By FRANCO PANIZO
Zygi Wilf is known for being the German-born owner of the Minnesota Vikings. He could soon be known for being an owner of an MLS team.
Wilf held a press conference on Tuesday announcing that he had reached an agreement with Ramsey County and the city of Arden Hills for a new retractable roof stadium worth an estimated cost of $1 billion. The stadium will serve as the new home of the Vikings, but Wilf also believes it could be the site of an MLS team in Minnesota.
Even if the stadium is built, there's no guarantee MLS would give Minnesota a team. Wilf would still need to cough up the $40 million necessary to buy into the league, and MLS would still have to decide whether or not Minnesota is a good location for a team.
Here's a video of what the Minnesota stadium would look like:
What do you think of Wilf's idea of a joint-venue for the Vikings and an MLS team? Do you think MLS in Minnesota would be a good idea?
Share your thoughts below.
This guy looks like he should run for FIFA president. Couldn’t be any worse than Blatter
I’ll chime in about the Home Depot Center. Same problem as what you’re talking about — no public transportation, not close to any urban center. Of course in L.A. people are used to driving everywhere, so I suppose it still works….
I realize there are going to be different opinions on whether MN is a good idea or not.
But some of the arguements are bizzare.
We have another ( and there are plenty now ) guy willing to invest in soccer in this country.
The Don has been very good at figuring out which markets to expand to, no ?
This is great.
In my opinion this is nitpicking:
They will have to share a stadium ( this situation is exactly like Seattle BTW ).
They might have turf there.
In my opinion this is not:
Commentors already have plans on where an investor could put a soccer specific stadium in MN.
THEY DON’T HAVE AN INVESTOR TO BUILD ONE.
I’m not sure where in Brooklyn you live, but it takes me approx 40 minutes to get to the stadium. C train to Chambers (15-20 mins), walk to Path and the ride to Harrison is approx 20 minutes.
Are these the guys that would form an instant rivalry with Chicago or is that Wisconsin?
I live in Minnesota. Soccer is bigger here than you’d think. There is a market here. Western Wisconsinites that aren’t Cheeseheads? That includes about 100 folks in Hudson who grew up in Minnesota. The Packers may be the third most popular team in Minnesota, but it’s not the same on the other side of the border. I would whole-heartedly support a Minnesota MLS franchise, and I have many friends who would.
I can’t get past the dyed eyebrows.
NEXT!
It is ten miles from downtown and located in near some posh suburbs (where soccer moms, people with money for tickets, tend to live).
I have been a loyal Vikings fan for many years and he is by far the best owner the team has had during my lifetime. Stand up guy, pays for talent . . . class all around. He would be an asset to MLS.
Perhaps you should stop and think before judging someone based on the way they look.
Of course, so was Seattle back in the day. Paul Allen had no interest in it, he just claimed it would be a two-sport stadium to get votes.
if they have a stadium and money then I’m down with letting MN in. It would give Chicago a better natural rival. As it stands now C’bus and KC are the closest thing to Chicago.
On that note as well, it might be time for the league to buy out Chivas USA. It has run its course. It was a joke to begin with and has now turned into little more than an excuse for a foreign owner to set up a camp to poach local youth prospects to go play for Chiva…de Guadalajara.
Furthermore, the attendance there is a joke. The fans of actual Chivas only nominally support them and that is about the extent of that.
One final note, all the talk of suburban fields being the reason teams don’t draw is a little bit of a stretch and over-simplification. LA plays as far out in the boonies as anyone does. They are much farther from downtown or Hollywood then Chicago is from Bridgeview (which is literally across the street from the City of Chicago city limits.
Some parts of this country simply don’t have as many soccer fans as others. Note the lack of NFL support in LA. It happens.
Do you honestly think San Jose is a suburb of San Francisco?
The MLS needs to focus on selling out games and grabbing better tv shares before rather than the continual addition of teams.
Miami is not indicative of the Southeast. Miami is in its own little world down there.
Completely agree with Shane.
