The Dynamo must have an in with the Houston Business Journal as there is a Dynamo or Dash article weekly. But I gotta call BS on one of their Dash claims: From the Dash article: “One of the challenges the Dash faces as it seeks to grow its season ticket base and overall attendance is what O’Neill described as a lack of awareness. The club is positioning the Dash in the market in a different way that it would for the Dynamo, she said. The Dash is the only women’s professional sports team in Houston and the only NWSL franchise in Texas. Additionally, the NWSL is home to the world’s best female soccer players — one of the reasons Alonso was attracted to the Dash job — who play at Shell Energy Stadium in East Downtown at least 13 times each season. “What we’ve been focused on with the Dash is an awareness challenge,” O’Neil said. “We need more people in the city of Houston to understand that the Dash play here.”” I’m sorry but this is Year 10 of the team and Carli Lloyd was on the roster for a few years and to think folks that would buy tickets don’t know they exist is absurd.
Another excerpt from an article yesterday about the Dynamo having more events at the stadium - the stats sound nice but how many who come to an El Salvador match are coming back for the Dynamo? “Growing in the events business is one of the major ways to grow our revenue, so it is something that we’re very focused on,” O’Neill told the Houston Business Journal. “It can be (a significant revenue stream), absolutely.” The club is no stranger to hosting major events: Last year, Shell Energy Stadium was home to a sold-out El Clásico Regio, four Concacaf Gold Cup matches and four Leagues Cup matches. Along with hosting Dynamo and Dash games, the venue is also the home stadium for Texas Southern University’s football team. The club is expanding its efforts to host even more events, hiring of Ashley Jones as the club’s director of special events, leading the Dynamo’s first dedicated special events arm. “That allows us to be much more proactive than we were previously,” O’Neill said. “When you don’t have this dedicated person making this outreach, you’re reacting to the inbound inquiries that are coming in, so we’re doing much more outbound efforts.” Special events add an immediate boost to the the club’s bottom line, but they also play other equally — if not more — important roles. First, they get more people into Shell Energy Stadium, many of whom are first-visitors, exposing them to the club’s brand andenticing them to come back for Dynamo or Dash games. The organization saw a 20% year-over-year increase in total visitors visitors and a 33% increase in first-time visitors to the venue from 2022 and 2023, and it would like to see at least the same jump from 2023 to 2024, O’Neill said. Additionally, events help the club build its reputation for being a destination of choice for current and potential employees.”
Banned from the Dash forum but this is generally an “off-field” matter - boy, they really know how it keep the HR and legal team busy at the Dash: https://equalizersoccer.com/2024/03...houston-dash-for-alleged-player-relationship/
It’s still early and they’ve pre-sold a ton of tickets and season tickets, but the Astros look like garbage early on. Dynamo have some opportunity this year if the Astros struggle thru May
The Austin game hopefully should get a good turnout given the Dynamo start. Oh, and since I am banned from the Dash forum I'll put this here: The Dash are true dumpster fire of an organization. 10 years, 1 playoff game (Dynamo didn't have much more success those years), constantly firing or losing coaches then trashing them (Clarkson, Laity), always some soap opera, re-sign an NWSL DP-type player who wants out 4 games into a new contract. Always something - and then they have the audacity to keep talking a huge game about the Dash when they can't even get the basics right, like having a true club president, GM, training staff, etc. They are irrelevant in this market.
I think once before on this thread we talked about alternate/one off jerseys and some had mentioned the team should be more aggressive despite rules put in place by adidas/MLS. Well, if those rules safeguard from stuff like this I’m all for them.
Good find. That is Juventus and their kits over the decades are normally very solid. This one off must be a kit specifically designed for an Italian youth hospital a la our hospital chest sponsorship with MD Anderson, or something that is directed to raise money for their local children.
This club has been around 18 years now and still they can't seem to get simple STH notifications correct. https://www.reddit.com/r/dynamo/comments/1d9py17/68_sth_open_practice_session/
Someone in the comments mentioned this, but this is my experience as well, they don’t notify every single season ticket holder of every single one of these events. The problem they run into is the fallacy that STH don’t talk to each other. Be that their seat neighbors, Reddit, Facebook, this forum or discord. So then you have the situation that someone feels left out even though they’ll probably get an invitation in a month. I think the better option is that every couple of months they put out a signup document for practice invites, meetings with the FO, autograph sessions and whatever else may be offered.
