FC Dallas Should Try An "Everyone Gets In Free" Night

Here's the problem with giving away free tickets. And this has been proven to be true by other FO's around the league. It doesn't generate paying customers down the road.

Several FO's have gone after the AYSO crowd, doing huge giveaways to local soccer leagues. Those parents will show up for the games they get tickets for, but they aren't going to shell out a couple hundred bucks to take the family out to a game again later that season. Why would they when they know they are likely going to get another batch of free tickets somewhere later on in the season?

Now, 20 years from now, when those kids who got to go to games with their parents grow up, they might buy tickets because they remember going to games as kids. But I don't think anyone is interested in waiting 20 years in Dallas to generate new ticket sales.

Giving away free tickets for the sake of filling a stadium is kind of like chopping off your arm because you want to lose a few pounds.

It gets the job done in the short term, but the long term ramifications are pretty devastating.

 

FCD discounted the sideline tickets to 15 bucks for this last match. And they got >10k fans in the door. It's 15 bucks people. I'm not convinced a free ticket night would draw more than a $15 ticket night. You'd just lose that ticket money. PHP is sitting in one of the most affluent suburbs in the DFW metroplex. (the median housefold income in Frisco is over 100k a year). If we want to get the homeless in then maybe we could give away free tickets. Of course, if people can't afford the cheap ticket nights...........they're not going to be driving all the way out to Frisco the matches.

It's just not a fantastic sports market for anything other than football. It's not all that great of a baseball market. The Rangers don't exactly come close to filling their stadium.......virtually ever (average 27k in a 50k seat stadium). Before Cuban, the Mavericks didn't draw well. And when they're not winning, the Stars aren't exactly sold out every night. There was this recent article on ESPN which starts......"Is hockey dead in Dallas?"

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/nhl/columns/story?columnist=reeves_jim&id=5068206

Dallas is a football town. Here's the football stadium being built in another suburb of Dallas for a high school football team. It's bigger than some of the SSS we've been building.

http://highschoolsportsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/04/if-drawings-are-any-indication.html




I heard a radio guy say recently that for all sports other than football...........Dallas is a "small-market town." And there's a lot of truth to that.

 

It's not so bad. I've been to quite a few MLS stadia, and PHP is about average. Try RFK sometime.

FCD's attendance problems have more to do with the quality of the team than anything else. If your team wallows in mediocrity year after year, without ever coming close to winning a league title, apathy starts to settle in. Especially if there aren't any players that excite the fans. FCD, more than any other team, could really use a DP that interests people. If they could convince a Mexican star like Nery Castillo to play for them..............that would be an added 5k every night. When Blanco came to PHP, a lot of Mexican fans were there.

Castillo's doing nothing in Europe, even when he's healthy. But the FCD brass wouldn't have the cojones.

But the team are doing a lot of things right. Last Saturday they had people stationed at the exits to thank people for attending the game. It was a small, nice touch. If they average 10-12k this season, that will be fine. And they can build from there.

 

By letting everyone in for free, you tell them your product isn't worth paying for. As always, Kenn has a good writeup.

http://www.kenn.com/the_blog/?p=2821

 

I hesitate at the beer + college kids PR thing

I doubt many people know this and it really has little to do with MLS or Kansas City Wizards but last season some idiot college kids went to a game got shitfaced (not from the concession there were under-aged) returned to their dorms where one of them fell to his death and pretty much no one noticed.

http://www.kmbc.com/news/19271430/detail.html

 

I know it's been brought up before, but I can't help but feel that the complete lack of public transportation to/from Frisco isn't exactly helping; especially when the two major highways to get to PHP from afar are boothless toll roads.

I also think we need more partnerships. 1 free brew from Lochrann's after the game with ticket or reduced ticket prices for KERA members. I should be able to buy tickets at Kroger's for a few dollars off when checking out with >$150 worth of groceries. If this stuff is already happening, it's nearly invisible.

 

Maybe I'm wrong. Please someone correct me if so, But on OPENING DAY I was at the game, and I seem to remember not all of the concession stands being open. I KNOW there was a beer concession that usually has alot of different beers not being open. So, it seems that even the Front Office wasn't expecting a big crowd for the game?! Am I wrong about that?

 

I've not slogged thru this whole thread, so I apologize in advance for throwing my thoughts in. As an Austin resident I really would like to see FC Dallas thrive even if my old home town is Houston and I support the Dynamo.

Two points:

1. Don't cheapen tickets or make them free. That devalues your product. The current price point is not the obstacle to attendance.

