Not for certain, no. The major strike against it compared to similarly sized markets seems to be that there's an MLB team and not just football or basketball or hockey. Though that team is the Royals. So who knows? Unlike others, I'm ready and willing to be pleasantly surprised. Half of all teams will always draw less than the league average, anyhow.
KC's size can work for it (see Rochester, Columbus, Salt Lake City) - less competition for entertainment dollar and media coverage. i believe KC traditionally has the second highest ratio of youth soccer participants in the U.S. only behind Salt Lake City, which also works in its favor. peter
Not always, but right around there. 1996-6 of 10 teams drew below the league average of 17,406 1997-5 of 10 teams drew below the league average of 14,169 1998-6 of 12 teams drew below the league average of 14,312 1999-5 of 12 teams drew below the league average of 14,282 2000-7 of 12 teams drew below the league average of 13,756 2001-5 of 12 teams drew below the league average of 14,961 2002-4 of 10 teams drew below the league average of 15,821 2003-4 of 10 teams drew below the league average of 14,898 2004-5 of 10 teams drew below the league average of 15,559 2005-7 of 12 teams drew below the league average of 15,108
Let me revise that to "about half of all teams will draw below average." And I'll defer to you and Peter, you all have the sports marketing background, so I'm more interested in seeing how you guys see this situation than hearing from other random internet strangers.
Honestly, I think if Kansas City had its own stadium and a local owner who devoted the necessary resources (not just in terms of marketing, but in all aspects), there's no real reason they couldn't do well. They're not going to lead the league or anything, but I don't see a real reason why they couldn't be sustainable. Like Peter said, there are opportunities that go along with being in a small market, just like there are challenges. I think one of the reasons that KC had those periods when it underperformed relative to the rest of the league was the wrong people at the top and the feeling that the combining of NFL and MLS resources was going to be easier and more productive than it actually was. I guess that's two reasons.
One thing that really hurt in 97 or 98 when many of the Wizards operations were combined with the Chiefs is that the Chiefs hadn't had to actively sell a ticket in a number of years. People were climbing over each other for a chance to get into a Chiefs game. The same thing with promotions and corporate sales. Nothing like a Boulevard Beer truck handing out free brews at a Chiefs game. The Chiefs staff wasn't prepared for the the hard work involved with the Wizards. Eventually the Wizards staff expanded back to mostly dedicated personnel.
From an attendance standpoint, this technique did not work for the other team that tried this, The Revs... Andy
The options listed in the KC Star are in fact the best options in KC... so that was right, but the writer of that article didn't do proper research and basically just listed the sizes of the football fields (120 x 53.3 in every case) at those locations. When in reality the best option on that list has a football field with no track around it - meaning the field could be widened to be a proper soccer pitch, plenty of room for temporary seats/bleacher expansion, and ample parking.
There are two irrefutable facts that support Peter and Kenn's assertions about the potential of the Kansas City market: 1) Don Garber believes in the potential enough to devote one of the executive officers of MLS to be the point person for the league in evaluating and shaping the potential locations. 2) Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson who founded Cerner are the leaders of the investor group discussing the purchase with HSG. If you doubt the acumen of these men, please Google Cerner and see why it's one of the elite technology companies in the U.S. If you have evidence that goes against the Don's judgement or that can discredit the business savvy of the businessmen in question, please let us know. If you don't, you can criticize our attendance numbers all you want to but don't badmouth the potential of the market.
