OUR LANDSCAPE WILL CHANGE irrevocably in June. Are you prepared?

Build a world-class sports facility in the entertainment capital of the world with a soccer stadium as a primary component, and the world wakes up. As glorious as it will be for Galaxy players and coaches and staff and fans to see a match there, potential investors will be focused on the bottom line. AEG has already proclaimed the HDTC will make money.

Making money is what is driving MLS into aggressive expansion mode. After reiterating the league will expand by two teams in 2005, Commissioner Don Garber said, ''Then we want to expand from 12 teams to 14 or 16 teams in the next four to six years. We want to be a 16-to-18-team league by 2010.

''Single-entity is one of the more attractive aspects of Major League Soccer, but what will stimulate new investment and expansion in MLS is to prove we are a viable business.''

What a concept. Lure investors with a business plan that can spin profits. Can it be true?

MLS has formulated two primary business plans: one for large stadia to be shared with NFL teams, and another plan for soccer-specific stadiums built, operated and owned by league investors and local groups.

Revs fans are inconvenienced by being restricted to one side of Gillette Stadium, and it remains to be seen if sufficient services and customer support can be provided by a management hierarchy running more than one team.

But by shrinking the portion of the stadium it needs to operate for Revs games, Kraft Soccer has cut operating expenses to a figure much closer to that incurred by the Hunt Sports Group in Columbus. By merging administrative, marketing and sales duties, it can reduce off-field costs for both the Patriots and the Revs.

''By downsizing the stadium, you are aligning the costs to what they would be in a soccer-specific stadium,'' says Garber. ''By committing to not sell beyond that 20,000 or 25,000 – outside of a special event – allows you to have managed pricing.

''You can't be economically viable in a large stadium if you are a tenant there. But we have a potential path to viability if everything is integrated under one owner.''

By partnering with NFL owners and local groups in Houston, Seattle or Philadelphia, an MLS team could afford to play in those mega-stadiums as an affiliate, not a tenant. Yet MLS also has formulated a plan for Frisco (Dallas) and Edmond (Oklahoma City) and Tulsa, not to mention Cleveland, where a soccer facility might make more sense than Cleveland Browns Stadium.

This isn't an ideal scenario. In a perfect world, there would be sufficient resources and facilities to sustain a free-market league with each team tucked into its own cozy home.

But if it works who the hell cares?

In a country where soccer has been stigmatized as a financial sinkhole, as well as a foreign infestation, two paths to prosperity are better than none.

by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney