MSL Owners Move To Build Credit, Credibility : Soccer: Deadline for financial documents is part of plan to boost effort for expansion.
Major Soccer League owners on Wednesday voted to file letters of credit for next season by April 15, and all club representatives at league meetings in Baltimore indicated they would meet the deadline, according to Oscar Ancira, Socker managing general partner, and Commissioner Earl Foreman.
That would ensure the return of all seven teams for next season.
If owners follow through, it will contrast sharply to last year when the $350,000 credit letters were not filed until the end of August.
“I hope that we’ll put to bed once and for all all the problems we’ve had in the past when we’ve taken this thing into the summer,” Foreman said.
Owners said that by acting quickly they can send a message to potential expansion cities that there will be an MSL next season. Foreman said he hopes to add two teams next season.
The league is engaged in an informal competition with the National Professional Soccer League to move into Buffalo. Seymour Knox, who owns the NHL Sabres, is trying to get a new arena built in downtown Buffalo and has said he will buy either an MSL or NPSL team and begin play next season in an effort to secure another tenant for the proposed building.
Knox already has hired Jim May, a goalie with the old Buffalo Stallions (an MSL team from 1979 to 1984), as the franchise’s vice president/general manager.
The team will be operated in conjunction with the Sabres, much the same way the Dallas Sidekicks share a front office and personnel with the NBA Mavericks.
With that Dallas model in place, the MSL has begun to concentrate on expanding to other NBA cities. Norm Sonju, CEO of both the Sidekicks and Mavericks, has brought his operating scheme to other NBA owners who own arenas.
“These people don’t just run franchises--they have to fill dates,” Sonju said.
San Antonio and Auburn Hills, Mich., often are mentioned as possible expansion sites. Other NBA cities Sonju has contacted include Phoenix, Portland, Charlotte and Minneapolis.
Owners also gave Ancira, head of the marketing committee, the go-ahead to put together a marketing-business plan at the cost of about $300,000. Ancira has until April 1 to complete the plan and get it approved by the rest of the owners.
It will mark the first time there has been a leaguewide marketing agenda, the aim of which is to attract sponsorship money from corporations looking to get involved in soccer prior to the 1994 World Cup, to be played throughout the United States.
MSL Notes
Commissioner Earl Foreman said expansion into Kansas City, which maintained league membership from 1981 to 1991, is no longer likely. “We haven’t given up on it,” he said. “But it’s not on my list of priorities.” . . . The competition committee has been instructed to come up with rules changes that will trim the length of games from an average of two hours 13 minutes to two hours or less. A likely target will be the 30-second guaranteed timeout for substitutions every time the ball goes over the glass. . . . Socker Coach Ron Newman has been asked to explore putting an MSL select team in a single-elimination outdoor tournament with the American Professional Soccer League’s five teams. The tournament would be sometime this summer. . . . The San Diego Cable Sports Network (Cox 22, Southwestern 30, Coronado Cablevision 24B and Jones Intercable 25) will carry tonight’s All-Star game live at 5 p.m. and rebroadcast it Saturday at 5 p.m. . . . Newman will coach the West team, which features six Sockers: goalie Victor Nogueira, midfielder Paul Dougherty, defensive runner Wes Wade, forward Paul Wright, and defenders Ben Collins and Kevin Crow.
