Ft. Lauderdale Strikers

Interesting article:

http://www.miamisoccerfan.com/Socce...9_A_Case_For_The_Ft._Lauderdale_Strikers.html

Good grief! Interesting to say the least.

I'd love to see The Strikers 3.0 take the field, the Miami Strikers. Miami FC could morph into the Strikers, glorious kit and all, but I feel that Miami will eventually be their permanent home (and yes, I'll miss Lockhart and all the fond memories of Strikers, Sun, et al), but I feel the future lies in Miami-Dade. Especially if they can ever find an actual stadium for the franchise. Even more so if TPTB in Broward foolishly decide to destroy Lockhart like the fools did in Miami-Dade did with the Orange Bowl.

Of course, this presupposses that the Striker name & uniform are available. My understanding is that someone here in Broward actually owns those rights. Would he be willing to part with them? Or participate in their reincarnation?

Also, would the nice Brazilian folk that own Miami FC wish to awaken the dead yet again? After all, love it or hate it, the fact remains that the Strikers failed twice. Would they accept that 3rd time's the charm? Or would they give us the Brazilan equivalent of "No thanks, no losers needed, go stuff it".

Personally, I'd love them back here at a sold out Lockhart 15+ times a year, but I honestly think there may be too much working against it for it to happen....

No matter what happens, I'll support whatever team we have as best I can & work to make it a success.

See everyone Saturday at Lockhart. I'll be bringing someone with me. Hopefully, the Blues will put on a great show & my son & I can plan to attend and enjoy their games as much as we used to enjoy the Strikers, not so long ago. Hopefully, the Blues will survive long enough for he & his 16 month old son to enjoy them like he & I used to enjoy the Strikers or Sun. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll take me with them from time to time. I'd enjoy that...

(and, I wonder why someone from Tampa would call our attention to this article... ...)

Of course the rivalry would be EPIC, also I hope Miami will still have a team in USL, but the attendance figures are concerning, if Miami FC plays good like they are doing now and the attendance doesn't go up, something is wrong. I know for a fact that a resurrected Strikers franchise can draw at least 5,000. A figure only Miami FC can dream of.

I wrote that article

I just think it's something that warrants at least a thought from the team. The fact that I live in Broward has nothing to do with it. In fact, I anticipate moving to Dade or at least South Broward in a few years for my job anyway, so really the team moving full time to Broward would be a disadvantage for me.

The bottom line is I want the club to last. Miami/Dade has in every instance failed to step up and support it's pro soccer teams. The Gatos/Toros, Freedom/Sharks, and so far Miami FC. Ft. Lauderdale, while not spectacular, has performed waaaaaaay better with it's two(or three depending on how you count the APSL Strikers). All of the Ft. Lauderdale based teams were primarily victims of their leagues and/or owners, not lack of support.

For a minor league club with little to no serious promotion of marketing, the smart move is to go with the place that has proven it can and will support pro soccer.

P.S. in case you missed it during the MLS Expansion race, here was my vision for a reborn Strikers, playing in Miami:

You know why Miami has failed? BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT THEM! Ask most Miamians if they knew we had failed several times with professional soccer and they would give you a perplexed look, probably not even knowing there was professional soccer teams outside of the Fusion... and even that is a maybe.

The problem is MARKETING. No one knows about this team. Focus on the FIU community and the area around it. Not even people who go to the school, and I am a student there, knew about the game last Friday and many of them didn't know we had professional soccer. All I saw was a table in GC there for a few hours on Thursday and Friday. And one flyer in an obscure entrance to a building on campus the day of the game. That's it. You call that promotion? You don't think there are a MILLION things happening in Miami?

There are 38,000+ students at FIU. A couple thousand on campus. A very strong alumni base. You tap into a FRACTION of that community, and you have a fanbase that will most assuredly come out and sustain this team for YEARS! I want to see flyers, posters, players meeting and greeting students on campus. Ads in the Beacon (the school newspaper), pass out free stuff, that kind of thing. It would be a very specific, very aggressive campaign centered on a particular group of individuals. Show FIU that they own a stake in Miami FC!

