Earlier today we learned that the Puerto Rico Soccer League (PRSL) club ‘Sevilla FC Puerto Rico‘ (also known as Sevilla FC-Juncos) was approached by the USL this past weekend with an invitation to join the league. Sevilla FC-PR might be relatively unknown in the US and Canada, but the young club made history in Puerto Rico by being the first ever champions of the Puerto Rico Soccer League in its 2008 inaugural season.
With the massive defection of USL-1 clubs to the newly created (or resurrected) North American Soccer League (NASL), it’s no surprise that the USL executives are looking for any viable alternatives in order to possibly repopulate the USL-1 with new clubs in preparation for the 2010 season. According to Sevilla FC’s website, the club is considering the offer quite seriously. Also, the website notes that USL and FIFA representatives will be visiting the Island on December 17th in order to asses the club’s facilities.
So the question for most people watching this USL/NASL debate will be if this is even a serious proposition. After all, we’re not talking about a new club in a top media market – with a population of less than 40, 000 people, Juncos (home of Sevilla FC-PR) isn’t even one of the larger towns in Puerto Rico. On top of that, the Puerto Rico Islanders play only about 30-40 minutes away from Sevilla’s home – a definite market overlap.
In order to put things in perspective, we’ll provide a bit of background about the club and also our initial thoughts of the USL offer.
The Sevilla FC-PR club was founded in 2006 and was originally known as ‘Islanders B’, alluding to their role as farm team for the Puerto Rico Islanders. From 2006 to 2007, they played as Islanders B in the ‘Liga Premier’ a now defunct amateur league. In 2008, the club became Sevilla FC-Bayamon as they became affiliated with the Spanish La Liga side Sevilla FC.
2008 was also the first year of the Puerto Rico Soccer League (PRSL), where Sevilla FC-PR participated as one of the founding clubs and also as Bayamon’s representative in the first ever unified professional soccer league on the Island. The association with both the Spanish club Sevilla and also the PR Islanders helped make the team very successful in the PRSL’s inaugural year as Sevilla FC-PR became the team to beat and eventually were crowned champions.
Unfortunately for Bayamon based Sevilla fans, the club owner apparently had some disagreements with the Mayor of Bayamon (an important supporter of the Puerto Rico Islanders) that culminated with the PRSL club having to look for a new home. With the municipality of Bayamon owning the Juan Ramon Loubriel stadium (home to the PR Islanders), a rift with the Mayor meant that Sevilla FC-PR had to look for a new stadium to play in for the 2009 season. The PRSL champions eventually found a home in the town of Juncos, located in the eastern central region of Puerto Rico.
The move to Juncos proved positive for the Sevilla club as they found an eager partner in the Mayor of the town. With little else in terms of professional sports in Juncos, the team also saw improved attendance and support compared to their previously slim following in Bayamon. While the team were eliminated in this year’s semifinals by the newcomer and eventual champions Baymon FC – plans to continue strengthening the club seemed to be in full throttle. During the 2009 season the team announced plans to build a brand new stadium for the club in Juncos, Puerto Rico’s first ever soccer specific stadium (pictured below).
While the stadium seems like a fantastic idea, it brings us to the issue of viability. How much funding those Sevilla FC-PR have? Could they really support a team in the USL?
In terms of the nascent Puerto Rico Soccer League, Sevilla is a well funded and run club. Still, we’re talking about a team that can only fit a couple hundred people in their stands and that isn’t really getting rich anytime soon from running the club. It’s hard to see them being able to support the budget required for all the traveling and competition required by the USL-1. Even if the team could somehow manage the funding to take the team to the USL-1, how many fans would they be getting? Could they continue to support the team with just a few hundred fans in the stands?
Consider that the Puerto Rico Islanders have established a name for themselves on the Island and draw from the San Juan metro market (2.5 million people) yet they had problems in the 2009 season with even getting 5,000 fans into the stadium. How are we to expect that Juncos with 40,000 people can do better than that? Even if Sevilla could tap into the towns in the east coast of the Island, from Juncos to Fajardo, it is still a considerably small market area.
The only wild card here seems to be the involvement of their parent club, Spain’s Sevilla FC. It’s hard to say how involved Sevilla FC could really become with Sevilla FC-PR in terms of providing funding for them to participate in the USL. Without monetary support from the Spanish club, amongst other things to expand their current stadium to meet USL-1 standards, it’s hard to see this as anything more than wishful thinking.
Judging from their press release and also from our brief conversation with personnel from the club earlier today, there is a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about this proposition. Still, there’s nothing too tangible at this moment that would make us think that having Sevilla FC-PR in the USL-1 could happen anytime soon.
Finally, we must note from a broader USL perspective that this move by the league seems to be quite a risk – if not outright desperation. The USL has had a tradition of constantly propping up teams to fill the ranks of the USL-1 with little regard to their long-term viability. Seeing the USL invite such a long-shot like Sevilla FC-PR has to make everyone wonder how desperate the USL is at this point to fill a quota of clubs in order to have a viable USL-1 in 2010.
*Stay tuned, we should be interviewing the president of Sevilla FC-PR at some point this week in order to get more information on this developing story.
Its true that Juncos is not a big market… at all. Sevilla FC (spain) will have to help this team ALOT if they want this to be succesful
I am Jack’s total lack of surprise. The USL will do anything to stay alive, including screwing the pooch in Puerto Rico.
Agreed, they are showing their desperation.