In Part 1 of my three-part interview with USL president Tim Holt, Holt talks about the state of the USL today and certain trends that are developing as the sport grows in the United States. One trend is stronger club and League affiliations with MLS. He also discusses USL’s new venture, professional indoor soccer (MISL).
Read the overview of my entire interview with Tim Holt here.
Part 2: Changes coming to U.S. Open Cup
Part 3: W-League/MLS affiliation and WPS
Interview with Tim Holt, president USL
Part 1: USL and MLS affiliation and the new MISL
LE: In March 2010, the MLS Philadelphia Union partnered with the USL Harrisburg City Islanders to scout players and wound up signing three of the USL team players. How many USL PRO teams have a similar partnership with an MLS team?
Holt: The affiliation the City Islanders have with the Union is unique in terms of how it’s structured being exclusive on each side. It’s a great template. The City Islanders are going into their tenth year and they’re an established lower division professional team. The Union have done an extraordinary job over two years. Sheanon Williams, who was a starter for the City Islanders the year before, ended up being a 90-minute player with the Union. It’s one of those mutually beneficial relationships where not only are players having the opportunity to go back and forth, but it’s just as much off the field as on the field and cross promoting.
I had the opportunity to attend a Union game this year and by the way they promoted it, you knew that the City Islanders were their USL PRO affiliate partner. It was on the video board, they did a five-ten second clip with an oral read that said they’re exclusive partners. During the year they promote upcoming City Islander games and from time to time recognize players or special achievements the City Islanders have or big events that are going on.
It’s vice versa, of course, you’ve got more than a handful of fans going from the Harrisburg area into Philadelphia to watch the Union. It’s a good situation on and off the field and still just getting going. I think there are more and more teams where you’ll see that happen with additional situations going forward.
We think it makes a ton of sense. Major League Soccer is doing a fantastic job of growing the sport as a top professional league in the country. We support that and think USL PRO is a good complementary piece to what MLS is doing and can reach some communities and expand the MLS awareness footprint in even more markets. We’re not only excited, but we really encourage it and are trying to foster more of those relationships.
LE: How many PDL teams have relationships with MLS teams?
Holt: Interestingly, the Union have an exclusive PDL affiliate, too, Reading United AC, based in Reading, Pennsylvania, which is sort of between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Obviously, because they’re using college players and it’s an amateur team you can’t have the same kind of player movement opportunities, but there are some unique aspects. The head coach for the PDL team Reading United actually is an assistant coach with the Union, a guy called Brendan Burke. They do a lot of the off-field stuff and scout players with Reading.
Then you have some MLS teams that actually own and operate PDL teams, such as the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Portland Timbers, which were both part of the USL professional division for a number of years, and the Chicago Fire, which have operated one of the most successful PDL teams, called Chicago Fire Premier. And there are other MLS teams talking about employing that model in their own market or in satellite markets.
Just like with USL PRO, the more we can connect with different levels of the soccer hierarchy in this country whether it’s the men’s side or the women’s side, the better it is for the sport. We like to complement what MLS does.
LE: Do you see more of these PDL and USL PRO affiliations with MLS coming in 2012?
Holt: We do, actually. There are few that are being worked on as we speak. We’re also speaking with additional MLS teams about establishing PDL teams and we don’t expect any of those will happen for the 2012 season, but for 2013 and beyond.
We also have MLS teams operating Super Y League and Super 20 teams, the best example being the Columbus Crew, who were the Super 20 champions for us this year. They don’t have a PDL team or a USL PRO team, but the Super 20 team fits well with their model for youth development.
LE: So you see this as a trend in the future?
Holt: There’s no question about it.
LE: What’s your vision for the USL?
Holt: Great question. The vision of USL is to continue to be the leading system of elite level soccer leagues in North America. We have been that in the past and we are that now and our vision, objective and goal is to continue to be that in the future. For us, USL PRO is the strongest, most experienced and best operated pro league below MLS in the United States.
It becomes more and more challenging each year. Each year there are more and more soccer organizations and league properties which show up in the landscape, which is a good thing for the sport, it’s a measuring stick that the sport continues to grow in a positive way in this country.
