Republic F.C., the Brand

Cool I will have to check it out. She's been on in the past and talked about Republic before, back right after she had her baby (or maybe when she was expecting?). She and Mr. Rebecca Lowe live up in El Dorado Hills, which is a weird place to be if you consider yourself part of the Sacramento scene, but that's where all the people with big money live, so ah well.

 

yeah was talking about living in the foothills - also about how people talk in Nor Cal

 

Reason #87 why Sacramento is ready for MLS...

 

Honestly, it looks like a warm-up kit.

 

I do.

I think it's the ICS folks who have been really pushing the "quails" thing.

When there's a quail on the crest, I'll play along. Until then...

 

Meh, qualis....bears, whatever...they keep playing like this and its time to thin the herd anyway.

 

Did anyone (lookin' at you, SS. lol) attend the fan/management meeting last week? Haven't seen anything posted on outcomes or promises.........

 

Yes, I did attend. It was cool to see some faces put to the names of folks I see in the TL.

Topics discussed were: MLS (a lot), TBB relations and gameday experience (a lot), road game watch parties/locations (a bit), outreach into underserved communities, and - right at the end - #NoSashNoParty

In order:
MLS - long and short, we're pretty much at the "don't call us, we'll call you" stage. Without whale-level $, we are boned. Allegedly, that angle is still being worked. PMP/Bonney is not acceptable even as a temp facility, so no MLS until Railyards is built, but Railyards cannot be built until MLS. The math is left to the student. Some folks said that Nagle wrote that he'd have something more concrete in 60 days, this meeting took place on day #63 from that pronouncement. Differences in style between Warren Smith and Kevin Nagle discussed. (My opinion here) Unless something drastic happens, MLS will not occur for SRFC until at least team #31 or #32.

TBB - some leadership issues in the battalion right now, but overall feeling and morale in TBB is low. They don't like the gameday experience, feeling like they are in a "cow pen" at the stadium. Cal Expo won't let them use the Cantina any more, and tailgating is verboten even in the dirt lot on the tunnel side. No drinks, no food, no organized games. TBB wants to be seen as "independent" of the club, does not like the stage-managed aspect of the current march into the north bleachers.

Gameday - food/drink prices too expensive but these are set by stadium owner/operator (not SRFC). Not much to be done there outside of negotiations in off season to stabilize prices. Owner/op also doing events during season that chew up the field. Other stadia have seen issues and responded - cheap food at MBZ stadium in Atlanta, bottled water price cut by 67% at Levi's in Santa Clara, SRFC would do well to figure a way to cut food $ prices for families.

Road watch parties - No set place, that's a problem. Club likes to rotate around, but that makes it tough to generate a nucleus of activity. Devere's was great, but their bandwidth sucks. Sac Sports Bar is a dive, not family friendly. Encouraged by La Banda del Puente members to have watch parties at (name of Mexican restaurant, I forgot) with Estrella TV audio feed.

#NoSashNoParty - I brought examples of current road jersey, first open cup alternates (gold hoops) and original home white with sash. Most folks in room supported going back to sash, even if it meant dropping Nike as a supplier and going back to Lotto. Nike won't customize unless the order size is large enough, so that is why sash went away. I reminded them that the sash is part of the team image, and if they were really interested in honoring the five years of SRFC, they'd get rid of the unis with the Raiders colors and go back to Old Glory Red.

Overall - bit of a listening/gripe session, perhaps this is what the club needed. They know that there are people out here who want to see the club succeed, no matter what the level. They know that they are having difficulties with their image, and that Really Bad Week on the field just made things blow up in social media.

 

Okay, the next few paragraphs are my opinion and speculation only, SWAGs really, and not to be taken as the opinion of this website, SRFC, SierraSpartan Incorporated, or any of its agents or sponsors.

Right now, I believe that there is no conception in the SRFC leadership for an eventuality outside of MLS. This is the goal they have set, this is the goal they think they will reach. As such, they are "trying" to make the experience at PMP as positive as possible for the fanbase, but since they do not have day-to-day control of the facility - which is something I thought they would have when the facility was constructed four years ago - this is obviously fairly difficult.