I haven't been a STH for 7 years, but IIRC they had a lot of "one-time" a year events that if you missed it due to lack of notification, you weren't getting another shot at it. If they have multiple meet the team STH practices then they should communicate that to everyone that they will have several during the year and you will be invited to one. maybe they do that (I suspect not). My experience was that if your rep sucked, you were going to get left out. very little standardization or consistency across the operation. "oh you renewed early so you get to play on the pitch . . . um, yeah well we already had that back in January, sorry" Its no different than when they advertise discounts or giveaways then they don't actually happen, there's no recourse. Not crapping on them just to complain (I'm not a STH) but they just have never seemed to get any of this right no matter who is in charge over there.
I thought the season ticker-holder town hall thread posted the same day was interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/dynamo/comments/1da0d4b/takeaways_from_townhall_meeting_with_director_of/ One commenter stated 8,000 season ticket holders. Hopefully the claim about 713 nights is accurate. I had season tickets for nearly a decade. The occasional 713 night-style promotion (Unsure the promotion name at the time, but the premise was similar) was no big deal, but the value of season tickets dwindled greatly as they grew more frequent later in the Canetti years. Once a person on this forum -- Westie? -- tallied the number of promotions and concluded it was cheaper to buy single game than season tickets.
I think on STH the math used to be that if you were going to attend 60% of the games, STH was probably better - but that was before they did all the discounting and if you don't care about your particular seats that much, its much better to buy on the SeatGeek marketplace and go to the games you want to. What always got me was not so much the discounted tickets, but other one-time special stuff that you only got if you bought a special 3-game pack or something like that. The small package guy got better stuff then the person who bought a full season. 713 nights they have done largely on second tier opponents and also on weeknights. That thread on reddit is great - marketing talking about "connecting with the community" which has been said for 17 years straight and resulted this year with a misplaced urban mural campaign and new jerseys colored the same as an illegal drug concoction. Why don't they just stop this nonsense and do Dream Scream Believe or Forever Orange? 8k STHs? Seems plausible after a playoff year. The announced attendance is still a joke. I do sort of agree with the guy who pointed out their overall indifference to realizing they aren't the Astros and need to provide something that competes with the ability to go to a game in AC for a top-tier product (maybe not in 2024 but most of the last decade its been an elite team). Lastly, I think the Apple TV has 100% hurt this club's local reach - they don't have any local coverage, they webstream Glenn's commentary instead of radio (go look at the # of youtube viewers of his post game wrap ups - frighteningly low), other than a few billboards they are invisible to the market. The Sabercats have more reach
This is our 19th Season. Jeez does time fly. A 25% percent increase in season tickets. Good news! 8,000 total STH. Ten years ago, our 2014 Season, what was our total STH figure? Also, here is MLS average game day attendance for all clubs>>>
I think we had it somewhere on this board, Grant Wahl used to try to survey the teams to get STH counts. Think Dynamo peaked in 2013 or 2014, feel like it was 12,000 or so. Not sure how far they fell but think they got down to 5,000 range at one point. Think this FO looks at revenue yield overall so they probably care less about actual attendance and more about $$ yield per seat, but it also computes that without increasing attendance you can't increase demand and pricing - the 'ol squeeze more out of existing ticket holders than growing the base. I've lost track a bit of the complaints but they had the Sports Deck that they went from all inclusive to some sort of concessions credit but seems like a net loss in value to the ticket holder. Have no idea how many East Club or recliner seats they have sold. It is what it is, invariably they will monkey around with something for next year, sell it as a quantum leap in something, and then rejigger it or undo it a year later.
I realize the problems with attendance numbers. Tickets sold does not equal butts in seats. Yet how else do you measure “attendance” other than tickets sold? All this just to indicate I’m not casting aspersions at the Dynamo. Having said that, I have a hard time believing that the average attendance at Dynamo games is anywhere close to 17,000.
I think you have to use it to make comparisons over a number of years. A CFB podcast once said something about AP poll rankings that I think is similar. On a week by week basis it doesn’t tell you too much about the team but over the course of 10-20 years it shows you the success or perceived success of a team over time pretty well, like rings on a tree stump.
It always been "announced" attendance - which is usually some sort of mix of tickets actually sold plus tickets given away, plus ushers & concession workers, plus a fudge factor by the FO. "Tickets Distributed" is the term. Of course, other than reports they have to give to the league for revenue sharing, no real way to validate any of the figures other than the eye test, which most of the figures seem to fail. The Marlins former president David Samson hosts a podcast mostly on sports and has a good amount of discussion on the inner workings of teams and FOs - he openly discusses how they would monkey around with things like selling blocks of tickets for $1 to sponsors to give to charity and stuff like that to make it look like they had better perceived attendance. Most teams do it, although i thought the Dynamo were really absurd with some of their claims over the years on tickets sold - there's a point where jacking the figures so much implies that 50% of the ticketholders for a game figured it was better to eat the cost than attend which actually devalues the product.
