Why doesn't the Fire have a quality merch store at TP? Other teams have more Fire clothes than we have at TP. Why doesn't the Fire have a restaurant in the 1st floor of TP? You already have a kitchen and a staff right there, why not allow people to pay you a bunch of money after the game if they want to hang out with their friends after the game? Look at the Hawks 2 years ago. Notice the media pressure they put on after Wertz died? Why doesn't the Fire use Facebook/MySpace/Twitter to reach fans? And by creating a Facebook account and then doing nothing with it, that doesn't count. Why doesn't the Fire pay someone a few thousand bucks to do a 30 minute call in show every day and stream it on the internet, or offer a podcast? Have you called every paper, news station, and radio station in the city offering to make your players available for interviews? It was college night on Saturday?? I had no fricking idea! Why is that? What did the Fire do to get college kids to show up? Here's a brilliant idea: ask Section 8 if some of their college members would take $60 bucks in food vouchers in exchange for handing out 1000 pamphlets on their campus? I bet they would, and I bet you would get people to show up. I had at least 6 people say they would have gone to the game if they had known it was dollar hotdog night, you don't think college kids would go for that if you made it known? Speaking of Section 8, why don't the Fire stop fighting with their biggest supporters and ********ing work WITH them? (Maybe this is what AH is doing by going to the tailgate, but it's kinda late). You scheduled the Meet the Team event to conflict with the Red Stars first game? Was that on purpose? If yes, you are idiots. If no, you are still idiots. Speaking of the Red Stars... why not have a few fire players at the games signing autographs or whatever? Why don't Fire ticket reps ever call anyone? Why didn't anyone call me to see if I want tickets for Club America? Is anyone going to Mexico city? The Fire could arrange for something for fans no? Block of hotel rooms or whatever. Nothing on that front I'm sure. Why don't the fire have a frequently updated blog? Superlega?? We qualified right?? Is this happening? No word from the Fire, and I am on their newsletters, Luis, Ives, and BS practically every day. How stupid is this? Hammy does a post game press conference after every game right? Where is this video, b/c I have seen it only once, after the everton match, other than that... never. Why not have 4 shuttle busses running between the L and the stadium for 4 hours on gameday? Why not offer people some free crap if they give their email address to sign up for a fire newsletter? Why not open up the club when the Fire are playing away? Or USMNT away games? Or Saturday EPL games? etc. Sell some food, get Fire fans together etc. This shit is easy. My Dad bought a couple skybox packages over the years... they never called him seeing if he wanted to do it again? This is like business 101. How ********ing hard is it to get a beer delivered to someone in the club seats in under 30 minutes? This CANT be hard. You are asking those people to pay a lot more money than most people, and like a dozen times more than I pay for my $99 seats, why do you make them feel like idiots? If their "perks" are crap, they will move or stop coming. Speaking of $99 seats, is this the worst business move ever? Ok, maybe "New Coke" was worse, but in 1 single move they a) took a bunch of $30 seats and sold them for $6, b) majorly pissed of those of us who had season tickets in 207, c) convinced a lot of other STHs to give up their 800 seats in the lower bowl for the $99 option, d) left a lot of the existing lower bowl STH feeling like they are getting ripped off. Speaking of pissing off 207 STH, calling us to explain the situation and apologize for revoking our tickets might have gone a long way. Jim Belushi: I don't even what to know how much of the Fire marketing budget was spent on getting him to appear in those commericals.
I probably could have done 80% of this for free in my spare time with a 2 cent pencil, 1 coffee stained post it note and an unregistered copy of photoshop. I can't even imagine what i could get done if i was paid for it. simple sh*t is simple
All of those points are good and valid. I'm hoping you sent this same note to the actual Front Office, or is this just echo chamber affirmation time?
Just to take this a step further, when TP hosted the Brazil practice two years ago, the Fire had a road game starting just after the practice ended and it was announced that club seat holders could stay to watch the game in the club room. We decided to ask if we could stay to watch the game anyway, explaining that we have full lower bowl season tickets - just not club seats. We were told no. To make things worse, there were a couple Brazil fans near us who had never seen a Fire game, but seemed interested in the idea of staying to watch if they would have been allowed to do so. They were turned away too.
This has been my quest since TP opened. They actually show it on the "in-house" feed, but you need to change the channel on the tv to do that. But the real problem is that once you change the channel there is NO audio. I didn't get a chance to broach this topic with the FO personnel at the opener and will be missing the game on the 2nd, but I'll ask on the 9th. It's been amazing incompetence in that "stadium club" since day 1.
Have any of you been to The Steel Yard? It's the stadium of the RailCats in Gary. http://www.railcatsbaseball.com/ussteelyard/default/ http://www.ballparkreviews.com/gary/gary.htm# Get past the Gary part for a minute. Let me tell you, that stadium is awesome and it's independent, minor league baseball, in the dirty armpit of Indiana. They have a Bennigans in right field, with windows to actually watch the game. Their merchandise store is incredible. Could fit right in at Macy's. They have a hot tub in Center Field. Did I mention this is independent minor league baseball? And we're Major League, right?
Great points, but the FO won't do any of those. They will be puzzled as to why the stands are not filled, they will blame the economy. Andrew Hauptmann asked the media how to improve the club as if the fans haven't had two hundred bitch threads that would probably address any and every issue .
Do you have a link to this? I'd like to read how this was broached/handled from the media perspective.
Quite possibly the best post I've ever read on Big Soccer. Let's get this to Hauptmann, maybe he'll realize his front office team is standing still on the runway.
