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Major League Soccer
12th soccer team for salt lake city "Major League Soccer's 12th team will begin play here in Salt Lake City in April of 2005. It's a very exciting day for our sport and another one of those milestones as we continue to build the sport of soccer in America and continue to build our great League.
"It is both an honor and pleasure to have Dave Checketts sitting beside me. When we were looking at expanding by two teams in 2005, Dave Checketts was someone we met about six months ago and he came in to meet with us to find out what opportunities existed in the sport. As many of you know he had agreed to secure an option for 2006. Just 30 days ago we were able to come to an agreement to have that option turn into a purchase for that 12th team to begin play in April. "Salt Lake City is a city that has proven it can support movements very well as it did in its show of support for the Olympics in 2002. It's a city that shows tremendous support for its basketball team and a city that has a large youth soccer population and a growing Hispanic population. We're excited about Salt Lake City but we're really excited about having one of the great sport entrepreneurs and operators over the last two decades joining the list of visionary MLS owners." OPENING COMMENTS BY DAVE CHECKETTS: "We had a very positive announcement today in Salt Lake City which is my hometown. We're sitting in Rice-Eccles Stadium where the announcement was made and where we will begin play in April 2005. We are looking out the window at the skyline of the city and I was born a minute from here. Despite living in New York for the past 14 years, I do have a lot of roots here and I'm proud to announce that we have the 12th team. "We are bound and determined to build a great organization here that will contribute to MLS. The reasons I made this decision are simple. The group of owners that already exists in Major League Soccer in Phil Anschutz and Lamar Hunt and Bob Kraft and Stan Kroenke - these are people I know from my affiliation with the NBA and the NFL. |
I've come to know them and have great respect for them. Secondly there is the growth of MLS and the success it is having in various markets across the country. Thirdly, there is the very positive participation in soccer in Salt Lake City, the highest per capita participation in soccer anywhere in the country.
There are a lot of families and a lot of kids and they play soccer and love soccer. There is also an international flavor to this city that was evidenced during the Olympics. So there is a lot of interest in the international aspects of soccer. That, plus a lot of business and real estate interests I have, and it came together all at once and I'm thrilled to be a part of it."
CHECKETTS ON HOW THE EXPANSION BID STARTED:
"I knew that MLS was growing. I knew there had been some discussion once upon a time with Salt Lake City. It turns out that my office in New York is a block from Don's (Garber's) and I wandered over to see him one day. We met earlier at a sports conference and talked there. I told him of my interest and the more we looked at it and the more discussions we had, the more our people spent time at The Home Depot Center and other facilities around the country, the more we began to catch a vision of what this sport can be in the near and long term."
CHECKETTS ON SINGLE-ENTITY:
"I've been a student of sports leagues for 20 years and I've seen all sorts of set-ups and all kinds of entities. I've created rules for leagues and participated in the start-ups of leagues. And it always comes down to who are the owners and what their vision is and how the league is managed. I was not only comfortable but also enthusiastic about the ownership and management of this league. We'll work through all the issues that are created by having a single-entity which also means to spur competition. That creates interesting dynamics which I've participated in before and will again."
CHECKETTS ON THE FACILITY FOR THE EXPANSION TEAM:
"We have to build a stadium and we will build a stadium because you cannot expect this team to have a permanence about it until we do. We're committed to that and we're going to commit a significant amount of private equity and private capital to building a stadium. The way stadiums operate today, if you can build a stadium where you can also get some control over parking, concessions, naming rights and other revenue streams, there is no reason why this can't be a financial success. And I expect that it will be in Salt Lake City.
"There are no concrete plans at this point. The reality is we have a number of bedroom communities for Salt Lake that have expressed an interest and the city proper is very enthusiastic about this. They're building a soccer complex on the far west side near the airport that has tremendous freeway access north and south. That's one possibility. There are downtown locations. There are areas in other bedroom communities where cities want to participate and build. They want their children to grow up in the shadows of the stadium with their children playing soccer dreaming about someday playing for the big club. I'm not being insincere with you in saying that we don't know where it's going to be. But I do know we're going to build it."
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