2. What I notice is that DFW media gives no attention what-so-ever to FC Dallas. FC Dallas needs to go sit down with the editorial boards and figure something out. For lords sake, underwrite the entire sports section of the paper. Or something else. But some solution has to be found because everything up in Dallas says that FCD is a minor league sport, if it exists at all.

Bottom line: FC Dallas needs to find a way to say they are more valuable as a place to be -- not less valuable as the OP suggests.

 

for my group all of whom are 18-24 yrs old, its the location.
just saying; its why I don't attend regularly and what I hear from friends that have been but are no longer interested in attending. Between our jobs (which most are retail/service, so work schedule isn't set and work on most weekends) and school/homework - its too much of a hassle and it feels like going to see a game takes up 1/2-3/4 of the day between gathering, driving up there and back.

All this pointing to Mexican DP's, ChicagoFire/Blanco, FMF friendly games doesn't really add up imo because they are just one off "events" to attend for these people, so saving the date and making the trip to see one game a year isn't a big deal (much like how it is for my group).

I live 3 miles north of downtown, fwiw.

 

Apples to oranges. If you want an apples to apples comparison, read the blog post by Sam linked in the 3rd post.

 

Probably (in part) because there is no (or little) threat of it costing anything in the future. Web sites that operate on an ad or "free" model show little pretension of paid value to its users.

This is a pro sports team that expects its tickets to be of value, and depends on premium tickets to drive revenue. Giving away tickets extensively not only creates expectations among the lower price barriers of perpetual access to free tickets, it substantially reduces the saleable value of premium-level tickets.

Compound that with the likelihood that the large majority of giveaway tickets will be in middle-range price levels and you're also effectively pissing off both ends of those who do pay; cheap ticket buyers who could have a better seat for nothing, and premium buyers whose ticket value is infringed upon by freebies in comparable-level seats.

Bottom line: you're not gonna be able to pay players on hot dog sales.

 

If not a free night then a $5 buck night at least.. they need to find out where they stand in the Dallas sports landscape. They should've called themselves Cowboys FC or some sh*t so they could attract soccer fans and dumbasses who would attend a match thinking it was an actual American football game taking place.

 

Read the thread and come back. Please.

 

It is amazing what a draw cheap beer is. I know a number of minor league baseball parks that charge the same for parking, tickets, hot dogs, popcorn, and everything else, but the inducement of cheap beer absolutely packs the house. And people who drink beer inevitably hit up the overpriced concessions. Or they have a few too many and buy some stupid looking hat or T-Shirt.

When I was in college the local minor league team promoted the dollar beer night on campus and it seemed like half of the campus jammed into that little stadium. This promotion got people interested in the team, and even on nights besides Thirsty Thursdays, people started to come out.

 

As evidenced by "HP Free Printers" Day X ∞

 

Don't forget trade in your Chevy for a Free Ford event every single year. Or all the free groceries you can fit in your car day. Those happen all over the country.

 

Let's say you knew that every Thursday your favorite pizza place was giving away free pizzas to all customers. On a Wednesday night when you are trying to decide what to eat for dinner are you going to call the pizza place and order a $20 pizza when you know that on Thursday you get a free pizza? So now imagine how busy this pizza place is every night other than Thursday, not very. Giving away the free pizzas has effectively killed off all their business on every day but Thursday when they are giving it away for free anyways! That is why pizza places use special promotions/coupons where you feel like you are getting a great deal and entices you to buy while the company is still making money on their product.

If FC Dallas is enticing free ticket seekers to the stadium, what makes you think that they are going to want to spend $6 on a beer, $8 on nachos? When in reality they are probably hitting the $1 menu on the way to or away from the stadium. And now that they know there is a game a year when they can get in free they will just wait till next year when they expect to get in free again. They wont be so impressed with play of Atiba Harris or Dario Sala that they will want to drop $20 to come back.

 

While this is so completely correct, I'm afraid it will fly so far over the head of the OP that he won't even be able to hear the whooosh as it zips by.

 

I don't see how devaluing your product makes it better. A lot of people shop at Walmart, but it's not because they enjoy it. If you take away the cheap prices, no one would shop there. They would be better off trying to slowly building a dedicated fan base than just throwing tickets at people who are never going to come back.

 

Dave's been hammered pretty good here. But let me try to salvage his idea.

Before the season, maybe FCD could play preseason games in a couple of local venues for free.

Exactly. A loss leader is dollar beer night, or buck-a-brat.

 

The core product of bigsoccer is my eyeballs and yours, and they charge advertisers to get access to them.