The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

“My crystal ball says that Oklahoma City’s next major-league sports franchise will be in MLS (Major League Soccer),” said Lund, head of Sold Out Strategies, the managing partner for the OKC-based team.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Oklahoma City has historically supported its minor- and major-league teams like no other city in the country,” said Ayala.

IF YOU like sports, and we assume you do since you're reading this, the Tulsa Project is a no-brainer.

You go cast your yes vote and we'll see you downtown at the NCAA Basketball Tournament. We'll be seeing you at Big 12 Conference and WAC championship events. You'll be checking out Olympic swimmers, divers, gymnasts and wrestlers.

You'll see exhibition NBA and NHL games. You will see, if Oklahoma City lands an NHL franchise, real NHL games.

The Tulsa Oilers, one of the top minor hockey franchises in the country, will finally get a regulation size rink and enough seats for every game.

Sometime in the future, Major League Soccer will be back in Tulsa.

How do we know this? It's our business to know these things. It's our business to talk with the people who make decisions in sports.

If anyone tries to tell you differently, ask them if they've ever spoken with Big 12 Commissioner Steve Hatchell, WAC Commissioner Karl Benson or Bill Hancock, director of the NCAA Tournament. Ask them if they've talked to folks with MLS.

All of them believe Tulsa is a terrific venue for sports events. They aren't interested right now for obvious reasons -- there's no place to play.
However, if you build it they will come. Don't let any of the opponents of the project tell you differently. We know for a fact.

When was the last time any of these "no" backers talked with anyone at the Tulsa-based NAIA? The NAIA, which pumps millions into the local economy each year, loves the Tulsa Project. Steve Baker, executive director of the NAIA, plans to bring dozens of events to Tulsa if the project is approved.

Opponents of the Tulsa Project would like you to believe that Tulsa will be unable to attract big- time sports events. Wrong. The only way we will be unable to attract big sports events is if we don't build the sports facilities included in the Tulsa Project.

The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament will come. Tulsa was selling out NCAA games back when the NCAA wasn't an automatic sellout. However, the NCAA hasn't been back to Tulsa in over 15 years.  The reason is simple. No place to play. It takes a minimum of 13,500 seats to host NCAA Tournament games. The tournament has outgrown our facilities, not the city.

In fact, Oklahoma City will play host to NCAA Tournament games this spring for the second time in five years. We have two deluxe hotels in downtown Tulsa and plenty of other hotel space. Oklahoma City has one mid- range hotel located next to the 15,000-seat Myriad, which will soon be replaced by a new 18,000-seat arena. Oklahoma City is looking ahead. It isn't standing still.

The Big 12 and WAC decide several dozen championships each year. Both conferences are shopping around championship events. We don't have a football stadium large enough but the Tulsa Project would give us facilities to bid on basketball, volleyball, wrestling, gymnastics, soccer, field hockey, swimming and diving, track and field.
Tulsa will go to the NCAA and bid on those events. And, we're not just talking about Division I events. How about Division II events with state schools like Northeastern State and Central Oklahoma? We can go to south Tulsa and bid for NAIA national championship events.

We've also heard the argument that sports venues will not revitalize downtown. The next time someone tells you that ask them for one example.
We can name you dozens of places where sports facilities were the catalyst for a new vibrant downtown. There's the obvious ones like Indianapolis, Denver, Baltimore and Cleveland.
But you don't have to look at major league cities. You don't even have to look further than our backyard.

Take a trip to Oklahoma City and see the downtown construction. That's all being driven by the construction of a new baseball park and arena.
Or, drive over to Little Rock where construction is under way on a new 16,000-seat downtown arena. It has spurred a construction boom.
This is the right time, right tax and right project. Hope to see you for March Madness in our hometown.

The downtown "superblock" off 4th and Elgin that we all assumed would be the prime location for the new ballpark is still sitting idle.
The area sorely needs an "anchor" to spur development.

If you think that moving a Unitarian church downtown and having Tulsa Opera move its operations to the old fire station will spur pedestrian friendly development and new construction, please point out examples in other cities of when and how this has ever happened...

Moving the offices of the local opera always spurs massive development, doesn't it?  :P

Thunder are successful because of Kevin Durant. There is not really a market for a second team.

You made some comments recently about possible expansion into Los Angeles, and I’ve heard some rumors that there may be expansion into Oklahoma City. What can you tell me about that?

We’re in conversations in three or four cities that I think are positive and moving at the speed I want them to move. But all this has to go before a board meeting for a vote, and that’s probably not going to happen before July. So nothing’s imminent yet. Here’s what I can say: we’re coming across potential ownership groups in cities that are exciting and people who understand what we’re trying to do as a league and fit in very well.

What are the markets under consideration?

Yes, we’re looking at Los Angeles. Yes, we’re in discussions with a group out of Oklahoma City. There are two others I’d rather not say because they’d rather I not say. And then once we get through that process, either yes or no, there’s another group of four or five cities that I’m going to get started on in August that are very strong and have people signaling that they have interest.

Drillers Stadium is not an ideal home for the Tulsa Athletics, the latest soccer franchise trying to carve out a fan base in the city.

But the stadium, like the team, is a start.

"Everyone has to start somewhere and finding a home at Drillers Stadium was great for our new team," said Sonny Dalesandro, one of the owners of the Athletics.