Well obviously marketing has been a huge problem for Miami FC so far. Local TV has thus far pretty much ignored the club as well. I agree tapping into FIU students would be huge for MFC. I thought that would have been great for the MLS team as well. I hope they do very well at FIU this year, and if it proves to be the better venue for the team, great, move there permanently.

..but, if FIU falls short this year, marketing or not(probably not, in either county), the best shot at keeping this team going is at Lockhart and in Ft. Lauderdale as the Strikers, where the support has always been best.

Here is the yearly average for the Strikers:

1977 - 8,148
1978 - 10,479
1979 - 13,774
1980 - 14,360
1981 - 13,324
1982 - 12,345
1983 - 10,823

And Lockhart wasn't expanded to it's 20K capacity until the Fusion came along(had to be expanded twice for the Strikers, first from 8,000 to 11,000, then up to 15,000). The Fusion averaged just shy of 12,000 in their 4 years. Miami has never been as good. Call it poor marketing by the teams, poor talent, whatever, they just haven't come out.

I think as you said a few posts up, the simple act of changing the name to Ft. Lauderdale Strikers would help the team get at least in the 4,000-5,000 range. They had similar numbers in the ASL/APSL. It would help Miami FC, I think it would have helped the Fusion. It has worked for the Sounders, Whitecaps, Timbers, and to a lesser extent, the Earthquakes. All have kept strong ties to their NASL glory days, through various leagues all these years, and now they all have long standing fan support and MLS clubs. Imagine if the Fusion, rather than start fresh, came into MLS as the Strikers. They'd have had team and support continuity dating back to 1977 and would probably still exist(same goes for the Mutiny IMO).

Eddie and Ray aren't bringing them back and they aren't selling the name.

Well not that I would know but, these numbers are from back in the day when there was no MLS. IMO I dont think we would be able to get those numbers again even with the change of name and uni's to the Strikers.

Well obviously not that high, NASL was the top division league then, the MLS of it's day. But we could see 4-5,000 consistently. People still have a lingering connection to the Strikers name(and to a lesser extent the Fusion). Adopting one of the two names could only help in the marketing department. It worked for Portland, Vancouver and Seattle, and it will probably work for Tampa Bay. The Fusion and the Mutiny should have been the Strikers and Rowdies, and if that happened we might still have two MLS teams in Florida.

I'm assuming that's Eddie Rogers & Ray Hudson? Why won't they let the Strikers be resurrected or allow someone else to do it? It could be what is needed to keep the sport alive here.

Unless, of course, they'll only do it for MLS or some top flight league. Could that be possible?

Strange because a few years ago Eddie wanted to bring the team back and Ray declared on goltv that it was almost a ''sure thing'', then there were rumors that Lockhart would be torn down, and Eddie and Ray got lost...

Very True!! My mom of all people mentioned the strikers, I went into shock as to why she even new the name strikers, but very impressed maybe a change of name could do the deed.

Another thing, I have a little marketing plan: It consist of the air banging thingy's given at the Miami FC games.
Well this is the plan everybody if you want to join me, go right ahead I encourage everyone who want to see Miami FC survive and reach 5,000 in attendance in the near future.


Ok now to the plan, the banging thingy's that you recieve at the game, just get them as they come. DO NOT INFLATE... Well when they are out of the plastic get them, unfold and stick them to the back window of your car. That way you can get the attention of the person behind you especially at traffic hour, which in MIami is almost 12 hours of the day.. SO join me with this effort to do MIami FC fan marketing project/plan. Help me out guys, I believe it the cheapest and most efficient way to help our team grow...



OK maybe you can put it where you'd like. top or bottom if it gets in your way.. Lets go Blues... jajajaja fr the next game I want to see car with the Miami FC bangers on the back windows. LOL and remember its on the inside of your car you stick it in not the outside... Dale MIami FC!!!

Can you explain how having different names would have led to more people in the stands? Or brought owners who knew what they were doing.

Slapping a NASL Name on a team does not make a club successful. Having dedicated and competent ownership with deep pockets brings success. Something that has been in precious short supply in Florida since the NASL days.

