I don't think you're far off, but (I'm not trying to make anyone in this thread upset) Houston is a very "fair weather fan" city outside of the Texans. Look at the Astros when they're bad, or the Rockets. Occasionally fill the stadium to see a big name, but on most nights there are a ton of empty seats. We could be entertaining as hell, but the Dynamo only get media hype if they're winning and nobody will come see them other wise. I really think they just need to build around the community. Get involved with kids, kids will get parents to come, parents will see it's a good product for a fair price and keep coming. That's my take on it anyway. If you build a fanbase that cares about the badge and not just the sport, you are more likely to get those 20,000 seats full on a semi-regular occasion. Eintracht Frankfurt has a saying "Players come and Players go but Eintracht always remains." They also have a history of making no-names -> big names in that city, a lot like the Dynamo.
Adding to this. I don't go to many Rockets games, 3 reasons. The parking situation is horrific. I have actually seen people blocked in as the lot has very faded lines. 2. The homeless, they just wander through the parking lot, I was verbally accosted at the last game I went to. I was a racist because I wouldn't listen to this guys scam. My kids were right there. 3. The price of tickets. Now, while our parking lots are close to homeless row, they don't just walk through the lot harassing people. The parking lot is in good conditions and easy to enter and exit. The price is very good and affordable for most, especially if you don't eat at the stadium. The hatred I have for the area around Toyota Center is so much that I won't go to many NHL games when we finally get a team. Even though I desperately want another Houston team to root for. As for the people of the city and their fickleness, that exist in many places. I don't know what makes a die hard ride or die fanbase. I could have bought Texans tickets for like 20 bucks anytime last year. Washington has a stadium that is often filled with the other teams fans. The Chargers, Cardinals etc. While the Browns fans still show up. Lambeau Field will be filled up no matter what, Pittsburgh the same. As for the European fans, it is the same. I've seen Sunderland, and that stadium is not filled due to failure, Juventus massive success, not filled. Frankfurt sells out, and when is the last time they won a trophy? The point of all this is that in some cities across the world, one team tends to bring in fans no matter what, and some teams need to win and attain high levels if success. Here is what I do know, Since we signed HH our stadium has had noticeably higher attendance. I am not talking tickets sold, I mean butts in seats. I need no stats, I have a working set of eyes. Stars and winning will bring the fans, because we are not a ride or die city for any team.
I would also add, that all of the reasons I have heard on Twitter or here, for people giving up their tickets or not going to matches is because the ownership was terrible. That was true. What is the excuse now? Can it really be argued that Segal doesn't care? Look at the investments he is making. HH was signed, I don't care what you think of that tactically, did you ever think that would happen under Brenner? We are now a much higher spending team. The people are starting to show up. Some have been turned off so long that they will never be fans again. But this city is huge and it grows everyday.
The build a fanbase that cares about the badge is definitely the ideal. I think you have to be realistic on that front, though. That doesn't happen overnight or anywhere close to overnight. Entracht is 124 years old. The loyalty now goes back 3-4 generations. The Dynamo are, what, 16/17 years old in a city that is highly transient? If the Dynamo ever reach the point you describe, it will be long after we're all dead and gone. On the kids thing, I generally disagree. Reason being is that I come at it more from the women's soccer world where marketers lacking in ideas long thought you market to little girls. You can't ignore kids, for sure, but the women's soccer focus on marketing to kids first and foremost was a complete and utter disaster. Several reasons for that 1) kids don't buy tickets. So, parents may bring them once or twice but unless parents are soccer fans, that's it. 2) Kids don't go to games on school nights. They go on vacation with their families during the summer. They have youth soccer conflicts. In other words, they miss a lot of games. 3) The saddest thing we've seen on the women's soccer side is in many cases, marketing to little girls backfires to where women's soccer is something little girls do. Then they grow to an age where they are no longer little girls, so they stop going because they don't want to do things little girls do. Women's soccer crowds didn't start surging until the focus became young adult professionals. Again, can't ignore families, but you just don't want to make them the centerpiece of your marketing campaigns.
What you describe is why I became a season ticket holder again last season after a few years of being out. However, a lot of people just grew away from the team. Their lives changed, they have other priorities and the Dynamo made it too easy to just forget about them.
We actually agree on all these points, and I didn't mean to exclusively market to kids. But it has to be part of it. On a latter note, I hate being a 16 hour commute away from the games. I want to be there soo bad!
