The four owners of Seattle's newest professional sports franchise sound like a mismatched alliance: one of the world's richest men, a veteran movie executive, a TV game show host and a soccer nut. But one thing they have in common is their seriousness about making Seattle's first Major League Soccer team a success.

The four - Paul Allen, Seattle Sounders managing partner Adrian Hanauer, comedian Drew Carey and movie and TV producer Joe Roth - are promising a team of world-class players, a high level of fan involvement and, just for fun, a marching band.

They're off to a good start. Two months after announcing the team's intent to begin playing in 2009, the organization had received a flood of reservations, at $50 each, for season tickets. "Over 11,000 (as of mid-February), and really all we've done is made the announcement," says Roth, the new team's majority owner. An online contest to name the team had tallied more than 7,000 entries by that point, with a name to be chosen this spring and marketing to kick into higher gear later in the year.

The ownership of Seattle's expansion team consists of a strong front divided between the Northwest and Hollywood. Roth caught the soccer bug as a youth, playing soccer in high school and college in the 1960s. He also has coached recreational teams throughout the years. In the meantime, he's also been chairman of Walt Disney Studios and Twentieth Century Fox and has founded or co-founded three other film studios.

Roth says Seattle makes a good bet for Major League success. Washington state has the nation's highest per capita participation in youth soccer. The Sounders were successful in both their early days and their latest incarnation as part of the United Soccer Leagues.

Roth has teamed up with Adrian Hanauer of the Sounders and Paul Allen's Vulcan Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers. The chief executive of Vulcan Sports and current Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke is no stranger to professional soccer, having worked with his two brothers with the Kansas City Comets, a Major Indoor Soccer League franchise. Leiweke will be CEO of the new soccer team, with Vulcan handling most of the marketing. (His brother Tim Leiweke works for the company that owns the MLS Los Angeles Galaxy team.) The final member of the team is perhaps the most unusual on its face. Drew Carey is known for his sitcom and his new role on The Price Is Right. What's not as well known is his love for soccer. Roth, a friend of Carey's, calls him a "big soccer aficionado."

By his own admission, Carey's roots in soccer fandom don't run too deep. In a visit to Seattle last fall, he talked about getting hooked after attending a match of the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2002. He learned more about the game and, during a later visit to Spain, saw the Barcelona soccer team in action.

When Roth offered to bring Carey into the partnership, however, Carey had a couple of conditions: The team had to have a march- ing band (Carey played trumpet in his high school marching band, Roth says), and a fan membership group would be formed to help make decisions about the team's direction. It's a model that Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain use.

For his part, Hanauer professes to like the idea. "We owners are stewards of this franchise for the fans of the Puget Sound region. This is the kind of open-mindedness and inclusiveness that makes me excited to be part of this franchise." The new MLS team has offices with the Seahawks at Qwest Field, moving with the football team to new offices being built in Renton. The team will play at Qwest Field, which would provide Vulcan with revenue when the Seahawks aren't playing.