TERRIBLE June weather here in NE. Literally 50s and pouring rain ALL day, not just for a few hours or moderate rain. Considering we had 7K last spring on a perfect Saturday night, 12K this weekend is really a good thing. We still suck as a professional organization off the field top to bottom and need to be shuttered for the good of the league, but 12K this weekend was a darn good showing.
I've been waiting for a while for someone to explain what was happening up in NY (and I'm sure I'm not the only one). It's a shame to hear. Hard to grow a ticket base when you're actively breaking down the base. And if he's not making a good dollar of the policy, he'll be out soon enough.
His rationale for raising prices was to increase the number of asses in seats as a % of tickets sold. In Chris Heck's mind, the more expensive the ticket is, the less likely you are to miss the game. That's all well and dandy, but he jacked the prices up on the people who actually show up. I get it, we are paying money for Henry and Marquez. But you don't jack ticket prices up on your most loyal customers AND bring in PSL's in one year. Not in MLS, where people go knowing it is not the best league in the world. Especially not after last years abortion of a season. If Heck was competent, then he would be concentrating on soccer fans in the NY metro area. He's resorted to promotions for kids 12 & under, a 1 PM start on a freaking Wednesday in the middle of summer (he's branding it as 'Camp Day'...too bad its going up against the effing Yankees camp day too), and trying to court just regular sports fans. So, basically we've reverted back to the marketing policies of the pre-Erik Stover years. Years where our attendance was complete shit. We as fans were apprehensive when he was signed on. Everyone was especially concerned because of his NBA resume, how poor the NBA is at cultivating a legitimate atmosphere, and how they are famous for squeezing every penny out of fans/pricing them out of the stadium. We've seen everything we feared to see and then some. I don't think any of us were expecting a PSL (member card is a joke, it's the same shit). You have to spend the damn money on the 'member card' in the stadium or you lose it. The team is playing fantastic football and we have our main rivals coming in for the next home match. Yet, instead of promoting the rivalry, he's promiting a free soccer ball for 5,000 kids 12 and under. Complete ********ing idiot.
Watching Brazil vs Mex right now and seeing so many people showed at game, just how many in the stadium are MLS fans?..
I dont think he understands the true use or value of having PSL's. There is a reason why it works well in Football and is limited in the MLB, NBA, and NHL
How do you tap that market is the question. Are they soccer fans or just Mexico "fans" for the event. Many of the Mexican I know personally aren't football fans beyond the nats. I don't know if they are representative at all. My sample size is pretty small.
I don't think you can specifically tap that kind of market. Those "fans" don't show up consistently until you've grown your brand to a point where it attracts people that aren't even necessarily interested in soccer. Where you have people show up just to "be seen" or get on tv or that other silly stuff. Dunno how far away the league as a whole is from reaching this status, but one could argue that some of the clubs are approaching that status already. Of course, there's also the fear that things won't be as pleasant for fans once we reach that status, but that's another story.
Chivas @ Carolina 7,117 NY @ Harrisburg 1,477 Philly @ DC 3,276 Colorado @ Sporting KC 14,868 Charlotte @ San Antonio 5,112 Cal FC @ Seattle 3,894 Minnesota @ SJ 1,548 Still trying to locate attendance for Dayton @ Michigan
What's the capacity at Starfire? I seem to recall something like 4,500 there for a game against L.A. Also, pretty epic @ KC. Is SJ planning to play at a larger venue against Seattle?
If this game was available to season ticket holders then they weren't necessarily all there. Nonetheless, this is why its so good to have season ticket holders - you can even get support for cup matches.
I wish Seattle would do this.. Want interest in USOC to explode, make the third round ticket part of the season ticket package...
They weren't, might have been 10,000 actually in the stadium. But that beats the heck out of 1,900 at the high school soccer stadium we used to use.
Agree with Greg above (KCFutbol). It was probably more like 10-11,000. Cauldron was certainly full and East and West stands were mostly full in the middle sections, but towards the corners flags on both sides it thinned out a lot. Hard to judge the south stand as the central portion was still torn out after a concert the previous weekend. More importantly, the pitch didn't get torn up by the concert!!!
KC is just an amazing story. Think about where SKC is now versus just a few years ago without asking yourself what this type of renaissance would mean for teams like NE, DCU and SJ if executed just as well.