And Id also like a 3-way with Sofia Vergara and a 25 year old Sofia Loren, but that isn't happening any more than Daley giving Wilt more than Jack & Shit. Sure: the "south side" option was tantamount to being reliant on the (snicker) largesse of Jerry Reinsdorf, so if you considered that in any way a realistic option, Id also like a pony. And the Arlington racecourse "option" never had legs, either, so let's not pretend these options that ever had a snowball's chance in hell. There's no way around it: watching Barcelona on TV 》suffering through Pawno's bus-parking operation. The fire are a bad product, & the Bridgeview location, while not great, was the best option then available. And, it is not one of the main reasons for Chicago's underperformance in this league. If Beckham can get into Overton, will it be ideal? Perhaps not. But, if he puts the same calibre of horse manure on the field as Hauptman has, Beckham will fail to an equal degree, full stop.
Every time the Fire play a home game, there are millions of people in Chicago that don’t know about it or know and don’t go- how many really give a shit about Daley, Wilt and/or you and Sofia Vergara? When deciding whether or not to go to damn Bridgeview, of all places, how many of the millions of Chicagoans that are contemplating whether to go see Hamilton, or a concert, or a Cubs/Sox/Bulls/Blackhawks game (at some point the season overlap a bit) say “well sure its easier to get to Wrigley/Comiskey/The UC but the Fire could’ve been in Hoffman Estates, so let’s totally go to Bridgeview instead of the more convenient things!”. Probably not enough to move the attendance needle as much as not having to go Bridgeview would, but sure, they’d average a couple hundred to maybe a thousand more people in that shitty location if the owner that many of those millions of people that don’t go to games don’t know exists didn’t own the team. There’s nothing that can be done about the Fire’s location now, but the fact that MLS at least appears to be making stadium location a consideration when judging which markets are worthy of an expansion team should tell you how important they think it is to a team’s long term success- it would appear to me that they do consider it in the ‘top 5’ based on what we’re seeing with Miami and the other recent candidates/expansion markets but YMMV and apparently does ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
Bluecat82, oh man, you didn't notice the favoritism in this league??? If you're not LA, NY, Seattle, Beckham, or Blank, you're NOTHING. And if you're San Jose, Garber forgets to mention you at his 'end of the season speech' even though Avaya had just opened. Yeahhhhh.
I've been very critical of the stadium design and location, but it's pretty damn close to Nats Park. There will be two blocks between the venues. It's pretty much across South Capitol St from Nats Park. If you look at the webcam you can see the red signage for Nats Park. Here are three photos from this weekend quickly stitched together. The Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge is South Capitol Street. Audi Field is about two blocks from South Capitol Street.(100 Potomac Avenue in some documents) which Nats Park actually borders. From the intersection with South Capitol St to my back.
Three things : 1. I wouldn't walk across the street to watch a 4th-rate team in a 3rd-rate league, when all of the other world class options to spend my limited free time & my discretionary dollars you mentioned. Even if I have to take (shudders!) transit to get to Hamilton, for example. Life is simply too short to waste time on bad soccer. 2. If you're bitching about transit to get to Bridgeview, you clearly have never tried to get to the Sears Center in Hoffman. 3. Note that each of the successful MLS 3.0 teams (Atlanta, Seattle, Toronto) are relatively good at soccer, & spend more on their rosters. None of them have the "get all the TAM/GAM to avoid spending money" strategy that Hauptman deploys. Again, the quality of the product matters more than the location of the product.
And, yet, the opening two days of the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament in Brooklyn were sold out with the scalpers cashing in on people hoping to see future NIT teams play. I hear high school football is quite popular, too.
FWIW, I drove two hours each way (more if there was traffic) for every Sounders game for four years when I lived in Bellingham, Wash.Yes, supporting my club was worth it. If I couldn't make a game I never had a problem selling tickets in town to others who also gladly made that drive. Unfortunately I now live in Texas. But I do make the four-hour drive to Dallas or the 3 1/2-hour drive to Houston to see the Sounders when they come round and the game is on a Saturday. Usually I just get a hotel and drive back Sunday. Point is: if people care about the club and the sport, Bridgeview (or Frisco, or Harrison, N.J.) wouldn't be an issue. The problem is those clubs have done a poor job getting people to care.
Is MLS looking to re-define the term "user friendly"? Maybe we can get insurance companies (who'll be there for your claim after your car gets broken into) or gun manufacturers (you'll need the self-defense) to sponsor MLS teams? How about the mace manufacturers? I've traveled a bit to take my boys to several national team games. The whole family has gone up to Orlando to catch a few Orlando City games. I want to support MLS, but I first and foremost want a good, safe experience for me and my family.
Yeah, I thought it was like next door though. You'd probably get off at the earlier stop on the Green Line rather than the one for Nats Park, right? And it's still a 10-15 minute walk? That's not bad by any means, but I guess I just don't see how it's more accessible than RFK.
