New York Red Bull have sold about 4000 season tickets so far

Re: Respuesta: Re: New York Red Bull have sold about 4000 season tickets so far

i would add two things:
i) to some extent, other cities have the same attitude. the first time beckham came to town, a lot of places sold out that usually don't come close.
ii) back in cosmos days, that was about all the soccer you could get here. today, with all the cable and satellite and other outlets for games, even a team in mls with several name-recognizable players wouldn't get as much respect. you could put a roster like the cosmos in ny again, but i wonder if now people would say right away that it's nowhere near man utd or barca. in that sense, i think that investing to bring certain players here, is trickier now than it was back then.

Re: Respuesta: Re: New York Red Bull have sold about 4000 season tickets so far

The team identity and branding will always be an issue in some degree or another. Also, if their strategy to turn it all around is to win 3 stright MLS cups, they have huge problems.

Well the number he uses isn't relevant but I can vouch for the thrust of his statement. Most soccer fans i engage in pubs and playing with club teams are unaware of this stadium thing. They know an MLS team plays in NY and most know its some Red Bull thing but that is it but i have to show them photos on the iPhone for them to know the stadium exists.

Then it's "that is cool" and then they say maybe they will go see a match when a big club comes and generally have limited interest in the Red Bulls.

But anyway, yes most soccer fans I have met outside my normal MLS/US circles are unware this stadium is built.

Community, tradition and a unique identity that will stand the test of time.

No need for secretarian, racisit, social=politcal idenity...just something unique to New York or New Jersey and the area and history of the area.

Red Bull executives told me in no uncertain terms that they want "Red Bull" to be a global brand and they want to invest in NY, Salzburg, LEpzig, Brasil, Africa, etc and create a global soccer brand. Essentially, something that is not unique or special to NY or NJ or anythign that would specially identify with this community other than the words New York on the same generic badge and shirt.

The way this team was branded furthers only a ego-centric design. The team exists for the owners pleasure Red Bull itself is the only thing readily able to full identify with it.

Nothing lasting, nothing that signals any sort of alliegance and emotional connection to the people that live here. When Red Bull is gone, the entire Red Bull New York identiy goes wit it...leaving NY fans with yet another void of soccer history.

Bottomline, its hard to fully invest yourself in this club because at the end of the day beyond just being a soccer team there is nothing for you to grab hold of and own as your own.

You really need to read up on the history of the game and understand the history of most clubs in the world. If soccer and a soccer team is nothing but a abstract thing designed for your entertainment then what does it matter who you support or why should it be anything special to you?

Rerun, Onionsack is dead spot on. Good seasons come and go; great players come and go; logos, even stadiums come and go. A team - from any sport - must have an identity that transcends this. If you look at all the great franchises, regardless of sport, you will see they have a strong identity that the fanbase embraces. Examples:

Oakland Raiders, Boston Celtics, LA Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, NY Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Green Bay Packers...

What do these teams have in common? Winning? Yes, but they've all also had losing periods. Beyond won-loss they all have recognizable identities. "Commitment to Excellence," "Showtime," "America's Team," "Celtic Pride," etc. This speaks not just to winning games, but crucially how they believe a team should win.

Here's what a New York-based soccer team needs to do/say:

"Yes, we want to play great, winning soccer, but we're going to do it with a style that is New York. We appreciate that we live and play in a great, multi-cultural city and Brazilians, Jamaicans, English, Germans and yes Americans love soccer and live here and are our fanbase. This is your team, you are the custodians of soccer in New York."

Or, to boil it down: "[Team name] soccer: More than a club" (Yes, I stole that from FC Barcelona)

What does that mean? It's not just buying the greatest players on the planet. NYers are more sophisticated than that. NY fans want to see passion and effort and that players give a crap. It means not just slapping your logo on a youth soccer team, it means sponsoring local amateur tournaments or hanging out at the local to watch the World Cup with fans. It means talking soccer (EPL, Copa Libertadores, etc.) with fans and not just trying to sell them a t-shirt.

Re: Respuesta: Re: New York Red Bull have sold about 4000 season tickets so far

Correct observation. It's similar as to why the Lynx and A-League Sounders were poorly supported and yet TFC and MLS Sounders are well-supported.

