Revolution Stadium Groundbreaking "12-24 Months" Part VI

Agreed. Vancouver is gorgeous, even at ground level.

But about the Revs-----------

Good lord just sell the team to John Henry already.

Kraft has no intention to sell. His investment has multiplied 10 x. It's an investment to him. I know that's a nightmare for us but it's true. We are veal calves in a veal cage for now at least.

So true. This team was worth nothing when they started. Now, it could be worth $60-$100 million, even without a stadium, if the league halts expansion.

Lol forgive me if its perfectly timed sarcasm but -if you did sentiment analysis about sox ownership the majority of sox lemming fans HATE Henry with a passion. Be careful what you wish for, hes just like Kraft but an even more ruthless and unethical fan passion exploiter.

Never understood that - 2 World Series titles, renovations every year to actually make Fenway semi-tolerable to watch a game and exponentially diversifying the team's revenue streams, branding and media exposure. Run him out of town!

No, he's nothing like Kraft.

Kraft was a Pats fan first. A passionate supporter of the team and game. A season ticket holder who sat on the cold bleachers of Schaefer stadium and cheered for the losers that were the New England Patriots.

He got rich enough and lucky enough to buy his favortie team that plays his favorite sport and has improved the franchise monumentally during his tenure.

Of course, the success of his soccer franchise has not mirrored this and its clear his personal passion does not extend to soccer. But its hard to accuse him of being a "ruthless and and unethical fan passion exploiter". His problem is that he doesn't understand the sport well enough and his "people" have consistently failed to maintain a passionate fan base because of a long series of mistakes and miscalculations.

Henry and his ilk are just front running pencil pushing geeks. Your description of them is apt. Despite the good things they have done, my gut tells me they are morally lacking, and poor judges of character in both their front office and in the players they picked.

The Sox collapse last September and the subsequent facts that have come out around it make me despise this group of players. I wish the team had jettisoned 75 % of them and started over.

Well I agree with you, repped. I probably should've clarified what I meant by "just like Kraft".

As you pointed out Kraft was a football fan so he had genuine passion for the Patriots - something deeper than viewing the club purely through a financial lens. That love is important and he deserves all the plaudits on the Patriots' side.

However, Henry is like Kraft when it comes to the Revs.

As you've suggested, he sees the Revs solely as a revenue opportunity and nothing more. I believe Henry views the Red Sox (and Liverpool, the racing, etc) the same way and will exploit passion from fans who will turn up anyway to get even more money. But I do agree with your post 100%.

Allow me to be the first make this reference:

It's the colon, isn't it?

An interesting analysis of MLS attendance and stadium location...

http://www.soccernewsday.com/usa/a/131/mls-stadium-locations-attendance-comparison

-A Bit interesting that he counts DC as near core. You can get there on the metro and from the white house its only 11 minutes. How much easier can you make it to get to a stadium?

- What makes Vancouver at 9.1Mi as near core but CO and NY at 9.5 & 9.6 Suburbs? Seems like a bit of selective picking to me.

- That NE number makes me want to vomit

As the author acknowedges, it is hard to define the "urban core," but I would argue that if the stadium is within the city limits, it counts. For example, I was surprised to see Toronto as "near core" since it is right on the lakefront, with several streetcar lines that go there, as well as a suburban rail stop. Just because it's a mile from the skyscrapers on Bay Street, I'd argue that it is the very definition of an "urban core" setting. Like Fenway Park being in the Back Bay, not exactly walking distance from the financial district. 100 years ago they thought it was out in the boonies, but things change over time.

Other factors have to do with local culture. LA fans won't ever be the types to take public transportation to games at a stadium in the city in large numbers. It just isn't the way they roll there. And since Chivas and the Galaxy both are in the same stadium, location can only have so much to do with it. You can argue that Chivas' fanbase live elsewhere, but I beleive it has more to do with the Galaxy being the mother of all front-runners, always a high-profile team with big names, while Chivas got their marketing acumen from the same online university the Revs did.