Not sure completely follow what you are saying. So a snapshot of one-game attendance overstates actual attendance — but look at those snapshots over time and they are accurate? CFP rankings are going to have error. +- error. Over time the errors cancel each other out. In the case of Dynamo attendance the error is always in the same direction. Overstatement. Thus looking at it in aggregate over time will still have that error in it. Perhaps what you are suggesting is the change over time is meaningful. Even if attendance numbers are overstated, if they grow or shrink that is a fair representation of change in the actual attendance. Maybe. I can envision a dynamic where you sell more tickets, especially to corporate sales, and a lower percentage of them get used. But I dunno — I just can’t believe that Dynamo average attendance is 17k. Maybe 2 or 3 games have reached that level.
Yes, that is what I recall from a decade ago. Our club peaked at 12,000 or so, around Ching's final season and then the corporate accounts dried up, the team started a decade long slide of on the field success and our FO started to take shots fired across the Dynamo Ship's bow of all us that still were going to games! As if it was our fault others started to spend their hard earned money elsewhere. Those sickening years of FO ineptitude and speaking in duplicity of their own failures. As we all know, Houstonians as sports fans, well, there is so much to attend in the GHA with college and pro alike. A winning side that plays attacking soccer appeals across so many different demographics and if only our FO was to focus on this front over the past 19 seasons, who knows how our club would reside in our crowded sports market. End game being a solid average attendance once we got our downtown stadium built, solved the AEG relocation project in good order.
I didn’t see an attendance in the box score for last nights game, but it looked pretty sparse. I’m sure the weather & midweek had a lot to do with that, but I’m not even sure how many tickets they can claim they sold. by the way, remember when they were turning down media credentials for “bloggers“ and other fan coverage sites? Yeah, well the Chronicle just laid off a bunch of sports writers (mostly the HS & minor sports folks, including the one that they’ve been having cover the dynamo lately) and The Chronicle ran an AP story in today’s paper with no real details or quotes from the game. this organization better figure out how to increase their reach in the broader community because between coverage basically evaporating locally and being stuck on Apple TV, They’re going to disappear from everyone’s minds unless you’re a hard-core soccer fan
In our early years, with The Rob our home venue, there was a terrific sense of come on down and get in on the live soccer and a good time at the ballpark vibe. It helped in an odd way that the venue was a 1940's Work Project so the amenities at the stadium moved the needle little, the sport was centerstage. And soccer being such a participatory sport for spectators to feel attached to their city's players, the fun of live outdoor soccer was easy to market. Word of mouth and solid local Chron, Ch. 2 and Ch. 26 coverage of our new team in town did indeed move the needle for MLS in our market. People knew who Brian Ching was. All this got crushed when we finally saw the home stadium built and going, where corporate suites (that quickly dried up as a reliable revenue stream), wristbands for supporters so no newbies can get in to the party section, squeezing fans for bland food in long lines became the norm as game day experiences. Then there was some odd restriction placed on anyone that wanted to visit training and cover the team. All these moves are amazing to look back on, how our FO just did shift after shift in critical thinking that made going to games for us fans some bi-weekly trip to a downtown Denny's on Saturday Nights. Then the lean years of crap soccer and home games became as sparse in attendance as we all witnessed from 2014 to now. HH and better, more appealing to the eye soccer has helped recently but my main point is that our club's FO marketing arm still here in 2024 has not been able to market and sell how much fun a home match in pro soccer is. Specifically for the Dad taking their kids out, Moms as well, a solid demographic to focus on. Or the most coveted demographic as known the world over and that is the single, working class male that really follows the sport. Season ticket soccer junkies that often will be at home games regardless of record just to be at their second home of sorts with buddies from across town converging on getting their bi-weekly live outdoor soccer fix! The hard core soccer fan shows in various incarnations as far as MLS fans go. If we lose any more of these as the club slips into more of an uncovered, under marketed, just go read the AP write up type of local team, you are correct, the team could disappear into an also ran.
agreed. Look, Brener was a disaster as an owner, Canetti misread the new stadium opening and spent way too much time on the lousy Dash and not enough on customer experience then the Chief Hostage Negotiator ran it all they way into the ground. lots of plaudits for Segal spending money, but have they ever changed the customer service practices? Seems like we still have that stupid auto renewal (or “opt-out”) in place, Doesn’t seem like they staff the stadium much different than they did before, and then they make these changes to seating areas that seem to annoy certain people. I don’t know maybe all the ticket buyers are happy and we just don’t know it
Hahaha! Right! If our boards say something about fan happiness, think of all the different characters and banter on our boards over all these Dynamo seasons. Now, just a few of us still log on and talk about our players, the results and the league. Yet here we all are, with this powder keg of a soccer market in our great city and yet very our FO just cannot read the room.