Revolution Stadium Groundbreaking "12-24 months" Part XV

If the empty promises, inaccurate projections, and egregiously self-serving puffery on the topic that semi-annually emanate from the New England Revolution front-office were eliminated altogether, there'd be no need for this series of threads, let alone "snarky remarks".

 

The Revs actually say very little - over the years their public comment containing real information probably wouldn't fill both sides of a sheet of paper.

That lack of information is a bigger issue in my mind than the little that they have said.

 

Eliminate the snarky comments, misinformation and wild speculation this thread would not exist.

 

Fake news!

 

Which is what I suggested. However I know how much fun posters seem to have in joining the frozen cow patty discus throwing contest that has been at the core of this discussion for years.

 

When life hands you frozen cow patties, toss them.

 

Up here in cow country we have some great cow patty games. My fav is the fourth of July cow patty lottery. You buy a ticket for a square in a big freshly mowed world. When all the tickets have been sold they let a cow free into the field and everyone stands around drinking waiting for the cow to select the winner. Sometimes it takes awhile. Same is true in waiting for the Krafts to decide that MLS has morphed into stage where its worth their while to invest more of their wealth.. IMO. just like in the cow plop lottery it may take some time but I do think Krafts will give us more of what we've been kvetching about for the past two decades.

 

If your cow waited until the 5th of July to "pick a winner", there would be a lot of impatient and angry people.

If the cow waited 7 years, there would be just as much snark as here, and the cow would be dead.

 

Like with so many other things you sure know how tp kill a joke

 

Some things never change...

 

I just take Doc to finally be saying, in his folksy way, that the Krafts are full of shit.

 

Bringing this back on track ....

Interesting comments from Twellman in a good 12/7 Globe interview. He covered several topics but I found his comments on the SSS conversations most interesting. He says, in short, with a SSS in Southie or Dorchester, Boston would be a top 5 MLS city right away.

He also pointed out a few things I found interesting (emphasis mine):

On recent conversations about a SSS:

 

The Krafts built a football stadium which their soccer team gets to house-sit when it's not being used.

And "behind the scenes conversations" is such a shill line. Their Bayside Expo/UMass-Boston plan crumbled and we've heard precious little since then. I agree that the Revs would become a marquee franchise with a Dot stadium, but there is perhaps no human less qualified to build in that section of Boston of Bob Kraft. He's spent decades having various Boston stadium plans fizzle into nothing.

 

Why would the Krafts want another stadium? Why would anyone with a house want a second one? Because it's an asset that increases (historically) in value. According to Forbes, link below, the value of the current stadium is $741m. That's a nice return on your investment. Also in the same report, the Patriots operating income is $247m a year. So for 1 year's Patriot operating income you could build another stadium.

https://www.forbes.com/teams/new-england-patriots/

 

Soccer in the US is becoming a real cash cow. The Krafts bought in when a franchise was cheap and up until the last few years have played their hand to not spend any more than necessary tp stay competitive (we have been in a bunch of MLS Cup Finals). I think they have known for a long time that a down town stadium would significantly increase the value and cash flow of the franchise and the only reason we haven't seen one being erected in the difficulty of nailing down a location in town. I understand the sentiments regularly expressed by those who post here, However I do think the general consensus underestimates tp commitment of the Krafts to building a SSS down town. IMO, it would be a smart business decision to build a SSS and increasing the value of the franchise is at the root of all the decisions the krafts make.

 

Here is the key point: Boston/New England was considered one of the top soccer markets in 1994. Hence, 6 WC games there in 1994. Fast forward 23 years and we are now one of the backwaters/sick men of MLS. THAT is the legacy of the Krafts. That can’t be sugar-coated.

 

With all due respect to Twellman, no one is "asking" the Kraft to spend $300M on an SSS. That was their idea. The problem is they've been talking about it for too many years, with nothing to show for it. Talk is cheap.

If I went through these 15 threads, I could probably find a post by SoccerDoc or rkupp betting that the Revs would have an SSS before DCU.

The Krafts will build an SSS when it is economically beneficial for them, not before. They have no reason to hurry, because, "at the end of the day, Gillette is a pretty good place for soccer."

In the meantime, please Krafts, stop talking about it. We don't want to hear any more until you are actually ready to DO something besides talk.

 

Maybe the talk isn't intended for the fans. Maybe it's targeting the Kraft's other constituencies: MLS and the other owners.

 

I think that perception was based on the level of local interest in international (mostly European) football locally. I think MLS as a whole has learned that most of their fanbase needed to be grown with younger generations, not converted from ethnic communities transferring (or sharing) loyalties from teams "back home".

I've sat next to many of the Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, etc. fans in those early years, complaining (and gloating) about how MLS was crap.

In 1994 Boston wasn't one of the best markets for MLS - Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, etc. were. That was part of MLS' learning curve.

I don't think we're not a good market, but the reasons we are are for different reasons than people thought in the early 90's.

Pretty sure I've stayed away from any concrete predictions.

I thought it would have happened by now, but I think they've also had some near misses/bad luck (I think the Olympic bid woke up the whole real estate/developer community to an excellent potential site).

