Already have a RV, we go to see whats new, and watch my parents waffle about buying one. Looking forward to bring the motorhome to a few games this season.
I dont know & I think this is the key. I would build 20 to 22k....and design for the possibility of expanding to like 26k or so. Any bigger than that...and you've spent money on extra capacity you'll rarely utilize and you lose the ability to create ticket scarcity (driving demand). I could easily see it being similar to Orlando City with the corners that can be filled out and such. Whatever the renderings make it look like right now doesnt matter because that can easily change by this time next year. As was mentioned, a lot of fans around this league are overly concerned about attendance. It matters clearly, but some fans act like high attendance is the ultimate achievement in our sport/league and that's dumb. Having 500 more seats than Cincy is a dumb and pointless dick measuring contest. Instead of pulling your weiners out next to each other to see who's more awesome, just beat them on the field like a real badass.
Two quick notes: - On Friday MLS announced that their Coach of the Year Award will henceforth and forever be called the Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year Award. EvenMLS gets it right once in a while. For you, Big Guy. - mls.com - let me repeat that, MLS DOT FREAKIN COM - issued the obligatory draft grades for who did good, who didn't, etc. Philadelphia, who traded away every single one of their picks, got a B+ I rest my case.
I would follow your welcomed information if I knew what size. I would like a winter jacket. I have never had one because it always seemed to be too much of a splurge. Being all grown up and doing well, I discussed buying one with my husband. Of course, he said yes, but that he will also want one. Jackets get tricky. Guys most likely do not have this issue, but if it is a short jacket, then most likely S. However, I am familiar with the Crew winter jackets, and the jackets are long. My hips probably say M. I want to try it on. Oh well. An excuse to plan a trip to Columbus before Crewsmas!
1. Absolutely the right thing. Now please explain to me the Landon Donovan MVP nonsense because that immediately diminishes all other award credibility... 2. Surely I can't be the only one who still goes to thecrew.com . I can not and will not ever type the newer domain. I also can't be the only one to just try mls.com and find myself on the multiple listing service page again. [emoji23]
Get one. The yellow one (very visible). Mrs KG loves hers (breaking fourth wall) .... hers is a large, BTW.
I am not convinced that FCC's attendance success will hold either. As JB said, they are basically offering USL prices this year. Prices are either going to spike next year or when the stadium opens. The same thing happened with LAFC...reasonable prices last year, then increases of up to 40% for 2019. MLS 3.0's strategy seems to be set artificially low prices in year 1, use that carrot to lure STHs, then jack up the cost by 20-30% per year after. Obviously an awful strategy for building long-term loyalty and hooking casuals, but short-term thinking is the norm for MLS at this point. If FCC isn't competitive for the first two to three years, and the baseball team down there is with their rebuilt roster, I could see it becoming Orlando City redux.
I could totally wrong but I thought I read that they have a 2 year plan to bring the prices up. Basically at the end they would be double the prices.
The idea that attendance #s are disconnected from the product on the field is baffling to me. They drive revenue. Revenue affects the team you get. An extra 5k (if sold out) at $400 per season ticket is an extra $2 million in revenue. More at a higher price point. A better DP, more Academy investment. I know the Haslam's have bank, but an extra $2-3 mil per year adds up. Even $1 million. Heck, another 500k is the difference between 2 Pipa's & a Pipa + a Santos.
That sounds about right. I lived down there for a couple years and their fans are some of the more fickle I've experienced. If they miss the playoffs the first two years while prices double, I'd expect a major dip. The novelty will be gone as well. My wish for our new stadium would be 22k base, able to support 25k with temporary bleachers and SRO, and eventually expandable to 28-30k if needed. I don't know if that's feasible though. Making Nordecke a safe standing area that can also be converted to a stage for concerts and festivals is a must.
You know, I remember this day, back in the late spring of '98 just before the World Cup, when I was living in North Carolina, and I was in a bar (I'll pause a moment to allow the shock to sink in) in Chapel Hill chatting with two drunken Englishmen. "Chatting" implies I was an active participant in the conversation. But, in truth, mostly I listened in - highly entertained - to their hard-to-understand rant about Paul Gascoigne being left off of England's World Cup roster. God were they pissed (purposeful double entendre). Twenty ********ing years later, and I'm probably close to their age back then. And, no, we do not have England's soccer pedigree, but we're light years beyond where I thought we'd be back then, two years into MLS. My point, assuming I have one, is that, as I get older, I'm going to gradually (d)evolve into one rambling s.o.b. when it comes to this miserable, flawed, corrupt league, and this (despite the obvious tainted association) brilliant club. The US Open Cup, you ask? No, buddy, it's the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, and let me pontificate as to why that's the case! And, yes, I could use another beer, thankyouverymuch. Coach of the year? Fuuuuuuck, Sigi Schmid, man. Yet another deep Columbus association, if you didn't know. Won us our first MLS Cup. One do the best teams in league history. Allow me to elaborate... and, yes, I sure as hell would love a tumbler of bourbon. Buffalo Trace, if they have it. MLS's charter franchise, by the way. Have I mentioned that? First player drafted into the league? Crew player, of course. You might have heard of him: Brian ********ing McBride. Iconic stadiums, you wonder? Shit, man, it's still over on Silver Drive, with St. Lamar's statue proudly standing out front. Good Lord, if that erector set could talk. Without that stadium, without Lamar Hunt's willingness to drop $28.5 million of his own money on a dream, I shudder to think where we'd be now, all those "I was there" memories that wouldn't have ever existed. You see, other cities tear down their old stadiums when their precious franchises blackmail the community into building them better digs. But not here, man. No, in Columbus kids from nearby disadvantaged neighborhoods, and of course anyone who just wants to play the world's game, can run around the same field where Josh Wolff somehow (I still get goosebumps when I watch the blurry video) split four Mexican defenders and slotted that perfect pass to Earnie Stewart on a frigid February night in 2001. And on. And on. And on. I'm going to be absolutely insufferable, babbling on about the rich history, the undeniable greatness of my team. Just like those guys in the Carolina Brewery back in '98.