Peter, tell me where you think my thumbnail calculation of the KC decision is wrong: Is a ticket sales staffer a full-time, year-round position? Do they tend to get farmed out to other organizations for some part of the year? (I.e., would Anschutz use them for concert sales, or for other Bridgeview events?) If not, I'd guess that the cost of a ticket sales staffer to a team is in the range of $40,000/year. Given the range of ticket prices, and allowing for some of the ancillary revenues (but also allowing for some per sale costs - like postage, etc.) that means you need something like 1,000 tickets in a year to cover the marginal cost of an additional ticket sales employee. So roughly 60 tickets/game is what the marginal staffer has to pull in to break even, thereby earning his keep under Spoelstra's iron law of ticket exec hiring. That's a pretty low hurdle. Yet you say that no team has more than 20 staffers. If you've already hit the barrier of diminishing returns at 20 staffers, it's hard to see how ticket sales staff is the amazing factor that Kenn always makes it out to be. All an extra ticket sales staffer has to do is track down 3 youth teams a week, more or less. Yet at 20 ticket execs, you've already exhausted the market of people who, as Kenn says, aren't just looking to go to a game anyway. To put this in simpler terms, let's say that KC is making a mistake -- that they haven't hit the point of diminishing returns at 3 sales execs, and they really should have 8, as you suggest. But it must be a close call, or else it would be so obvious that even the idiots in Hunt's organization could tell they were way understaffed. So the 5 additional staffers are going to bring in something close to the marginal cost -- something close to 60 people a game each. Let's be generous and call it 80 people a game each. Times 5 sales execs. That's 400 extra people a game. I admit that from a management point of view, that's enormous. It's a lot of money. And most important -- it's one of the few factors that's under your control. So from your point of view, it's HUGE! But from the point of view of someone bitching in an attendance thread, it's really not that meaningful. KC is down by 4,000 a game. Are you saying Hunt and his people are outright stupid? Unable to see that more, better tix execs would have a huge effect, astronomically above the marginal rate of return? Or is KC a different market than Chicago? Did Hunt and his people recognize that the boom a couple years ago came from two factors - his personal influence on decision makers in the city, and the kind of temporary increase that hype can generate - a one-year gusher that was bound to run dry. My hunch is that Hunt and his people aren't stupid. That they've made a business decision about how many ticket execs to hire, based on their actual experience of the marginal value of hiring another. Chicago's a different market. In a region of 8 million people, there are a lot more fans on the margins. Even just following the 3-youth team logic, you'd multiply the number of potential youth teams by about 4.5 (the population ratios of the metro areas) and come up with something like 2,000-2,500 tickets a game as the difference that the sales execs might make. I think the KC people probably understand their market pretty well. And Kenn, I know exactly what the ticket sales execs do. They've inflicted themselves on me year after year, in their enthusiasm and their soccer-cluelessness. To no avail. Though no doubt my season ticket is credited to my sales exec each year, and thereby he effortlessly wins 16 points towards his positive Spoelstra rating in the minds of his supervisors.
A number of things played into this: 1) The Chiefs ticket office doesn't employ the same kinds of numbers that are employed around the rest of the NFL. They simply don't need to. There's always been such a demand. So Hunt didn't hire a large ticket sales staff for the Wizards. And when he realized that the Wizards needed more people working on selling tickets, instead of hiring more sales staff he just farmed the job out to Chiefs staffers which turned out to be a horrible idea. They weren't soccer people. They didn't care about soccer. And because it wasn't their primary job, they didn't put a whole lot of effort into it. Not to mention the fact that many of them had never actually had to work hard to sell tickets before then simply because of the demand for the Chiefs. 2) Yes, KC only has three ticket people on staff this year. But this is for a franchise that is up for sale and Hunt isn't really putting any money into the organization. You (and others like you) seem to want KC to fail. Why is that? Look at the facts: There is a local ownership group in KC in talks to purchase the team headed by two co-founders of the largest medical technology company in the country. They've got the means. They've got the interest. There are ongoing discussions to get a soccer stadium built in the area. There are cities extremely interested and involved. The county is fully behind it. Essentially the deal hinges on the stadium. Hunt won't sell until there is a set stadium plan. But as I said earlier, those plans are in the works. Of course the deal could fall apart any second. that risk will always be there until everything is signed... but in reality, the Wizards staying in KC is just as likely (if not much moreso) than the Wizards leaving. And once that happens, the numbers are there to support the idea that the franchise can be very succesful with a soccer specific stadium (check out the feasibility study for that). So do yourself and everybody else in MLS-world a favor and quit bitching about Kansas City. Get behind the idea of an SSS in KC the way I'm sure you were behind the HDC, Pizza Hut Park... and of course Bridgeview; Because when it really comes down to it, a SSS and succesful franchise in KC is far and away better for the league as a whole than the team leaving and going somewhere else.