1. Okay - that's great but not really the experience of people merely seeking entertainment, and that's a group of people that a soccer team in Chicago needs to fill its suburban stadium right now. 2. I have. It doesn't make getting to Bridgeview any easier though.... 3. Not sure why you prefaced 'the quality of play matter more than the location of the product' with 'again', when your initial comment was simply questioning whether the location was one of the top 5 things keeping people from the stadium. Don't think it matter whether product on the field is more important or not, it's absolutely important, and location is absolutely important, too. The thing is, MLS can't control whether a team in a given market is consistently good (in an ever-expanding league, it is almost guaranteed that some teams will suck a bit) but it can control whether or not it's easy to get to the stadium and obviously has learned that they need to pick a location that works for a given market based on what we're seeing with these expansion teams. Maybe in those other markets- I can't speak to any of them but Frisco (in-laws live in McKinney) where everyone drives everywhere and the sprawl is such that a desolate location now might be booming in a few years, but in Chicago, even a playoff team with Blanco and McBride had relative trouble drawing people to Bridgeview, a (mostly) transit-inaccessible location that is outside of the city, 14 miles from downtown and near nothing else of any relevance to the ~3 million people in the city that have tons of other entertainment options, sports-related and otherwise, on every single night of the week. Teams need fans that'll drive 4 hours to see them play, sure, and winning (duh) goes a long way toward creating those, but many of those fans are going to come no matter what once they're hooked (absent blatant neglect such as what the professional team in Bridgeview is currently experiencing), and soccer isn't at a point in this country where those fans alone can reliably fill a stadium in every market. Again, the care that MLS appears to be putting toward stadium location shows that they're not simply going by the old 'build it and they will come' mantra but instead understand that the easier you make it for people to get to games, the more likely they'll come even when the team isn't dominating on the field.
Someone once told me that Hauptman was sandbagging the team in an effort to induce the Village of Bridgeview to file for municipal bankruptcy, giving the Fire an out from their lease. Is that true? I'm not sure. But it was completely plausible, which I think gives you the conclusive answer to all of these "Is it Bridgeview or is it Hauptman?" debates. Yes, Hauptman is that bad. Yes, Bridgeview is that bad. I'm reading folks in this thread from Seattle and KC and San Jose, etc. It's difficult to explain to folks like that how nonexistent MLS is in Chicago.
Okay, then what? Move the Fire to Austin? Seriously? Abandon the third largest market in the country? America's "Second City"? Breaking the lease sounds great - if there's a plan B. I don't see the Fire returning to Soldier Field. And if you think Bridgeview is inaccessible, what did you think of Cardinal Stadium and its indoor/outdoor carpet in Naperville? The conspiracy theories about Hauptman and Bridgeview don't contain any rational next steps from what I've seen. So the Town of Bridgeview defaults and the lease is broken. Great. Then what?
I believe the logic is that because of the Bridgeview lease, the team is essentially unsellable. With the lease broken, someone could buy the team, move them closer to the city, and tap into the fans who are completely uninterested in driving to suburbia.
Well hopefully it won't be decrepit, have raccoons living in it and about to fall down. So there is that.
Well, first and foremost, this is just a rumor I heard so I can't purport to know. I am certainly not one of these people who believes a soccer stadium is going to be built on one of the constantly ballyhooed old industrial sites on the North Side along the river. (Least of all for a USL team. Can't believe people are falling for that.) But I do think Soldier Field would be a far better platform for the franchise going forward if it were willing to make other investments toward truly breaking into the market. The new SF is a terrific soccer venue. Is that financially realitistic? Would the City/Bears let them? I don't know. Wrigley would be incredible. I doubt that's possible. The site that always seemed to make the most realistic sense to me was Armour Square Park on the same parcel of land where Comiskey Park is now. The parking is already there, and the highway and transit links are great. The team didn't have the money to do that in 2004. Could they do it now? Again, I don't know. The only suburb I would even consider would be Rosemont. I hate Rosemont, but it would make a lot of sense, and they might have interest in footing some of the bill.
They should coax raccoons into the new DC stadium. They'd be like the ravens at the Tower of London except they're furry and they move different.
Andy Mead thinks he's such a big shot but Sitruc is my favorite photographer now. Anyway, is it looking like a rush job to Audi Field opening day? Sitruc, could you sneak in there and set something big and heavy on the that other side so the stadium looks balanced / safer? My iPhone has a level app. Or bolt down that side to the ground.
I have to think the City would jump at the chance. I bet the Bears could be persuaded as well, but the question is what the rent would cost.
The Cubs will allow anything in Wrigley except soccer. It's not management , it's the ownership. When an anniversary show for Wrigley Field was produced, every sport or event was featured except the highly successful year the Sting of NASL had in the late 70's. The lease for the Bears I believe allow the Bears to rape revenue streams for non Bears events.
Fact is even if the Fire had a downtown stadium and Neymar on the team. They would still have trouble getting any attention from local TV. Chicago along with most of the Midwest are the last pillars of soccer resistance. TV ratings for the world cup has proven it.
I'd be interested to see the data on that. EPL seems exceedingly popular here, there are soccer bars all over the place. The USMNT has drawn decent crowds. They filled up Grant Park with fans to watch the Women's World Cup final. There is certainly resistance from the old-line sports media, but my impression is that that's true everywhere. Chicago ought to be a cornerstone market of the league. It ought to have two-team potential.
Chicago is a party town and Grant Park are bandwagon party central. If the USA isn't playing Mexico at Soldier field attendance isn't impressive. Ratings for MLS & WC not very impressive. Ratings for LigaMX off the charts. Bars with soccer fans yes. A downtown fire game might have bigger attendance and atmosphere but the bashers still control local media and aholes like ABC's Mark Giacrecko will pretend soccer doesn't exist .