 

OK, now I know you're just messing with us. NO ONE, not one single person on planet earth would have said in 1994 that those cities were legit contenders for this new soccer league that they were starting up. OK, Atlanta and Seattle were considered serious markets and major cities with other sports teams, but neither of them hosted WC matches, or had any trial run friendlies with the US or other national teams. there were only 9 host cities in 1994, Foxboro, East Rutherford, Washington, Dallas, LA, the SF Bay area, Chicago, Orlando and Detroit. The first 6 were in the original MLS, and Chicago by 1998. They took Tampa instead of Orlando, but all of them except Detroit made it eventually.

Boston was one of the best markets for soccer at that time. 51,000+ showed up for the first game with the grass field -- US vs Ireland, and every summer there were at least a couple of big games. For any city, the main criteria was a deep-pocketed owner who was willing to take the risk and lose money for at least a few years. Seattle, Philly, Portland, or Lost Nation Iowa could have had teams if they had a willing owner, but they didn't. Portland didn't start hosting National Team games until well after MLS was up an running. We were a vibrant market, and with a little effort, we could have still been one. But we know what happened there.

Yes, in 20-20 hindsight, those cities turned out to be among the best MLS markets, but in 1994, they weren't Even in 1996 Columbus was one of the best markets, leading the league in season ticket deposits and their owner had the vision to build the very first soccer stadium. It was a huge risk at the time, but they were on the forefront. But look what is going to happen to them now...

 

Yes, I agree - that's why I said it was part of MLS' learning curve. They tried at least a few target markets before finding this current growth boom.

Boston/NE has good representation of each of those markets (immigrant/2nd gen. communities, soccer-moms/soccer-families, college student/hipster/millenial/whatevers, ...).

But when MLS started, they were going after the existing, soccer-loving, immigrant/ethnic-communities. It didn't work (at least here) - that crowd wasn't willing to take a raw, rough league and love it as it grew when they were used to much more sophisticated players/competition/style with a long legacy behind it.

Now MLS is targeting younger, more passionate fans who are willing to love and grow with the league. Boston/NE has them also, but probably not at the level of the Pac/NW, for example.

 

23 years ago things were different. Print newspapers still mattered, just to take one example. But you are daid-rong when it comes to the bolded part. Their marketing efforts were almost exclusively based on the youth market. Remember when the Wiz would point to the fact that there were a ton of kids playing youth soccer in their area? It didn't help them break 5 figures in Arrowhead, although by now, a lot of those are probably their core base.

MLS should have marketed to 4 different groups, none of them big enough to carry the load by themselves, but if you give each one 80% of what they want, that would build a large enough fanbase. Those groups are:

1. Ethnic/Immigrant fanbase. They may still have their first team from back home, but they should try to make the Revs their second team. Soccer was nowhere near as available on TV or online as it is now, and if you want to see a pro live game, the Revs it is.
2. Die-hard American fans. This group was a lot smaller than it is now, but at the time, every team had at least some kind of supporters group. The league didn't know what to make of these nutjobs and were afraid they'd scare away the familes. I don't have to elaborate on how club management trashed the very brand ambassadors they are relying on today
3. Families and kids. The Revs overemphasized this group at the detriment of others. Certainly you need this group, but when it's cool for a 10 year old, in a couple of years that same kid who is 12 will see it as something for "little kids," and move on to skateboarding or some other nonsense.
4. General American sports fans. Hence the shootout and stupid, non-soccer rules, things that pissed off everyone familiar with the game, but did't make a difference to those who weren't soccer people. The weren't confident enough in the game on its own, nor would they give "general" sports fans any credit for maybe liking soccer once they get exposed to it.

But it DID work here for a while. The Revs were in the top-third in attendance most years, and everyone used to say that if they ever got a good team here, they'd average 30,000. That was when the Revs used to advertise, had games on over-the-air TV, the print newspapers covered them regularly, and they had front office support.

But all of that changed when they moved to the new stadium. The marketing budget was slashed to almost zero and attendance dropped even though they did have good teams. The "if you build it, they will come" theory didn't work. Not everyone was so enamored with the cup holders that they'd pay more to park than the cheapest ticket, nor with the idea that the McDonald's "dollar menu" items cost $6.

New England WAS a good market and potentially could have/should have been Seattle before there was a Seattle, but a whole string of poor decisions on the business side of things made sure that didn't happen.

 

Well, maybe it was just the Revs, but in the first few years, they were trying to get the Italians and Portuguese and the Irish, etc. They did market exclusively to the youth/family market at one point, but IMO that was after the initial startup buzz started trailing off.

I clearly remember sitting among the "ethnic" fans, having to listen to a LOT of talk about how crappy this was and about how their club's youth teams would kick the Revs' @$$. That was probably true, but that's not the kind of attitude you can build a fanbase on.

The Revs drew a lot of people to come "check it out" and drew really well for big events (like MLS Cups and international friendlies). But those who came to check it out weren't willing to return and stick it out while the team grew into something (I'm familiar with that, as are you, being Mets fans back in the day!).

 

Great great post.

Just to add 2 things that I think happened too:

This area was suddenly flooded with games, some were big games, some were not - and I think a burnout factor started to drift in and people started choosing those other games over the Revs. And then even those games started to hit the burnout factor (partly because they cost $$), and attendance started dropping for them too - overall the Revs suffered because of it.

The other big thing to me that I complained about for years - that initial decision with the move to the new stadium for everyone sitting on one side of the stadium. Disaster and created the mentality the Revs were low-budget, and semi-pro. I can remember arguing with my ticket rep at the time and telling them to do kind of like what they do now. They wanted to save $ by only opening concessions on one side and they wanted it to look good on TV (which it didn't).