Not looking good for KC according to a snippet in today's Toronto Star about a Don Garber interview by Cathal Kelly:- http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...ageid=968867503640&col=970081593064&t=TS_Home On the downside, the Kansas City franchise is struggling so badly it will have to be moved. The deal for a stadium in Salt Lake has fallen through. Attendance is spotty outside marquee cities Los Angeles and Chicago. And no team has turned a profit. Not clear if that is Cathal Kelly's take on things or Don Garber's, however.
Garber's comments about KC from Wednesday: "Kansas City is for sale, and we hope to get a local owner. As you know, Arrowhead (Stadium) is under renovation and we're not going to be able to play there, perhaps as early as next season. We're going to have to find a place to play. We're going through the process of figuring that out. Our hope is to stay in Kansas City with a new owner playing in a new facility. Hopefully we'll get a new owner that will be in a position to build a new facility. But, we've got a lot of work to do before we get to that point. None of that should have anybody think that that team is going on hiatus. I don't know where that came from. That's never going to happen." Again, it's really simple: If the stadium deal doesn't go through in KC (and the ownership deal doesn't follow - the two go hand in hand), then KC will be moved. Garber has never said anything otherwise, and there's no reason for him to do so now, especially since he gave an extensive answer the day before about KC and didn't mention it. No reason to change his tune. That's obviously just a case of the writer taking things and blowing them up because of a lack of research.
That wouldn't come as a huge shock in the case of this journalist. Probably a bit of a Eurosnob IMO based on reading some of his previous articles.
It's late at nite (or early in the morning) and I'm typing on my bb, so please excuse if this isn't fully coherent, but I will try. In KC, where average ticket price is extremely low (a seperate issue right now) and ancillary revenue to the team may be about $3-$5/cap, a ticket sales exec making $40k would need to sell a minimum of 200 to 250 tickets per game to justify their existence. An average rep in MLS would sell more than that in group tix alone plus be responsible for 300 to 500 season tickets equivalents (70% of which are renewals and the rest are new). You are right that many - though certainly not most - of the renewals are "effortless", but few of the group tickets and almost none of the new season tickets are effortless. Soccer cluelessness by MLS ticket sales staff is inexcusable. The pool of young soccer knowledgeable sales candidates in all MLS markets is now large enough that virtually all sales execs should be soccer and MLS knowledgeable. I'm disappointed to hear of your dissatisfaction with the soccer knowledge of your Fire sales rep(s). I'd be curious who your Fire sales rep(s) are as I'm pretty proud of the soccer acumen amongst our sales staff over the years. I can't answer why HSG decides not to invest money in this area in KC except to say they have long subscribed to the tortoise and the hare theory that the sport and league just needs to survive long enough to be in place when the tipping point occurs like it did in football in the late 1960s and the NBA in the 1980s. They are obviously putting their resources (human and otherwise) into Dallas this year for good reason. They have a bigger investment there and a better chance for r.o.i. I suppose this question should be posed in the "Ask Curt Johnson or John Wagner Thread". The 4.5:1 population ratio doesn't translate directly to ticket sales or soccer market share due to variables in the respective markets (see NY). Soccer participation ratios, ticket and parking prices, distance/traffic to the stadium and alternative entertainment options are among the variables. I truly believe, however, if Hitch were brought into KC and allowed to staff up, he would have results similar to his work in Denver 5-6 (?) years ago - which is to say significant. Regarding the argument not to invest in your product while it is up for sale, I believe that is the best time to invest in your product, just like it's the best time to invest in improving your house. It increases the value of the house, usually more than the amount you actually invested. Hope this helps. peter
Unfortunately, there's a lot of journalists like that out there in the US soccer world. Not necessarily even Eurosnobs, just flat out uninformed and/or unwilling to do minimal amounts of research. (See: Trecker, Jamie - Foxsoccerchannel.com; Grathoff, Pete - The Kansas City Star)
Unfortunately, Hunt obviously doesn't agree with that philosophy. BTW, thanks Peter for all your comments on these types of things. Your insight and knowledge are really appreciated.