Given that information (again, please see the disclaimer above), I see no escape from PMP until the MLS bid is either accepted or officially dead and buried. Now that Inter Miami is (finally?) settled as a name, they will finally get a spot and become team #26 in 2020. The Modell suit in Columbus will continue to grow weird-looking turnips, and MLS will settle with either Precourt or Columbus, with the loser of that settlement getting quick expansion to become #27 in 2021. That leaves us, PHX, SD, DET, and possibly STL all in competition for one final slot in this round, probably in the 2022 time frame. Expansion to 32 will not happen until the late 2020s, if at all.

If I was SRFC's owner (again, please see the disclaimer above), I would be currently putting best efforts toward making SRFC the best G-D franchise in USL, the one club that EVERY player in USL wants to play for, and the one club in USL that every fan wants to be a fan of. To that end, I would already be having conversations with the Savage family about the possibility of putting SRFC into Raley Field, and/or engaging their assistance in the construction of a new ~~8K facility in one of the parking lots there. CalExpo is a long-term death sentence for the team - bad location, bad parking, no rapid transit, no ability to tailgate, and a seeming choke chain of a lease that's making everybody (except for the stadium ops company) miserable.

Another semi-crazy idea would be to get together with the City of Sacramento and the Kings org to unearth the grave of the old ARCO Park stadium and see if something can be done there.

We have all seen that this town doesn't need "Major League" to make sports work. So we should embrace D2 and kick the living shit out of everybody while we're here.

I am SierraSpartan, and I approve of this message.

Again, the above few paragraphs are my opinion and speculation only, SWAGs really, and not to be taken as the opinion of this website, SRFC, SierraSpartan Incorporated, or any of its agents or sponsors.

 

Thanks SS!

I'll preface my remarks as well. I don't have the experience of leading a multi-million dollar company, nor have i studied business in school, so the following comments come only from the heart:

SRFC deferring complaints with the "it's not within our control" is leaving me with a bad feeling about the future. Strong leadership would have created leverage to gain some measure of control over some of these issues.

To throw up your hands when an organization with little skin in the long-term game (cal expo) negatively affects your fans' experience seems a poor business practice.

 

Nope, just a lot of informed speculation and a fairly active Twitter feed. I also lurk the Reddit, which has turned out to be an astonishingly productive source of information and tidbits.

Believe me, I wish I had Hal Holbrook standing in the shadows whispering The Greater Truth to me on this one, but the Greater Truth is this: When Mr. Nagle bought the team, he did so with a MLS outlook, and he thought at the time that he had MLS money, but then the universe changed (thanks Atlanta), and Mr. Nagle could not keep up. It is my belief (repeat, belief) that the Whitmans and Yorks pulled out over a tug-of-war over financial control of the franchise, which Mr. Nagle wanted to maintain; this, plus the failure to procure the "Republic" name prior to bid submission time, told the MLS Expansion board that the people here in Sacramento were not serious about what they are doing.

As a result, the SRFC Brand has been damaged. No so damaged that it can't be fixed, but there's things that can be done, and it is my hope that the SRFC brass will continue to hold listening sessions to figure out ways to get those fixes in.

After all...while we wait for MLS, there's still a D2 team to run successfully.

 

Nagle has to sell the team completely or have a bigger investor come in and run the show. IMO, the problem has been Nagle, despite what anyone says, that's what everything points to.

Sadly, at this point, that's the only way we will hear about MLS again. Meanwhile - no stadium, status limbo, and we're all paying inflated prices for a minor league product. That's not a long-term strategy.

The club needs to come out with a "okay, maybe we won't be an MLS team (at least not until some date far off in the future), so here is our plan for the next 5-10 years" plan.

They need to decide whether to go for a smaller(but expandable) Railyards stadium, or whether Papa Murphys Park will be home for the next 5 years. In either case, they need to plan for it. I'm of the opinion that even if they stay in USL, they need a permanent home. PMP was always meant to be temporary. There are lots of teams in USL that have built better stadiums which have no spot in the MLS expansion race. We need to have a real home and Railyards should be it - MLS or not, or MLS down the road.

Every time I'm at a game I'm astounded at how much extras and bells and whistles there are, how many gameday staff, how many promotions and non-game-related things and I'm always thinking about how much my ticket is going to pay for all kinds of things other than the team itself. Bottom line is prioritize spending on the team itself. Following the model of the Kings is NOT a good idea, but I see that seeping into this organization as more and more people from the Kings head things up. Failing mentality. People that are used to being perpetual losers have a low bar and I don't want people like that running things.

Well that turned into a rant.

 

QT absolutely nailed it. Too bad we're limited to only one "like" per post, lol.