When I was working for our old USL club back in the era of local pro soccer before our Dynamo got sent to us, my aim in marketing fir sure was parents and youth teams out together as teams. Then there was the men's demographic of footy lovers and want live outdoor soccer two Saturday nights each month. Finally, newbies to the beautiful game, sports fans of other sports now getting hooked by soccer post 94 n 98 world Cups. It worked! Correct By defeating Rangers FC no less!
I’m with you, Wade doesn’t consider those real trophies though lol. Only your domestic championship counts!
When I was young I worked in Houston Hurricane soccer camps, and then in Kyle Rote's soccer camps after the Hurricane folded. I was also working in the clubhouses with the Hurricane which is how I got involved. I've been a close observer of American soccer now for 44 years. This approach "get kids involved, they bring parents, ..." has been the vision for how to make soccer succeed for most of those decades. And it has always failed. Always. Soccer is succeeding now in Portland, Seattle, Kansan City, Cinci, St Louis, Atlanta, Austin etc. not by abandoning that but through making that strategy a minor non-important component. What works is appealing to young, cool, hip adults who want nothing to do with a kiddie playground "family" event. They want to drink beer and be cool. Austin FC games are "The Best Party in Austin." Nothing family friendly about it in the branding area. Make it THE cool event to be at and everyone wants to go be there. The kids want to go with their Dad. It is a bonding experience for the kid to go to the big grown-up thing that is a big Pro-Soccer game. Respectfully: the whole focus on youth soccer and kids, being "family entertainment" is a proven losing strategy that has been holding soccer in the USA back my entire life.
When Frankfurt FC goes down to 2.Bundeliga their attendance drops bigly. Just a fact. Look it up. This whole thing about Euro football fans being ride-or-die is a myth. They are no more than Houston fans.
I'd love to see an analysis of this. Something analyzing relative spending of HDFC versus rivals over the past 10 years. BTW. I agree that Segal appears to be committed to doing more with the club than Brenner. I think the jury is out on whether he is committed to competing in this league with Seattle, Austin, LAFC, LAG, etc. I think it is possible he is committed to only doing enough to get him past 2026 and selling the team after it appreciates because of the World Cup, of which Garber convinced him. Doing more than Brenner is a low bar.
Bingo, Bango! Same thing with Men's soccer. People want to be with the cool kids and the cool kids don't want to be at family events.
Even today, half the people in Houston probably were born in a different region of the US o different country. Of the legacy folks, Astros have the best "pull" or draw and a lot of that is due to the last 8 season of being good but if you look at the last 30 years of the Astros, except for '07-'14 and a few odd ball seasons (like 2000), they've been good more often than not. Rockets I probably couldn't name 3 guys on this years' team, they are boom/bust. Like the Dynamo, their glory years are fading (Rockets only won like one playoff series from 99-14, Yao Ming or not). Texans suck but its still football - and the younger generation seems very disinterested in them IMO. Remember that UT/A&M sucks up sports energy and money out of this market as well in the Fall. Segal is investing in the club much more than Brener - low bar or not, he's spending money even if it is more of a PE view of the investment and flip the team later on. Can argue building East Club and buying HH was not the "right" investment but they aren't small dollars. Bluntly, Dynamo need to build a well-rounded fan base - can't just be supporters groups, not just urban hipsters, not just Hispanics, not just Woodlands soccer moms with kids. Takes investments in all those areas. Seems like we've had a FO for the last 10 years that constantly went from initiative to initiative while forgetting just keeping existing STH happy is a better idea (why most of us left). We had the right mix of fans at Robertson, it just sort of eroded over time. On the negative, I worry Apple TV deal will hurt in the local market if few can just flip on the TV and find a Dynamo game.
Valid points. One thing I’ll say about the Apple deal that hasn’t been brought up before I think is that as bad as things are I don’t think the Dynamo will be the first canary in the coal mine to see potential negative affects of the deal. I think Colorado and Chicago would suffer before the Dynamo do. But at the same time at least we know MLS is looking to fix “legacy” clubs so maybe they already have ideas to counteract it.
An Austin website had this. They say it is from MLSsoccer.com. It is a graph of xG for the game. Supports what we all saw. Austin comes out and kicks our ass, but fails to finish. Their energy runs out, and team play level until Dynamo get a break, a freakish penalty, and then exploit Austin that have to chase the game on weary legs.
