Ok, thanks. I suspect you might be on to something though. When making a deposit, nobody is committed to a particular number of seats. Each deposit is good for up to 8 seats. So maybe Austin reported their seat deposits as 8 X their number of depositors. It would explain their claim to have deposits for over 30K seats while not claiming to be sold out and still selling deposits without a waitlist. If they had 3750 depositors who asked for say 11K seats, that would still be an impressive opening day. But leave it to PSV to use a lie when the truth would suffice.
He has said from the beginning that he was going to be bringing on local ownership. Last week Precourt was on a Podcast and said that they will have an impressive ownership group, and it would probably come out in the next few months as to who those investors were. I assume stock in Austin soccer has alot of interested parties right now with the success right now with deposit project and bringing on a top 3 Sports management company (in the world) handling international stadium/Jersey sponsorships I do see him keeping the majority investment in this team though, he has to regain credibility as a sports owner, and Austin's lining up to be what looks like a home run. Did MLS help, or were they complicit in the project from the very beginning? I say that because somewhere there's a Don Garber quote from back in something like 2014 about Austin 'being a market they want to be in'. They had their eyes on Austin for a long time. The league commissioned a bunch of market statistics before the Announcement in 2017. But from what i can tell, most everything that's been done in Austin since October 2017 has been PSV led. I lived in San Antonio during most of this drama, and I have my own theory about Spurs sports and Entertainment (SSE) initially buying the Scorpions NASL with no real intention of becoming an MLS team. They got the city of San Antonio to pay for the $25million stadium and will have to pay them back only $5 million for the stadium if they dont make it to MLS. SSE has a habit of trying to control the Sports market in SA, but their primary product will always be Basketball.
My current thinking is that they added up the number of seats that each depositor chose at checkout. For me, that's a total of 3 seats across 2 deposits. In the end, I may only buy 2 seats. There was no incentive to entering a high number of seats during the checkout process, as the reservation was for a place in line, not a specific number of reserved seats. So, my current thought is we were probably in the 10-15k range for the number of deposits made on day one.
So, for clarity, your saying that a person who put down a deposit and selected 1 seat, and was first in line, will be allowed to select 8 seats with his first position?
It's always Columbus people who crash these threads with stuff like this. Not surprising but just noteworthy.
LOL. Yeah. I am. I know nothing about you man. But I did look over your short history on Bigsoccer. Nothing since last October and every post is about Austin FC or the SaveTheCrew situation. If your a PSV paid shill (which you probably are not) your record would be no different than what it is. If you were moved here by PSV from Columbus (or living there and paid to post here) it would look exactly like this. No posts in MLS General. No international soccer posts. No Austin Aztex posts? Nothing before last fall. So I have no idea who you are and trust your just a super interested soccer fan in Austin. But then you never showed any interest in the Austin Aztex? What gives with that Mr. authentic Austin? Hmmm.... But if you want to look though my bigsoccer history you can do that ... but it will take considerable more time and you will find all the evidence you need to know I’m Austin and have been a long long time. And I’m as big an MLS soccer fan as you will ever interact with.
Not a paid PSV shill. Not from Columbus. I'm not sure why people here look to bigsoccer.com history as any useful metric. The soccer world has moved on from the early 2000s and more fruitful discussions are had elsewhere. I had just moved to Austin by the time the latest iteration of the Aztex were on their way out. Why tho? Not worth my time. For as long as you've been in Austin (going on your word here), you seem to be a bit out of touch re: the current goings on. Go Dynamo, I guess. ♂️
Then why waste your time here on Big Soccer if the discourse is "more fruitful" elsewhere? There is a lot of Group Think on this website, but things are even worse other places on the internet, as far as I can discern. And the "soccer world" has moved from Japan / Korea in "the early 2000s" to Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022. I would not characterize that as progress.
Rubbernecking. Hard to look away. The chasm between perception (as told by older Columbusites and other assorted BS.com archetypes) vs. reality re: Austin is comedy gold and I inject it into my veins daily. I lament that I can't get my fix on the weekends, as you all seem to use this site as your escape from work. That's a weird analogy.
The World Cup is not an analog of the soccer world but a reflection of it. And in my mind the unethical manner in which the tournament found its way to Qatar is an appropriate mirror to the unethical way MLS found its way to Austin. There are orderly mechanisms for these things, but both Qatar and Austin circumvented them in disturbing ways.
The Crew are still in Columbus. AFAIK it wasn't Austin's (potential) fanbase that wanted to steal the Crew- it was Precourt that wanted to move the franchise. How loud would the cries of "We don't want a stolen franchise" have had to be for this new non-stolen Austin FC to be accepted by all? Were there any? Does this spat include fans of teams that could have been in MLS but were leapfrogged by Austin? I'm for welcoming them, if for no other reason than I know what it's like to have people hate on my team. But I don't have a dog in the fight...
Precourt is still around. And it's the Precourt Gang that came up with the, potentially illegal but certainly unseemly, idea of taking vastly more deposits than seats it can fill without plainly explaining what depositors are bargaining for. Austin's fanbase, to the extent it exists, has abetted such behavior, and Precourt's earlier abominable behavior in Columbus, on this website by rationalizing it. The idea that Columbus fans should declare victory and simply shut up is a curious one considering that no one ever seems to apply that same standard to Austin fans.
Come on Don. Your over generalizing and way over-stating things. Folks in Austin are not abetting PSV's behavior anymore than Columbus fans abetted PSV's behavior over the last 5 years. Every team, including the current and past to the beginning Columbus team, engages in similar marketing bulls**t. As offenses go, the AFC spin on their meaningless deposit shenanigan is pretty trifling. Its also transparent. No big deal. And yes -- Austin folks who hated on Columbus were wrong and for me, embarrassing. And likewise for Columbus folks who got by far the best end of this deal. Without Austin willing to take Precourt you'd still have him. The fanbase against fanbase nonsense is just childish on both sides.
I could have chosen my words more carefully. The abettors are not Austin citizenry or their broader fan base, such as may exist, but the Austin 6 and the (probably overlapping) simpletons on BigSoccer who have baited Columbus fans (and others, including you just a few posts before on this thread). They do not cast Austin FC in a good light. I'm a member of neither the Austin nor Columbus fan base, but my sympathies lie with latter. That does not make me partisan or "childish." Crew fans were subjected to something no fan base should ever be subjected to. They have the right to be bitter, even though they won.
You and I may both think it's obvious Austin hasn't sold deposits for 30K season tickets. But the mods in MLS N&A got upset when I pointed it out. The sad thing is that Austin may have had pretty good first day sales but they couldn't just report that, they had to come up with a whopper.
Been looking around Big Soccer and the net. Question, if Austin's stadium is not done in time, what is plan B? Do they spend a lot of time on the road like some have? Can they play at UT soccer stadium or football stadium? Do they make a deal and put temps in at some place? Has there been any discussion on this, because unless I am wrong, the new place has not turned dirt yet...