Yankee Stadium isn't a bad Soccer venue at all. It's just not a good TV presentation for Soccer, which is what most everyone who's never actually attended a soccer match at Yankee Stadium bitches about. True, however, just don't let him anywhere near the management of the roster or the Soccer Operations side for that matter.
After the first season, some City fans and I were thinking "you know what this is actually a pretty sweet venue" and were not in a rush to get a bad SSS deal. At that time, crowds were pretty big, the atmosphere was very good and you will probably never get anything even remotely close to that amazing location transit wise. Now that crowds have dropped, the atmosphere has really made the stadium stick out.
---- Remember we had the California Emperors in the APSL of 1990 I believed they won their division and played at University of Redlands. Went to a few road games, fun times Agree, other than minor league baseball and hockey, not much else out here in the Inland Empire. Big and growing population. The question will be where to base a team and as always, a decent stadium (meaning not a baseball stadium or a high school or college football field with plastic turf )
I think the marketing has been terrible. There doesn't seem to have been any attempt to recreate the excitement of the first season. I've spoken to people involved with the club and they seemed to be resigned to the lousy soccer and those Red Bull defeats really hurt. And there's been no attempt to bring on another big name. This is New York, you have to fight for attention. I mean the Rangers and Knicks are great at attracting attention and filling seats even though they suck (I think, I can't stand NBA or hockey).
Rocco Commisso used to babble that since London has 5 teams, surely there's room for 2 in New York, which, as is typical of that frightful gasbag, is wrong on so many levels. First of.course there are more like 12 teams in Lomdon; go ahead and tell Wimbledon or QPR fans their team doesn't matter, just don't do it while I'm withing arms reach. But the real point is, as you suggest, the competition is not just the RedBulls. You're competing with the Rangers, the Knicks, the Giants, the Jets, the Nets, the Yankees, the Mets and the Islanders. And they all have a helluva head start on you. And trying to talk a corporate type into swapping their sponsor package from say the Knicks or the Giants involves some serious heavy lifting. Point being, it's not a wide open field where a couple soccer teams can romp and play in the money fields. It's a fiercely competitive town in sports marketing as well as everything else
I think there is room for 2 top- flight soccer teams in the New York metro but they need to market the hell out of them. Both have disinterested foreign owners, who regard them as reserve teams, while their capital investment is performing quite nicely. NYC is still playing midfielders up front and being duly profligate in front of goal, Cincy excepted (Danny Welbeck would have been a great signing). Meanwhile the Red Bulls are a youth team with an average age of 23 last time out. That would be great in Salt Lake or San Jose but this is New York.
Jeff Berding did near-genius level work in Cinncinnati, masterfully orchestrating MLS entry in a place that nobody had given it a serious second thought. And the stadium, oh my. It's superb. However, like Nick the Sack, as he was affectionately known in the BigSoccer of old, he should have been fired when it came time to build a soccer team. And I say that as someone who loved Nick. As I'm sure you know, he was a gracious gentleman who was always personally generous to me when he really didn't need to be.
That's true everywhere. Even in the hinterlands where the only competition for eyeballs during the summer is a terrible 100 game losing baseball team. Ever the spendthrift, Lamar Hunt initially turned the Wiz(ards) ticket sales duties over to the same folks responsible for selling Chiefs tickets. The Chiefs haven't had to sell tickets since the 1980s. The Wizards landed in the afterglow of the Joe Montana years. Chiefs ticket sellers had a cush job. Just answer the damn phone and put someone on a waiting list. Needless to say, those people either had no idea how to actually get out and sell tickets, or they weren't given the resources to do it. Probably a combination of both. Unless you got a ridiculous waiting list, you always have to sell tickets. Customer retention is a talent. One is seven Americans change addresses every year. Some of those are out of market moves. Other people have economic changes or health changes or they just get pissed off. There is always a steady churn, even for popular teams. Soccer in 1996 wasn't popular. Soccer in 2021 isn't as popular as baseball, football, or basketball.
But if you do it right it's habit forming and it's difficult to break the habit but once you do it's over. Houston is the perfect example. They're going to have to jump through hoops to get those 6 or 7k missing fans back.
This^^^ They totally wasted an off season where moves could have been made to grab the attention of the metro area sports fans. Only the die hard kool aid drinkers were aroused by the signings of Amundsen, Gloster and the likes. And it's a safe bet that even the kool aid drinkers chuckled at the re-signing of Zelalem.
I shot a Houston/Chivas playoff game at Robertson. It was absolutely incredible atmosphere. The match of any MLS Cup I've been at (and I've been 23 of them). https://andymead.photoshelter.com/g..._A72EI1ixDo/I0000oBlyfI27rEg/C0000O4gWxFjd_gA
Yeah, Nick's recurring 60-90 days pledge sounded more promising than what we hear from NYCFC, Revs... and frickin Charlotte now.
So, back to stadium porn, sorry if this has been posted already: https://www.columbuscrewsc.com/post...h-sod-install-downtown-columbus?autoplay=true
And I've discovered why it is that I can't seem to get a decent lawn to grow; it's because I didn't buy $100,000 worth of lights on wheels.
I have to say that those are a fuckton of lights.. when I visited Old Trafford they were using grow lights during the stadium tour. Not even half of the lights were used compared to what the picture in crew stadium show.
I realize this will never happen, but in theory Red Bull should really figure out how to "transfer their team" to Salt Lake instead of being in New York. RSL has outstanding academy facilities, and it would be one of the two professional games in town with the Jazz (so not a lot of direct, in-season competition). A team in that area wouldn't have the competition of the New York market and could be more of an identity team in that town of developing younger players. Then MLS can focus on a bigger ownership name that would want the second New York team to be more of an "attraction". I get all of this is pie in the sky stuff and will never happen, but on paper it seems to make quite a bit of sense.
Speak for yourself. Two or three minor patches of weeds aside, mine is world cup final quality Ok. So it is more like small town country club gold course quality.
Was it put in a couple months before it was supposed to host league matches? (P.S. I'm sure they have a hotshot whippersnapper full of analytics in the job now but talking with their groundskeeper is a great experience.)
But the Red Bulls have an outstanding absent without the facilities. They do a lot of community outreach. NYC's academy/ training facility is based on Man City's.