NLL Expansion Candidate Cities – Lacrosse All Stars
NLL commissioner Nick Sakiewicz has made it clear that the league intends to continue its growth and geographic footprint through expansion over the next few years. We’ve recently seen new franchises like Fort Worth and Las Vegas come online, preceded by San Diego, Halifax, and New York (Riptide).
But where could the NLL go?
When looking at new cities, there are several things to consider. Ironically, an established presence of box lacrosse is not one of them. When we consider the recent NLL additions to states like Texas, Nevada, and California, these are places with thriving field games where youth box is still relatively new.
The Criteria
The criteria I considered when looking at possible cities for the NLL expansion were:
- A medium-sized stadium in the range of 12,000-18,000 capacity
- A “sports” city with enough room in the market for another pro team
- A location that isn’t too close to a competing franchise
- A location that can easily pull fans from within a region
- An established ownership group with experience in sports operations
NLL Expansion Candidates
Toledo, Oh / Grand Rapids, Mi
So, this started out as a selfish choice so that I can have a team nearby, but I promise they both make sense as NLL expansion cities.
Each city is blessed with a strong lacrosse presence in both field and box. They are both also adjacent to major cities, host minor league sports franchises, and have suitable venues.
Toledo is one hour from Detroit, a little more than an hour from Windsor, and two hours from Cleveland. It’s home to the Toledo Walleye of the ECHL and the Toledo Mud Hens (an MLB affiliate for the Detroit Tigers). The Walleye and Mud Hens are both owned by the same group:
The team is currently owned and operated by Toledo Arena Sports, Inc. The current ownership group is a subsidiary of Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club, Inc., another ownership that owns and operates the Toledo Mud Hens.
sanduskycountyairport
All Walleye are back in the Pond.
🚨 We’re 𝘽𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝘼𝙩 𝙁𝙪𝙡𝙡 𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙩𝙝, Toledo. 🚨 pic.twitter.com/c6WvCnBpNQ
— Toledo Walleye (@ToledoWalleye) July 28, 2021
This means that Toledo has an experienced ownership group in place that already operates a suitable facility; The Huntington Center is 12 years old and has a maximum capacity of about 8,000. While the facility is on the smaller side, it gives the franchise the opportunity to sell out every week. There are few things as intimidating in sports as a smaller, sold-out venue in a sports-crazed town.
What a move by Jonatan Berggren for his first point as a Griffin, setting up Turner Elson, who scored his 100th point as a Griffin on Friday night #GoGRG pic.twitter.com/wIQaluzxSO
— Grand Rapids Griffins (@griffinshockey) October 18, 2021
Grand Rapids is two-and-a-half hours from Detroit and three hours from Chicago. It already hosts an AHL franchise in the Grand Rapids Griffins, which is owned by billionaire Dan DeVos, who also serves as chairman for the Orlando Magic. The Griffins play at VanAndel Arena, which can seat approximately 10,000 fans. In short, Grand Rapids has the stadium, the owner, and the right location to replicate a Halifax-type level of success.
Salt Lake City, Ut
I had my own list of NLL expansion cities, but as I was starting this post, I stumbled upon Charlie’s suggestion, and he was so spot on that I immediately added (all credit to Charlie).
After seeing Salt Lake City first-hand and just how electric a Jazz 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 game was, I have no doubt the @NLL would thrive here
— Charlie Ragusa (@chucknchuck) October 19, 2021
SLC has seen tremendous growth in its lacrosse presence, but that isn’t what makes it a great candidate to me. The city has one major sport franchise, the Utah Jazz, and a state of the art arena (Vivint Arena), which can seat up to 20,000 for basketball. When outfitted with boards to host an NLL game, I imagine this puts the capacity right around 17,500, which is ambitious but ideal for NLL attendance.
Not only would SLC create another West Division team, it could also lure some impressive ownership groups west. According to a recent article about the sale of Real Salt Lake, the local MLS team, there is quite an extensive list of possible new owners. When spending more than $350 million on an MLS franchise, why not add a $10 million NLL team and really invest in Utah sports?
Honorable Mentions
- Portland, OR
- Nashville, TN
- Charlotte, NC
- Milwaukee, WI
- Boston, MA (but not actually in Boston)
National Lacrosse League Expansion.
