USL Division One Expansion in Canada, Part Two: Halifax
Halifax.
I just blew your mind, didn’t I?
The population of metropolitan Halifax is nearly 300,000. Weather is as mild as you can get in Canada east of Vancouver, allowing use of outdoor facilities throughout the North American season. On the East Coast, it is ideally located for USL-1’s current teams and would introduce very few scheduling complications. In spite of its low population, the city has no summer sports higher than the CIS level to compete with a USL-1 team. It’s a university town with plenty of the students and young professionals who traditionally form the lifeblood of a new football team in Canada. There’s even a workable stadium in place: Huskies Stadium is artificial turf, seats 4,000 permanently and can be expanded to 11,000. Though also home to a CIS football team, the turf pitch ought to be able to handle the rigour.
The closest thing to a reason to turn down Halifax is population: 300,000 in the metropolitan area isn’t that big. Halifax would be the third-smallest city in the USL Division One if it joined, behind only Charleston, South Carolina and Bayamón, Puerto Rico. But population has historically had only a small correlation with USL-1 success. Massive, immigrant-laden Miami can’t draw flies to watch their side while Puerto Rico may be the most successful team in the league.
Yet Halifax gets no buzz for a soccer team at any level. If one talks about summer sports in Halifax one is talking about the CFL, in spite of the fact that there’s no CFL-calibre stadium in the city and little prospect of building one. Halifax’s history with the CFL and its history with high-level soccer are identical: they don’t have one. It’s peculiar, though emblematic of the state of the game in this country, that you can’t swing a dead horse without hitting an article about CFL expansion while nobody considers the possibility that 4,000 university students might be drawn into watching twenty-odd soccer games a summer.
Remember, a USL-1 team, particularly one on the east coast which doesn’t need to build a stadium, hasn’t got huge overhead. Average attendance in USL-1 is under 5,000 fans a match. Halifax is a smaller city and not a traditional football market. But there’s no reason it couldn’t become the next big success story.
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I would really like to believe this was possible. But the city deadens pretty quickly in the summertime, when the thousands of university students bugger back off to wherever they’re from. This is not to say that native Haligonians wouldn’t come out and support footy, but I certainly have my doubts. But then again, who knows. Maybe we will see fans “taking the slide” for a goal by Mooseheads FC some day.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 am
It might be east coast, but it’s not “near” any other USL teams. Montreal, Rochester, Boston are all flight distance away. If every away game involves a flight, this team has too much overhead. Map to prove:
http://www.uslsoccer.com/teams/index_E.html
Huskies Stadium is a decrepit, crappy facility with poor amenities. Raymond Field in Wolfville would be a better stadium, but nobody in Halifax will go to Dartmouth for a game, let alone the Annapolis Valley.
Point of fact: Halifax did have a pro soccer team in the Nova Scotia Clippers in the old CSL. After one year with mediocre attendance and massive travel costs, they ceased operations.
I’d love a team in Halifax, but you’d need some seriously deep pockets to pull it off, and to my knowledge, there are no Saputos in town.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
I agree, squizz. The loss of students in the summer is definitely a *potential* negative, though maybe not a deal-breaker. One other thing the city has going for it is a relatively strong sense of place — people here like to support local initiatives. As a side note, if anyone with any clout is thinking about picking up this idea, I’m behind you 100% and I’ll do what I can to rally the troops.
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Hali is a small 300,000, if that makes sense. That said, the size of the market isn’t necessarily a deterrent. A small city with a soccer culture could be very successful.
Having lived in the Maritimes for five years, I’m not so sure it has a soccer culture. There are the same 10 per cent of us geeks out there, but 10 per cent in Halifax is 3,000 whereas 10 percent of Toronto is 50,000. That makes a difference.
Anyway, as others have pointed out the biggest roadblock would be corporate money. Like, there is none.
Maybe Irving FC could set-up shop in Saint John (which probably has the best stadium for soccer in the Maritimes. Huskie Stadium is really not workable – the 11.000 you reference includes people standing on the track beside the Tower).
It’s an awesome city though.
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
As always, the more ridiculous my ideas seem, the better comments I get. Look for Part Three: Inuvik, coming later this week.
When I said that “travel is easy”, I meant only that it’s pretty much as easy as you’re going to get with a Canadian USL-1 expansion. This isn’t Rochester, New York, but then again we knew that.
Money men are going to be an issue in almost any Canadian market. The purpose of this series is to suggest markets that could be viable if somebody was around to take a chance on them, not markets where USL-1 teams will crop up in the next five years. Winnipeg has a problem with money men too (or at least money men with any interest in round balls), and so will the rest of the cities I’m highlighting except for maybe three.
I completely forgot about the Nova Scotia Clippers. The old CSL was before my time and occasionally I slip on it: the Maple Leaf Forever regrets the error.
I’m still not worried about the stadium, though. USL-1 stadium needs aren’t exorbitant, and I think the eastern crowd may be spoiled by the opulence of Stade Saputo or MLS grounds. I’ve only been to five A-League/USL-1 stadia in my time: Edmonton, Montreal, Calgary, Miami, and Vancouver, listed in descending order of facility quality. And I’ve had my best times standing in the south endzone with a bunch of Southsiders. Swangard manages to pack more casual fans than you might think into steel bleachers under tents on the east side. This isn’t to say that Halifax is going to have Whitecaps-level support immediately, but 4,000 seated and concessions/toilets to match are going to get you started, and if you end up having to put up temporary seating for five years until a new stadium gets built because you’re too successful, well, that’s a good problem to have.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
If population size is one of the more topical issue why don’t you use the proper number? Halifax Metro is listed at 411,007. You’re looking at the Urban number at 282,924. While Halifax doesn’t get much credit as a potential expansion city, I think it is real hidden gem. There is a strong soccer participation in the city. Lets compare Halifax to Winnipeg as an expansion city….look at their player registration numbers. Winnipeg has a population of 739,000 (Metro) and 17,054 registered players in all of MB, where as Halifax is 411,007 (Metro) with 29,106 registered players in NS. Now considering Nova Scotia only has a population 939,531, nearly half of population is concentrated in Halifax. You could assume the around 15,000 or more registered players are concentrated in the city which is nearly the entire soccer registration of MB. 3% of the NS population are registered soccer players which is more than the national average for hockey 1.75%.
For any sport expansion to Halifax the issue has always been infrastructure and money. Make the in game atmosphere all about drinking and singing and it would do really well. Someday, I hope to make this happen.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
If player registration numbers were the biggest determinant of a sport’s widespread popularity, then soccer would have supplanted hockey as Canada’s “national” sport years ago.
September 24th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
[...] reality contest, Drafted, are any indication, no one out east watches the beautiful game (sorry, Bobbo). If you didn’t know, the show’s dubbed “the search for Canada’s next [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Requisite, I want this to happen post, by Fouge…
Huskies Stadium is not an option, surely. The city really shit the bed, in my opinion, when they built the new Harbour East facility without any room for spectators. Yes, it’s turf, and yes it’s not downtown… parking is a bit shite, etc., but, it’s a pretty kick ass field and could have at least whet the appetite for making this a discussion and not just a pipe dream.
-Egouf
September 25th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Harbour+East+soccer+field,+Dartmouth+Nova+Scotia&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=43.443045,93.076172&ie=UTF8&ll=44.703116,-63.576035&spn=0.009563,0.022724&t=h&z=16