The stadium they were trying to build wasn't in that bad of a place. Winston-Salem has pockets of getto all over town, so it would be hard not to place it on the "wrong side of the tracks". The real problem with the location as access ability. It was on the other side of down town from the highway, and the Winston-Salem city planners obviously failed kendergarden with the system of roads they designed. The real problem with W-S though was the plan that Carolina Soccer set up. They wanted individuals to purchase a seat for something between 600 and 2000 dollars, and commit to purchasing season tickets for several seasons. Then when the stadium was built they would hand it over to the owner of the team. There is no way you could get 10 to 20 thousand people to agree to that plan. Also, I think they finally repaid all of the money to the people that purchased seats.
Based on my brief marketing survey (well ok really just observation at a number of USA matches, MLS and ALeague matches) the college educated middle class population of the area would be more important than any sort of hispanic population growth. Seems like the Triangle has a pretty good section of the population that falls into that category. By the way, my info comes from the Rhinos Front Office trying to gauge if fans would be interested in a Road Trip. The game is already set.
Very good point. Do you have a date? --------------------- Yeah the Bulls and Mudcats don't really compete for the same fans. I know tons of folks who come from Raleigh for Bulls games, and only a handful of hardcore nuts who ever go the other way. I was a Bulls season ticket holder for 10 years and I've yet to make it out to Zebulon. As to the "balkanization" - everything in the Triangle is affected. I used to live in Orange County and it cost me 7 cents a minute to call into Chapel Hill because I was on the "wrong side of I-40" even before I-40 was built - my phone service being supplied by GTE from Durham. There was no "Triangle-wide" local calling plan available Things have definitely improved over the last 20 years, and the Hurricanes have not had problems drawing from all parts of the Triangle. Neither did the Courage. While I-540 makes WRAL Field far more accessible than NC-98 or US-401, It's still probably close to an hour trip for me (northwest Durham). The RBC Center (Hurricanes) and SAS Stadium (soccer) are both about 25 miles, or 30 minutes if I'm not driving I-40 during rush hour. The success of an A-League team at SAS Stadium would have more to do with how successfully it advertised itself than anything else. The Courage finally had started to go after it's best audience (20 somethings, college kids, and young families) during the third and final season (and second at SAS Stadium). If the other 7 WUSA teams had been as well off as the Courage, the WUSA would likely still exist. I don't see any barriers other than marketing execution that would keep a SAS Stadium USL-1 team from averaging 4-6k. One thing that is sorely lacking from the area is any commercial development like restaurants or bars. It's a pretty desolate stretch of road for something smack dab between Cary and Raleigh. The Courage had planned to build offices and a field house at the bottom of the hill next to the stadium and the two professional quaility practice fields. If that could be resurrected for a USL-1 team, it would certainly contain first floor banquet room that could be rented out or used for events. A perfect world would see a gameday cafe/pub there.
Yes, while checking out their websites, I noticed that the schedules of the Bulls and Mudcats overlap 30 times in a 70/71 game schedule (18 times in the first two months alone), which indicates that they must feel pretty strongly that they are targeting distinct market segments. If they didn't, logic dictates that they would have made every effort to further minimize scheduling conflicts.
In the immediate area yes, but Crossroads plaza and Cary Towne Center are not that far away. Plus, there are plans to develop more on Cary Town Center Blvd (the road from I-40 that nothing is on) and they are getting ready to break ground on a new aquatic center adjacent to Cary Town Center.
They don't care about scheduling conflicts, they really target two different audiences, as someone mentioned before. The Mudcats are more of a "down east" team than they are a Triangle team. The stadium is barely in Wake County, and I would bet if you surveyed they population at the stadium, an overwhelming majority of them would come from Franklin, Vance, Wilson and Johnston Counties as compared to the Bulls where most would come from Wake, Durham and Orange. Yes, there would be a good amount of Raleigh people who go to Mudcats games, but the more affluent ITB and North Raleigh crowds are much, much more likely to go to the Bulls games. It's much more hip and trendy to be in downtown Durham than in the middle of some tobacco field somewhere down US-64.
