Tim Bezbatchenko has been quoted as saying that for a lot of reasons - business, organizational and competitive- they thought very hard about shutting down the team this year and re launching in 2020. In retrospect, do you think that would have been the better option?
I don't. Anything they did with the front office, the staff, TV rights, sponsorships, community outreach, stadium plans -- those were all things that were going to be done whether there was a team on the field or not. So you might as well have one. I think the only thing that would have changed would have been that we'd have had to release all the players and start over, and that's certainly not preferable to having an existing roster. See: Minnesota, Cincinnati. The only way they should have gone dark would have been if the organization and staff had been stripped down so badly that it was literally impossible to operate the club.
Is this a set up question ? Considering everything i see not a single benefit to even considering such a outrageous proposal.
No. It’s sad and pathetic excuse making for the product on the field. This is a team who made the playoffs last year. Everything we have been sold is about how the team being saved would lead to renewed interest. There were threads on these very boards predicting a dramatic increase in season ticket holders and game day attendance. None of this happened this year. The failure of 2019 is on the city, the fans, the ownership, the coaches, and the players. All promised better. None delivered on the promises.
No, I think that going dark for a year would have been nearly impossible to recover from. This franchise is already fighting for relevance in the market, and disappearing for a season would have been damn close to a death sentence. Better to have a shitty, struggling, rebuilding year than no year at all.
Our star player got hurt half way through. Of course it’s gonna be a tough year. Yes, we’ve had ups and downs. Yes, the coach could do better. But to wish we didn’t play this year? Hell no. No way.
Even though I am sure it has been very chaotic for the FO thanks to precou*t, and it has been a pretty dismal season on the pitch, shutting down the team for a season would have had a very negative impact on the club. All of the STC momentum would have stopped dead in it's tracks. Would we lose "first club in MLS" status with a total reboot? Trying to get people excited about the new stadium would be a challenge, with no team playing(See Austin). How much of our fan base would we lose after a season in the dark? We would be thought of, and we would feel like, an expansion team. What would they have done with our players and staff who were under contract? What would have happened to sponsorship deals that were already committed to? Mapfre Stadium would sit there for a year with the only revenue coming from a couple of concerts, with plenty of expenses for the new owners to pay. It would have been very risky for Haslam/Edwards to shut the team down in 2019.
The worst stretch in club history mid-season and we are still looking at a possible 16%+ growth in attendance average versus 2018 season, only behind Portland in that regard. The amount of salt left on the earth by the previous regime was underappreciated by some and continues to played down by others... and we will still only finish 6-7% behind the team's all-time average for attendance. Not a bad start given how late into the game people were allowed to get into their positions for this year. Scrapping a year would not have helped convince ticket sales next year, not allowed us to hold onto players we wanted to keep, nor allowed us to bring in the players of our future and develop them. And for hang's sake, scrapping a year would have meant it takes one more year longer to fire Porter than it does now. It was the right decision to plough through.
I was under the impression that is where we were at seasons start. And only because the Cleveland Browns staff was willing to work 2 jobs was the Crew able to operate this year. I'm not finding the quote now (prolly means twitter, which prolly means can't be proven...) but I thought I read something along the lines of 50 Browns staff were making a daily compute to Columbus!!! I believe that filthy b@stard Precum did his best to wreck this team. I also believe the only reason the Crew were operational this year is the Haslams already were running a sports franchise whose employees remember having their team stolen away so worked the extra needed to keep our team running.
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. This thread has numerous good (and some terrible) opinions on your question. I doubt going dark for a year was a realistic option even if Be Bezt mulled it over. p.s. Nice seeing your smoking monkey face around these boards.
First, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the club seriously thought about going dark in 2019. I recall Bez stating that "in many ways" (or words to that effect) it would have been easier to not play in 2019, but in innumerable other ways, it would have been an epic disaster for the club. And logistically without precedent in the league. Would the entire roster have been reassigned to other clubs? I can't imagine this would have been a serious option unless - as others have said - Precourt so destroyed the organization that we were physically incapable of playing this year. To me, going dark in 2019 would have felt like PSV winning. Yeah, we've had a tough season, but it's immeasurably better than no season at all followed by the prospect of starting from scratch in 2020. Not to mention, I doubt Bez would have come here if we'd not played in 2019.
I agree with most that it wouldnt have been a good idea to go dark this year. There definitely would've been some advantages as far as getting the front office in order (which seems like it was and still is an on going task). When we still have a certain amount of people in the city of Columbus itself who dont even know the team is still active and didnt leave....shutting down for a year would have for sure killed the Crew in terms of being in the consciousness of the community. Perhaps with a big enough marketing campaign they could have rose from the ashes but the risk would not have been worth it. Then as others have mentioned about the roster....we would've had to release all players and had nothing to start with in 2020. I'm assuming they would have all been inserted into the waiver draft or some specially concocted draft. What happened to Chivas USA players when they folded? Either way, rebuilding a roster from scratch would've been another huge burden to execute in just one season off.
When you think about having to return Acura and Mapfre money, season ticket holder money and all the other revenue streams, going dark would have been crazy.
I mean, as shitty a year as it's been on the pitch, I don't get the sense that it's been a terrible year financially. We seem to have set a season ticket sales record, and building on the #STC momentum/vibe, the club reported early on that they were receiving a lot of interest from businesses about corporate partnerships. We have a better TV deal now that we'd had in recent memory. Too, I have to wonder how the Steffen transfer fee might ave worked out if we'd shut down for the year.
I agree with everyone else that it would have been a bad idea to cancel the season. That said, I see everyone assuming that we would have started up again next year. I'm not sure that's the case, is it? Wouldn't it have been easier to just wait for the new stadium to be done in 2021? Rebooting the Crew in 2020 at Mapfre would not exactly have screamed "look at the new improved Crew" to any disgruntled fans in the city. It would have been the same old MLS v1.0. Seems like it would have been far better to just start fresh in 2021. however, as many others have said: I love the Crew, win or lose.
I would like to see the quote in context before going that far, but it's obviously a very stupid idea. The amount of goodwill built up around the team would have been destroyed immediately. It's already been severely tarnished by the hiring of Porter and the craptastic season that we've had. Someone mentioned the Acura and Mapfre money. What about the season ticket money? I guess they would have had to pay all that back, too. And what about all the players and staff. Would they have been laid off, put on retainer, loaned out, or what?
C'mon. He said at least once something to the effect that in some ways it would have been easier to have gone dark for a year. Which, by the way, wouldn't have been Bez's decision to make. And, to state the obvious, we didn't go dark for a year. Put another way, he's also quoted as saying that, when they finally got a chance to pull back the cover on what they'd bought in January, it was far worse than they'd imagined. And then you're faced with a "we have to host a home opener in less than two months" reality check. So, hell yes, it would have been easier to have not had to work as hard as the organization did to actually have a 2019. But that's exactly what they decided to do. Double down and bust their asses (with the help of Brown's staff) to get the organization - and Mapfre - ready for March 2. Which, by the way, was a remarkable turn-around from where things had been left in late 2018, done without a dozen-plus traitors who left for Austin in the off-season. Personally, I don't recall Bez ever saying they were close to cancelling 2019. I don't doubt that he looked at the state of the organization and questioned whether and how they could pull it off. I don't see how that makes him a moron. He sure as hell was smart enough to make March 2 a helluva lot smoother of an experience for fans than Precourt's last game in charge.
They didn’t even have enough people to check tickets at the gate. I remember standing in line at the opener this year and hearing them talk frantically on who is who, and where they’re from. They had two months to throw people out there and shipped a ton of them from Cleveland. You can’t have games if you don’t even have the staff to run the stadium. It’s miraculous (and a bit lucky that their boss owns another professional sports team not far away) that they were able to pull it off in such a short time.