St. Louis Ambush hosting MASL owners, all-stars this weekend I hope to have some decent coverage of the meetings today and tomorrow.
The All-Star game should be entertaining, I expect little defense and lots of goals. A few guys from the MASL 'combine' will also play in the game. I imagine that most players in the 'combine' will be young random players who probably haven't played a lot of indoor soccer. You might find a few combine/tryouts guys out of a hundred who become excellent indoor players. Any team that thinks they will win MASL games consistently with a mostly inexperienced roster is fooling themselves. However a veteran team is wise to have a regular 'practice squad' of extra players who sometimes practice with the top squad. Even better if the MASL team runs their own amateur men's indoor team to further develop players without putting them into MASL games until they are ready. Every city should already have amateur adult indoor soccer leagues, teams can just plug into that.
I hate these off-season games ...purely out of jealousy they never come to Baltimore haha! Hope the game is streamed.
I hate to tell you but this is far from an all star game. The players playing are the best of who is available to play in the game. The league would be better off doing a real all star showcase instead of what is doing now. IMHO this is a gimmick at best
This is arguably the closest thing the MASL has had to an All-Star Game. There are some big omissions but there are a lot of top players coming from diverse parts of the league.
Judging by the attendance alone it should show you the fans just don't seem to care for it. All this did was confirm that Indoor soccer does not work in the summer. I would agree with you that this is the closest thing to a MASL all star game..
It has a lot more to do with marketing than the time of year. Last June on a MONDAY Ontario had a legit 7,000+ if you recall.
What was the attendance numbers from this game? I honestly cant see how they made enough revenue to cover Hotel cost for 2 days for 30 players , Food for 30 players , Arena rental for 2 days, Airfare for 15 players, Staff pay, Uniforms for 30 players . Refs pay , I am not even sure the players are paid to play in this game. Unless long John Silvers helped out with uniform cost and food. This is still a lot of money that someone has to put out. I doubt the player combine even scratched the surface on the cost to host this game.
I am in Saint Louis, and I saw zero marketing for the game, other than social media posts. It was an MASL event, you would think the league would have spent at least some resources on local advertising to drive up ticket sales. Also, Ambush season ticket holders got free tickets to the game, and I don't know how many of the people got in free. I don't think there were more than 1,500 to 1,800 people there total (just my eyeball estimate). Of course this is indoor soccer so we are used to being disappointed.
These games are a joke IMHO Last year it was USA VS Mexico Now it's USA VS The World. These are gimmicks at best. Now if you want to showcase the game play it in cities you want to be in. The league is growing into Mexico because without it they won't get a TV deal. Teams need to invest in long term advertising Billboards , Phone Book covers, Regional newspapers, on buses, Local indoor soccer centers, School flyers. The team's logo website and phone number should be at each goal. at the other side of the goal should be the league logo This why if you get your 20 seconds on the news and they show the highlights you get free advertising. I believe that advertising needs to be cross promoted by division , Example Baltimore plays Harrisburg on the road The heat should be mentioning the Blast website and number for tickets and the same when the heat plays in baltimore
You only need to invest in phone book covers if your target audience is people who work at the recycling plant.
Jesus, Lewis. It's 2017, not 1967. I will agree with you that it is clear that the MASL has chased the Social Media ("Hey! It's Free!") model as far as it can go (and based on Wave attendance using that model... you get what you pay for). I will agree that whether for a season, playoff or exhibition, the league and teams need to hire real marketing people to do real marketing, though even that has been hashed to death on these threads so I will leave it there. But I assure you that advertising on the covers of phone books is not the way to go, unless the goal is to bring hoarders and those who can't afford internet service to an MASL game.
Teams need to advertise on phone books and the Heat should spend money to try to sell Blast tickets to Harrisburgians who live 80 miles away. My God, it's a wonder you don't have a job working in the league front office, Lewis.
Real marketing and advertising costs money, which the MASL (apparently) and many teams don't have very much, or choose not to invest in real marketing. The 'free social media' and 'set up a team promotion tent at a soccer camp' strategies only get you so far. There are numerous social media platforms and I doubt most teams are anywhere close to hitting all of them anyway. Remember that people can block stuff on social media. Like that soccer team that posts the same thing 5 times a day. At this point, both the individual teams and MASL need to invest in modern marketing campaigns, hire real people to manage it, create a coherent vision for why the sport exists and why people should spend $$ on tickets. Your team also needs to win half or more of the games and be a legitimate competitive team year over year, in order to attract enough committed season ticket holders and sponsors to provide a solid base of revenues. Then your group sales to soccer moms and corporate groups are creating funds to hire better players and market the team even more. If your on-field product is terrible (e.g., El Paso, Ambush), fans will just lose interest at some point, regardless of marketing. Sure, an owner might continue to prop up a lousy team for a time, but either their money runs out or they just decide to fold the team and not lose money anymore.
