Seattle Sounders FC are quickly becoming the benchmark for incoming Expansion Franchises after new media reports are indicting the northwest club is set to turn a profit in 2009.

Via USAToday 

They have the millions of Hollywood filmmaker Joe Roth, team co-owner and actor Drew Carey, and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen. Disney is a team sponsor, too. All that cash pried one of MLS’ most-accomplished coaches, Sigi Schmid, away from the league champions and persuaded Swedish national star midfielder Freddie Ljungberg to come from England’s Premier League to this relatively modest soccer league in the United States.

And they have a partnership with the Northwest’s pre-eminent sports franchise, the Seahawks of the mighty NFL.

“It doesn’t look like an expansion team,” Roth said Wednesday, smiling like a proud father after watching his team practice for the first time through a cold fog on the practice field of the Seahawks.

Roth said the Sounders will turn a profit in 2009, no small feat in the current economy. They have sold 18,600 season tickets. Even if no one else buys a seat, Seattle will be better than 11 of the league’s 14 other teams were last season at attracting fans.

The Sounders are the first MLS team to have an agreement for all games to be broadcast on free, over-the-air television. Microsoft is paying $20 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, to have its Xbox 360 Live brand prominently displayed on Sounders jerseys for five years. Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said the company has not disclosed the amount but confirmed this was its first sponsorship of a pro sports team.

The Seahawks, with their regional might and rich resources, have provided at least the appearance that the Sounders are in the race with pro football and baseball’s Mariners for the Northwest’s pro sports attention and fans’ money.

“Well, I hope so. That was my idea,” Roth said.

“Once a week, I wake up and say to myself, ‘What would I have done without the Seahawks?’ There’s no way we would be where we are right now without them.”

Roth was standing in the hallway of the Seahawks’ luxurious new headquarters, built for $60 million. His Sounders are using the complex for part of training camp before they leave for Oxnard, Calif., and then Argentina next month. They will begin play March 19 on national television inside Qwest Field, the Seahawks’ opulent stadium that Sounders FC is using rent-free.

It’s all because Roth is friends with Tim Leiweke, a Los Angeles-based president of sports and entertainment company AEG and brother of Seahawks chief executive Tod Leiweke. When MLS commissioner Don Garber pointed Roth toward Seattle to start an expansion team, Roth sought out Tod Leiweke and a partnership with his Seahawks.

“It’s definitely the best situation I have been in,” said Schmid, who ranks second in MLS victories (113) behind Bob Bradley, the current coach of the U.S. national team.

“We need to pay these people back as soon as possible. And the way you pay people back, the fans, and the owners and everybody else, is by getting wins.”

Spotted via TIAS – Twitter 

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