I'm sticking this thread for a bit, because I know there are some Fire ticket reps and staff who read these boards occasionally who desperately need to see this and keeping it up top will hopefully help their seeing eye dogs point them toward it.
Excellent post by snkscore. We have been asking some of those questions since TP opened, especially about the merchandise store and first floor restaurant.
Great idea. Though it still may be ignored in the long run. Also wonderful and I mean wonderful post by snkscore.
Hard to figure out what the business plan is. I figured (maybe wrongly) that after they got rid of Peter Wilt, the powers that be did not want to have the same casual, chummy relationship with the fans, but to be more removed and business-like. Not that I like that- the old Fire was something special. But for a business, they hardly maximize the revenue possibilities. How much of TP sits empty? There is nothing in those ground floor spaces. Put a good soccer pub/ restaurant down there.
Yep the 'Wilt' era still goes down as my best experience ever as sports fan bar none. I don't think it'll ever be eclipsed in my lifetime. The thing we all have to remember about Toyota Park is it's owned by the city of Bridgeview. I'm all for a restaurant/pub for pre and post game festivities or a nice club store but the Fire are the primary tenants not the owners which is unfortunate. Our parking costs $15 for a reason...
I agree 100% with this post...Regarding the merchandise/store-I was at the game on Saturday vs. Kansas City and tried to buy an authentic McBride jersey. It was simply pathetic, noone seemed to know where the Chicago Soccer store was then once they pointed me in the right direction when I got there I simply asked for a large authentic Fire jersey and you would have thought I was speaking a different language. Not only that but when they finally searched through all their merchandise they informed me that they were out of large jerseys. And this was 30 minutes prior to game time. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? This is pathetic and pisses me off. Some people in the FO need to be fired, stuff like this is unacceptable. By the way was this post sent to the FO? It should be because they need to read this stuff.
Im convinced that hiring the Bears guy was a major philosophical announcement. Its as if they think the reason the Bears sell 65000/game is their local outreach. The Fire has embraced the paleo-media 1970s Bulls marketing format. Jim Belushi is a perfect illustration. He exemplifies Chicago! Animal House is cutting edge. Hire the Sloppy Seconds Cheerleading Squad. I can picture the carpet in the front office being crushed by the lead boots. Were I in the FO the first thing I would do is hire a couple local 16 year olds to max out the free media.
I was a STH with front row seats in 208. My wife and I thought we had the best seats in the house. Close to center circle with a full unobstructed overhead view of the whole field. No one called me to tell me they were turing the Terrace into general admission by section. I found out when I received the renewal letter with the "great" news. When I picked up the phone and called my ticket rep, she was somewhat surprised that the thought of showing up early and sitting in an empty stadium in hopes of sitting in the same seats I had last year didn't appeal to me. All she kept repeating was it's going to be so much cheaper, which tells me 1) the FO didn't anticipate the negative impact this would have on a small group of STH's, or 2) they didn't care because they thought the Terrace would be filled to the rafters with fans that couldn't turn down such a great offer. As a result, I'm no longer a STH. I've bought single game seats for a few games, and will probably buy some more seats on game day. After reviewing the attendance for the first couple of home games, it looks like I'll be able to buy a cheap seat and sit anywhere I want. Plea to Section 8 supporters: How about a nice "Way to go FO" chant at the next home game?
we could all e-mail our ticket reps with hotlinks to this thread.... BTW, folks: don't forget to rep snkscore.
$99 GA season tickets were an excellent idea. Where the FO chose to make $99 GA was a horribly, horribly bad decision. They should have made the entire North End, corner to corner, $99 GA for 15 games. S8 would not have complained, and most other STHs would probably have enjoyed the price drop. Lastly, thlse seat prices will have to reach parity, of course. Once those who got the $99 deal see the prices for their seasons rise, they'll start heading for the corners and North End anyway. The FO would be getting praise if they had done this, not ridicule and resentment..
For various reasons, I have not been a STH for a couple of years now (mainly due to having a very young family (3 kids under 7 now). I used to be a big supporter, now I simply watch the goings-on from afar. One thing I have noticed this year has been the absolutely horrid coverage of the Fire in the papers. The opening day article was practically non-existent. The question I have - is the FO fighting for coverage? I remember Wilt explaining in a blog one time how hard he fought to get coverage by the papers - and what he had to endure to make it happen. It just seems (the above being an example) that the FO is just simply not working very hard to make this an enjoyable experience for anyone. They appear to be resting on their laurels (got Blanco and McBride - don't need to market anymore!) I loved reading the article from the GM of Seattle who said (paraphrased) - "once we believe we have "made it" - then we are really in trouble." /Rant
And they haven't even capitalized on that, here you have two guys who have been symbols of their national teams, the two top concacaf teams, bitter rivals, and these guys have been rergarded as the best of each team... where's that being used? It should be played up everywhere. Odd Couple spoofs, every "buddy cop movie" ever made spoofs, Voltron type shit, and it would be klind of lame, but deck them out like Blues Bros....... SOMETHING, anything. I also want to see a bilingual TV commercial with these two featured. COME ON, IT WRITES IT'S SELF.
"The national pride of Mexico (cue scenes of throngs of crowds of all ages dying to touch Cuauhtemoc) and the unsung hero of US Soccer (cue clips of bloodied and bandaged McBride scoring goals) meet in Chicago to conquer the MLS. (Make sure you include footage of 2002 wc.. McBride scoring the first goal, and Blanco bout to slug Mastroeni) THIS is Chicago. WE ARE THE FIRE!" boom... 10 second commercial that beats the shit out of anything that the team ever aired. But what do we know? We're just fans.