Article by Will Parchman 02/15/2017 "The 2017 SF Deltas have the most grueling travel schedule in soccer history" http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/the9...t-grueling-travel-schedule-in-soccer-history/
All of SF Deltas home games to be broadcast live on Twitter http://www.soctakes.com/2017/03/20/indy-eleven-v-sf-deltas-to-be-broadcast-on-twitter/
Isn't this precisely what killed the Bay Area Gold Pride of the WPS? IIRC, in the 2010 season (of which they were champions) they were one of only two teams west of the Mississippi, and when AEG folded the LA Sol, I think that sounded the death knell for the Pride....
No, when LA Sol folded after 2009, the Gold Pride acquired from the scraps of the Sol's squad Marta, the acclaimed best female player in the world, to round out a star-studded roster that made the 2010 Gold Pride arguably the greatest-ever women's club team. They coasted to a championship, but they could not make any headway at the box office playing at Cal State East Bay, so Gold Pride's ownership threw in the towel, figuring there was little else they could do to improve the product. The league limped along for another season before folding, as I recall. Obviously, a sports league is not merely about the product. It's also about marketing and venues, which were high school level for the Gold Pride. And, of course, it's about persistence, which was missing from WPS.
Well, I worked a few games for the Pride in that last year and talked to a few people, and the expense (including both Marta's salary and travel -- being the only team west of the Mississippi) made the team prohibitively expensive to operate.
I'm sure that didn't help. A plethora of factors came together to kill FC Gold Pride and the WPS. I'm sure travel didn't help. Neither did Marta's salary. But playing at Cal State EB also couldn't have helped matters. Put enough small stab wounds into the biggest cat and it will eventually bleed out, just like that poorly designed lion did.
As Don pointed out it wasn't just the travel schedule that killed FC Gold Pride. But many of the same factors that did kill FC Gold Pride exist in the Deltas as well. Namely bad travel schedule, bad stadium and location, relatively high cost of players salaries (necessitated by playing in 2017 San Francisco). We'll see how it goes for the Deltas. But frankly given Kezar and SF's history tied with the parallels to outfits like FC Gold Pride... I think my 2 season estimate before they fold may have been optimistic.
It's pretty clear that the SF Deltas are going to lose a ton of money. It's tough to say how long they will last, because we don't know how much money the ownership group is *willing* to lose. Of course the New York Cosmos ownership went from plans to spend $300+ million on a stadium to abandoning the team after three and a half seasons when they lost $30 million...
The Cosmos spent a lot of money on former national team players in Raúl and Marcos Senna. I doubt the Deltas will have any players (foreign or domestic) with more than 5-10 caps.
2 years seems about right. It depends on ownership's willingness to light millions of dollars on fire. Helmik is about to burn $3 million a year on an in-depth seminar on why minor league sports don't work in San Francisco.
As I recall, the FC Gold Pride made 2 bad decisions on their own. First, they moved to a horrible venue that failed to attract the East Bay and Central Valley fans that were the supposed targets. Second, in a fit of hubris, saying that women's soccer was just as good as men's soccer, they scheduled half their games at the same time as the Quakes. After they did that, I declined to renew my season tickets. I complained on Big Soccer that if forced to choose, I'd rather watch the Quakes than FCGP because the men's game was more entertaining, and the FCGP CEO replied online that I was sexist. That did it for me. It was pretty obvious to me where all the bad decisions were coming from.
Three NASL games this weekend, the SF Deltas had the smallest crowd, despite it being their first ever home game: 6,058 Carolina-Miami FC 5,692 Puerto Rico FC-NY Cosmos 4,133 San Francisco-Indy Eleven Reno 1868 had better attendance in their first ever home game: 5,691 Reno 1868-Orange County
I worked for both women's teams, and I do believe that there was a rather sizable "chip on the shoulder" attitude regarding the women's vs men's game that was both surprising and counter-productive. I think one of the progenitors of this was the fact that it was perceived that the average fan of men's soccer either ignored or was actively dismissive of the women's game, and I know that people don't generally respond well to being ignored. At any rate, I do think that the "most injured victim" posture that was often reflected by both the Cyberrays and the Pride tended to do little to attract people to the games and perhaps much to drive them away...
Not disputing the women's chips-on-their-shoulders, but how was it publicly manifested? And how did it drive potential fans away? And why do the well-publicized chips-on-their-shoulders of the USWNT, reflected in public demands for equal pay, seemingly not drive fans away?
Here's one anecdote: The first year of the CyberRays, Brandi Chastain made comments quoted in the SJ Murk that came off as disparaging those soccer fans who ignored the emerging league (after all, there are world-class athletes involved). Some old-timers here on this board may remember the poster BlueMeanie; his wife was annoyed enough to register her disappointment with Chastain's comments in a letter to the editor (which the Murk did publish......hey, they actually had an audience back in 2001, right? ). this might be a bit off-point, but I also recall that WUSA had--at first--a seemingly hostile (not sure if that's too strong.....disinterested?) attitude toward MLS, didn't want anything to do with it, no cooperative marketing or anything. i think by the second year, they realized the error of that approach, and there was a little more cooperativity (er..."cooperation" ). i recall at least one Quakes-Rays double-header at Spartan, but not much other than that.....
Thanks. I attended the Quakes / CyberRays double-header, the only WUSA game I went to. I must not have been sufficiently attuned in 2001 to have noticed Brandi Chastain's comments or the letter to the editor in response. I've heard anecdotally that the 1999 Women's World Cup champions were full of themselves but I've never experienced it firsthand, despite interacting with Chastain many times, and on at least one occasion with Julie Foudy. And, as I said, I'm not disputing a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, but I am skeptical that it meaningfully hurt attendance. I get the sense from many male soccer fans I know that they are more than willing to, and sometimes do, attend women's games, although like myself they won't forego the Quakes when the games conflict. The Ultras attended the 2010 WPS final as a group and cheered vigorously for the Gold Pride, and I know they would have been pleased to return had the team not folded. In the meantime, if women and girls attended women's club pro soccer games in numbers approximating attendance for the national team, women's leagues would be thriving. But for some unexplained reason they don't. Perhaps it is because most people attend sporting events to have fun rather than as a form of virtue posturing. So I don't think the scarce crowds are really about Women's Lib or fans' reaction to it, but a simple lack of perseverance among the rich people who own the teams. MLS might also have folded but for such perseverance, and then the soccer-haters could have pointed out how they, too, might have gone to more games had MLS fans not displayed such chips on their shoulders.
Is the whole 'technology first' schtick the Delta's are peddling completely off putting? Maybe it's the European in me, but footy is a blue collar game. Standing and beering and yelling at opposition and hanging out in a (relatively) lost cost ticket environment is so appealing to me. What they're selling sounds dreadful and completely un San Francisco like, outside of the 'tech' community I can't see who they're marketing to.
So much for coming out the gate with 6,000. And you can bet that number will drop off on subsequent games as it always does. For comparison last year's NASL average was 4,684 a game. And that was with the Strikers and Rayo OKC, who are both gone, pulling that average down.