All hail our new President of something or other. No, wait, it is President of Business Operations. https://www.chicagofirefc.com/news/...dave-baldwin-president-of-business-operations I really hope he can something to raise the business operations of the team. He has quite a bit of sports experience, but zero experience with soccer, apparently. He has been in ticket sales for most of his career, unfortunately spending a bit of time with the Washington "Commanders" and, almost as bad, the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers. There is something very weird in the Fire's announcement: Most recently, Baldwin was the Chief Ticketing Officer for the Commanders, where he served as a key member of the senior leadership team and was responsible for overseeing the strategy and operations for the team’s ticketing efforts as well as securing major events, including world class concerts and the 125th anniversary of the Army vs. Navy football game (scheduled for 2024). Additionally, under Baldwin’s leadership, the Commanders ranked second in the NFL in new club seats sold and third in new annual suites sold this season. Prior to his time with the Commanders, Baldwin served as the Senior Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service for Ilitch Sports + Entertainment from 2019-2021. In this role, Baldwin oversaw a team of more than 90 people, including salespeople, sales leadership, and ticketing strategy and analytics for the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings. This seems to imply that he was only hired by the Washington football club in 2021 and was only with Illitch Sports (Tigers and Red Wings) for two years. That is quite a bit of job hopping for the young man. Here is the announcement of his hire by the Washington football club: https://www.si.com/nfl/commanders/news/washington-football-team-hires-new-exec March, 2021. Yep, he managed 19 months in that job. Good that he escaped from them. Here is his profile from that pointy ball team: https://www.commanders.com/team/front-office-roster/dave-baldwin His twitter proflie still lists the Washington football club https://twitter.com/dwb_34 Dave Baldwin @DWB_34 Mary’s husband, Hudson and Blake’s dad. Chief Ticketing Officer for The Washington Commanders. University of Miami MBA His comments from the announcement: “I am extremely grateful to Joe Mansueto for the opportunity to join the Chicago Fire,” said Baldwin. “It’s an honor to be joining the team during such a pivotal time in its history. Between the consistent growth that MLS has experienced over the last decade, the Fire’s recent move to Soldier Field, and the 2026 World Cup set to be held in North America, there’s never been a better time to join the sport and to help grow one of the League’s original clubs. I’ve spoken with Georg and I’m excited to support his efforts as we look to bring another championship to the great city of Chicago. I’m looking forward to joining the team and meeting our Fire supporters soon!” Umm, sorry, Dave, but the Fire are NOT one of the original clubs. Everybody knows (or should know) THAT. Hell, winning MLS Cup, and US Open Cup, completing the Double, in our first year as an expansion team is just about the only thing we have to be proud of as Fire fans. Not the way to make a positive first impression.
Yeah I noticed the same things. Commanders? Maybe leave that off the resume. Not an original club dude, but whatever. Nothing in his history suggests the type of corporate deal making required for this position. Ticket sales improvements? Why not hire internally then? Implementing digital ticketing systems? Give me a break, that’s just signing a contract with a third party vendor approved by your boss. Most of this stuff happens no matter who has his role. Glassman-Cherin’s resume was more impressive. Good luck Baldwin, hopefully you at least move to Chicago.
He’d better get cracking on a new jersey sponsor. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s not a quick come on in for a couple meetings and sign a 3-year multimillion dollar deal.
In my book any team founded between 1996-1998 is an original founding member of MLS, so I'm with Dave on this one!
cheap -- even free -- tickets to fill a larger-than-average stadium feels like a no-brainer maybe the ticket + concessions does not net out higher than the staff required, I don't know
True. If the Fire gave away tickets just to fill the stadium why wouldn't they just free season tickets away to fill the stadium?
yeah, i'm sure there are complex models that work through this, but season tickets should be cheaper too! but perhaps the thinking/reality is you squeeze what you can out of your diehards and that nets more than making tickets cheaper and increasing attendance by n% some quick back-of-the-napkin math: i pay about $35/ticket for a club-level seat as a STH -- if there were $10 non-club options in the corners/upper levels I'm still gonna pay for my better seats at $25/game -- so I guess the equation is around whether the $10 ticket is enticing enough to bring in one fan for every STH to offset the reduced ST price I have no idea what they do for youth soccer groups or whatever, but as a STH I'm not gonna be mad if they give away tons of free tickets to youth programs
Andrew screwed us so badly out of keeping Toyota Park a viable option. He had Julian Posada negotiate away our rights to manage the entire stadium and thus, control all revenue streams. He did this to both lower the guaranteed fee to the village to a pittance and reduce all overhead associated with running a stadium to zero. This meant a vulture investment capitalist could control all expenses at the lowest possible level while sitting on the asset. Everything was lost at that point in time. We could basically only rely on ticket revenue and that wasn’t enough to run a team. We continued to trim the fat and lower investment in the staff until he sold. I know I’ve mentioned all this before but we can’t forget it. It really torpedoed our ability to be there. It ruined us for our last decade there. Fast forward to now and we have essentially the same situation with Soldier Field. We pay a fixed rent and don’t run the stadium or control the revenue streams. The big difference though, is that the location means prices per ticket can justifiably go up AND the number of seats they can potentially sell has TRIPLED. This means The revenue cap has easily quadrupled what Toyota Park could ever do. If we still controlled all the revenue streams of Bridgeview Stadium we could have made a go of it but ultimately Andrew Hauptman made it a dead end. And here we are.
There are models like this that accurately pinpoint the price that maximizes attendance. It’s not zero. I think the Fire utilize variable pricing too for non-STHs. Either way, I’m certain they know exactly the price point they need to hit.
sure but when you have 45k empty seats you kinda want to see them try something to get more folks in the door
How about signing better players and hire a more capable coach? A winning team would bring more people out than merely cutting prices. Of course, our new President of Business something should come up some ideas to bring in the crowds.