Aside from the "they learned how to actually run a team" aspect, which is significant, both cities think of themselves as "Major League Cities" and weren't about to support minor league teams; whereas somewhere like Portland or Rochester is more likely to be comfortable aligning itself with minor league teams because they can accept being minor league.

New York says "we aren't US major league, we're a global city, perhaps the most important in the world!" That's one reason people harken to the Cosmos so often -- it corresponds to the self-perception they have that the city is too big for MLS. It deserves a "global team" that's on the scale of Barcelona or Chelsea.

It's far from the only reason, but a significant one around here that MLS has such problems. If the gloves were off and it could run like a NASL team -- bringing in 8 or 10 world class players -- then the team would become much more popular because it'd match a lot of self-perceptions of New Yorkers.

Also correct. People can see through the b-s retirement aspect, and are more likely to say "no thanks." On the other hand, I firmly believe that most American soccer fans aren't as smart as they think they are. They associate foreign uniforms and big teams with quality.

I think if you took Arsenal or Inter and put them Red Bulls uniforms without publicizing the fact they were Arsenal or Inter, you'd only see a minor interest spike. It's the shirt, it's the Eurosnob or ethnic-association, etc., that makes them love their teams. You hear it all the time in the US -- "MLS isn't as good as the Greek second division" -- and similar b-s.

Re: Respuesta: Re: New York Red Bull have sold about 4000 season tickets so far

And.... as leagues expand, the opportunities to win, or even finish in the top half, drop. Selling tickets, at its core, has little to do with winning. It's about going to a game and having a good time.

The vast, vast majority of sports fans support a particular team for one single reason -- it's their local team. (Or, in the case of college sports, they attended the university). It is extremely rare for someone to decide to support a team halfway across the country because that team's "identity" resonates with them. Most of the people who do that are poseurs and/or bandwagoners.

But a love of the sport and a commitment to a local team is largely enough to make it special. Sure, there is a communal element to the experience that also makes it special, but it doesn't need to be any particular <i>kind</i> of community that stands for some particular thing or asks people to believe in X. The mere presence of a team provides a focal point around which people can build a sense of community. But that's on the fans as much as it is on management.

Other elements of team "identity" are rarely the function of some premeditated design; they are just accidents of history. The Yankees weren't conceived as a team of destiny. They just won a lot of World Series. The Red Sox weren't conceived as a team that is cursed. They just had a lot of bad luck. And, as my last example suggests, team identities are also very fluid.

I guess where I have a hard time understanding what you're asking for is if I think about what would happen if the Red Bulls sold the team. Let's say they sold it to Joe Millionaire. Joe Millionaire then renamed the team the New York Metropolitan Soccer Club. And they called the team the New York Metros. And they got Citi Bank to sponsor the jersey. And they renamed Red Bull Arena "Pfizer Field." And they put a winning team on the field that regularly made the playoffs, semi-regularly made the CCL, and won the MLS cup twice in 10 years. And they had a good relationship with the supporters groups and the fanbase at large. That would strike me as a pretty good situation, that didn't require me to "believe in" or "invest in" any kind of preconceived identity beyond the notion of supporting a local team with my fellow metropolitan area citizens in a sport that I love and enjoy.

These are really your examples of "identities" that people can believe in and invest in? These are largely meaningless marketing slogans. Commitment to excellence? America's Team? I think you're proving my point about how artificial some of this stuff is. Anyone who feels like there is something special about cheering for a team because it has an identity of "commitment to an excellence" but would not otherwise cheer for the team because he loves the sport and his city is a rather odd duck. Maybe New York is full of odd ducks.

(There are some team identities that result from a particular style of play. But those identities are highly fluid, and in any event, it's not clear to me that Onionsack is militating for some particular style of play.)

Again, this is all incredibly vague and amorphous. New Yorkers want "passion" and "effort"? What, people in other cities who support their sports teams don't? And what does this mean, RBNY should go out and sign "passionate" players who give "effort"? As though there is something unique to being in New York that should encourage them to do that?

The rest of what you're talking about is just having a good grassroots relationship with your fanbase. But that's true of any team in any city. You don't need to contrive a team "identity" or something for people to "believe in" other than the idea of supporting a local team in a sport they love with their friends and neighbors.