The Athletics, an amateur team, is a member of the National Premier Soccer League, a nationwide association of soccer teams.

It is a long way from Major League Soccer, the top level of soccer in the United States.

It is a long way from the North American Soccer League, the premier soccer league in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s and home of the Tulsa Roughnecks.

But Dalesandro hopes the Athletics is the first step to bringing back high-level soccer to a city that embraced the sport 30 years ago.

"I don't know what the future holds for soccer in our town," Dalesandero said. "We just wanted to do something. We wanted to do this at the grass-roots level. We wanted to have this team. We wanted it to have its own home and its fan club.

"We wanted to do something to help rebuild the soccer culture in our community."

There have been a number of attempts to rekindle the spark of the Roughnecks in Tulsa.

In the early 2000s there was talk of building a soccer-specific stadium in hopes of luring an MLS franchise to Tulsa, something that was met with plenty of optimism from MLS officials. However, a number of Tulsa officials weren't as enthusiastic and the idea died a slow death.

There have been other attempts to put Tulsa back in the major-league soccer business.

But most faded from a lack of finances, interest or facilities.

The Roughnecks were a huge success in Tulsa, drawing large crowds to Skelly Stadium and building a solid fan base in northeastern Oklahoma. The Roughnecks peaked in 1980, drawing 19,787 fans per game (and a team-record 30,822 for a 1980 game with the New York Cosmos).

However, as the NASL started to fade in the mid-1980s, so did the Roughnecks.

There are still many in the soccer community who believe the league, not the Roughnecks, was the failure.

Whatever the reason, the Roughnecks were gone and there has been a constant murmur among loyal soccer fans to get a major league version of the sport back to Tulsa.

It is a far different world for big-league soccer in the United States these days.

The MLS is about stadiums built specifically for soccer. Forget Arrowhead Stadium. Sporting Kansas City now plays in 18,467-seat Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kan.

The Los Angeles Galaxy doesn't play at the Rose Bowl. It plays at the 27,000-seat Home Depot Center.

Chapman Stadium, TU's football stadium, was the Roughnecks' old home. The MLS wants stadiums built for soccer and it is an idea that is working.

There were plenty of skeptics in Tulsa and so the idea was dropped in hopes of rallying support in the push to build a new arena.

The two new sports/entertainment venues built in Tulsa in recent years have proven to be huge successes. One has to wonder if a soccer-specific stadium would have been another piece in the downtown boom sparked by the BOK Center and ONEOK Field.

Tulsa, considered a prime candidate for MLS expansion at one time, has been off the national radar of the MLS.

But the success of the Roughnecks has not been forgotten among soccer fans around the country. Or here in Tulsa.

We can have the Thunder, but they need to be supported by the whole state, The OKC market is not large enough. Everyone has to get involved into the act. :-X

OKLAHOMA CITY -  A Major League Soccer stadium is coming to Oklahoma City. A metro sports marketing company is partnering with local developer ADG Inc. to begin designing what will soon be the home to a MLS franchise.

The same firm who designed the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, now in its 15th year of operation, will also design the new soccer stadium. The vision to build an MLS stadium has been a three-year-long process.
------------------------------------------------------

"You know, I think there's probably a tremendous market in Oklahoma City for Soccer," said Anderson.

The plan is to design and build a 7,000 seat stadium with the ability to expand to seat 20,000. That's the minimum size for a major league soccer franchise to be considered.

"For Oklahoma City, bringing USL PRO is a conjugate path for the future to bring in a MLS team," said Darren Ransely, Director of Creativity and Entertainment for Prodigal.

Ransley says OKC will have a United Soccer Leagues team in Spring 2014, owned and operated by the company.
-------------------------------------------------------

At least 10 different locations for the stadium are being looked at including near the Oklahoma River. For more information on professional soccer in OKC, go to www.prodigal.com

With the recent addition of New York City FC as the league’s 20th team, MLS has added 10 clubs since the beginning of the 2005 season, leading to a remarkable and rapid transformation of professional soccer in North America. According to Commissioner Garber, “these expansion clubs have contributed to the vitality of our League, bringing passionate fans, new traditions and committed owners with new ideas.”

The process to determine a future MLS expansion market will be selected on the basis of multiple criteria. Factors taken into consideration include:

    · Committed and engaged ownership;

    · A comprehensive stadium plan;

    · Demonstrated fan support for professional soccer in the market;

    · Support from sponsors, television partners and other constituents;

    · Geographic location;

    · A strategic business plan for the launch and successful operation of the club.

OKC has never been a strong soccer market from the professional leagues standpoint.  

Maybe because it's not sponsored by Skoal and Copenhagen?

SI.com reported on Friday that "Orlando City, a USL Pro club that claimed its second championship in three years on Saturday before nearly 21,000 fans at the Citrus Bowl, appears destined for MLS. Assuming an October vote on using an existing tourism tax to fund the final quarter of the club's $80 million downtown stadium project goes well, MLS should be ready to announce Orlando's addition by the end of the year."

Phil Rawlins, president of Orlando City, said the club is confident it will enter the MLS once the stadium deal is finalized.

"Completing this final step would secure a Major League Soccer team before the end of 2013," Rawlins said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel. "A vote is expected by both the County and City Commissioners in the coming weeks. We look forward to continue to work closely with them and encourage our fans to let their elected officials know they support this project."