With the Dynamo joining in on the party and beginning to build a soccer specific stadium to call their own it seems like as good a time as any to look at how far the MLS stadia situation has come in the past few years. At the moment there are 18 teams in the league and 13 of them are currently playing in soccer specific stadiums. If you include the Dynamo and the San Jose Earthquakes, who are also in the process of building a stadium there are only three teams left in the entire league without the almighty soccer specific stadium. Of course the best example of a team flourishing primarily because they don’t have a small soccer specific stadium is Seattle. At Qwest Seattle is able to bring in huge audiences and take in a huge income because of it. If they can sell out a stadium that size, why would anyone ever argue that they should create a soccer specific stadium which would almost definitely be substantially smaller. Qwest, along with the Linc, is a stadium that may not be soccer specific but was definitely built with soccer in mind, and that is generally much better than those which were not intended for such purposes. The New England Revolution don’t have a soccer specific stadium because of Bob Kraft and the fact that he owns both the team and the stadium.
Then there is DC United. Somehow out of all the teams in the league, DC is the only one which would want to build a soccer specific stadium, but can’t manage to do so. They are one of the more prolific franchises in the league, along with being probably the most successful pro-team in the DC area. It seems they have submitted a plan to build a stadium in the Baltimore area, but its very much in the early stages .
bpmangan
mattsant16
Pat
