ABettererDetroit, thanks for the post. I would LOVE for Detroit to get a team. There are some real challenges, but I think it's possible. Demographically, I think Detroit would support a team. The challenge is that we would need an owner* with deep pockets to fund a stadium and sustain early year operational losses. Complicating the stadium equation is the rapidly shrinking list of soccer-stadium size plots around downtown or midtown to build on. A few years ago, there were many candidates. Now, there are many fewer and the prices are much higher. Realistically, a downtown or near downtown seems imperative to me. Detroit's ethnically mixed and young urban professional population are exactly the people who would go to games.
My dream scenario is that Gilbert would plunk down the money for fail jail [[I bet it would cost him $100M upfront, plus a few staggered payments of $10-20M for the other area buildings like Frank Murphy HoJ as they were emptied out). He would then build a soccer specific stadium, which could also house concerts and events. And he could then build some hotel, retail, restaurants, etc on the fringes, and channel as many of those patrons as he wants to his casino. "Arsenal Detroit at Jack Casino Stadium". Not predicting that will happen, just dreaming.
*MLS has a different ownership structure than the other major sports leagues, and the "owners" really are licensed MLS franchise operators, not literally the owner in the same sense that they are in other sports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_...ccer#Ownership