Philly actually has a really good academy. They got money for picks that probably wouldn't be better than what they already have. So... yeah, not the worst idea ever. Especially since some people rant about how the draft is completely irrelevant. If it's the case, wouldn't getting rid of your trash picks for allocation money be smart? People just love to complain.
This was going to happen sooner or later. Teams that have their academies right are going to be less and less reliant on the draft for those young, cheap roster-fillers. And if it allows them to game the system a little by trading one asset (picks) for another (cash), good on them.
Yep, I read that too. In fact: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinn...ncinnatismls-ticket-prices-soar-for-2019.html Also, to say prices are USL isn't quite acurate, but it's not quite MLS either. Cincy supporter section tix went from $170 to $295 (74% increase). Other sections rose from 40-70%. They will keep going up, next year, and the first year in the new stadium. Attendance figures will for sure change over that time. Location will play a big part too.
Or.... a full or damn near full stadium at 20k looks better to business partners and advertisers than a 25k stadium that looks 1/5 or 1/4 empty. You also need to take into account the extra marketing costs needed to get those fans, and what that advertising cost per customer is. Again, SKC capacity is fvcking 18k. Let me say that again, 18,467. They have 1 MLS Cup, 3 US Open Cups, and 3 first place finishes in the conference in the last 8 years. Quit equating attendance to product on the field. For the most part, stadium capacity is in line with market population (relative to other MLS markets).
I wouldn't underestimate FC Cincinnati. I actually did when they first announced that they were starting a USL team and stated their intent to get to MLS. "Aw, isn't that cute," I thought. Starting up a soccer team in a city that didn't exactly have the strongest history of pro soccer was going to be tough, as I saw it. I figured they should be happy with building a USL squad that drew 5000-10,000 a game. Maybe if they played their cards right, they could be the USL affiliate for the Crew. That's what I thought. Boy was I wrong. They not only did what they set out to do, they set records in the process. As much as we may want to believe that it was about cheap tickets, it wasn't. Otherwise everyone in the USL would be drawing big attendance numbers. Can you honestly say that people have been falling all over themselves to go to minor league soccer games because the tickets were cheap? No, they are where they are because they have an owner and a front office who have shown them that they matter. To say Cincinnatians are fickle when it comes to sports is to completely ignore the crap sandwiches that Mike Brown and Reds owners have served up to the fans for the past 3 decades. The voters of Hamilton County gave the Bengals and Reds two taxpayer funded stadiums and the owners nickel-and-dimed their way to mediocrity. There is so much disgust among fans that going to Reds and Bengals message boards are what the world would be like if everyone was hangthadj. Would you continue buying tickets after dealing with that crap? The interesting thing about FC Cincinnati is that their owner is the son of a former Reds owner and their president worked for the Bengals. In spite of that, or maybe because of the experience of how not do things, they took a different path. Armed with marketing data that Jeff Berding learned about in his time with the Bengals, they went about taking the steps to get the USL franchise. But they didn't just rely on data. Berding and Carl Lindner III went to soccer bars to meet with potential supporters to aee what they wanted from the club. They personally went to businesses to engage their support. They invested millions into Nippert Stadium to make it more conducive to soccer. At the same time J. Anthony Voldemort was trying to undermine community support for the Crew, the FCC group was working their butts off to build community support. Everything Dee Haslam and Dr. Pete said on Wednesday about being a part of the community was said a few years ago by Berding and Lindner. Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, . . . We Ohioans are largely the same when it comes to sports. Show us you care about us and we'll show you how much we care about you. If we wanted to be treated like crap and show up to games anyway, we would move to Chicago and become Cubs fans. I don't think most Cubs fans care about baseball. They just go to Cubs games because it's what all the cool kids are doing. I think if FC Cincinnati shows they're invested in the community and in putting a competitive team on the field, they'll have no problem selling out games even after prices go up. But if they start nickel-and-diming like the Reds and Bengals, their attendance will drop even if they keep prices where they are.
All I can say is they aren’t operating in the top tier of MLS based on their roster budget. They look like Minnesota 2.0. Doesn’t mean they can’t be successful but clearly they aren’t going to be top spenders. Maybe when they get the stadium but even then I am not sure. They are bringing up a lot of USL players and had what like 10 draft picks? Same with the coach and front office staff.