Photo by Kirby Lee/USA TODAYÂ Sports
By RYAN TOLMICH
The future of Chivas USA has seemingly gotten a bit clearer as the league has reportedly found a buyer for the ailing club.
Citing unnamed sources, ESPNFC.com reports that MLS has agreed to sell the franchise to an unknown investor for $100 million, with conditions of the sale requiring that the club goes on hiatus. One source in the report states that the club is expected to remain dormant for two years while the new owners plan and build a stadium to house the club.
MLS has apparently confirmed that one potential site for the new stadium could be Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, which is located next to the LA Coliseum and the campus of the University of Southern California.
The hiatus will also allow the club to be re-branded with a new name, which has been planned since the club was acquired by the league from Jorge Vergara earlier this year.
The possibility of Chivas USA’s hiatus came to light earlier this month when commissioner Don Garber revealed the possibility at the MLS logo reveal. At that event, Garber confirmed that Chivas USA going dormant was an option on the table. If Chivas USA were to take a hiatus, MLS would move to a 20-team league next year, with Orlando City SC and New York City FC joining the league for the 2015 season.
Chivas USA is set to miss the postseason for the fifth straight season and ranks dead last in the league in attendance. The club was routed, 4-2, by the Seattle Sounders for the second time in September, last Saturday.
The Goats are on a 12-game winless streak, with their last win coming in a 3-1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps on July 12. They’ve lost seven consecutive games.
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What do you think of the Chivas USA hiatus plan? How do you think the league should handle the team in coming years?
Share your thoughts below.
Move them to San Diego! We need a team and most San Diegans will not route for an LA team (maybe Orange County).
Grant Wahl reporting Vincent Tan is the minority owner and Henry Nguyen is the majority owner.
Total speculation on my part but I wonder if Stan Kroenke will be announced as the new owner, then transfer ownership of the Rapids to his son Josh. Then he moves the Rams back to LA and helps build a dual use stadium for the Rams and the soccer team. This would fit in with older rumors of Kroenke wanting to add an expansion team in LA and call them the LA Gunners.
What a horrendous idea; just move the team.
Don’t forget that the NASL is planning to award a team in LA.
Galaxy average 22k in a 27k seat stadium. Why give them competition when there’s so many cities without and MLS team?
Andale.
As an LA resident and frequentor of LAG games, I happen to agree. I think people are greatly overestimating the market size here. Sure Chivas USA was a terrible execution, but still should be something of a warning sign. And if the NFL actually returns (I don’t hold my breath over any of these reports), that will eat up a significant chunk of available dollars — People rarely buy season seats for more than one sport, particularly if the seasons overlap.
In all serious, while I’m happy to see Chivas gone it had fans, however few of them there were. I had a club yanked from under me when the Quakes left for Houston and I know what it feels like to tell your kid his team is gone. There are people for whom this is very sad news. I hope they can connect with the new club, but I doubt they will.
LA’s used to it…
True. But each child is wounded fresh….
Sigh. Too, too profound, bro. #Feels
Cubo torres to Seattle- write it down
No, you.
Wow, we are at $100 million for a failed franchise fee now.
Where are those trolls anyway ?
$100 million when approx 1/20th of MLS fails
This is the equivalent of contraction and then awarding an expansion franchise to the same market at the same time. The timing just allows the MLS marketing machine to put lipstick on this pig. Yeah, $100 million is the going rate for an expansion team with no assets.
for all of you who wanted promotion/relegation… here you have it!!
I forgot to mention this, if Los Angeles 2 is a serious thing, then what name would they carry cuz
There is not enough names out there,
Los angles city is simple and boring, Los Angeles fc worse, Los Angeles Hollywood fc
And the only option is Los Angeles Aztecs which won’t happen.
I also would love galaxy or the new Los Angeles 2 to be around San Monica and that would be a real Hollywood team. Imagine Hollywood galaxy or Hollywood stars fc.
Angel City FC
Santa Monica would be a nightmare to build a stadium in, even worse to try and drive in and out of on game day. I live 7 miles away, if I have to commute there it can take an hour and half. If there was a stadium there it would be easier to go to carson 20 miles away.
yeah, Santa Monica would be a failure all around. downtown is the right placement if trying to attract Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, etc.
(1) Just move this team to another city that will support it.
(2) I can’t wait to see what new process MLS comes up with to distribute the players — to all the right places, of course.