Meanwhile, measure, measure, measure, measure, measure, measure, measure, as fan goodwill goes down, and brand negatives go up.

Because Empire Field was only 4 miles from downtown. For some reason he has the number wrong.

It's not interesting, it's lazy. He based it on distance from Google's idea of the center of the city. As you note, it's close to the Stadium-Armory subway station (the clue is in the name) and the ride isn't that long. Proper research would look at accessibility by public transportation and car against demographics. I'd expect the following conclusion: public transportation access widens both the age and socio-economic range of attendees and is particularly valuable in attracting young fans. The pressure will increase on Kraft to build. In a franchise system promotion and relegation is replaced by pissing off the other owners.

Are you suggesting that there's even a chance that the other owners will kick Kraft out of MLS?

Never happen. I can't be arsed to go look for it, but a few years ago I posted a likely (toung-in-cheek) fly-on-the-wall scneario of the MLS owners in a meeting, where people were putting pressure on Kraft, and then Kraft's response. He ripped into each of them, from the Johnny-come-latelys like Fat Boy Carey (who people forget was so out of touch he wanted to name the team "Seattle Republic"), to Jorge Vegara, and the whole cast of characters. Guys like Checketts jumped in when it was a pretty safe investment, but Kraft was there when there was a very real possibility that the league could go under. He even bailed out the Clash for a couple of years when the group headed by the founder, Alan I and I Rothenberg and his Japanese investors bailed.

All true, but while Kraft gets credit for keeping the league afloat in the early years, he has done, to quote the '60s song War, "Absolutely Nothing!" to bring his team even a couple of steps beyond the Brockton Rox and Boston Canons on the local sporting scene. He has even gone backwards while the league as a whole has gone very far forward. The rising tide can't lift all boats when one of them is tetherd to the ocean floor.

But every league has its perpetual losers. I don't think the other owners lose sleep over it. In fact, if I was another owner, I would be ok with it. An easy victory means that the fans for my team go home happy.

Once again, you don't understand the difference between being a losing franchise and being a minor league franchise. Toronto FC is a losing franchise, the New England Revolution are a minor league franchise.

There have to be teams like TFC, as someone has to lose. However, teams like Chivas USA and the Revs are bad for the league. They have terrible attendance, no media coverage, and apathetic owners. They're bad for the league, while losing franchises like TFC are not.

Bailed is a little strong. Rothenberg had sweat equity and Dentsu was a league investor without a team. They were never investor operators for the Clash (well, not any more than they were for Dallas or Tampa).

Also, Kraft's people were hated by the Clash fans. They weren't benevolent in their treatment of that team.

Except when it comes time to negotiate the TV deals and you can write off the entire Boston market. Then Bob's benign neglect approach cuts into revenue.

Rothernburg was part of a group with some Japanese investors who were all set to buy the Clash. The reconsidered when the economy there took a downturn. Kraft did step in and paid the bills for a year or two. He had enough influence over the team that he put his own people in place, like Lynn Metaparel, an ex-ticket rep in Revland who became the GM. That's a GM in the Brian O'Donovan sense, not the Theo Epstien sense.

Yes, the fans hated him, not unlike how we feel about him here. Imagine what it would be like to be the younger brother of the red-headed stepchild? Not that I didn't enjoy winding them up with the "rumor" that the Clash were moving to Connecticut to be the Revs-like tenant in Bob Kraft's spanking new stadium at (Yo!) Adrian's Landing in Hartford.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/05/04/somerville-ikea-plans-dead/

It is looking more and more like the Ikea site by the new Assembly Square T stop is becoming available....

I'm sure they'd show the same loyalty the Pats show to aging players.

They can't kick somebody out, but they can start trying to put pressure on them, whether to do something to improve performance* or sell up. The MLS has revenue sharing, so an under-performing franchise costs the other owners money. Owners don't like not earning more money.

* Financial, obviously.