http://www.insidemnsoccer.com/2010/...ation-stabilized-with-money-from-jeff-cooper/ Just in case anybody thought we were a one and done. Cooper saves the day!!
Not trying to be negative, just realistic. The article said the team was funded through the end of the season. That's it. It said nothing about next season. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's all it said. You can spin however you like, but, "that's the facts, Jack."
It's true, there's nothing there to reassure me that AC will be around next year. I'm all for forgetting about the financial BS and just enjoying the season, but let's not pretend everything's coming up roses. Still a lot of questions hanging there.
Does anyone know how wealthy Cooper is, anyway? Does he have enough money to keep the team going after this year, or does he need investors immediately to keep the team going another season?
Where does the estimated avg attendance need to be in order for the team to break even? Are all the financials a mystery? I know there are more income sources than just ticket revenue, but attendance should be a decent % of income.
Soccer in the United States loses money, that's just a fact. I beleive I've read that in MLS maybe two or three teams make money, in D-2 it's even worse. I doubt if Portland makes a profit and they draw over 10k on a regular basis. The question is how much does the team need to bring in through ticket and merchandise sales to take the losses to an acceptable level and whether we can find a soccer patron or two who cares about the game and the community enough to absorb those losses.
Yeah I thought I read something a year or so back that 5K was the point needed for profitability. Can't remember where it was stated, but it was for an article on the success of the smaller divisions and how (USL-D1 at the time) was a good option for smaller markets and USL-D2 had really low costs of opperation in comparison. Ill see if I can track it down again.
the magic attendance number is gonna be different for each club based on a variety of factors. Do you own or lease the stadium, how are concessions handled, parking, payroll, travel, league fees, etc. Without knowing everything about a team's financial situation there's no way to say 5K attendance would be break even.
So every organization is the exact same? What may work for Cleveland isn't exactly what works here... I hope you realize that.
The basics of minor league soccer are pretty much the same across the board. It's pretty well established that to break even in DII, you need to average around 5k.
Cooper's worth over 200 Million dollars. He could fund it personally out of his lear jet fund for 10 years if he wanted to. On top of that, there will be more investors.
Maybe, but as an earlier post stated, different teams are going to have different numbers depending on their financial setup. I would have to think that owning their own venue where they can keep all profits from concessions and parking would give AC a lower break-even point for attendance than for the teams that are paying rent and splitting profits with a venue owner. Venue ownership also means that they can rent out the other fields for high schools, etc., to help offset costs further. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5K may be about right, but there can't just be one magic number that equals profitability across the board.
If you own the venue, the number of the butts in the seats isn't as important as the number of beers sold though. You can be profitable if you do it right. Realistically speaking, what's the payroll of AC St. Louis? 300K? 400K?
I think this is our biggest problem. I don't know any salaries, but I've heard from various sources that we were paying way too much for average talent. I don't think this was for any of the St. Louis guys, but the Brazillians and French were supposedly outrageous salaries and their resume's weren't exactly accurate. Having a try-out with a team was often listed as playing on that teams reserve squad.
?!? OK...who the hell was checking this stuff? Was Anelka acting as general manager as well as coach?
I think Tampa did a better job in evaluating talent. They had tryouts in Tampa a few times and held an open tryout in Europe (England? I believe). They obviously had a longer time to plan since their team was set over a year ago and our side was kind of thrown together last fall.
I think most of the blame goes on Filho- who also wasn't what his CV suggested. Yes he worked for Man United and FFF, but he wasn't instrumental in the development of anyone. He bolted town long ago when people started questioning his credentials. I thought that he would be the strong link behind Anelka, but apparently Filho was a joke.
So...our team was peopled with frauds? I thought it was strange that someone of Filho's "caliber" would come here.
I'm not going to go as far as to say they were frauds, but they presented themselves in a very positive light. As in, I once was on the Harvard campus so I could technically say that I went to Harvard. But the Vaids were the ones that signed off on all of that. Hopefully we'll see the house get cleaned and we'll be lean and mean for the future.