Crew Stadium 2.0 - Construction News and Notes

I appreciate that but

Thank you BlacknGold, that is very nice of you and I appreciate it, but my wife probably thinks at 78 years old I shouldn't be driving the three hour round trip to and from Columbus anyway! Best wishes to you!

 

I totally understand. I am not in your situation but my parents were so I elected to pay for their seats as well as mine so we could still go together. We have had season tickets since the 2nd season and they have always paid me back for them but 3-4 years ago my dad said they couldn't afford them anymore because of the fact they are on a fixed income. As it was for this year with the price hike we had to move from east preferred at HCS to upper deck and the LDC. Luckily ADA parking is not an issue for now but it could be at some point since my dad is 74. Sadly my mom passed away unexpectedly 3 weeks ago and next year I will most likely drop her seat. For the rest of this year I am letting my dad choose who he wants to go since I see her seat as his.

 

I remember when the Crew first began playing in the "Shoe",all the Ohio State red jackets that were in attendance. They sort of disappeared over the years!

 

Life isn't always fair or easy! Sorry about your Mother! I lost both of my parents in 1971,a month apart!! Enjoy your Dad while you still have him!

 

Well said.

Look at Toronto. Their fans made a point of "oh, we don't *have* to win immediately. We have a WAITLIST!!!"

Well, their management's ineptitude forced them to burn through that list fairly fast.

We were 0-SomethingAwful when trailing at halftime on the road. The game to put us at 1-SomethingAwful? At Toronto.

Whatever Toronto was... we're the opposite. We need to win, win now and win consistently.

We don't have the luxury so many other teams have had.

 

But there's always more that could be done. The FO should never be satisfied with the amount/quality of coverage. I can guarantee that there's still people within a reasonable drive of the stadium (even in the reach of Columbus TV stations) who wonder what happened to Queso McDaddy's Money and/or think the team was moved.

Idea: If you come from out of town, get a room/ticket package at the official hotel. Heck, throw in a couple drinks at the hotel bar. I think someone else had a similar idea, actually.

If the stadium consistently sells out at current prices, it presents a chance to raise ticket prices, thus affording better players and more winning. This should be their goal. Get the stadium to sell out every game. Empty seats don't win championships.

Here's one: We were promised some sort of MLS Cup celebration once things were safe. Did we ever get that? What would this do to build hype, especially if it was right before an important game?

 

Condolences. Mrs, KG lost her mom in April....

I only got to go to a Crew games once with my folks--one of the early years at the Shoe. Interestingly my dad noted that MLS was much better quality than the NASL (he took us to Atoms games at the Vet when I was a teen).

 

I’ve never really understood the whole ‘stadium bump’ theory, at least its applicability here. Or, rather, why anyone would think we’d experience a huge bump in Columbus. After all, we had a - during its lifetime - a great-to good-to decent stadium for over two decades. HCS had its limitations, but it was also located in a pretty convenient spot, was Crew-dedicated (meaning we controlled the match day experience and scheduling, but for State Fair and Quarter Horse conflicts).

On a beautiful day, it was a great place to watch a game. Of course, Columbus ain’t San Diego; it’s often too hot, too cold, or too wet/snowy to enjoy a match at the old place. To that end, I think the roof in the new place helps immensely.

Maybe I’m just an old dude who doesn’t get it, but I really don’t understand how the rest of the features in the stadium - the concessions, LED displays, larger scoreboards, or just the overall design or architectural polish of the place - matter all that much. They do matter, I’m sure, in the margins. The same way the glitter and polish of, say, Easton appeals to shoppers.

But in the end, you’re either a shopper or you’re not. You’re either a Crew fan - and therefore a potential ticket buyer - or you’re not. And we know, historically, there haven’t been enough Crew fan shoppers in existence to fill our last 20k seat stadium. So why would anyone assume there’d suddenly be enough now to fill the new 20k seat stadium?

Columbus is the city of the casual MLS fan. I’m not one of those people, so perhaps I’ve missed the aggressive outreach, bridge-building campaign the FO has engaged in to get them to buy tickets. My guess is that the pandemic wiped out 90% of what the club hoped to do for this season.

My hope is that the new owners, Bez and the rest of the FO aren’t stupid enough to really think that Kansas City turned around their franchise simply by building a stadium. My further hope is that they’ve developed a post-COVID backup plan to build the fan base. But the effect of the past year - no fans in the stands during a championship run, no ability to host physical events to really gin up excitement over the new stadium - has to have had been like a cold shower to the team’s ticket sales plans for 2021.

So, yeah, a modest bump in 2021. But the real threat of retraction in 2022 as those 2020 ticket credits expire and if the team continues to stumble on the pitch. If this team is to get to the promised land of 15k season tickets, it won’t be by threading the needle the way KC did years ago. We’ll have to come up with our own approach, that’ll likely focus on gradual, steady growth over years. Hopefully ownership and the FO is geared up for that years-long effort.

 

One difference: The new place (plus new owners) has created a market for the higher end seats and suites that wasn't there before. The old place was a high school stadium on steroids. The new place---isn't.

 

Second difference: Location Location Location.

 

I just don't get all this "we need better marketing" blah blah blah nonsense. First of all because I've forgotten more about marketing than a lot of you will ever know and second because equating marketing with advertising is what dummies who don't know anything do.

A billboard saying Come Buy Soccer Tickets, for example, is not marketing. And it doesn't sell many tickets.

In any case, the big marketing push, after spending the modest sum of $320 million on a stadium - which very much IS marketing, but why let facts get in the way? - was the rebrand, a very costly 18 month project which everyone hated. So by all means, trash the shit out of that attempt and then piss and moan about how they don't do enough marketing.

Do you people even listen to the things you say?

I can't stand it any more.