Again, I think the fact of Red Bull's unique model is obscuring some issues here. Yeah, there's something very different about a team that has sister clubs that all fall under a single "global brand" that is using the team largely as a marketing tool for a separate business rather than as a business in and of itself. But the idea that a successful sports team needs to go out and prefabricate some kind of identity around which to generate a movement strikes me as odd and, frankly, not something I'd be interested in.

Every team in the world has done this. So the fact you find it odd makes me think the only oddity here is the man behind your keyboard.

What does the fact that you substitute ad hominems for actually explaining how "every team in the world" (!) has prefabricated an identity and presented it to the masses for their investment and consumption (much less responding to anything else I said) make you think?

Your non-responsive response aside, as I think about this more, I suspect that we're not as far apart as I initially thought when I read through your posts. Part of the problem might be the language that we're using.

I think it helps to have distinctive traditions and elements that give a team a sense of character -- something that marks them as unique relative to all the other teams in the league, country, world, etc. But I don't have an especially grandiose notion of what that entails. To take one example, Seattle has a pre-match march to the game. That's a nice tradition. But I don't consider it as something bigger than themselves or bigger than the sport to "believe in." It's just a ritual that helps build a sense of community and character. And I also think that rituals, traditions, and identities that develop organically -- emanating from the fanbase or random accidents of history (see, e.g., the nickname "Zolos") -- are both much more likely and much more meaningful. Management deciding "this is what we stand for" and offering it to fans-as-shareholders is not a very meaningful model to me.

That's a loaded term that throws everything off. No one is looking for organizations, like the one in NY or anywhere else, to calculate and construct an identity out of whole cloth. That doesn't work.

In fact, the problem with the NY organization is that its current identity is completely prefab, but has nothing to do with the area, its fans or its soccer heritage.

But you also have to ask yourself how that got to that in the first place. What led so many people to even decide to march to the stadium in the first place...what moved them to be a part of that "tradition"? Somewhere along the lines Seattle project had to convience people that being a part of this was special.

Having traditions tends to derive from the fanbase and the club itself, but having a fanbase to build these traditions...that is my thrust in this conversation.

I could not agree more.

Isn't that exactly what Red Bull came in and did here? They forced their vision of what this team should be and stand for without so much as consulting with the local fans or people familier with this region and basically gave a my way or the highyway choice and did so under protest from fans and even Garber.

Yeah, but what was the something "special" other than a pro soccer team in their city, and the experience of enjoying it with their fellow Seattlites?

I think you understate the value of ritual and community per se. It doesn't have to be a ritual in support of some larger purpose other than a way to support and enjoy your local soccer team. You don't need to have some raison d'etre to form a community around your local soccer team other than the fact that it's your local soccer team. All the other things that make your particular rituals and your particular community distinct will, for the most part, develop organically and randomly.

Like I said, I think Red Bull is unique in some respects, but I think where we may disagree is the role you give them as the high lords who define "what the team stands for." There's nothing preventing Red Bull fans and supporters groups from doing their own march to the match, or whatever. I understand that the idea of Red Bull using the team to market their product is annoying to some, but I don't think this prevents the community of fans from developing distinctive and unique traditions and rituals that mark them apart from other MLS teams or, indeed, other Red Bull soccer teams. And I certainly don't see why it necessarily prevents people from enjoying the experience of supporting their local soccer team simply because it's their local soccer team. Was there something other than that fact that led Seattle fans to embrace their team? Was it their shared love of Xbox or field turf?

And yet Onionsack has declared that every team in the world has done this.

I still don't understand how management institutionalizes an "identity." What kind of identity do you want them to bestow upon the team to reflect the area, its fans, and its soccer heritage -- and, more importantly, how? I suspect we're talking about things at the margins that actually wouldn't be inconsistent with Red Bull owning and operating the team.

A team for the city where fans control a part of the team and had the right to decide its identiy themselves. For starters.

This is where i think you are wrong. Simply having a local soccer team is not going to move the needle, the needles moves when the team is something the people want to invest themselves into. If it truely was that easy, then MLS wouldn't have any problems filling the stands now would they..given the soccer following population. People have stayed away for other reasons, identity is not the sole one but an important one because its a foundational reason. League and team perception also comes into play feeding on that identity.

But they have, and in no uncertain terms. When someone calls into their office and expresses they may not want to buy or renew season tickets in part do to the Red Bull in your face propoganda...they are told tough shit and if you want to wait for a new team go ahead its gonna be a long time.