Of course that's assuming the Southern League and the International League are run well enough to do any real scheduling coordination. But yeah, as a 20+ year minor league baseball fan in the Triangle, the teams definitely don't compete for the same customers. In fact, the Sallie League Burlington Indians might be closer to the Durham Bulls than the Carolina Mudcats are. There's also the college wood bat (baseball's version of the PDL) summer league that has had a team playing in Durham for the last number of years. But their crowds, I gather, number in the low hundreds.
The size of their crowds - as well as their likely inability to draw any more fans to their games in the face of affiliated minor-league competition - is probably why the Durham Americans of the Coastal Plain League no longer operate in Durham.
I miss the old FPSL Durham Dragons. They ceased operations when the league contracted prior to the 2000 Olympics. I think the league folded shortly afterwards. It was like being at a UPS drivers' convention. But the thing is, while there would be an impact and challenges, I don't think that the Bulls and Mudcats would be a difference maker in the ability of a USL-1 team surviving in this region. Frankly the Crossroads 20 movie complex is probably more of an issue than either of the baseball teams.
I can't really speak to that, as I don't know what a USL-1 team would need to do financially to "make it". Admittedly, my focus was comparing the impact that the two minor-league baseball teams in the Research Triangle would potentially have on an MLS side in the region, versus the impact that the Columbus Clippers have on the Crew... primarily in the area of scheduling and how that might influence crowd size. Using the home dates that the current MLS sides are playing this season as a sample of the home schedule for a Research Triangle-based MLS franchise, then cross-referencing those dates with the 2005 home schedules of the Bulls and Mudcats, the number of conflicts ranges from 7 to 12 (and averages 9.9 conflicts). The number of dates on which a conflict would exist with both baseball teams ranges from 1 to 4 (and averages 2 conflicts). That contrasts with the Columbus Crew, which has conflicting dates with the Clippers just 4 times this season. My whole point was to illustrate that referencing the impact that the Clippers do (or don't) have on the Crew isn't necessarily reflective of the impact that the Bulls and Mudcats would have on a Research Triangle-based MLS side. Then again, maybe minor-league baseball fans in both markets wouldn't regularly attend soccer games and vice-versa.
That's all true. In Richmond the Hispanics play soccer in the rec leagues, where their families and friends can watch for free and socialize. They don't pay $10 a head to watch ex-college boys play in the A-League. Raleigh used to have an A-league team. They got about 500 per match. Any talk about an MLS team for the triangle is silly (unless of course a billionaire steps in to take the losses).
CARY, NC – Professional soccer makes its return to the Triangle on July 11, 2005 when Major League Soccer’s defending champions DC United--led by soccer phenomenon Freddy Adu--squares off against the United Soccer League’s First Division Rochester Rhinos. The game will be played at 7:30 p.m. at the SAS Soccer Park in Cary.
1. Bullcrap. 2. Doubly bullcrap if you look at how they did when they weren't in the boonies. SAS stadium's location is about 1000 times better than the WRAL Center.
AndyMead-There's the date. I was just coming here to post it, thanks ncguy. The Rhinos now have 4 games in 7 days including this trip on the 11th followed by a game on the 13th and 15th. Brilliant!
The DC press release - with a glaring mistake - just came out. I guess the 4 A-League and 2 MLS teams that played there in March, 2004 somehow didn't count: http://www.ibiblio.org/footy/2004/0327_kc_la_ajm.php
DC plays Kansas City on the 9th and San Jose on the 15th. Additionally the Gold Cup will likely pull several DC players away.
So you're saying this will be DC United Reserve's "B" Squad? I can't wait to pay good money to watch Kenny Arena display atrocious man-marking skills!
Also, Sunderland's been here. Wasn't there a Scottish league team as well? A couple of latin american teams too if I recall.
I play for CASL. Our PDL team is trying to become at least a minor league proffesional team if not an MLS team.
The Dundee/Lincoln Town FC/Marathon/CASL Elite "Bridging through the game" tournament was held in July, 2003 - while the Courage still existed.
Hey Bryan, thanks for posting. Who's got the money to jump to the pro level? MLS is way out there and even A-league would take $1 M a season to do it right.
Well, they've calved the "CASL" out of the name. It's now just "Raleigh Elite" www.raleighelite.com My understanding was, however, that the potential USL1 owners were a different group.