Quite coherent. Thanks. Interesting. To make just a few quibbles. First, my ticket rep got better as he went. I was a season ticket holder for five years. My first year or two, he seemed like he was more enthusiastic than knowledgeable, working from talking points rather than from a genuine understanding of the game. But he was much better by the end. I don't want to get him in trouble. Second, I'd argue that Hunt DID put a big investment in when he put the club up for sale. Wasn't his big push timed precisely to bump up attendance to make it look solid right before putting the Wizards on the market? To pursue your real estate analogy, if your 2,000 sf house in a decent but not fashionable neighborhood didn't sell after you put $20,000 into the kitchen, would you put $30K into building a deck with jacuzzi and fabulous landscaping, or would you realize there's a limit to the price you can ask? I think Hunt tested your premise. You say you could send Hitch in and he'd do in KC what he did in Denver, but again, isn't the KC history pretty close to the Colorado history -- a big push using marketing and sales resources to leverage a one-year bump that faded. Denver's bump lasted a bit longer, but most of the big jump was in the first year after a disastrous decline. Then they had two years of small increases which had completely eroded by the following year, when they fell to the historic norm. Was it because the marketing genius was gone? Or because that sponge had already been rung out, and there warn't no water left? It seems unlikely to me that Colorado saw such an amazing increase, and then chose out of idiocy to ignore the lesson. This is what you can do with marketing - add some sales and move up the date on a lot of sales. But ultimately, that front-loading of sales can only go on so long. Some of those soccer dads who bring the U-13's out are only going to do it every other year, regardless. Sure, it's valuable to have a sales rep contact them, moving the sale up a year. So a newly invigorated sales staff gets a big bump, but most of it is like squeezing a garden hose when the spigot is turned off. You're not finding a new source of water, you're just making the water already in the hose spurt out. Once it's out, you're done. The very factors you describe that make in trying to negate my 1:4.5 ratio are what makes Chicago a better town for sales/marketing efforts - we've got way more people at the margins of the audience - in categories like 'soccer fan living a little too far from SF (or Bridgeview) to be convenient', or whatever the conflicting factor is. Way more fans whose decision is hinged between 'yes, I love soccer and 'but there are reasons I might not make more than one Fire game this year.' KC only has so many of those. For the "I really like soccer" crowd in KC, no one is so distant or so bombarded by other things to do, so a bigger proportion of their crowd is just going to come, and a smaller portion of their crowd is at the margins waiting to be convinced by a good sales rep. But I accept your experience. IMy appreciation for the importance of ticket execs grows from hearing you tell it, even if I remain somewhat less appreciative than you and others here, and somewhat more appreciative of the likely business factors that make Hunt's choices seem reasonable to me, in a very different market from Chicago. When I say that marketing people add some sales and move the date up on a lot of sales, I put a little more emphasis on the ones they're adding than I would have yesterday.
Some good points, but a couple of counters. The Rapids attendance stayed up until Hitch left AND the new ownership did not support the sales effort. It could have been retained if the new ownership would have kept a dedicated soccer sales staff and a soccer dedicated marketing, community relations department etc. The fact that KSG packaged their support staff with multiple sports teams and had their attendance fall back down plays into my argument. If the investment in the house both increases value for sale AND returns at least a zero based r.o.i., it should be continued and i remain convinced that this can be accomplished in KC. No matter how small or large a market is, very few in the soccer community are "just going to come." Open up the gates, put the schedule on the web site and hope for someone to come = Miami. peter
If the "big push" was all part of some kind of master plan to sell the Wizards, then Lamar must be some sort of Sith lord.
Now we ARE talking. He is actually. Did you know that him and his brothers tried to corner worlds silver market in the 70's? They lost stacks of cash, but if it had succeeded, they would have made Gates look small time. http://www.dallashistory.org/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=3439
H.L. Hunt had more "sons" than you can shake a stick at. I'm pretty sure Lamar was uninvolved with the silver market.
You're only half right, and it's IMHO the lesser half. 2003 is a clear outlier year here, but the trend is clear even without it. It suggests that a 12k attendance if the move had never hung over their heads is a plausible prediction, but it's on the very low end of what's plausible.