All MLS Teams Should Have Soccer-Specific Stadiums

Last weekend, I was watching DC United play the New York Red Bulls.  United continued their resurgent season with a solid 2-0 victory, but it was not the game, itself, that really stood out to me.  Rather, it was the dilapidated stadium that they call home.  As a burgeoning MLS supporter, I had half a thought to call NBC Sports Network and tell them to zoom in whenever the camera had to show anything beyond the field of play or individual fans.  The focal point of every wide camera shot behind the goal or into the crowd was unintentionally a piece of the RFK that appeared to be falling apart.  I was embarrassed for the league.  That hunk of junk makes them look bad.  Perception is reality and, right now, MLS needs as much positive momentum as it can get.  A featured game on television on an otherwise unopposed Sunday afternoon is great, but what if a prospective viewer notices the giant green panel behind the goal - you know, that one amongst many that looks like it hasn't been painted since United played their first game in 1996?  It gives the impression that MLS is still second rate when, in actuality, it isn't.  Trust me, I've tried following the league about every four years since it came into existence and there is a massive quality difference in MLS 2014 than even MLS 2010.  For the sake of US professional soccer, get DC United the hell out of that stadium!

This is common throughout RFK Stadium

DC United is the second most successful franchise in MLS history; and they are second only by a slim margin to the Los Angeles Galaxy.  LA has played in the beautiful Stub Hub Center specifically designed for their club a decade ago.  DC is stuck in RFK, which was built for the Washington Redskins in the 1960s.  Different stadiums are suited for specific sporting events and, as much history as United have given the nation's capital, the place they call home has never been a particularly good soccer park.  It's OK.  It certainly worked for a number of years when the league first started and investors needed to find out if they had a viable product, but the fact that the team that established that product as viable has not been given the reward of a place to call their own is a crying shame.  United won four MLS Cups between 1996 and 2004.  They were the league's first dynasty - the first truly great team.  They deserve much better than RFK.  “We have a lot more good memories than bad memories in this building,” then United President Kevin Payne said in 2011, “but its time has come and gone, and it’s time to move on.”

The problem is that they can't seem to move on no matter how hard they try.  Steven Goff and Johnathan O'Connell of the Washington Post wrote an article on United's stadium struggles three years ago.  They stated that the team has been planning a move for (by now) almost a decade, but that their attempts continually get thwarted by the city.  Politics were at play in the early denials, then the economy was used as the primary reason and, frankly, still is.  During the economic downturn, eight amazing new MLS stadiums have opened in other cities.  So, it may have been a good excuse, temporarily, if nearly half the teams in the league can build in a recession, why can't DC?  These soccer-specific venues, as Goff and O'Connell wrote, "maximize the fan experience and game-day revenue, and allow its teams to have greater control over scheduling."  United are at a competitive disadvantage by remaining at RFK.


Like it or not, part of expanding Major League Soccer is for its teams to get their own venues.  It's an integral piece of the puzzle of allowing MLS franchises to stand on their own two feet.  To build legacies, foundations must first be in place.  It is fundamental that each MLS team has its own home.  A person cannot forge their place in the world while still living with his/her parents, nor can any MLS team expect to earn its stripes in the American sports scene by playing in a stadium built for the bigger team in the same city (or United's case, the hunk of junk that the bigger team abandoned twenty years ago).  Ten MLS franchises share the same city as an NFL team.  Seven of them have moved on from sharing the same venue and flourished because of it.  Attendance has been great for these teams that have their own place with capacities closer to 20,000, as they've been able to create a demand for tickets.  RFK seats 46,000, which is just too much for pro soccer in the USA right now with the exception of soccer mad Seattle, who are the exception to the "don't share venues" rule.

Sporting Park in Kansas City: that's more like it

United and the New England Revolution, whose fans gets swallowed up in the Patriots' Gillette Stadium, are behind the times and making the increasingly popular league look bad.  I suspect that New York City FC, who will play at Yankee Stadium in their first MLS season in 2015, will do the same.  There's a big difference in the perception of seeing 20,000 screaming fans going bananas when there are 30,000-50,000 empty seats versus seeing those same 20,000 screaming fans jam packed into a stadium that is standing room-only.  RFK may be a memorial, of sorts, to Bobby Kennedy, who was assassinated before he could finish his run to the US presidency in 1968, but it is no longer an adequate home to DC United.