They refuse to allow fans to inset songs about the past team name in publications they control, when we send a photo of Gio to use on their site to promote a big tribute by the fans they crop out Metro insignia same as on their stadium booklet. They have willfully censored fans from their own traditions in that way.

Make no mistake, the corporate branding is an absoulte definitation of what this team is and what it stands for. There is no comprimise.

I wouldn't want them to 'bestow' anything, I would want them to 'work with' and 'adapt' to the culture and traditions and ideas held by the fans of the teams that have come before them in the area, even if it means attenuating their all-encompassing brand a little bit.

But working with and adapting is not in RB's repertoire, full stop. Certainly not when it comes to promoting their brand.

And what exactly did MetroMedia do, way back when? I posted on another thread my recollections of a phone call, when a Empire Soccer Club front office guy (the company set up by MetroMedia to run the MetroStars) called me with some questions. One of them was "what do I think this team should be called?" and I told him that Empire Soccer Club seemed like a perfectly good name to me. I don't know how many other people they polled in regards to this, but the bottom line is they didn't take fan advice. And, guess what: it was totally their perogative not to do so. They stuck my team with a ridiculous name, but it's not like we were the only team in the league with one of those.

It's quite too bad that our team wasn't christened "Cosmos" way back when, eh. If you believe rumors, Pepe Pinton wanted $5million for the Cosmos name, which was the same amount it cost MetroMedia to buy into the league. But then, it wouldn't really have been the Cosmos, not in 96 and not now. And that's another thing: please keep in mind that this whole league was contrived. It was created to, at some point, make lots of money for the owners. These aren't clubs, they're franchises (and I'm sure it can be argued that they aren't that either). These aren't teams that started out out small and amateur. The original teams sprung up out of nothing. Talk about identities being "completely prefab, but having nothing to do with the area, its fans or its soccer heritage". San Jose Clash, DC United (what exactly did they Unite with? as you ask in your sig), Tampa Bay Mutiny, Dallas Burn, KC Wiz? Whatever, all that was fine! It gave us here in the US a league of our own, a team of our own.

So you're pissed that Red Bull didn't do as Seattle did? Get over it! And what exactly was the MetroStars identity? Let me go back, at this point, a quote from one of the great RerunStubs posts on this thread:

I seem to have forgotten my answers for all the above questions, in regards to the MetroStars. Or maybe I just put it away somewhere deep down, after so many years of crap.

Just a quick FYI: The Emerald City Supporters have been marching to Qwest Field before matches since 2004, during the USL-1 Sounders years. The MLS club 'assisted' the growth of the phenomenon with advertising, but it started with the supporters years before MLS came to Seattle.

This is true...all 40 of them that were fans before MLS came to town.

Yeah, but what might that actually result in? What tangible thing would you like to see?

Every time I ask about substance (what do you want?), I get a response about process (Red Bull should work with the fans). Well, sure, all MLS teams should be responsive to the fans, and to the extent Red Bull isn't, that's a problem.

But the question at hand is this notion of "identity" and what the team "stands for," and how that might result in a more robust fanbase. Does no one have any affirmative view of what the team's "identity" should be, and how it should actually manifest itself? If your view is that the team should stand for something larger than simply being the local pro soccer team, what should that actually be? How would it be implemented?

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

do I need to call in the Philly Rumspringas to beat your ass?

i) everyone around here who is a soccer fan knows about red bull arena. it's not possible to be an active nyc soccer fan and not have heard of it.

ii) red bull want to make a global soccer brand. that may bother some people, who would like a specific, ny-only identity (ny is the greatest city in the world, after all, and being twinned with salzburg doesn't give anybody goosebumps). but global soccer branding is not to say that nyrb exist only to market the energy drink. as a marketing effort for the energy drink, the mls team actually would be a ridiculous idea. and in fact there is not that much energy drink marketing at the games. it's on the jersey, of course, but everyone is happy whenever an mls team gets a jersey sponsor... in the stands there's not much energy drink peddling. and the game experience is presented well, imo. there are always plenty of team representatives around, dressed in the team blazers. rb may be wrong to censor metrostar references, and sure, they also could try lots of other things. but the job they do isn't all that bad, and i frankly don't see that they have to pay attention every time some know-it-all calls them on the telephone.