With MLS tours of prospective sites currently underway, it’s time for our monthly evaluation of North Carolina’s dueling MLS bids. But first, a look around the country to see how some other bids are doing.

Miami

The land deal is done. Miami Beckham United will reportedly purchase a parcel of land from Miami for about $9 million, upon which will be built a stadium slated to open in 2021.

There was hope around the country that the final whistle would be blown on Beckham’s Miami deal, opening up a slot for a Tampa Bay or any of the other 11 hopefuls. It now looks like that will not be the case, and Miami will get team #24 after all.

Cincinnati

Still considering three stadium sites, FC Cincinnati will nonetheless unveil their renderings on June 12, two days before they host the Columbus Crew in the Fourth Round of the US Open Cup.

But the bigger news out of the so-called Queen City (which country did Queen Cincinnati rule?) is the open letter to Cincinnati penned by FCC owner Carl Lindner III.

“We’re not asking the voters to build FC Cincinnati its stadium,” he says. However, he goes on to say that FCC is committed to spending “at least $100 million (which represents more than 50% of the cost) on the stadium ourselves.” That at least leaves the door open for a nationally-unwelcome public ask.

That said, I don’t have to tell you how popular FC Cincinnati has become up there. If the stadium financing gets worked out, Cincinnati becomes a lock barring a bizarre drop-off of support for the team.

San Diego

The SoccerCity bid in San Diego is in serious jeopardy after the city council voted down $5 million for a special election on the project. The San Diego mayor has indicated that he’ll veto, but the City Council has the votes to override the veto and delay the vote until 2018.

There are two options now: wait for the 2018 election and miss out on being awarded the 25th or 26th franchise or — like Bill Edwards did in Tampa Bay — fund the special election themselves. It is unclear if the second option is even allowed under San Diego and California law, and it is also for some reason unclear if Nick Stone et al. would be willing to wait for the 27–28 round.

Detroit and Others

And in other expansion market news, Detroit is still working on securing the Gratiot jail site. If that ever happens, they become a very interesting dark-horse candidate.

While North Carolina FC haven’t had the news blitz of groups like San Diego, Phoenix, or Tampa Bay, they continue to work behind the scenes to secure all the necessary requirements. Owner Steve Malik recently went on Neil Morris’s Inverted Triangle podcast to say that a couple announcements and renderings would happen this month. Also happening this month, according to Malik, is MLS’s official visit to Raleigh and, of course, the Open Cup game against MLS’s Houston Dynamo.

Meanwhile, the MLS news out of Charlotte is somewhere between “nothing” and “bad.” While Mecklenburg County set aside the MLS money in their annual budget, the reaction hasn’t been the most positive. And city officials, including the entire City Council and all of the mayoral candidates, publicly seem unlikely to support funding for a stadium.

North Carolina’s chances

So how is our fair state doing when considering MLS President Mark Abbott’s four factors of ownership, stadium plan, market soccer support, and market attraction?

Charlotte, it seems, is doing badly. Charlotte city leaders are right to look south towards Tampa Bay or east towards Raleigh and wonder why a prospective MLS ownership couldn’t build a stadium on their own. But even if the Smiths announced tomorrow that they would fund 100% of the stadium and expansion fee themselves, Charlotte still wouldn’t be a shoe-in for a team. The USL side is not a part of the bid, but it is not well-supported in the city at large. “Market soccer support” would still appear to be the weak link for the bid if Marcus Smith fronted all the cash. There might very well be action happening “behind the scenes,” but their time is running out.

Raleigh, on the other hand, is doing okay. The last few months have gone on without major announcement, but there is reason to believe the behind-the-scenes work is going well. NCFC is the only ownership group currently operating two professional soccer teams. And their academy setup may be a significant asset.

When you buy into MLS, you also buy into Soccer United Marketing, the company responsible for selling tickets and TV rights for the US National Teams. It stands to reason that you can easier sell those national teams when they’re awesome, meaning MLS investors have a direct interest in the success of the national teams. So, since NCFC Youth facilities are already built, any dollar invested into that academy can more efficiently be spent than one where facilities don’t yet exist.

NCFC certainly has a small-market problem, a bigger one than even Charlotte because at least the Queen City has Fortune 500 companies. However, other than dragging their feet on letting in Sacramento (which, it turns out, may have been a result of an unresolved ownership situation), there isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest MLS ignores small markets.

In 2009, small-market Portland (and Vancouver) won out over Montreal, Atlanta, and Miami. Orlando was basically immediately accepted when their city council approved a stadium deal in late 2013. And while Minnesota and Atlanta probably aren’t considered small markets to MLS fans, they are to MLB, NBA, and NFL fans.

Unfortunately, Raleigh does pale in comparison to those two markets. In fact, the Triangle likely sits with Cincinnati at the bottom of the “market added-value” totem pole without sporting the superior attendance and support numbers of FC Cincinnati.

That said, Malik is right when he tells Morris that the Triangle is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. So too is Charlotte. But, as evinced by NCFC Youth, Malik seems intent to build out NCFC with or without MLS sanctioning, going against the urgency of Charlotte’s Smiths and San Diego’s Nick Stone.