US Open Cup Final host bid leaves Seattle GM ‘skeptical’

Now that would be a fun league:

Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, LA, Chivas, Real SL, Colorado.

Finally, we don't have to travel forever or deal with 4pm (or 9am) televised starts! And if we dump RSL and Colorado, perhaps replacing them with Las Vegas and Phoenix (or San Diego), we could even have a normal fall-to-spring season without having to worry about blizzards (or for most of the cities even the NFL)! Oh to dream, to dream...

 

You also wont have a national tv deal and would lose sponsors. Great plan.

 

Um....I'm pretty sure that was just a joke.

 

HAHAhahaha


ha ha...

ha...


Oh, you weren't joking?

 

1. Your tears could not possibly taste sweeter to me.
2. ManU won the English league last year. How many players do they have from Manchester? Tevez, Berbatov, Rooney, Van der Saar, Ferdindand, Vidic, Nani, Park, Evra, etc.

 

Not gonna happen at RFK. Unless you're fine with 8k people. Well this is what Hanauer gets for hosting all the Open Cup qualifiers at Starfire instead of Qwest. I guarantee that the semi against Houston would have had at least 20k ppl as over 5k crammed into a tiny regional sportspark (it's a GOOD sports park mind you) with 25k watching on a crappy internet streaming feed.

Had Adrian ponied up and hosted the game at Qwest, we'd have the proof points to say we'd sell out Qwest and that the USSF was losing money by putting it in RFK. All we have to go on is DC's piss-poor attendance history to point to instead.

 

Hopefully someone has made this point before I posted, but MLS Cup is in Seattle. That HAS to have been a factor.

 

Dear Whinerbaby,

DC sold out Quest with traveling supporters in 2006. That's more than have EVER come out for a silly Sounders game.

 

Out of curiosity, where did the 25,000 watching on the internet come from? Is that unique clicks or perhaps total clicks? The official stream I watched(as a fan of soccer, not the Sounders) had a counter and it was around 5,000 when I glanced at it a few times.

 

That is a joke, right. I watched the feed of that game and it told you how many people were watching. It was 5,000 or so. Jesus that is quite the exaggeration. I took issue with your GM and some posters claiming Seattle would "sell out" (tarps...) a 1PM weekday game, which is complete BS. Nice to see the exaggeration doesn't stop there.

Would you have had more at an evening Open Cup Final than DC? Yes, but your team didn't bid an evening start and I'm sure FSC's desire for at least a .1 rating was an issue.

As for a "piss poor" attendance issue DC has one of the highest lifetime attendance numbers in the league. If you want to spew shit about a team being under supported go spew somewhere else.

 

I'm sure they had the internet stream hooked up to TVs in pubs and bars across the Seattle area. Thats probably what happened to all the people that couldn't get tickets to that US Nats game too.

 

I also love how people who host games only get 4-8K, but fans (or GMs) of teams who were "wrongly" outbid can "guarantee" attendances that pretty much no USOC match ever has seen.

 

If we also include the type of crap thats gloating or pointless bumping like this:

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=18315025&postcount=168

Your list would get a hell of a lot longer than two people.

 

Speaking of witch hunt...I mean annoying trolls that need to be put to shame:

This guy needs to get a life but still is typical of the annoying group of people that invaded our forum like the plague after playing your team. See this guy is a fool because our players were not wasting time as much as he claims or were the major offenders inflicting injury because many of our players in this game were hurt (to varying degree) and had to leave the game. You don't have to be permanently injured to leave a game or be on the ground. There's rivarly or just pre-game type posts and THEN there's these type of trolls! Yes, many did post decent to good posts.

 

My guess is Seattle partly/largely lost the bid because of the 1 pm start time.

For me the question is why the 1 pm start time? For those who say it's contractual that the Sounders can't play when the Mariners do, then why is that very thing happening tomorrow? Furthermore, as I've previously mentioned, when you add up the Mariners average attendance and the Sounders capacity attendance, it ends up smaller than the Seahawks attendance. So I don't see how parking is the issue. If we can get everyone in the parking garages and lots who need to be there for a Seahawks game, then why can't we do it for an even smaller combined crowd?

There's something more to this than we're being told. Was an exception made for tomorrow's game so it can be on ESPN? Was a deal of some sort made between the Sounders and Mariners to allow it? etc.

 

Have you been shown a still photo yet that PROVES Seattle's fanbase is being unfairly characterized? It's probably breaking news on the Examiner right now.

I can name a lot more than 2. I'd struggle to think of 2 Toronto posters that are equally as grating. I do agree with the general point though. I traveled to Seattle to watch KC play this year, and there are a lot of great fans that are just enjoying MLS at face value. I was treated extremely well, and I'd vouch that they have made by far the greatest strides in making MLS mainstream in their city. I haven't yet made it to Toronto though.

Hanauer insinuating corruption though is hilarious after his team was gifted a path to the finals through a combination of home field advantage, and more than a few suspect calls going their way.

 

Tomorrow is a Saturday. Tuesday, obviously, is a weekday. I don't know much about the specifics of Seattle's parking situation, but in many downtown areas that would change the dynamics significantly.

 

I'm speaking with no knowledge of the situation here, but can I float a theory?

Where is Quest Field? If it's in a downtown or heavy traffic area, could there be a deal that doesn't allow the two teams to play at the same time on a weeknight in order to keep another 60,000 people from snarling up downtown traffic during a weekday rush hour?

(And in general, I've found that it's useless and usually more than a little frustrating to try and compare the rules for football to the rules for anything else.)

RS

 

If you have no knowledge, there's an easy way to remedy the situation before you float any theories. Srsly.

 

Don't be ignorant. Clearly people in Seattle are following the USOC on a level this league hasn't seen before. Our online video showing had more fans than many USOC games draw total...

Just because it hasn't been seen before doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. Our season has been sold out for a long time, so any excess Sounders games would be hot tickets, especially in a final.

 

Yes, jackass, I'm going to spend my Friday morning researching Seattle traffic patterns. Piss off.

In re: the actual thread - this might be the answer:

"A Transportation Management Program for coordinating transportation options was a condition of the stadium's approval. A “Dual Event Agreement” with Safeco Field was established in an attempt to prevent two events with a combined attendance of over 58,000 occurring within 4 hours of each other.[61] The plan was also implemented to coordinate mass transit to the stadiums on game days."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest_Field#Transportation

(I know - Wikipedia. It's what I can do, unless Ed would like to pay for a research staff.)

 

The number of viewers at any one time topped 5,000. If you moused over where it was showing the current number of viewers, you would get a small pop-up showing the total viewers overall. That was over 25,000.

 

It takes five seconds to find out that it's in a downtown location. It probably took you another minute to find that paragraph from wikipedia. Forgive my snark, but when you preface a post with an acknowledgment that you have no knowledge, and that knowledge is easily obtained with a few keystrokes...well, why not look something up first, before you post? Then you'd only have to post once, and you wouldn't have to deal with jackasses like me.

 

Just let me make sure I have it straight one more time. Basically, 25,000 was the total number of views, while ~5,000 was the peak number of people actually watching the match at any one time. So when I originally opened the stream in Opera and had problems that was a view and when I tried a different browser and eventually another computer, those were two more views?

 

They weren't all sounders fans watching. I don't consider myself a Sounders fan at all (although what's happening in Seattle is exciting for the league). Also, many USOC games are played in small stadiums that can't hold 5k anyway. Not that all of them are sold out. In DC, we get less at the Rockville Soccerplex because the games are far away from many Maryland, DC, and Virginia fans.