 

A net gain, to be certain. But I doubt it's as big as some might assume. It's not as though HCS was in a terrible location. It you liked tailgating - and a sizeable chunk of the old fanbase did - it was a pretty good location. I do think it'll help a lot for those premium seats and suites, though.

 

I think you are underestimating the walk up crowd we will get at the new place that was simply non-existent at the old one.

I will disagree with you forever that HCS wasn’t in a terrible location.

 

As someone who's worked in marketing, I have a real love/hate relationship with the term. "Communications," too. Outreach, on the other hand, is a term I like. It includes marketing and communications, but also programming and relationship-building activities. It's pretty damned easy to drop $X on a marketing campaign. To toss out old visual design stuff and replace it with new stuff. To re-do a website. Again, if you have the money.

It's much harder to build and sustain relationships. I don't have a real issue with the Crew's marketing and communications. I mean, it is what it is. I hate the new logo. It's just that I don't think efforts in these areas can really move the needle very much.

The team's commitment to outreach and relationship-building is something I'm dubious of. We saw it in the way the new crest was designed and rolled out. What appears to be a go-slow approach to the new supporters and community liaison positions and the fan council. The FO might be knocking it out of the park building relationships with corporate sponsors and premium seat buyers, and perhaps that's what they're prioritizing right now. It's the other 10K+ core fanbase that I wonder about. Those are the seats you see occupied (or not) on TV.

 

I think banking on a "walk-up crowd" is part of the problem. As a transitionary plan, okay. But the most successful ticket-selling teams in MLS don't rely on walk-up crowds. There's sufficient demand in those markets that fans buy tickets in advance of gameday. If not, they risk not being able to attend at all.

But I do agree that a casual fan/walk-up crowd that has a great time in the new stadium might evolve not a fan who buys a season ticket package down the line. And that was not easy to achieve at the old place.

 

It was a good enough location to win two championships and keep the team alive. Best location? No. However, It was centrally located, city-wise, and not far (walking distance) from campus. Far from perfect? Yes. Terrible? Not so much--and one should also take account of the success of the Chill in a location quite close by. Mind you, that was a much smaller venue (about a third of HCS). But the fans came. So I would say "adequate" location.

 

The bump was always going to come from the corporate market. If the crew can get businesses to think that buying suites is just a normal business expense (though the tax deductions are more limited now), then they will be much better off than they will be in a decent spot. Then you hope all those lower.com workers buy their own tickets after attending a few games and the company expands. The team will lose some long time STM and hope they gain lots of new ones. 2023 will probably be the earliest year to evaluate progress as the credits expire and casuals make commitments after attending a few games.

 

Posting this here because it seems appropriate to this current conversation:

Cincinnati Bengals make big shift to keep fans engaged

Again, it's a Business First article, so may be paywalled for many.

Blackburn is the oldest child of Bengals' vice presidents Katie and Troy Blackburn and the granddaughter of Bengals owner/president Mike Brown.

I am neither a Bengals nor an NFL fan, so I don't much care what they do. But still, it's interesting seeing an NFL team hand the reigns of its "strategy and engagement" efforts to a family member still in her 20s. She seems smart as hell, but still.

 

Part of what problem, exactly?

Show me where the team says "Boy, we're really banking on a big walk up crowd" every game.

Honestly, I'd wager that they'd prefer to sell out the place with season tickets. If you have some evidence that they'd rather not, I'd be interested in seeing it.

As it is, a robust walkup is what they have to hope for. What else is there? Hoping that 10,000 Martians show up on game day?

Really? Wow, what a revelation. So then your idea is for the Crew to sell more season tickets and not be forced, out of necessity, to pray for 10,000 strangers to show up?

Have you considered sharing this insight with Steve Lyons? Talk about a smack yourself in the forehead moment.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

 

Sure, having the Brown family in most major leadership and decision-making roles at the club has worked wonderfully so far. I can't wait!

 

And there's a Walmart on the north end of Easton, across Morse. The folks who developed Easton had all of the options covered for the widest possible clientele.

 

So sorry for your loss, @TracieB.

 

Having a rough morning, Bill?

I'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make. I was responding to someone who claimed that a potentially sizeable walk-up crowd would be a great plus of the new stadium location. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. We'll see.

It is obvious to anyone paying attention that the top ticket markets in MLS sell 75% (or thereabouts) of their tickets via season packages (often with wait lists). I've always assumed that that's the Crew FOs goal, too. Again, maybe they'll get there, maybe they won't. They face some headwinds in this market.

But is the only other option "to pray for 10,000 strangers to show up?" Is that it? No middle ground? And how would you build that season ticket base? Again, I'm not one of those strangers, but I wonder how and if the club engages with those folks after they've attended a game.

I'm not trying to be snarky. It's just that we hear so little from the FO about what its real plans are, what the hell else can we do but speculate? Just what is the tri-state plan or our strategy to achieve a global brand presence? Do we have more season ticket holders than last year? Fewer? I honestly have no idea. When I saw Bez at the home opener and asked about the experience center, he said they have a multi-year lease, but clearly didn't have a firm plan yet regarding how to use the space. Okay. Seems to me it could be used to engage people wandering down High Street in the Short North, maybe sell them some tickets to an up-coming game, but what do I know?

I'm just going from my narrow personal perspective. The club fields a good product in a top-shelf new facility. And it's wanting to charge top shelf prices to see that product. Makes sense. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's being tight-lipped about ticket sales expectations for this season. It's just been my experience in MLS that clubs who are achieving their ticket sales goals aren't tight-lipped about it. I'm just curious to learn more about the club's overall strategy to address historically soft ticket demand in this market beyond "if we build it, they will come." I'm sure they have all sorts of plans. They just never seem to talk about them.