City launch MLS Franchise

[spacecadet]

One thing is for sure MCFC have been enjoying full worldwide coverage over the last 24 hours. Great free publicity, well done City.

 

[MaineDAWG2008]

NYCFC ok...

Hmmmmmm

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

This is strategically a perfect move for the football club.

I have felt for sometime football in the US inexorably moving towards critical mass and I suspect next years World Cup, given its location and equivalent timezone to the US, will provide that final impetus to fully establish the game over there. It won't displace American Football or Baseball, but it will sit alongside them within a decade imo.

It is an important market for City because the Asian market has already been subject to many years of exposure to the likes of united, Arsenal and Liverpool and whilst it should not be ignored I think it provides limited commercial opportunities for the club.

There is also a distinctive difference between the consumers in each of these markets which will mean that once established, the US will be far more lucrative: a City supporter in the US will prove to be a much greater source of revenue to the club than one from Asia. Their spending power will be much greater, they will more readily eschew snide merchandise and be better placed to visit games in the UK.

I imagine to many of our long-term supporters this may be another bewildering and unwelcome development to City and the world of football more generally, but it would be utterly absurd if football today closely resembled itself from the 1970's. Not much else in this world does. For me it's very exciting to be part of this football club, a club I saw drop through the divisions, continue its seemingly inexorable rise to prominence in the global sporting arena.

 

[munster]

This is strategically a perfect move for the football club.

I have felt for sometime football in the US inexorably moving towards critical mass and I suspect next years World Cup, given its location and equivalent timezone to the US, will provide that final impetus to fully establish the game over there. It won't displace American Football or Baseball, but it will sit alongside them within a decade imo.

It is an important market for City because the Asian market has already been subject to many years of exposure to the likes of united, Arsenal and Liverpool and whilst it should not be ignored I think it provides limited commercial opportunities for the club.

There is also a distinctive difference between the consumers in each of these markets which will mean that once established, the US will be far more lucrative: a City supporter in the US will prove to be a much greater source of revenue to the club than one from Asia. Their spending power will be much greater, they will more readily eschew snide merchandise and be better placed to visit games in the UK.

I imagine to many of our long-term supporters this may be another bewildering and unwelcome development to City and the world of football more generally, but it would be utterly absurd if football today closely resembled itself from the 1970's. Not much else in this world does. For me it's very exciting to be part of this football club, a club I saw drop through the divisions, continue its seemingly inexorable rise to prominence in the global sporting arena.

Excellent post

 

[cibaman]

Good article by James Ducker @ thetimes.co.uk ...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/clubs/manchestercity/article3771468.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/foo ... 771468.ece</a>

Picture the scene a few years from now: a New York City football team playing in the sky blue of Manchester City with one of the potential stars of the Barclays Premier League club’s ambitious academy project running the midfield.

Or how about the New York Yankees baseball team pitching up at the Etihad Stadium to play a regular-season Major League Baseball game in much the same way as American football has set up camp in London in recent years?

None of these ideas is set in stone, of course, but nor were they dismissed yesterday as City, Major League Soccer and the Yankees announced a pioneering deal to create an MLS franchise in New York in time for the start of the 2015-16 season, the commercial opportunities and crossover appeal of which may, in time, come to have a landmark effect.

It is, in the words of Don Garber, the MLS commissioner, a “transformational move”. Sure, there are already figures with stakes in both Barclays Premier League and MLS clubs — think Stan Kroenke, the largest shareholder at Arsenal and also owner of the Colorado Rapids football team. But the idea of a Premier League club in effect creating a mini version of themselves in another country that also happens to be the world’s most lucrative sports market, represents an ambitious and exciting first for European football.

Ferran Soriano, the City chief executive, initially struck upon this idea during his time as a marketing executive with Barcelona but felt that, with a pre-David Beckham MLS still finding its feet, the time was not right for such a tie-in. Eight years on, with MLS boasting the third-highest attendances in United States sport after American football and baseball, attracting a host of blue-chip companies from Pepsi to Microsoft as sponsors and making huge strides in its bid to become “one of the world’s top football leagues” over the next decade, Soriano no longer harboured such doubts.

A driving force behind City’s latest statement of intent, the Spaniard had already been in talks for months with the club’s Abu Dhabi owners about creating an MLS franchise before he formally began work at the Premier League club in September last year. Nine months on, that vision has been realised, although it is the involvement of the Yankees, who will have about a quarter stake in New York City FC, that could prove the game-changer and ensure that this partnership does not end up the way of their previous unsuccessful tie-in with a Manchester club — United — in 2001.