Please don’t let it be Vincent Tan: http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/29411719
After Vergara, the last thing that franchise and MLS needs is another eccentric owner.
Tan’s eccentric, but he’s looking a lot better after the email leak. He clearly wants his team to succeed, which is more than could be said for the whole Chivas debacle.
awesome news, although i really want to know who the ownership group is. i think the location being rumored is a great location, so that’s a good start and i hope it’s actually their target. one thing is for sure, like with NYCFC, it’s going to take a big investment to do it right. they’ll need big name DPs right off the bat and i can think of many who would be great targets for starting in 2017. Ronaldo being one of them.
as for the Chivas USA players, i’m sure MLS will come up with some crazy idea for how to allocate them. but the fight for Cubo is going to be fun to watch!
I said a thousand times before and I’ll say it again, Los Angeles 2 and Miami should come in together as team #25 & 26 and MLS would benefit so much from it. If Miami and Los angeles2 come in together in 3 to 4 years, imagine Ronaldo, messi, Rooney, chicharito, Giovanni do santos, coming to those teams……it would create global attention for MLS.
For now MLS needs to give Sacramento, Minneapolis and ( Vegas or San Antonio) a team.
Now if MLS wants 28 teams, then markets like Indy, cosmos, Detroit, NC, Tampa bay, st.louis, better start getting ready because MLS can easily expand to 26 teams but expansion for #27 & 28 is going to be chaos.
It looks like the plan is for LA2 to come back in with Atlanta.
This is a club in need of a new plan. If a new stadium in East LA is a viable possibility then I say go for it, but it is impossible to know what is going on behind the scenes and what the actual realities are.
CHIVAS is worth 100 million? say what
why did this club fail? didn’t they have enough talent as a feeder club to Chivas in the Mexican league? all that owner had to do was pump more cash into the club or loan them quality players.
move the club to east LOS ANGELES or something
poor Bocanegra
Well big Chivas hasn’t exactly been the most successful Mexican club as of late either.
Why did the club fail? They marketed themselves as a club for Mexicans, alienating everyone else. And they’re named after and owned by Chivas, alienating fans of other Mexican clubs. And even Chivas fans probably view this as an inferior little brother team. So having come out of the box with such a tiny potential fan base, it’s hardly surprising this was a complete flop. Made sense to try at the time I guess. It wasn’t so easy to find people willing to buy into MLS back then.
Winner, winner, Chicken Dinner.
Their branding was terribly self-limiting.
You know there’s latin people ALL over LA, ESPECIALLY where Chivas plays in Carson don’t you? Moving to East LA isn’t a panacea. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea just that it’s not some magic wand. It’s not even really a problem with location. Though i do think it would help to not be in the same building and same location as the Galaxy.
well Chivas USA was sold back to Vergara for $60M, I believe, so it’s not really that surprising. most of that value comes from being in LA and being a part of MLS. their players are certainly an asset, but the big selling point is the fact that with the purchase of this team, the owner gets to build an MLS team in a massive market like LA.
in other words, Chivas USA was worth $60M but LA2 is worth $100M.
It speaks to the value of MLS more than Chivas itself. The buyer is spending $100 million on a secure spot in a single-entity league with a ton of upside. An analogy: Chivas USA is like a ramshackle, one bedroom hut on a parcel of Malibu beachfront property. The house may be sh*t, but the property is incredibly valuable.
Exactly. That is the going rate for an expansion team with absolutely no assets. Tells me that MLS plans to totally disband Chivas, disperse the players and just the placeholder of a franchise still exists which the new owners will rebrand and start totally fresh with.
This really is the equivalent of a contraction of a failed franchise and an expansion at the same time, it just happens that MLS gets to market it as a hiatus and rebranding which sounds better.
Very much correct. Although I wouldn’t quite say “absoultely no assets”, because it would appear Chivas has one vary nice asset (that NYCFC did not) and that is material progress on an attractive stadium site. The lease on Stubhub expires after this season and Chivas had looked at the Exposition Park idea last year. Any progress made that could be transferred (plans, knowledgable personnel, any permits filed, etc…) would certainly qualify as an asset and a good one.
