Too Late. But I'm sure there will be a gatekeeper that will keep inconvienent questions (such as "what was the point in alienating 90% of your season ticket base?") out of the ivory tower over at Red Bull FO.
I was messing around lol, of course its just gonna be a bunch of softball questions about how great the 2012 season's gonna be. I didn't follow the season ticket thread closely as I'm not one, but was he actually the one behind that pricing decisions?
Given the interview where he discussed the original pricing "irregularities" I would assume he was very much involved with the decision.
That was my question. As in 100% involved. Ironically we're more pissed here. Supporters didn't see a hike.
Yeah, well...that's what I was getting at. Obviously we're going to be more upset. However, I'm not sure the supporters are entirely unsympathetic to our situation. I talked to a few people from that section and they were pretty irrate about what Heck was doing.
Really? The discussions I've been reading seem like mainly Onionsack fighting it out with people who mock him for beating the heck sucks drum - clearly there are others who hate Heck but it seems like there are a lot of regulars who are okay with the free money on card and no hike - for which I can't blame them. But no LA game and 1PM Wednesday game don't make me regret not renewing. This guy is a clueless middle manager with too much power than he knows what to do with. He's way out of his depth with soccer. Can't wait to see the glowing reviews of 20,000 for the 1PM game when about 4500 show up.
Heck will announce it as a "sell out". The fat cats in Austria will read that and feel that all is well. A year later someone will take a closer look at the books, figure out that 4500 showed up, they'll fire everyone, gut the team, and we'll start back at square one. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I'm not a Chris Heck fan and I'm not certain I would have chosen the same 1pm starting time, but the 1pm game is not that outrageous of a decision. That Wednesday matchup v. Chicago is the sandwich game of 3 MLS games in 7 days at Red Bull Arena. Because of the Wednesday game being the sandwich game with all 3 games being played at Red Bull Arena, the Wednesday game was likely to draw less interest in general than the two weekend games around it. So for a game with low attendance expectations to begin with it isn't a huge risk to just try something different and to try to sneak in some extra rest time before the last game of the sandwich on Saturday. If Red Bulls ever become popular enough that they are packing RBA on a regular basis, there are enough people in the NYC metro area to fill up RBA for a once a year midweek mid-day game. Although playing in the hot part of the day would probably negate the benefits of the extra rest time before the Saturday game.
You've summed up why it's a bad idea pretty well. Red bull isn't that popular now to warrant this and it further devalues season tickets. And even if you do take a vacation day - if it's 100 degrees on the field the game and the experience will be miserable.
First of all, when those numbers are announced they are of tickets sold which is what really counts and those numbers are not made up. If 20,000 is what is announced there is no way anything close to 4,500 actually show up unless some really terrible storm happens. Even in some NFL stadiums plus of course NBA and NHL games you will see quite a number of no shows as well as other MLS team games in other stadiums outside of Seattle and Portland (have you seen Toronto?). I personally don't understand why someone who owns their seats does not get someone else or sell their seats so someone shows up, but I do hope the number of no shows decreases this year. What does get me very suspicious is what appears on Stubhub where entire rows in the lower level appear on sale when you can't buy them individually except as part of a family pack on the Red Bulls website because otherwise they show up as unavailable. I am sure there is some thought process here regarding this so called sales tactic, but I don't get it.
Okay fine - but it's ticket distributed not tickets sold - and those sellouts were all bogus. There were close to 10k no shows in each and the tickets were given away.
My post included one sentence only about the disadvantages of the day game so my post definitely doesn't qualify as a good summary of the disadvantages. If July 18, 2012 brings oppressive heat then I can definitely see the game being an absolute failure. If its not oppressively hot on July 18, 2012, then even a low attendance for the day game such as 4500 does not mean the sky is falling for NYRB. Last year for the July Wednesday night evening match I attended at RBA the stadium was only around half full. Substantial risk of a poor turnout for the day game isn't as concerning when odds of a packed stadium for the night game are pretty low.
Given the attendance the last two times they tried this, the stadium would be about a tenth full, not half full. And no camp kids showed. So why do this again?
The general sentiment I have read over there is similar, although I firmly believe far more people over threre are in the anti-Heck faction. The people I talked to are pissed, many didn't renew their seats or if they did they reduced the # of seats. Me personally, I agree with Onionsack. If you are dissatisfied with the new ticketing polciy and the manner it was put on you as long time season ticket holders then your chief recourse is to respond by cutting them off from the tit that is your wallet. As someone that doesn't have ST's anyway, it never effected me. In 16 years of supporting Metro and its other incarnation, I have come to figure out that ST's really are not necessary in order to get to the match and get good seats. The place never sells out and the team has soo many one time deals floating around (not to mention supporters at the pubs having extras before the match) that you can always score a cheeper ticket. Quite simply the team does not have the tocket demand that would make being a season ticket holder attractive. Especially in the face of large mark ups on existing ST holders. Add to that the very disingenuos company line being placed out there that the entire stadium saw a 6% decrease in average price and its not hard to see why people are angry. One interesting idea i saw on metrofanatic was the idea to get the STH's together to form a STH trust and like the SG's do..use that as leverage. Notice they didnt raise the price on the large block of supporters behind goal.
The problem is how they define "tickets sold" may not be what the common sense definiton of the term is. Their "tickets sold" could include hundreds or thosands of tickets "sold" to secondary markets at extreme discoutned prices...which may or may not ever get distriubted. That is what i beelive Heck was doing late last year to get his "numbers". Notice that perfect weather games in annouced sell outs consitantly where showing the stadium with PLENTY of seats vacant.
I never said the sky is falling - this is just another example of what Haig described as a case of chronic institutional amnesia. What is the upside of doing this? I find it hard to believe that this will go a long way to seeding a future generation of MLS fans. It was a total failure when tried before and it sucks for many season ticket holders. It's just yet another example of Heck being clueless/indifferent about the history, clueless/indifferent about the fan base, and clueless/indifferent about what matters to us. You may view this as a throwaway game, but when I was a season ticket holder I liked the weekday games. Not sure how many you went to this season but I thought the atmosphere was surprisingly good, even if the attendance wasn't always the greatest.
Absolutely - this was just a marketing ploy. When 9K don't show up to your sellout, it's safe to say they weren't sold in a traditional sense. Ahem - that idea started with me here. I agree with you that a season ticket was never required, but many of us such as koko and myself, bought into the notion that we were buying season tickets for life - that we picked a spot we'd stay in for good. We figured prices would go up, but they would do so consistent with past practice and consistent with some success. I get the increases, I just hate the Heck's slash and burn - fire everyone, screw the history, and I'm doing it the way I want and if the long time season ticket holders aren't going to take what I'm selling, screw them too. I don't get it, but I doubt he's answering that question.
When was the mid-week day-game tried previously for NYRB and what were the attendance and weather results then? I've attended an occasional Red Bulls match in my 6 years of living in NY and have never been a season-ticket holder. So I concede that my opinion is based on far less first-hand experience than some of you have. That also means my opinion should mean far less to NYRB franchise leaders than some of your opinions should mean to them.
Not RBNY. Metro. The one we all remember was KC (Jimmy Conrad passed out on the field during the game, - Edgar Barthalomeu after the game and the game itself was a dire 0-0 draw played in front of maybe a few hundred people) But you think they could have done a little research and come to the proper conclusions, no?
Kind of a schlepp eh? That Queens team will be easier I'm not saying your opinion should matter less necessarily, just don't see the upside. And it's not worth the risk of players passing out on the field while playing incredibly unwatchable soccer.