We’ve even gone to beach soccer, which is another way our clubs can be involved. We also do showcases, combines and ODP.
We create a structure for our teams to be viable year in and year out. It’s trying to find the right economic structure for lower division professional soccer in this country, trying to find a model for U23 soccer that fits within the collegiate set-up and gives people competitive games in the summertime. It’s trying to find a model for what the W-League is and where it fits on the women’s landscape and doing that in a way that our team owners and operators can be successful each year.
Everyone’s objectives are a little different when they come into this. There’s a financial component, that we need to provide an economically sustainable model for our teams, and the teams need to execute on a certain level and we also provide a player development model that meets their objectives.
LE: Do you anticipate more USL PRO teams in 2012?
Holt: We’re still working to finalize that at this point. Our annual general meeting is in mid-December in Clearwater Beach at which time we’ll have everything finalized for next season – schedule structure, playoff format and all that fun stuff.
We restructured our professional division about 12 months ago, where USL 1 and USL 2 were brought into one division called USL PRO with a much more clearly defined business model for League and teams alike in terms of what we want to be. Our first USL PRO season was very successful. We had over a half dozen new teams in the League and we had teams that been playing in USL 2 and other teams that in the previous year played in the USSF D2 league and we brought them all together under this new model. It was a very positive season and ended with as good a championship game as we’ve ever had in Orlando with 12,000 people – a thrilling game with national broadcast coverage to boot.
There’s been a lot of expansion interest. Most of that interest has been west of the Mississippi River in the central and western region with serious groups. We’re going to be very deliberate about our growth and the groups that we add need to do several things. 1) They need to be qualified on every front in terms of their financial wherewithal, venue, ability to execute against their business plan and they have to philosophically have the same approach that the League and its current team owners do on how to grow and operate a professional lower division soccer league in the United States.
Most importantly for us, we don’t want to have a team start until they’re fully prepared to do that and if it means waiting an extra season to launch, we’ll wait an extra season. It’s not a sprint to see how many teams we can have in 2012. It’s, in 2015, where do we sit? When a team comes in we want them for a minimum period of three years in terms of commitment, but we want to see them being around five-ten years later.
It’s still a possibility that we’ll add teams for the 2012 season. By 2014 we expect to have largely self-contained regions in the East, in the Central and in the West. Whether we get there incrementally each year or we add a group of teams this year or next year or in 2014 remains to be seen, but we’re gong to be very deliberate about the groups that we add into this league. The interest level is there, which is very exciting, especially in a difficult economy.
LE: This season USL has taken on Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL), which has had a checkered history. What does it take to make professional indoor soccer succeed and what are you going to do differently?
Holt: There’s a couple of storied soccer franchises – forget indoor versus outdoor – the Milwaukee Wave and the Baltimore Blast, and the Blast averages about 7,000 fans a game. They’ve been operating for about 30 years and there’s a lot to learn from them.
We focused a lot with our teams on a) operating structure and b) making sure there’s an emphasis on revenue generation at the local level. There’s two things: 1) the League’s model needs to give teams an opportunity to be viable year in and year out. The spending on players, the travel structure for the League – those are things that we can control through the League structure and increase the stability for teams in the indoor soccer league. We want to see stability. Travel is very reasonable and team spending is much more reasonable without sacrificing the quality of play and entertainment value.
On the flip side, best practices sharing. What are the things that Baltimore does well that Wichita can learn from to be successful? Our job as league management and operation is to facilitate that process. We’ve been very active in the off-season and we have four new teams – Wichita, Syracuse, Rochester and Norfolk. We’ve spent a lot of time with them structuring how they go about their ticket sales process and sponsorship. Then it comes down to execution and we’re laying the groundwork for that. The most important thing is that the seven teams that are playing now need to be back in 2013 and 2014 and build slowly from there.
We just acquired the property five months ago and we’re really excited. The season started last night and Wichita played their first-ever game in the League and they played in a 4,700 seat arena that they only control and they sold it out. So things are off to a good start.
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