Quote:
Originally Posted by #-3
So Calgary is 59th on the list.
It's 3-4 years out of date, Calgary is offically 20% larger now. probably having passed about 4 Canadian/American Cities on the list.
There are 17 cities ahead of Calgary on the list that are not in the US or Canada.
Calgary is already the ~38th largest city in Canada/US and still has one of the fastest growth rates among those cities. It's pretty reasonable to think we will be at or near the top 30 in 8-10 years.
Assuming MLS wants to follow the model of top tier North American sports they will probably aim to end up around 30-40 teams eventually. Calgary will never have a NBA, MLB, or NFL team. So 60% of the competition for top tier team sports is out of the question in this market
The MLS is already starting to develop a strong Western Canadian division, largely due to the other two cities sharing many of the same factors.
Really there is no reason to believe that Calgary isn't the prefect type of city, (especially if they build an indoor stadium capable of supporting live grass, like Las Vegas). We will have to see what it looks like, but Muta's post lead me to believe that The Calgary Flames Entertainment Group feel it is worth there while to prepare to bid on an MLS franchise.
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Here is a 2012 list of USA metro areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States
Calgary would be around 53 on this list. Most of these areas show growth (except cities around Lake Erie). CMA for Calgary in 2011 was 1.2M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Region
If the price of oil remains depressed long term, the population of Calgary could decrease.
Mexico has a popular domestic soccer league, but I would not rule out MLS looking at some of the big markets there too.