I can tell you from experience that two years is almost certainly not enough time to start from scratch and get infrastructure sited, permitted, and constructed in LA– a temporarly groundshare would almost certainly be inevitable
But if the new franchise could hit the ground running using already-completed progress on a hugely attractive stadium location. To clarify — some seem to think Exposition Park is East LA, which is incorrect. Exposition Park is technically South LA, but really it is effectively Downtown, adjacent to USC/Coliseum and a huge improvement over Carson. It benefits from excellent proximity to LA’s less-than-perfect public transportation system and could actually stage well-attended midweek games.
I don’t know how far Chivas got with this when they looked at it in 2013, but it sounds like somebody knows something and things it is odds-on. This is a big advantage.
That sound you hear is all the other teams calling Garber to ask “how can I get Cubo Torres?”
…and then he ends up at the Galaxy or Seattle, because, well, you know.
It would be convenient for him to stay in LA, plus he take Lando’s DP spot. That’s that settled then, what’s next?
I don’t believe there will ever be two strong, popular MLS teams in the Los Angeles area. I understand that being in the L.A. market makes the franchise more valuable, but they should exploit one of the many other metro areas that want and can support an MLS team. L.A.’s got the team it needs already.
I agree with this. Since there are a limited number of expansion spots that can realistically be doled out I’m not sure I see the value in putting another team in a market where you already have a successful club.
Kings, Ducks
Dogers, Angels
Lakers, Clippers
Two teams in LA can work just fine.
Maybe but that doesn’t mean its the best solution for MLS.
NY and LA are two market teams! & they can easily handle it.
The question is, does galaxy plan to stay in Carson and remodel their stadium In order to be regain fans and not let LA2 take over their territory or move into Hollywood and have a 25,000 seater. ( then rebrand to Hollywood galaxy)
As for the location of the new stadium, isn’t USC kinda of close to Carson, just off the same freeway but like 10 minutes apart with no traffic.
I live in DTLA. I drive past USC to get to SHC. However with so many freeways, everyone comes a different way because LA is so sprawled.
I live in LA and drive past USC to get to the SHC, but that will not stop me supporting the Galaxy. I would welcome a strong intra city rivalry though. I just hope the Aztecs do not get resurrected. I’m sure this new brand will take a while to really get its program in gear.
peanut butter, jelly
Here’s a one word answer for you: NFL.
Another: If “Two teams in LA can work just fine,” then how come it hasn’t for MLS?
Yeah, Chivas was mismanaged, but I don’t think that explains fans’ utter indifference to them. They were OK for a while, back in the Klejstan days, but no one has ever cared.
L.A. 2 is a waste of a franchise in my opinion.
“no one has ever cared.”
Inaccurate. As someone in an earlier thread on this page mentioned, the Goats had very good attendance figures their first 5 seasons. 9 years of atrocious marketing and underachievement on the field will eventually lead to abysmal attendance, but that does not in any way take away from the fact that Chivas USA was well-supported during the first half of its existence.
OK few have ever cared for what turned out to be a flawed concept.
The NFL doesn’t want a team in LA because it can use moving to LA as a bargaining chip to demand states/munis pay for stadium upgrades. If actually move a team to LA, then they lose that cudgel.
This is a little over-the-top, but it definitely happens. The NFL most definitely wants a team in LA, but they certainly don’t mind using this little stunt while they don’t.
Ultimately, they could use this argument with any city. Once they have a team in LA, it’ll be Las Vegas or London or [wherever] that teams threaten to move to. Honestly, I don’t know how many cities are even scared by the LA threat anymore.
If the NFL wanted a team in LA, they’d have put a team in LA. There have been between three and five expansion teams added to the NFL since 1994, depending on whether you count the Ravens and Browns as expansion teams. None of those were even considered to go to LA, because they don’t want to water down their threat.
I live in LA my friend, and that is hardly the only reason they haven’t made it work.
Explain how you think the threat of LA is any different from the threat of Las Vegas? Or London? Or Wherever? You can always make this threat.
Yea. MLS wants to build from the ground up when they have some ready made markets on the verge of finalizing and breaking ground on stadiums. Sacramento looks to be more deserving of a team than a restart LA.
The MLS brand is clearly not very focused on bringing soccer to small/mid-market areas. It’s about TV revenues, profitability and marketability.
Those TV deals are probably contingent on ratings and viewership. Tell me, who do you think will draw better ratings, LA2 or Sacramento?
LA Aztecs or bust.
i think that would be cool.
Ditto Aztecs !
Absolutely!