To be fair, we were making them play through their worst side. I'll take my chances against Rigoni and Gallagher vs. Driussi, Fagundez, and Kolmanic all day every day. If we can only shut down one side, at least we shut down the proper side. Playing the way we did also let Tate Schmitt do what he's actually good at, which is get forward and play wide. He's not a very good defender. We really need Brad Smith to get healthy.
roughly what i saw on highlights. they had 3 good chances first 30 or so then it shifted. this sounds like classic failed road tactics. they came at us hard to start the game. they didn't convert. they got tired. they also seem to have botched their defense so bad they couldn't even hold a haitian team. i can't support brian's reading because they had a bunch of chances at our back post on our left side. a better opponent takes advantage of that -- as NER did. re smith, 9 months from july 10, 2022 takes you to mid-april 2023, and i'm not sure if that's practicing or playing, and it was always an estimate. the roster is set up like van der kust is the bridge to smith but i don't think van der kust is any better -- perhaps worse -- defending his position. van der kust's immigration is settled and i expect he will replace schmitt soon, for good or ill. schmitt then becomes HD2 or a utility player.
the graph is also either misleading or being misread because to me a close look shows we started piling up chances from 35' but having conceded so many to the other side we don't catch up in absolute xG until 70'. but the pivot point is back at 35' and they stay flat from then on. emphasizing xG is also a bit goofy when (a) goal 1 is a PK when a somewhat wayward cross is headed off an arm, (b) our first run of play goal this season is scored 4 minutes left, 266' into the season, and (c) anyone so much as watching highlights can see we continue recent years' disparity between getting the ball in the box vs. to someone and finishing it. i like the ball seems more on the floor. i like HH's finish. but in reality 2 of the goals are "headers" or "header adjacent." we are averaging a goal a game, 1 run of play goal total, and what this needs is better finishing. and i also think a more direct, straight up the middle 10 element where everything isn't in-out-back in.
re your team/apple concerns, the attendance will play out locally, the subscriber count will play out nationally. we won't know how the attendance holds out until we play more games. they pulled 500 more people this year vs last but it was a rivalry game. last year by game 2 it dropped 5k people to 13k. by next to last game it was down to 10k. there was a response to HH and then people showed up for chicharito for the finale. that against per freaking usual points to fans wanting to see us have a good team or at least watch good players on the other team. i would thus anticipate a dip for NYC followed by fans showing up for LAG. i think the fans respond to rivalries, opposing players, and whether we look any good. attendance always sloughs off from opening night but we will see if anything is done this summer or they can do it without names. they are also going to benefit no matter how crap this is, from santos coming in july, at least on ticket sales. that's like a playoff game, gravy. re apple, i don't think it helps locally but the opt-out is a national subscription number. so they need to grow up and fend for themselves. the league is going to give them their share of the apple money. i think the idea they come bail us or chicago out if we continue to flounder in an apple era is naive. other teams will also get their apple cut and we will either fix it or not, cope or not. i think they have already done what they are willing to do in recent years eg let us finesse roster rules for a few weeks at a time (quinones was signed 7/26 and pasher not released until 8/5, and we played at least one game between those where pasher dressed). i don't know how good or bad the subscriptions are, or to what extent they are allowed to be padded by the "free" STH or have to be constituted from people who pay. i hear there is an option based on total subscriptions but an option doesn't have to be exercised. it may not be triggered. and it doesn't have to be used.
Good point about the option being triggered but not used. Something a lot of the clickbait websites failed to bring up. Regarding the “bailout”, it’s probably not going to work like that at least as literally as the name suggests. He talked about it in an interview with the Athletic which I’ll post the relevant part here. Governance changes While not as visible as the new playoff structure, MLS also made some changes to its revenue sharing model. The commissioner said they were the first such changes in “15 to 20 years.” “We operate in a way that allows us to do research, align together about new ideas and evolve our system so that it can provide value and opportunity for everybody in the MLS ecosystem,” Garber said. “Revenue sharing is one aspect of that, in our league and every other league. As the league is continuing to evolve, we have big markets, small markets, you have teams that have big stadiums, new stadiums and you have legacy teams that might have soccer stadiums, but they’re older. And as you continue to think about what the best way is to make sure that everybody is aligned on making the right investment, on being good partners, on thinking about proper strategy in their markets, it makes sense for us to change our governance.” Those changes are part of a larger project related to governance, out of which a “club performance group” will be launched and an “MLS University” concept to help guide clubs and ensure that owners are “aligned on doing what they need to do to drive relevance and to drive our business forward, and to make the right investments so that our teams are more meaningful in their markets,” Garber said. Asked if that was specifically aimed at boosting the clubs that seem to lag behind in investment, Garber said, “It’s way easier to be new than it is to be improved. We have a lot of new teams. This is seven years in a row we’re adding new teams. So as you have legacy teams that have been around since day one, and they have success and lack of success, and stadiums that are now older and the like, we do have disparity between our best-performing clubs and those that need to get better about reimagining what business they’re in in the local market. So yes, this group will get very focused on helping those teams that are not performing at a level that we think everyone should be performing at.” It’s an interesting way of changing things. They’re kind of vague about the new revenue model but hypothetically you could give more to the better performing teams and less to the worse teams. However maybe you have a caveat to where teams that are worse off can get more of a share back if they go through the “University” program. That’s just conjecture on my part but it’s interesting to think about. We can say for sure is that the league does want to offer some assistance to underperforming teams. It’s still on those teams though, you can lead a horse to water but doesn’t mean it’ll drink it.
