Baltimore Blast owner Ed Hale blames owners of teams in the recently formed National Indoor Soccer League and Xtreme Soccer League for preventing the two from merging into a nine-team league.
“I’d like to bring together soccer,” he said, “not divide it, like they’ve done.”
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Hale believes the leagues will remain independent because of financial reasons, as an XSL team likely would have to pay about $2 million to switch leagues, according to numerous industry sources.
“It’s not necessarily a buyout. There is a five-year commitment from each group to not only participate from a team level, but to make sure the league operates at the correct level,” Brian Loftin, the XSL’s commissioner, said.
“There is a multi-million dollar penalty for failure to complete that period of time. But if anyone looked at being involved for just five years, they wouldn’t have signed on to begin with.”
Hale estimated he lost between $500,000 and $1 million using the business model of the Major Indoor Soccer League, which folded in May — less than a month after the Blast won the championship.
Hale said he loaned $300,000 to Chicago Storm during the offseason to prevent it from folding, but the team jumped from the MISL to the XSL. Hale doesn’t expect for the debt to be paid.
Viktor Jakovljevic, the Storm’s co-owner and investor, did not return phone calls.
“In just the closing of the MISL and taking care of the old bills, some of those things raised tension. I really don’t see any value in going over that,” Loftin said. “At one point [all the owners] agreed on something, and that was that there needed to be change.”
The MISL’s team owners folded the league to sever ties with owners holding franchise rights in defunct markets, such as Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City and St. Louis. But at a meeting at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., this past spring, it became evident, Hale said, that owners had different plans for the league’s future.
“[Some owners] didn’t want to include Philadelphia, Monterrey or Orlando. It was very personal,” he said. “We called up New Jersey and Milwaukee [to discuss a new league], because those were the ones I cared about.”
Monterrey and Orlando put forth $750,000 to be expansion teams in the MISL before last season. But Hale said Detroit Ignition owner, John Hantz, wanted to prevent Monterrey, Orlando and Philadelphia from joining a new league.
“It was very, very personal,” Hale said. “It became abundantly clear that the league was split down the middle.”
Hantz could not be reached for comment after multiple messages were left with the Ignition and Hantz Group offices.
“I don’t get a sense that there is a huge amount of animosity at all in the group of four investors on my side,” Loftin said referring to Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and New Jersey. “It came down to this is how we want to operate.”
Hale wants to expand the NISL, which has no league offices or employees. The addition of the Massachusetts Twisters — formerly of the American Indoor Soccer League — gives the league a strong presence on the East Coast. The league is looking into expanding into Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Mexico.
“We have other teams that are south of us here that are looking to come in next year. I think it will help us with our expansion,” Hale said. “The model we have makes more sense than anything I’ve seen in soccer. I think it’s plausible to have some other cities come in and join us now, because we make more sense.”