The thing is despite having one of the most beautiful logos in pro sports and having one of the more impressive legacies in US soccer history, they’re stil owned by Club America. Chivas would not be happy to see their club sold to a big rival like that.
So what happens with the players? Will they go on loan to other teams via some allocation, with the Club-formerly-known-as-Chivas retaining their rights for when they return? Or do they just blow it up and have yet another expansion draft in 2 years?
hope there’s no rights retained, that’s not fair to the players. Conveniently, there are two new teams next year that could use players. Aside from Cubo and a few others, not sure anyone on that team is worth getting bothered about if you miss out on them.
Kennedy is a darn good keeper but I hear you
I actually use to enjoy watching them play back when they had Razov, a young Sascha and Nunez.
Certainly a positive that there seems to be no shortage of people willing to invest $100m in our league. Don’t know enough about LA to comment on the proposed stadium location.
Houston and KC to the west then?
would be a good location. certainly serves people in other areas of LA a lot better. to give you an idea, this is 5 miles from downtown, pretty much on USC’s campus whereas Carson is about 17 miles from downtown.
in that location, they can hope to draw people from downtown, central LA, northeast LA, east LA, south LA, Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, etc.
i’ve always thought LA could support 4 teams if the sport continues to grow at this pace. one in Carson (LAG), one in downtown (LA2), one in the inland empire, and one in Anaheim/Orange County.
The thing is, LA barely supports the Galaxy, let alone three other teams. There’s always tons of empty seats at home games.
I’d rather see Sacramento have a team.
Are you ****ing serious? Please tell us you just forgot to put a smiley to indicate your sarcasm that the 2nd highest attended team has attendance issues, that it “barely” has support. That’s just dumb.
I saw a lot of empty seats on TV yesterday.
announced crowd of 25,102. so while we all know how those numbers can be misleading, it certainly wasn’t empty or “barley” supported.
that’s like using today’s weather data as evidence when trying to debate a point regarding Earth’s climate. long-term averages need to be analyzed, not daily fluctuations.
Therefore, LA “barely supports” the Galaxy? Dude. That’s just silly.
Chivas averaged 17k, 19.8k, 14.3k, 15.1k, and 16.1k its first 5 seasons. And that’s with severe marketing problems and at the exact same venue.
Downtown LA/USC, Orange County, and the Inland Empire could all support a team at 20k or more. Each. PLUS the Galaxy.
Not calling for that. Just saying.
If you’d have kept the game on longer than 10 minutes, you would have seen it was almost full last night. 25,000+ fans in attendance. The idea that no one goes to Galaxy games is a myth perpetuated by Sounder fans.
LAG has led the league in attendance 9 times, and even when games sell out on the grassy knoll (pushing attendance up 4,000), they still have to “announce” 27K. Since 2003, only Seattle has topped the Galaxy.
i’m sorry, but it’s not entirely accurate to say that. this is a team that has averaged over 20,000 fans/game for years. their jersey sales are some of the highest, at times the highest, among the league. they’re profitable ($7.8M/year), generate $44M in revenue, and are worth $170M, only behind Seattle in each metric. so to say they are “barely” supported is completely wrong. and yet, they have only captured a small portion of the LA market.
the biggest issue with LA sports is that LA fans require the top players. it’s that simple and if the Clippers haven’t proven that, idk what will. there are more than enough soccer fans in those four LA areas, it’s all about getting them to root for their MLS team. the LA2 owners will have to do that.
and look, i don’t actually think MLS should have 4 teams in LA one day. just saying in a future where soccer rules the sports market, there are more than enough people in those 4 areas to make it work.
also, i’m totally down for Sacramento getting a team. in fact, i think MLS should break their own rules when it comes to 24 teams. if capping at 24 by 2020 is the reason MLS has to say no to Sacramento in order to get a team in an area like Minneapolis, i think they should just do 25 teams.
Your are probably remember the empty seats during a mid week game where there is a parking restrictions with the college.
Hopper you’re correct. It makes no sense for LA to have three teams. The truth is, Californians don’t care much for soccer and that’s the reality.
what a pile of stinking BS
Exactly. He is being sarcastic.
Hilarious!!!!
Are you e-ffing high, Eddie?
+1.
I lived in San Pedro and loved going to LAG games. It only took 10 minutes up the 110. I DEFINITELY agree that the greater LA area could handle several teams, and in the locations you mentioned. However, I think only three teams and not 4. LAG has the OC area covered pretty good. Downtown LA2, Inland Empire, and LAG would be great. A fourth LA team would be better served in SD.