I live in Boston now and can tell you that it was quicker/easier to get to a Revs game when I lived in Providence, RI. It’s the same distance or even further (depends on where you live) from Boston to Foxborough as it is from Pvd to Foxborough, and the traffic is much worse.
might as well be Tegucigalpa. let’s see, there are 3 areas of 800-1mil in SF, Oak-Berk-Richmond, and SJ. The first has a density of 14-15k per sq mile, the second about 9 per sq mile, and third of about 5k per sq mile…the 3rd sure does seem like a population suburb to me.
This guy just looks like a crook
MSP is not that big of a hotbed for soccer. At least not anymore than any other metro area of similar size without a MLS team like Atlanta, Pheonix, St. Louis, etc… Yes, youth soccer is big, like everywhere else and there are several adult leagues that are doing well. However, the only Division 1 soccer program is the U of Minnesota’s womens team. There are no men’s Div. 1 or 2 college programs in the state of Minnesota.
The USL Thunder struggled to attract 2,000 even when they played in a high school football stadium in St. Paul and the NSC Stars get even less attendance since they play in Blaine. The NSC Stars finances were so bad that the new NASL had take over the operation this year to keep them afloat. A few years ago when the Beckham circus came to town only about 20k showed up to watch the game.
Yes, the Kicks drew decent crowds, but that was the late 70’s and early 80’s and soccer was pretty much a novelty. And some teams, including the Kicks/Strikers had marquee players from Europe and South America who drew in the fans.
Currently the Twins in their new stadium is the big draw in the MSP sporting scene. And since MLS and MLB pretty much have the same calander, it would be hard to fathom 40k fans going to a MLB and 30K to an MLS game if they were the same day. There may just not be enough sporting dollars to go around.
+1
When you’re talking about American football attendance, you need to keep in mind that a team will play fewer than 20 games even if they make it all the way to the Super Bowl. So you only have somewhere around 10 home games per season. That makes it much more of a novelty to go to a football game, hence people are willing to “schlep” all the way to Gillette for the Pats.
As a Boston resident who doesn’t have a car, I can say that the only reason I don’t go to Revs games is because they play all the way out in Foxborough.
Reading about this makes me think that it’s too bad there’s no middle ground in the US for economically viable regional sports. It seems like you have to spend $40 million on MLS franchise, or nothing. I know there is the USL/NASL, but those teams don’t actually have regional rivals and does anybody really pay attention to them? There are now some regional rivalries in MLS, but still not as many.
Can you imagine if say the San Francisco bay area had teams in Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco (or substitute your local area and the neighbors you love to hate)? Or if NY had teams from Brooklyn, Queens, North Jersey. There would be real local rivalries and rabid regionalism rather than national corporate franchises and bland manufactured interest. I guess then you would be in England.
Is it TV that makes this impossible?
Do you know what the closest bar outside BMO field is? And that’s considered an urban stadium. You have to walk through some carnival thing to get there.
Portland State Vikings football.
Sheep Meadow in Central Park? Can’t tell if you’re suggesting that building a stadium there is actually an option.
It’s easy walking distance to the Ironbound. That contrasts strongly with Commerce City, Bridgeview, etc if you’ve been to those venues. Warehouses is pretty much surrounds potential sites in Queens and Brooklyn.
Well sure it takes you an hour and a half to get there. It would take that long for somebody from the Bronx to get to Coney Island or from North Jersey to get to Queens or whatever. We’re not traveling in tubes.
and considering the only bar is a half mile away from the path in the wrong direction, I think RBA is a perfect example of the spirit of this discussion
You people took my comment too literally
Still takes me an hour and a half to get to from the 1st stop into brooklyn. And abandoned warehouses does not an urban area make…or something.
Point is, I think you’d see much more respectable attendance at RBA if they had built it on top of sheepsmeadow.
Portland State’s football team will play games there in the fall. That’s a large reason why JWF is turf.
I don’t know about Portland — there are American football games there?
HOwever, Houston will be sharing their new stadium with a college football program.
