The Orlando City Soccer Club may not have gotten its stadium money approved by the Florida state legislature, but that’s not stopping Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, who says she’s “fast-tracking” plans for a $105 million soccer-only stadium, by which she means:
Jacobs isn’t set to sign off on authorizing use of the hotel taxes for the soccer stadium. She first wants Visit Orlando, the local tourism board, to analyze the impact the stadium would have on local tourism.
Oh, that kind of fast-tracking. Also, even hotel taxes would only pay for $25 million of the cost, and OCSC wants $75 million, so.
In other news, David Beckham went to a basketball game, and now everyone is totally sure this means Miami will get an MLS franchise. Seriously, journalists of the 21st century, doesn’t “follow the money” mean anything to you people?
I just read the other day that Beckham wants to own the Miami team, and had something in his MLS contract that would allow for it supposedly. How many teams do they want to expand to, considering how sorry the league currently is? Normal soccer leagues in Europe have 20 teams. When they get up to 50 or so, I’m going to try-out. I could attempt to get in shape, or better yet play goalie.
OCSC also ran their own research on the economic impact of this new stadium, and they’ve apparently arrived at the conclusion that it would “generate $1.2 billion for the region over the next 30 years” http://orlandoweekly.com/news/orlando-city-soccer-39-s-goal-rush-1.1485484?pgno=5
Which is a complete pie-in-the-sky line of thinking, by the way. Their whole investor group (especially the guy from Brazil) just strikes me as being utterly deluded. When tourists, particularly from abroad, come to Orlando, they come to visit Disney, Sea World, Universal Studios, and any of the tourist traps that are in and around Central Florida. How many of them actually venture up I-4 to take in a Magic game, or even state going to one as the main reasons for the making trip in the first place?
They must fast track the study showing tourism benefits before anyone does a survey showing how many people looking for a vacation destination would avoid booking hotels in Orlando with an additional $15/day hotel tax tacked on.
Neal – there’s more to it then Beckham being spotted in Miami. You may also know Beckham has an option to buy an expansion team for well below the rate MLS wants to charge others for expansion fees, and he has been seen paling around with Marcelo Claure, Bolivian billionaire, who’s been trying to get into the MLS club for a few years now. They also visited FIU stadium, where, if a team were awarded, it would begin play – while I assume they try to get their own stadium down the road. Claure is also a regent at FIU.
Think Beckham’s option is for $25M. Compare to NYCFC who are ponying up around $100M. The option was part of Becks’ contract with MLS. Not a bad deal.
As for Miami… they already had one MLS franchise get contracted. I know they were playing in a converted high school stadium out in Ft Lauderdale and that probably didn’t help things. But Miami seems to be a really fickle sports town. MLS draws pretty well (TV ratings are shit, but average attendance is pretty decent) but I’d be skeptical of banking on people from that region to consistently support any team no matter who the owner is.
Neil. you don’t include a link to an article in an Orlando newspaper for this story. Where did you see this news?
Sorry, it’s there now. Also here:
http://www.socceramerica.com/article/51891/orlando-stadium-project-to-be-fast-tracked.html
Hey, Kei, Think Big in Sacramento says that our new downtown arena will produce $7B in new spending over the next 30 years. $1.2B? Pshaw. I can do that with one wallet tied behind my back.
That’s an annual ROI of 52%. 52%! Frankly, I think that builds a strong argument for a new arena every 5 years.
Why not five new arenas every five years, Mike?
There’d be so much money flowing in the city, everyone could quit work and “live off’n da fat o’ the lan\'”