is popular enough to alienate thousands of fans at a time. Especially thousands of fans who were fairly instrumental in helping the league last this long.

Maybe, for the NFL, adding more teams won't increase revenue enough to justify reducing payouts from 1/32 to 1/36 or whatever. I do not believe that's true for MLS, not by a long shot, now while the sort of cities NFL holds hostage are the ones most enthusiastic for MLS. Atlanta, to pick a painfully obvious example, brought in enough revenue to justify the extra piece of the pie. So will Cincinnati. So will Nashville.

And so will Austin, one day. I say this as the crank who sees forty teams as workable (not counting Liga MX teams), but of course put teams in Austin and San Antonio, Sacramento and St. Louis, wherever. Sports is not a zero-sum game off the field.

Well, Miki Turner is running with the story, and he's a damn bright guy who is in the know about such things. If this IS a hoax, then pre-emptive congratulations, you got a LOT of dolphins in that tuna net.

"What I’ve been told is that the deal to keep the team in Columbus is “largely done.” Precourt will be awarded a team in Austin. The Columbus Crew will remain where they are under new ownership. What wasn’t quite clear was how this will be effected. The information I was told is that the Columbus will get an “expansion” team, but will keep their name, players and identity and will play in 2019. Which doesn’t sound like an expansion team, but we’ll have to wait for an update."

Leave it to MLS to try the "Shakespeare's plays were not written by Shakespeare, but by somebody else with the same name" joke in real life.

Or as Pete Townshend would have put it, "Meet the new Crew! Same as the old Crew!"

The "same team, better owner" slogans write themselves. Or would, if the new owner wasn't the corporate criminal who made the Cleveland Browns what they are today. But if you didn't want to support corporate criminals, why are you a sports fan in the first place?

The other reason to revel in the Crew being saved, even if you did buy Austin FC season tickets, is the Modell Law. Take tax money? Then you can’t leave without trying to find a local buyer first. Your state should pass one. Pass two, in case the first one runs out of batteries. We'll never know if a Modell Law would have saved the original Cleveland Browns or the Brooklyn Dodgers or the original Baltimore Orioles (who ended up becoming the Yankees, and have been changing the world in hellish ways ever since). We do know it saved the Crew. It won't save a team that doesn't have a considerable amount of local support, but teams that don't have that shouldn't be saved.

The #SaveTheCrew movement showed the Modell Law could stop both league and owner, and give power back to fans. This is – what's the cliché I'm after – a game-changer.

Well, it's more of a game-keeper. Oh, that word means something else.

#SaveTheCrew might have changed the direction of pro sports. No more, or at least much fewer, shakedowns of gullible cities and counties. No more exploitation, no more ripoffs, no more Los Angeles Chargers.

Real-time update – to me, not you, by the time you read this you will know everything that's happened, which says something about modern communication that would make Marshall McLuhan sound like Marshall Mathers – announcement coming at 5:00 Eastern, just under an hour away. Paul Kennedy of Soccer America says done deal. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine posted a clip of Toto's "Africa" with the Save the Crew hashtag. Still not voting for him, but thumbs up for not using Weezer.

I'm not going to lie, folks. I thought it was over for me and MLS, and I thought the USMNT was going to be a tedious slog. I have more hope today than I've had for almost exactly a year. I love American soccer. Thank you so much, #SaveTheCrew.

--------------------

http://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/us-soccer-lets-gaze-inward-at-the-meaning-of-holy-stop-crap-the-presses-the-crew-are-saved.2087943/

--------------------

Bill Archer - If the expansion team thing confuses anyone, then do what you always do with grifters and thieves:

Follow the money.

Having Precourt "sell" the Crew to the local investors would have meant that they paid Precourt something in the neighborhood of $150 million.

Selling the local investors an expansion team means - yes, you're way ahead of me here - MLS gets the check.

So faced with a) allowing Precourt to walk away with a huge pile of dough and b) pocketing a pile of dough themselves, MLS chose b.

Precourt's problem now is making Austin happen in the face of increasing local resistance, with indifference being the primary emotion.

Right now, as we speak, bars on Columbus are packed with delirious drunks, dancing, singing, crying, euphoric. Wall to wall TV coverage. The city is going nuts. It's insane. Truly something to see.

In Austin, they're still having to promise free swag, free food and free beer to get the same100 people to show up to events.

Fortunately MLS has their money. If Precourt fails, as he very well may, it doesn't cost them a dime.

Somehow, incredibly, Don Garber comes out a winner.


Cavan9 - Agreed, Bill. The other MLS owners just took a ne'er-do-well incompetent trust fund douche to the cleaners. Never thought I'd ever see major league pro sports owners evicerate one of their own so dramatically and so publicly (well at least to those who know corporate finance and can read between the lines on that front). Precourt is probably too dumb to get what just happened. The other owners didn't even think enough of him to bother buying him out! Maybe they'll do that after he fails to field a team in Austin.

I hope Precourt just learned that he needs to learn actual business before humiliating 22 other groups of rich men and women who retain far better financial advisers and legal counsel than he. Probably not. There is still plenty of money to lose in Austin. Watch the city move the goalposts on McKalla Place a few times more.

Personally, I can't wait to watch Columbus-Cincinnati games. From what you Crew fans say, it'll stack up well with the Atlantic Cup, California Clasico, Cascadia Cup, 405 Derby, Rocky Mountain Cup, El Trafico, Hudson River Derby, Texas Derby, whatever Atlanta-Orlando calls itself etc. That's a good thing!