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Vixen Twins watch Wild Wolves and Loony Lynx (MN Sports Thread)


Heimdallr

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13 hours ago, MNPackfan32 said:

No offense, but if you include the soccer team, you also have to include the Lynx.

Agreed.  The United will likely never be a major team in the market, so if you include them, you have to include the Lynx, which then means there is no drought. 

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Sid gets a shout-out from Peter King...

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A note about Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Sid Hartman:

He turns 99 Friday.

Hartman writes a column every Sunday in the paper. Still working, in his 73rd year as a writer in Minneapolis. 

Hartman was of voting age, 21, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

 

 

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/03/10/antonio-brown-trade-raiders-steelers-nfl-free-agency-fmia-peter-king/?cid=pfttease/

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Olympic track cyclist Kelly Catlin, who helped the U.S. women's pursuit team win the silver medal at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, died Friday at her residence on Stanford University's campus in California. She was 23. Catlin's father, Mark Catlin, told cycling magazine VeloNews that his daughter killed herself.

Catlin was born and raised near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and rose to prominence on the track as a member of the U.S. national team. She also raced on the road for the Rally UHC Pro Cycling Team, and she was pursuing a graduate degree in computational mathematics at Stanford.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-olympic-cyclist-kelly-catlin-found-dead-her-home-n981591

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1 minute ago, vike daddy said:

Catlin was born and raised near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and rose to prominence on the track as a member of the U.S. national team. She also raced on the road for the Rally UHC Pro Cycling Team, and she was pursuing a graduate degree in computational mathematics at Stanford.

Horrible. Just goes to show that mental illness can hit anyone, regardless of how successful they are, and is not something to underestimate. 

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1 hour ago, Heimdallr said:

Horrible. Just goes to show that mental illness can hit anyone, regardless of how successful they are, and is not something to underestimate. 

Sounds like she had a head injury that wasn't correctly handled as well. Just horrible to see.

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On 3/11/2019 at 8:21 AM, swede700 said:

Agreed.  The United will likely never be a major team in the market, so if you include them, you have to include the Lynx, which then means there is no drought. 

I think Minnesota United is a lot closer than you think to being among the major teams in the market.

Minnesota United did have an average attendance of about 24,000 last year. For reference the Lynx averaged about 10,000 per game. The Timberwolves average about 15,000 per game this year. The Twins average about 24,000 per game. The Wild average about 19,000 per game.

MLS is growing at a very fast rate in this country. For years it was talked about that soccer was going to catch on here, but the results never really showed much growth up until the last decade or so. Now MLS is really making some serious progress. Here's an article from the past year that highlights this growth the numbers don't lie. 

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/dont-look-now-but-major-league-soccer-may-be-best-story-in-american-sports-and-sports-business.html

 

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9 hours ago, tyler735 said:

I think Minnesota United is a lot closer than you think to being among the major teams in the market.

Minnesota United did have an average attendance of about 24,000 last year. For reference the Lynx averaged about 10,000 per game. The Timberwolves average about 15,000 per game this year. The Twins average about 24,000 per game. The Wild average about 19,000 per game.

MLS is growing at a very fast rate in this country. For years it was talked about that soccer was going to catch on here, but the results never really showed much growth up until the last decade or so. Now MLS is really making some serious progress. Here's an article from the past year that highlights this growth the numbers don't lie. 

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/dont-look-now-but-major-league-soccer-may-be-best-story-in-american-sports-and-sports-business.html

 

All I can say is "we'll see"...but the difference is likely that the United will always average around 24K no matter whether bad or good, as there's a solid core fan base.  The Wolves and Twins only average what they have because of how bad they've been.  The Twins were the first MLB team to have 3M in attendance in the year after winning the World Series (1988).  The Wolves have constantly been a bad team, which is why their attendance has been depressed, but they were a top-15 team in average attendance during the Garnett heydays...if they actually were consistently good, they could probably sell out, which still probably wouldn't put them at 24K, because the arena isn't that large...so, it's not really fair to compare them in average attendance (same with the Wild), unless you compare them when the Wolves played in the Metrodome at the beginning...when they averaged 26K fans a game.

I will continue to insist that soccer will always be a niche sport, just like hockey is.  I really wouldn't even consider hockey a major sport (it is in the Minneapolis market, but not everywhere else).  There's nothing wrong with that.  But, even in the case of here in KC, Sporting KC has been really good for many years now, for the most part...but there's crickets in media coverage and nobody really talks about them at the office.  It's all Chiefs and Royals, all the time...and that's even when they average around 19.5K per game.  Maybe it will change, who knows.  But I wouldn't bet money on it.  

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7 minutes ago, swede700 said:

All I can say is "we'll see"...but the difference is likely that the United will always average around 24K no matter whether bad or good  

The new stadium holds about 22,000, so yeah the attendance will always be in that range. It'll be surprising if there are ever any non-sellouts though.

There is no question soccer is the fastest growing sport, even more so in the younger generations and in youth sports. Most people only think about MLS, but there are also well over 200 pro or semi-pro teams in the 3 tiers of USL + NPSL.

The real turning point though will be when MLS gets to the next level, and 2022 is the year to watch for. That is the year Miami's team will finally get into the league (led by David Beckham) and it will probably have the largest international following of any team, from day 1.

More importantly, the league has instructed all teams to not have any broadcast deals in place beyond 2022, which means there will probably be a major, league-wide deal, which is where the real money is. That will be the game-changer. You always need to follow the money, and over the last 5 years the money involved with MLS has gone up exponentially

 

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37 minutes ago, swede700 said:

All I can say is "we'll see"...but the difference is likely that the United will always average around 24K no matter whether bad or good, as there's a solid core fan base.  The Wolves and Twins only average what they have because of how bad they've been.  The Twins were the first MLB team to have 3M in attendance in the year after winning the World Series (1988).  The Wolves have constantly been a bad team, which is why their attendance has been depressed, but they were a top-15 team in average attendance during the Garnett heydays...if they actually were consistently good, they could probably sell out, which still probably wouldn't put them at 24K, because the arena isn't that large...so, it's not really fair to compare them in average attendance (same with the Wild), unless you compare them when the Wolves played in the Metrodome at the beginning...when they averaged 26K fans a game.

I will continue to insist that soccer will always be a niche sport, just like hockey is.  I really wouldn't even consider hockey a major sport (it is in the Minneapolis market, but not everywhere else).  There's nothing wrong with that.  But, even in the case of here in KC, Sporting KC has been really good for many years now, for the most part...but there's crickets in media coverage and nobody really talks about them at the office.  It's all Chiefs and Royals, all the time...and that's even when they average around 19.5K per game.  Maybe it will change, who knows.  But I wouldn't bet money on it.  

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree then. MLS attendance's/viewership are growing faster than any other sport in this country. Obviously they started at a much lower rate leaving a lot more room for growth, but the continued growth of the product seems to indicate it is not a matter of "if", but a matter of "when" it will be viewed in the same light as leagues NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. As you mentioned you are in a market that in KC averages a sell out crowd of 19.5k per game for 124 straight games dating back to 2012. That is 6 plus years of consecutive sell out crowds. I've noticed a lot more attention to soccer and the way it is talked about in big media outlets such as ESPN in the past several years. We are seeing in some markets MLS soccer teams are getting quite a bit of media attention. Atlanta and Seattle come to mind. Atlanta pulled in around 10 home crowds of 65,000+ last season. Seattle has averaged 40,000 plus in yearly attendance since coming into the league 10 years ago. Cincinnati also may be another market that crushes it in attendance as just last year as a 2nd tier pro soccer team in USL averaged around 30,000 in attendance.   

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