Wrong. If you want to win over fans for soccer in this country, you had better not make it too difficult for your the people you hope to convert to get to the stadium. It’s different for American football. The people are already converted.
Paul Allen.
I think Midway would be nice.
The other option for an SSS would be across the river from downtown St. Paul near Harriet Island and Cesar Chavez Blvd.
All pipe dreams… But then so is the Vikings Stadium proposal!
Yet that same stadium is packed for Pats games. Sorry but using location is a cop out. If people really wanted to go they would.
See Portland [although Timbers are the primary tenant]
See New England
See RFK [in the past]
See Dallas
Kind of easy to host gridiron games when they share similar field proportions.
and Vancouver and Houston.
Blech. Do not like.
Red Bull Arena is in an urban area within walking distance to a 24/7 5 minute train to NYC and another train station going all over. Not at all similar.
+1
I don’t know about all these other locations but Arden HIlls is WAAAAAAAAAAY closer to Mpls/St Paul than Frisco is to Dallas.
There’s a ton of soccer fans up here. It could work if in the right hands. Is Wilf that guy? Dunno. Having left Miami for Mpls recently I can say it’s more likely to succeed up here than down there (unfortunately for the SE).
I didn’t say it draws 12,000 people, I said that is the capacity. Point taken, however.
Agreed. People complain about having to schlep down there for Pats games.
Saying it is about the same distance as Toyota Park is a nail in the coffin.
Great city for soccer and they draw 12k a game. Not the direction MLS needs to go.
Yeah, you’re probably right on getting people there, they’re struggling to get people there now for games as it is. But MN has had 3 new stadiums in the last several years, was more thinking along of the lines of this possibly being the cheapest option. And also was thinking the Home Depot Center and how it’s cool that’s it’s more than just a stadium. Probably just dreamin’ over here.
Also, for Fire games, check out bus services. I used one for my first game a few weeks back, the best way to go (I used Windy City Wanderers FC).
or Sandy Lake, Utah
Minnesota can only have an MLS team if they get Garrison Keillor to do the commentary for the games.
See the renovated Vancouver stadium as well and DC for that matter(former NFL stadium).
Also, I should add about Toyota Park: I just moved to Chicago and the fact that it sucks to get there means I haven’t gone to a game. I would buy season tickets if the stadium was anywhere near public transportation.
Really? NSC might be good for kids and tournaments, but not a professional team. You won’t be able to get 15,000 people going to Blaine regularly. It sucks to get there from the city. Suburban soccer moms can’t hold enough birthday parties to fill the stands every week. The only way an MLS team can make it in MSP is it to be really close to a light rail stop or be in one of the downtowns.
A few of you pointed to the National Sports Center in Blaine. If the MLS were to come to Minnesota, this is where it should be.
I grew up a mile from that complex and it is already set up perfectly for professional soccer. The stadium itself holds 12,000 people right now. There are over 50 soccer fields surrounding it (making it one of the larger, if not largest, soccer complexes in North America), a velodrome, the Schwanns Super Rink (8 sheets of ice, largest ice arena complex in the world), a golf course and several other facilities. And, as previously mentioned, it hosts the USA Cup every year which brings in 1,000 soccer teams from all over the world. This place screams professional soccer WAY more than a football stadium would and in general is just a very pleasant sports complex. The stadium itself would need some work, but it’s already being played in by the Minnesota Stars.
I won’t go into whether or not Minnesota deserves a team, as I haven’t lived there for six years (though my brother’s men’s league has a few teams that hold try outs, which is ridiculous for a non-professional league but speaks a little to the passion of soccer there), but I would be shocked if a football stadium were chosen over this complex.
Also, Blaine is not as far away from the cities as some of you are saying. It took me 20-25 minutes to get to downtown Minneapolis when I was a young ruffian, roving the streets. It takes me that long to get to Toyota Park here in Chicago, living in the city.
That is all.
Yeah, it would be great if a small SSS stadium could be built near the state fair grounds and Saints stadium in Midway.
Hey I just wanna watch good soccer more often. Can you blame a guy?