..Past, Present, and Future
15 de Mayo de 2021 a las 05:04
Photo courtesy of InsideLacrosse.com
Article by Gary Groob IG: @ggroob
Columnist and Host of Spanglish World Networks
TORONTO. – With the recent Fort Worth expansion, and the move of New England to Albany, it is safe to say that Pandemic or not, the National Lacrosse League (NLL) won’t let anything come between themselves, and the goals they have set for league growth.
When Nick Sakeiwicz took over as the NLL commissioner his mandate was to expand the league the same way he helped to expand Major League Soccer (MLS).
People who had been around the NLL had seen this movie before.
Give out franchises to questionable ownership groups for the sake of expansion, led to teams folding, or moving cities creating instability in the league. At their peak, the “old” NLL had thirteen teams, but in recent years had settled comfortably to a nine team league of stable franchises.
Enter Commissioner Nick Sakeiwicz…
Although the first couple of years he was more in the background, he wasn’t just sitting in his office. Mr. Sakeiwicz was learning the league (the game, the teams, the fans), and was also fine tuning his blue print on expansion to fit the NLL.
What were the prerequisites?
Commissioner Sakeiwicz was looking for stability of the league first and foremost. To achieve this he would only look to expand with NHL/NBA ownerships or people with very, very deep pockets.
The first expansion added a billionaire to the league. Joseph Tsai, Owner of the Ali Baba empire and worth approximately 17 Billion dollars, was granted a team in San Diego (Seals). This also opened the southern west coast to the league for the first time in years. At the same time, Sakeiwicz brought a franchise back to Philadelphia (one of the original cities of the NLL dating all the way back to ’74). This time however, the ownership group was Comcast, who also owned the NHL Flyers, and had the Wells Fargo Center ready for them to play.
Opening the coasts was important to the league, making sure the entire Continent of North America was included in this league.
Rochester’s owner Curt Styres was looking to move his franchise to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but that would leave a hole in the storied NLL city of Rochester, what to do? A deal was struck with Terry Pegula of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, and owner of the Buffalo Bandits and Buffalo Sabres. His ownership group would now put an expansion team back in Rochester, NY, and though unorthodox, it worked. At the same time GF Sports (with proven experience managing live sports and entertainment properties both in the New York area and worldwide) was awarded a Franchise on Long Island, to play at the Nassau Coliseum.
Enter the Fort Worth expansion…
Bill Cameron (Part owner of the NBA’s Oklahoma Thunder) headed the ownership group set to lead the Panther City Lacrosse Club, ready to play in Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
The move of the New England Black Wolves to Albany (newly named the Firewolves), added Oliver Marti, a former pro lacrosse player himself, major invester in the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL), owner of Epoch lacrosse equipment, also forming the Connecticut-based healthcare hedge fund team CCI Healthcare at investment firm Columbus Circle Investors in 2001 and founded Akera Capital in 2018.
Where to next?
In Canada there are four spots the league is looking at…Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Quebec City.
In the U.S. the league is looking to increase their exposure on the west coast with places like San Francisco, Seattle, and Las Vegas constantly as rumored destinations.
The departing of the New England team to Albany, leaves a hole on the east coast, and rumors of the Boston Bruins (NHL) looking to resurrect the Boston Blazers have surfaced.
The league will add more franchises but, as seen in the past with this management group, will do their due diligence first, and space it out to not destroy chemistry of the present teams (expansion drafts have teams losing two players each time). The goal to have twenty to thirty teams, moving the league eventually from part time to full time is well underway, but this is a marathon not a sprint.
Teams will be added a few at a time, a few years apart from each other, keeping balance while moving forward. As long as Sakeiwicz and his team stay true to their blue print, they will have stable franchises all over North America. The future looks to be bright, and exciting for this league.
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States Expansion. How Americans Love Sports – Hockey News
How did David Beckham change soccer in America? How many millions of people watched the Super Bowl around the world? Why is the average NFL attendance the dream of every sports league on the planet? The answers are in the material of Vitaly Suvorov.
Super Bowl 2013, which ended with a resounding victory for the Baltimore Ravens, was watched by more than 150 million people around the world – never before had such an audience gathered at the screens of a football game.
Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Chris Graythen
About 72,000 fans made their way inside the Superdome itself that day – but that’s not a record, not even close. The Steelers from Pittsburgh match against the Green Bay Packers, which thundered in Texas two years ago, gathered 103,219 spectators in the stands. The 1983 California Super Bowl, in which the Miami Dolphins butted heads against the Washington Redskins, was attended by another 400 people.
Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Sports Illustrated/George Tiedemann
In the early 2000s, the average Super Bowl attendance was 70,000+. Such – with rare exceptions – it remains to this day. But this is due only to the fact that almost all the stadiums that have been hosting the United States Major Sports Performance for 13 years simply cannot accommodate more spectators.
No wonder the average NFL attendance is the number every sports league on the planet dreams of. In the 2009 season/10, a year after the world was rocked by the financial crisis, and ticket prices crept up, each game of the National Football League was attended by an average of more than 67,000 spectators; at the end of the season, it was estimated that during this time 17 million 282 thousand people visited the stands. Needless to say, the season ticket waiting list for, say, the Chicago Bears is over 15 years old?
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David Beckham, the most famous and arguably the most influential football player of our time, tried on the jersey of MLS flagship LA Galaxy five years ago. Leaving the States last December, Becks must have been pleased. So what has really changed during this time?
Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Steve Dykes
Well, first of all, there were 12 teams in the US Major League Soccer when David Beckham arrived; now, five years later, it’s 19. Professional football clubs have sprung up in Toronto, Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, Vancouver, and Montreal. The hitherto unprecedented competition for fans forced the club bosses to update the infrastructure, entertain spectators both inside and outside the stadiums. TV revenues have multiplied, and the average football match attendance has increased by more than 300 percent to 19 in 2012. thousand fans.
Photo: Fotobank / Getty Images / Otto Greule Jr
Of course, all this is not the merit of Beckham alone. For five years, Thierry Henry, Robbie Keane, Rafael Marquez and other European stars moved to the MLS. The American League not only got rid of the glory of Qatar – a place where older players secure their future without much effort – but also attracted the attention of English, German and even Russian fans.
It is difficult to judge how much it attracts the Americans themselves. However, it is known that, on average, only 10 percent of the seats are empty at each MLS game – less than in the NBA and NHL games, the two most popular American leagues outside the United States.
Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian , but especially strongly in America itself. The first three games, which restarted American hockey in January of this year, gathered a total of 53,500 spectators in the stands. #hockeyisback – and after watching the next two videos, you will understand why this is so important.
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The cardinal rule of the United States sports industry, just like the music or film industry, is that the world needs Legends. Nowhere else in the world is it possible to gain popularity so quickly. Nowhere, except in America, you can become such a star as you can become in the United States. Do your job, do it well – and you will not be left without attention. However, sport, in any case, is a different story.
The standing ovation received by Kobe Bryant on America’s best daytime show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, would be the envy of George Clooney himself – despite the fact that Ellen’s audience consists predominantly of women. So, as David Beckham was met on the same show a year earlier, they did not even meet Barack Obama.
LeBron James has about the same number of followers on Twitter as Jim Carrey and Jimmy Fallon, the host of one of the most popular Late Night Shows and the inspiration of Ivan Urgant. Kobe, who appeared on the social network just over a month ago, is already being followed by almost one and a half million people. There is a suspicion that by the end of this year, Justin Bieber will have a serious cause for concern.
Every Kobe throw, every tweet by Carmelo Anthony or Shaquille O’Neal brings the NBA thousands of new fans around the planet. YouTube is full of crazy things that basketball fans are doing in the stands. But personally, I like the other video much more – in which LeBron James strangles in the arms of a plump man, a fan of the Heat, who just earned 75 thousand dollars with one throw.
How many people who stumble across this video do you think would want to add a T-shirt from a good-looking black man who also happens to be a basketball superstar to their wardrobe? What do you think will be the first purchase of the lucky one?
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According to many, baseball is a sport that is almost impossible to understand for a person born outside the United States. It has to be learned from childhood – swinging a bat in the backyard, throwing a ball, collecting the legendary cards that today are bought for thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of thousands of fans celebrate San Francisco’s World Series victory. Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Ezra Shaw
In the States themselves, the game, celebrated in Hollywood films, is not just a sport, it is a cult, it is history. Joe DiMaggio, the best baseball player of all time, could easily be compared to Louis Armstrong or Frank Sinatra, all of whom influenced American culture in roughly equal measure, being the perfect epitome of the era they lived in. All of them were idols, for a meeting with which people were ready to give everything they have.