I totally agree with you, in Washington nobody wants DC to become the Diplomats, and in LA nobody wants the Galaxy to become the Aztecs because the Galxxy and DC were succesfull from day 1 in MLS, and even a lot more than the Dips and the Aztecs in the old NASL

Colorado did 2 rebrandings, Dallas 1, NY 1 but they only confused the few fans they had

As much as I like the NASL, the name of a team is only a small part of success

In this particular case I think it would help a lot. People know the Strikers name around here. It brings some credibility to the table. In those cases you mentioned, none of those cities' NASL clubs were terribly memorable(with the exclusion of the NY Cosmos). The Strikers did well here, they performed well, had some popular players and they had good attendance. It's something worth saving IMO, while the Caribous of Colorado, LA Aztecs and Dallas Tornado obviously weren't for the early MLS owners.

So far Miami FC has had little to no exposure, little fan interest, and an overall lackluster organization. Is most of that the ownership's fault? Absolutely. But if they were trying to establish a fan base and grow local support with a respected local brand on their side, it would be a hell of a lot easier. With the Strikers name the media would take more interest, more fans would be aware of the team and more would be likely to head out to games. For a minor league team in a basically non-US soccer market, they need every bit of help they can get.

we will see what happens with the Rowdies.....

At least it did not work out for the APSL Rowdies, nor for the APSL Strikers. But of course we all hope that the USL1 Rowdies are a huge success and that somebody brings back the Strikers

but wasn't APSL a doomed league from the beginning.. I think USL is way ahead of APSL as far as structure and finances.

I mean they were the foundation for A-league but Strikers were around from 1990-1994 in APSL here was the average attendance for APSL:

• Regular season/playoffs
• 1996: 4,946/4,781
• 1995: 3,347/5,280
• 1994: 3,478/6,082
• 1993: 2,271/2,903
• 1992: 2,104/1,502
• 1991: 1,827/3,106
• 1990: 1,082/2,039

Strikers had better attendance than Miami FC even in APSL

ASL/APSL

After a six year hiatus, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers name was revived in 1988, with a team joining the newly-formed American Soccer League. In just their first season back, the Strikers stormed the ASL, finishing with a 14-6 record, best in the league, before falling to the Washington Diplomats in the finals. In their second season the Strikers did almost as well, finishing the season with a 12-8 record, but emerged in the playoffs, eventually going on to defeat the Boston Bolts to win the 1989 championship. Following the end of the season, the Strikers defeated the San Diego Nomads of the Western Soccer League in the ASL-WSL "National Championship" game 3-1.
After that season the ASL merged with the WSL to form the American Professional Soccer League. They would play five more years in that league.

I don't know the attendance figures for Ft. Lauderdale Strikers in APSL..

The APSL became the foundation of what is now the USL 1st division by merging with the top USL league of the day.

I got news for you, the conditions that today's Rowdies (and a fantasy Strikers team for that matter) are being launched are no different and possibly less favorable than during the mid nineties when the old Rowdies gave up the ghost.

I would say slightly less favorable in the context that back in the APSL days, that was the highest level of soccer and today, most soccer fans and certainly the news media will be aware that this is NOT top class soccer.

''I would say slightly less favorable in the context that back in the APSL days, that was the highest level of soccer and today, most soccer fans and certainly the news media will be aware that this is NOT top class soccer.''

You are totally right, in those days the APSL was the TOP american league and they had the best american players with guys like Tony Meola, Cle Kooiman, Marcello Balboa, Hugo Perez, etc... Nowadays the best american players will normally play MLS, not USL1

Plus the Fort Lauderdale Strikers could between 88 and 94 count on a few former NASL Strikers like Ray Hudson, Teofilo Cubillas, Thomas Rongen, etc... but nevertheless they ceased operations

A new PDL team in Ft. Lauderdale:


The team, yet to be named, intends to compete at the new Central Broward Park Stadium. The stadium has a capacity of 5,000. Opened in November of 2007, the $70 million facility also includes four FIFA-sized practice fields and other amenities.

http://soccerfla.com/2009/20090520.htm