by JAKE NUTTING

Major League Soccer President and Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott made a concerted effort to avoid showing favoritism toward any of the 12 groups who submitted formal applications to join the league during Wednesday’s call with media members.

The league office will review all applications in the next few weeks and then pass them on to the MLS expansion committee for a comprehensive evaluation over the next few months.

When asked specifically how the Tampa Bay Rowdies stacked up compared to the competition given their status as the largest media market MLS is not currently in, their proposal to privately finance an expansion to Al Lang Stadium and their 40-year history in the market, Abbot admitted those attributes address much of the criteria MLS is looking for in its next four teams.

“I’m not going to rank markets today, we’re at the beginning of that evaluation process,” Abbott said. “But some of the factors cited [about the Rowdies] are factors we talked about just a few minutes ago. What’s the stadium plan, and how is it going to be executed? How does the market help us achieve our overall national goals? What do we think the dynamics of any particular market are to lead us to believe it would be successful. We’re not going to apply those today to any particular market or handicap any particular market, but those are the factors that we’re using in our evaluation.”

The topic of stadium plans came up frequently during Abbott’s call with the media. With MLS only giving bidders a month to complete their applications, many might not have as clear a path to an MLS-level stadium as the Rowdies have at the moment. Some have targeted one stadium site but have not finalized their funding (St. Louis, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Indy Eleven, San Diego, Charlotte), while other groups are in the opposite position of having private money but no finalized site (North Carolina FC, Detroit).

MLS plans on announcing its next two teams at some point in the back half of this year, while the date for the other two expansion has not been determined yet. Bidders will need to get to work quickly if they hope to be part of the first pair of teams, as Abbot made it clear that no prospective market will be chosen unless MLS is 100 percent certain that a stadium will be built.

“You need to have the site under control, you need to have whatever relevant government approvals you need, which varies from market to market, and you need to have the financing secured,” he stated. “When you have those things, absent an act of God, we know that the stadium is finalized and will get built. That’s what we’re interested in.”

In theory this hard stance from MLS favors the Rowdies, as they are one of the few groups currently with a plan that could receive full approval this year. If the public referendum in early May to allow the team to negotiate a new longterm lease with the city is successful, and the St. Petersburg City Council approves the lease, the Rowdies say they could have shovels in the ground in November and be ready to open the expanded facility in 2019.

Being ahead of the game when it comes to a stadium plan at this early stage in the process might not be so critical, though. MLS won’t be in a hurry to rush through its next two members, meaning bidders still have time to finalize or adjust their proposals in the coming months.

“There’s a difference between what you have to have when you file, which was yesterday, and ultimately when we make the selection,” Abbott explained. “That’s why we have said it could take all the way through the end of this year before we’re in a position to make those selections.”

Still, with the seemingly simplest path to a stadium deal and a large swell of support from local politicians included in his application to MLS, Rowdies Owner Bill Edwards is feeling good about his chances at landing an expansion spot.

“We are very encouraged by MLS President and Deputy Commissioner Mark Abott’s comments related to our ownership, media market, stadium plan and team history,” Edwards said in a statement. “Our assets stack up well against Major League Soccer’s criteria for selecting expansion cities.”