Since Sheikh Mansour bought City in 2008, the club have embarked on a series of commercial and community projects in the US, but this latest development could give them a footing and profile previously unimaginable.

The next two years, as City and the Yankees work together to ensure the fledgeling team are in place by April 2015, are certain to be intriguing.

Soriano will oversee the appointment of a director of football, coach and staff with offices due to be set up in New York, while the Yankees will have a role to play in the creation of a new stadium, the preferred site for which is Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, near the home of the New York Mets baseball team.

That process may not be without its obstacles; local residents and politicians have already registered their opposition because of the human rights record of Abu Dhabi, whose ruling family own City, but where there is a will there tends to be a way.

Under MLS rules, clubs are allowed to make three marquee overseas signings outside their wage cap, so just as Beckham’s arrival at the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007 helped to put football in the US on the map, there is every possibility that a New York City team under City ownership could boast some of the most recognisable names in world football.

And that, Daily Mirror,is how to write an article in a positive manner.

Yep, you don't have to be starfish sucking but looking on the half full side.
The article offers fair insight into why now is the time to strike so to speak.

Ok James i can say i am enjoying my times subscription now :)
Not looking for arse licking but it is nice to see more than the pitfalls and warped interpretations of how we are run/operate printed in the negative constantly.

Informative and fair, words rarely attributed to printed media for many years if at all in the general sense.
We knock the reporters enough so give em credit when they do the job in essence they are paid for well.

Cant see the Yankees playing at the Etihad. Didn't think the pitch is big enough for baseball?

 

[moomba]

Cant see the Yankees playing at the Etihad. Didn't think the pitch is big enough for baseball?

Think we'd have to remove some of the stands.

Or put in a blue monster.

I hate the Yankees, but if they play at our place, ST holders better have first dibs on tickets.

 

[Blue Haze]

Looks like City made a deal with US rags, lol

With the long-term success of the franchise and a large Yankee fanbase, many fans of other teams have come to dislike the Yankees. The organization is sometimes referred to by detractors as "the Bronx Zoo" (echoing the title of Sparky Lyle's book) or "the Evil Empire." When the Yankees are on the road, it is common for the home fans to chant "Yankees Suck", and numerous t-shirts, bumper stickers and other items have been sold with this phrase.

Much of the animosity toward the team may derive from its high payroll (which was around $200 million at the start of the 2008 season, the highest of any American sports team), and the free agent superstars the team attracts in the offseason. Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko noted, "Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.

They are more like Real Madrid on steroids. We only have a playoff system, there aren't multiple honors to compete for, so every season there is only one winner. The World Series is similar to the Champions League.

The New York Yankees have won the World Series 27 times. The next 3 closest teams: 11, 9, and 7. They are the largest, most successful team by far in American sports. They have been a Galacticos team since Babe Ruth in the 1910s. Just being associated with them will go a good way toward filling NYCFC's stadium. They couldn't get this kind of credibility from any other US sports franchise except perhaps the Lakers.

 

[WyongBlue]

This is strategically a perfect move for the football club.

I have felt for sometime football in the US inexorably moving towards critical mass and I suspect next years World Cup, given its location and equivalent timezone to the US, will provide that final impetus to fully establish the game over there. It won't displace American Football or Baseball, but it will sit alongside them within a decade imo.

It is an important market for City because the Asian market has already been subject to many years of exposure to the likes of united, Arsenal and Liverpool and whilst it should not be ignored I think it provides limited commercial opportunities for the club.

There is also a distinctive difference between the consumers in each of these markets which will mean that once established, the US will be far more lucrative: a City supporter in the US will prove to be a much greater source of revenue to the club than one from Asia. Their spending power will be much greater, they will more readily eschew snide merchandise and be better placed to visit games in the UK.

I imagine to many of our long-term supporters this may be another bewildering and unwelcome development to City and the world of football more generally, but it would be utterly absurd if football today closely resembled itself from the 1970's. Not much else in this world does. For me it's very exciting to be part of this football club, a club I saw drop through the divisions, continue its seemingly inexorable rise to prominence in the global sporting arena.

Good post and certainly exciting times are ahead, with the start up of this new MLS Franchise.............

 

[john@staustell]

Surely someone must like the Yankees?

 

[mancity dan]

These are certainly exciting times for the club. This will probably be the easiest way for the club to grow as well.