Garber sees only good things for MLS

The 2008 Major League Soccer season starts Saturday and Don Garber, commissioner of the league for eight-plus years, is upbeat about its immediate and long-term prospects, and not only because he is paid to be positive.

Interviewed in Dana Point, where he was attending a sports business conference, Garber said MLS has not quite reached critical mass, but is closing in.

“Clearly, last year was the best year that the sport has experienced, even going back to the days of the NASL,” he said. “When you think about diversification and expansion of ownership, expansion of the league, the formation of Soccer United Marketing [and] the designated player, those are four things we look at as the drivers of the position that we have grown to today as opposed to where we were even just a couple of years ago.”

Perhaps the best example Garber can cite from 2007 is Toronto FC, which, in its first year in MLS, sold out every one of its games at BMO Field, where its average attendance of 20,130 was third only behind the Galaxy (24,252) and D.C. United (20,967).

It would be difficult to improve on that, but Toronto has found a way.

This season, the club’s faithful, led by such fan groups as the Red Patch Boys, U-Sector, Tribal Rhythm Nation and the North End Elite, are taking their act on the road. In what is a first for the league, more than 2,300 Toronto fans will caravan in convoy to Ohio for Saturday’s season opener against the Columbus Crew.

Columbus Coach Sigi Schmid said Thursday that he is all in favor of it. “From a league perspective, I think it’s tremendous,” he said. “With them coming down, hopefully our fans have to respond to the gauntlet that’s been thrown down.

“If it results in our fans traveling en masse to a game in Toronto or en masse to Chicago, I think that’s good for the league.”

How much is an existing MLS team worth in 2008? Is it fair to say $45 million?

“Yes,” Garber said. “The last team sale [AEG’s sale of 50% of the Houston Dynamo] puts it at $45 million. The fact that you have Oscar De La Hoya writing a check to invest in a team with Gabriel Brener, another L.A. guy who is a really exciting, smart businessperson, Mexican American, that’s just another great statement about the league.

“The last expansion sale was Philadelphia and Seattle at $30 million. The next two will be at least $40 million.”

——

St. Louis is the front-runner to be league’s 17th team, but beyond that things get a little competitive.

“The 18th team will either be a second team in New York, it could be Montreal, it could be Vancouver, it could be Atlanta, it could be Las Vegas,” Garber said, adding that there are other possibilities as well.

There has been speculation that MLS could grow to as many as 24 teams.

“It certainly will be more than 18. The question is when and how do we insure that player quality continues to remain strong and we’re able to manage it,” he said.

The Galaxy’s push to be a global brand, combined with the deep pockets and ambition of the New York Red Bulls’ Austrian owner, Dieter Mateschitz, and Seattle co-owners Paul Allen and Joe Roth, could lead to a big market-small market split in MLS, but Garber said the league is not headed in that direction.

“I’m intrigued by what’s gone on in baseball, that had seen its popularity wane over the previous decade and now over the last number of years has more popularity and more financial success than at any other time in the history of the sport,” he said.

“It’s no surprise that they have their big-market teams, Boston, the Yankees, the Mets, even now the Dodgers, having success. But as an emerging league we need to be careful that every team has an opportunity to be successful on and off the field and we have to monitor it closely.

“That being said, the Galaxy and the success of David Beckham has been one of the drivers of the momentum we have today and certainly added to the great year we had in 2007.”

grahame.jones@latimes.com