you keep saying fans should show up for the badge when it's almost more like supply their atmosphere then show up for each other. it's a professional endeavor. not my job to make their circus compelling. to me "for the badge" implies a "soul" of the thing before we show up. to me this is a little too corporate and check box-y. ok, now we bring out a veteran. now we do the anthem. now the coast guard flies over. now we do the light effects thing. a stadium, which turns out to be hot, which is adequately designed but not particularly interesting. there is no cottage in a corner. there are no crawford boxes. there is no exploding scoreboard. there are no pirate ships in the end zone. there are no lambeau leaps. there are not even shrubs past the goal line. you could go back through and make it more interesting and unique. would cost. to me, where is the quirk? the non-corporate fun part? you don't have to go full savannah bananas, but where is our timber jim? where are margarita's flowers? where is a little violin ensemble? fun. poignant. tradition. class. maybe they are conservative. maybe they think the fanbase is too conservative. but if it's a few checkboxes then we watch soccer, the quality of the soccer becomes very important. if you want fans to show up no matter how it goes, then celebrities, quirk, something else going for watching a game. the two quirks i remember are we were early on the SG and singing thing -- but then got surpassed and never developed into more -- and they went after the SGs end of the 2010s. the other quirk stomped out was this used to be the streamers team. anyone remember that? i think they stomped that out around the move. "for the badge" is also literally amusing inasmuch as they changed that tradition. and many other things the fans liked. speaking of "soul." the branding used to be very particular. unique color scheme. unique logo. logo is gone and i think if they could help it this would be black not orange. you're chopping off all the limbs back to trunk we loved. orange and the logo was a little quirky and unique. we got rid of that, to what, mark the owner's territory? chase new fans who haven't showed up? did they ever bring back the old goal music? i also think they will forever be fighting what it is like to do a day game here. i went to an opener once, and we're talking like april, the infamous caig game, and my brain freaking melted. and the keeper imploded. and the saving grace to that day was geoff cameron off the bench. there have to be other things they can do. pre- or post-game concerts. get some of the local artists or musicians to take over for a day and if they come up with something fun we keep the idea. live guitar riff on the sideline if we score. mariachis going during the game up in the stands. why am i thinking of this and not them? hmmm. cuz if it comes down to me, last live game they won when i watched was the montreal playoff nearly a decade ago. since then every time i go we tie. and that's setting aside getting enthused to show up when we suck. and we're competing with the astros who try very hard and deliver. we got a break starting this thing as the astros deteriorated from their prior peak into playing for 1000 people losing 100 games. we now have to earn it.
now that i think about it, i think we have basically changed places with the astros. except when they went to sh*t they seemed to have a plan. i think they were shedding contracts to facilitate the sale of the team and meanwhile stocking the minors with high draft picks who became the team's winning future. which, team finally sold, leagues swapped, they flipped the switch and started trying again. i am pretty sure this isn't some planned tank job. which also brings up a response to brian. if this has turned into the old astros, and it's roughly as competitive, he should be thankful it's playing for tens of thousands still -- latent passion -- and not a few hundred locals and some road fans, which is what i remember from down ebb astros. i remember taking my dad to watch the rangers and wide swathes empty, being outnumbered by people who either seemingly drove from dallas or were transplants wearing their rangers gear. my concern is long enough in the wilderness, with the astros playing well, and this eventually becomes chivas USA. the long term trend line through last season was down. i agree that apple breaks the local tv feedback loop, and it starts becoming how do people know when the next game is, how do you follow a team behind a paywall, and what incentive are they giving to do so. ironically they have gotten a boost from HH's first games plus people want to see chicharito or vela, and to me that props this up and is the bridge back to someplace, if they tried. they get a few "freebie" decent crowds a season for visiting players, fans will show up for santos this summer. no matter how we are doing now just make and sell your own product.