In addition, baseball is perhaps the only game on the planet that so reverently guards history. Its rules have not changed for almost 100 years; the shape of the players even now is not much different from what athletes took to the field in the 20s of the last century.
Three million fans at the New York Yankees’ World Series victory parade. Photo: Fotobank/Getty Images/Allsport
However, the most amazing story happened only about 17 years ago when a bunch of activists from the state of Ohio organized the first reconstruction of a baseball game in the mid-19s.of the century, as others put on re-enactments of Civil War battles or the legendary Woodstock concert.
As the years went on, the number of participants increased, and at some point, those few people who started the historic match became the leaders of an entire league – a league that dressed up in equipment from 1857, spelled “Baseball” as “Baseball” (the name of the game changed in the 1880s) and used long-obsolete terminology. What is this if not love?
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The US Student Competition is a place where almost all the stars of American sports light up like a garland on a Christmas tree. The National Collegiate Sports Association has more than a thousand organizations, and the association itself holds championships in football, basketball, hockey, baseball, golf, lacrosse, fencing and dozens of other sports.
To hell with words, just look at this. The University of Michigan Stadium, where Brodsky once taught, during match days of the local football team.
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The short video just a couple of paragraphs below was filmed by the guys at EA Sports a few years ago as part of a campaign to promote a new series of the iconic soccer game. Its main character is a 62-year-old Chinese named King Keung Chu, who immigrated to New York from Hong Kong in the early 80s. Every Saturday, King puts on his boots and wanders towards the football field to play for an amateur club from Chinatown. King does not speak English, so none of his teammates know his exact age, or profession, or the secret of his amazing physical shape.
However, in this video you will find not only the touching story of a Chinese immigrant. In it you will find proof that even in New York City, a city full of fun, the less popular game captivates students and old people, artists and engineers, Americans and those who left their homeland a long time ago.
After all, real sport is crowded even in the largest stadiums on the planet.
Derek Keenan (Lacrosse Player) – Age, Birthday, Bio, Facts, Family, Net Worth, Height & More
Derek Keenan is a former volleyball player who is currently the head coach and general manager of the Saskatchewan Rush of the National Lacrosse League. Keenan has won the NLL GM of the Year award and the Les Bartley Coach of the Year award three times; He won both awards in 2006, 2010 and 2014, although he shares the 2010 Bartley Award with Chris Hall. After a long amateur career and playing for Team Canada at several World Championships, Keenan started playing professionally at 19.’92 with the Buffalo Bandits, where he received the Rookie of the Year award. 1992. The Bandits won the championship cup in Keenan’s two seasons with the team. After a five-year hiatus, he played six games against the Toronto Rock in 1999 before becoming an assistant coach to Les Bartleys.
Lacrosse player Derek Keenan was born on October 2, 1961 in Tsanada (he is 61 years old).
Lacrosse coach, general manager and former player who has won the NLL GM of the Year and Les Bartley Coach of the Year awards multiple times, both in 2006, 2010 and 2014. He was inducted into Canadian lacrosse. Hall of Fame 2012.
All info about Derek Keenan can be found here. This article will clarify all information about Derek Keenan: biography, age, facts, income, family, husband & breakup…
Derek Keenan was born in the Zodiac sign Libra (The Scales) , and 1961 is the year of the Chinese Zodiac Ox (牛) .
He was born in Oshawa, Ontario and played lacrosse at Ithaca College. He won the Rookie of the Year award during the first year of his professional career with the Buffalo Bandits.
Under his leadership, the Portland Lumberjax became the first expansion team in the history of the National Lacrosse League to finish first in their division.
✡ Astrology Birth Chart for Derek Keenan
His wife Wendy passed away in January 2015. He is the second cousin of NHL coach Mike Keenan.
Son-in-law of the Hockey Center Hall of Fame Hockey Player Joe Nieuschendyk.
Derek Keenan’s income mainly comes from the work that created his reputation: a Lacrosse Player.
Information about his net worth in 2023 is being updated as soon as possible by allfamous.org , you can contact to tell us Net Worth of the Derek Keenan.
How tall is Derek Keenan? Information about Derek Keenan height in 2023 is being updated as soon as possible by AllFamous.