How are they spending money by announcing it on the youtube live feed ? Baltimore would do the same in return thats my point.
OK so the phonebook may not be the best Idea. You have to advertise within your budget. Most teams have less than $10,000 for advertising that only works out to $900.00 per game now. The Baltimore Arena sits at a Major bus hub on any given work day I can guarantee you that at a minimum of 20,000 people walk past the Baltimore street side of the arena & they Blast Have never once put a poster in those windows advertising the games or ticket sales. The blast do have a commercial that plays in local hotels , the downside of that is no one really comes to Baltimore in the winter. The National soccer convention was here and they had 100K+ people go through the doors, That weekend the arena was empty and the Blast were in Harrisburg When the league / Blast should have had a game scheduled and a booth set up at the convention selling tickets. Free social media advertising will only get you so far. Unless you get likes and shares it just get hidden from timelines after so long. Unless you use pay per click advertising and the les you pay per click the less you post is seen.
The problem is that there will always be bad teams in sports (even in a league with significant parity, the bad teams just rotate instead of there being a permanent underclass). If a team needs to contend every year (i.e. be a dynasty or close to it) to merely survive, then the league is in serious trouble or done. You can't have a situation where one or two bad seasons are going to bankrupt a team. It's untenable.
Fair point, there are always a few teams that are bad each season. Well, the Comets have been very successful and even they have legitimate questions now about their finances as the owners finally settled a long legal feud. The whole sport could be labeled as somewhat unstable, though it's more stable than it was a couple years ago. Certainly it would be a good idea for the league to create more revenues so teams can have enough resources to survive some down years. For many teams right now, they exist on a year to year basis, save for the stable teams like the Blast, Wave, Sockers, etc. Even teams that won indoor championships have folded. My basic point was that if you combine a decent team on the field winning some of the time with savvy marketing, the team has a better chance to make ends meet each year. Indoor soccer teams that continously lose don't tend to last a long time. I don't know how Harrisburg kept existing as they were really terrible on the field for a while, kudos to their comeback season this year. As long as someone writes the checks, the team will hang on.
Harrisburg survived because of Carl Delmont. He renegotiated everything from arena rent to uniforms. Then released dam near the entire team and brought in 15 new players and new Head coach. The downside of it all was the fans have yet to come back, 2K fans a game is a good start.
I think you are all missing the point. You can call one company now and be in 38 local newspapers. Be on 4 Restaurant Menus printings , 2 grocery store receipts , for about $689.00 every two weeks & this is for a business card sized ad. you only need to advertise from November to March so you can be in all of the local papers for $1,378.00 a month or $5,512.00 a season. I am sure this changes from state to state. This worked out well for me when I was buying sports memorabilia. With the phone book covers my point was it is delivered to every single house Now with you tube , Majority of the fans watching are the away team's fans. So the Home team should advertise for the away teams, How hard it it to mention the away teams website and phone number to but tickets for the next upcoming game. Its a way for teams to work together to sell tickets without costing a dime.
I was aware of the amazing job that Delmont did with overhauling and rebuilding the Heat. We need a lot more owners like him, I hope their attendance picks up. We have repeatedly suggested to our Ambush owners to follow his model, especially replacing most of our current players with experienced veterans. Delmont even personally offered his encouragement and advice to our owners. Well, nothing happening yet in St. Louis to replace players, maybe something will happen in the fall. Delmont is certainly a role model of what owners need to be doing to raise the level of the sport.
Spending $6000 to get exposure in many local papers, restaurants, stores, etc is a good marketing investment at a basic level. Many large churches sell advertising space in St. Louis. It might be good to do a direct mail campaign in the surrounding zip codes with a 'coupon postcard' giving a discount on tickets. The redeemed coupons can indicate how effective the mailing was. A team could also easily form a marketing partnership with a large car dealership. It wouldn't necessarily cost the team money, basically agree that the team helps market the dealership and vice versa. The Detroit Waza team even had players appear in some car commercials. Each MASL team should have a half-time or full time marketing manager and give that person a marketing budget of @$15-25,000 a year minimum. There has to be a paid staff member committed to marketing and an actual budget to use. Certainly the league needs to do the same on a larger scale. There is lots of marketing that does cost some money but can more than pay for itself if managed correctly.