Exposition Park doesn’t seem far enough away from Carson to really capture a different fan base. The two sites are only 20 minutes apart (without traffic). I’d rather see LA2 play up in Pasadena or somewhere closer to the Valley, or out in the Inland Empire.
16 miles in LA-talk is absolutely far enough away. also, the point is that LA2 would be downtown while Carson is not. it’s absolutely a different fan base in terms of people who would be more likely to attend games.
20 miles separates NYRB and what will be NYCFC. so it’s very similar in that regard.
“The two sites are only 20 minutes apart (without traffic)…”
Most LAG fans, and most prospective fans of LA2 lack the means to ignore the ever-present traffic.
It’s an enormous difference. I’m from Pasadena originally and have lived literally all over Los Angeles, most recently in South Bay (quite near SHC).
Exposition Park is basically downtown Los Angeles (a few minutes walk from Staples Center and the central metro area). It is near 4 major freeways and critically, it is well-connected to public transportation (for ex. a Pasadena resident could basically take the train and be there in 25 mins for a round-trip cost of $3.50). This advantage would be huge and cannot be claimed to any degree by Carson.
Downsides? The parking situation is poor in that area and would probably get worse so this would have to be addressed. And the footprint of the existing Sports Arena is tiny and would certainly not support training facilities. The Galaxy have a very nice complex with many fields adjacent to SHC…. this would not be possible for LA2 so they’d have to find somehwere else for their training facilities (USC might have excess capacity but certainly not much– the area is very built out). And you’d have to schedule around USC, though this would only account for a few weekends and should be managemable.
All-in-all, the Galaxy would hate this. But there is also the issue of the NFL (sigh I know) who have been sniffing around downtwon…. how all these teams would coexist within the downtown metro area remains to be seen.
The LA area is mindbogglingly huge and the traffic so astoundingly bad getting from one area to another that I can see both teams existing very well in their own microcosms. This stadium would be much more centrally located than Carson is, and the team would draw upon an entirely different fanbase as a result. I can see the two LA teams eventually developing very distinct personalities, sort of like the Dodgers and Angels in baseball. It would be a much different situation than what MLS has had there with big brother having to share a room with little brother.
this
I usually frown on hyperbole, but as a frequent visitor to LA I will certify that your use of “mindbogglingly” and “astoundingly” in your first sentence is entirely accurate. Indeed, I think you could have easily upped the ante with “gobsmackingly” or even “ginormous”.
Now that’s funny! All hail Tony the Quakeman.
Seconded!
As a bit of anecdote: I went to a SFG-LAD game last week (the 13 inning 4-2 loss, and yeah I left early – in the top of the 12th), and it took a half an hour from Belmont Shore, Long Beach to reach downtown. It was another half hour to cross downtown.
Cubo to Red Bulls.
Wright Phillps -Cubo duo
So how do the players get dispersed? This is going to hurt young players like Marco Delgado and Matt Dunn.
More fodder for the new teams I’d imagine.
MLS should do a draft, they never do those
Wouldn’t free agency be better? If a players ends up on a team that doesn’t fit him that could be a big dent on the players career.
And since its a hiatus not disbanding would CUSA have to release them?
Hard to be a free agent when the league owns your contract and not the team. I would guess a dispersal draft is in order. I just wonder if any of the players would be available in the expansion draft first. Cubo to Orlando City!
What is Torres’ status? He was a loan from Chivas Guadalajara initially. Did Chivas USA ever buy out his contract?
If not, I would suspect Guad would be fairly likely to recall him before he got randomly dispersed for other teams to pick up.
Would expect that the players would be made available through a draft to the entire leage OR that the players will remain on the MLS payroll but play in the USL Pro league while the new owners figure things out.
USL for 2+ years? No way. Dispersal draft.
My guess is, MLS pays for Cubo’s transfer fee, and places him on a team of their choosing. NYC and OC will flip a coin for the first pick (Dan Kennedy) of a “Chivas USA reallocation draft.”
Their draft picks get dissolved except for the picks they already traded away.
What I wonder about is, what happens to their academies? Does MLS operate them for two years until the new owners take over, or do they dissolve too.
Actually, it’s not going to hurt young players to go to better clubs with better development systems. There is already a mechanism for this (for those of you too young to remember) – a dispersal draft.