I don’t have access to the Sportico stuff but I suspect that the ownership’s interest in the stadium (the lease) is contained in the club valuations. In other words, your double counting the stadium when you add $100m on top for that.
Check. However, they reported that the valuation for our club was a total of $700 million. That's all I am going by.
Ok. For clarification -- the quote you included said Sportico valued the 2 clubs at $600m, and that the $700m valuation is the valuation used for Howard's purchase. According to your article $700m is not from Sportico.
I'd love to know why? The real reason, not the PR pablum Why here, why now? Has Ted been floating shares for sale out there all this time and no one was interested until now? Are there more sales for share? Is Tim using this as a capital vehicle in a space that he is comfortable with or does he really want to be involved? If he wants to be involved, how much pull does he really have? It is a better sign IMO that people that have at least been in the industry are involved with our club instead of VCs or wanna Gordon Geckos. Don't see too many negatives here and this is a pretty good indication of health unless we find out that Tim got in on a discounted deal because Ted needed an influx of cash to support a sinking ship. My sense is the former. At the very least it'll be cool to see him every once in a while strolling around the stadium & I hope to add him to the autograph collection. PS How many more goalies does the C Suite need???
Howard probably bought a 1% share, PR-type move, presence on TV, some soccer benefits. Cosmetic but harmless. Likeable guy.
Banned from the Dash board but holy moley, that is one brutally dysfunctional organization. And most of you haven’t read all the stuff in Clarkson’s lawsuit!
Found this from the Chron about our club's women's camp: Why did the Houston Dash fire GM Alex Singer? The team's peformance didn't meet expectations (msn.com) In the meantime, the leadership for the Dash will be a collaborative effort. “We have a technical director and an acting head coach that I will work very closely with on a day-to-day basis to make sure that the team has what they need on and off the field,” O’Neil said. “So, it’ll be a group of us with input from our head of sports science and head of medical and our operations folks to make sure that we don’t let anything fall by the wayside.” Coach Francisco Alonso has been out for almost a month but the Dash haven’t said anything beyond that Alonso is ill. Assistant Ricky Clarke has been acting head coach since June 28. O’Neill said the Dash hope to be a destination of choice for the world’s best soccer players because of the investment from majority owner Ted Segal.
Just took a look. NWSL and the other defendants need to take a moment and contemplate why every motion they've made to dismiss and redact Clarkson's petition is being shot down by the court. If it goes to trial they'll lose biggly. It describes a dysfunctional organization that allowed certain players to control the narrative and cause the loss of employment of two fine coaches. It's a sad state of affairs when management knows who the real problems were with but because of the political climate at the time caves in. I hope James gets $millions.
I really admire James for taking on the “liberal establishment“ on this. These are usually very difficult lawsuits, but he and his lawyer are very well prepared. Those briefs/affidavits aren’t fluff, They’ve got some real good detail in there. They make a very good point about the law firms trying to claim it’s legally privileged and covered under the TCPA statutes but the firms used it as marketing.
I meant to add, if the defendants (league, players association, outside law firms) don't ultimately get this thrown out under TCPA provisions, they are probably going to have to settle with Clarkson. I can't believer there is much upside in going to trial on this for anyone involved on the defense side. And with the firms and number of attorneys and amount of filings, the legal fees are going to get pricey quick. The main crux of their defense is that their character assassination of Clarkson is protected free speech on a public figure, even if it wasn't really true.
Interesting reddit thread below on Sounders raising season ticket prices (Sounders reddit has one too)- this seems very similar to Houston (setting aside attendance differences) - trying to squeeze out more revenue from a declining base vs. making new sales but in the process also losing elements of the base. BTW, the Dynamo have next year's new member season ticket prices up on Seat Geek, Whoo boy, they really jacked up the club seat prices on the west side seats and lots of lower bowl seats in general at prices that I do not think are reasonable value. Sorry, lower bowl seats that aren't in center sections are not good seats at the stadium https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/1eoy8ou/ire_over_rising_seasonticket_prices_fueling/
Recall our conversation about the AppleTV deal MLS secured with them, and yet the downside of a great TV deal for streaming is the local TV void for Houstonians to watch their local team week in and week out. Well, Seattle folks are speaking of the same fallout. Here is on Sounders fan's recent change in how he takes in his Sounders. Allw3ar3saying •2d ago "Most of my friends stopped watching the Sounders bc of Apple TV. I’m the only one that has the subscription. We haven’t been to a game since before Covid. Removing games from local TV reduced visibility for casual soccer fans who will watch any Seattle team."
Another interesting Reddit thread on club operations: https://www.reddit.com/r/dynamo/comments/1exfuv4/what_can_houston_do_to_improve/ the ones that I laugh at are the ones that if you asked the question in 2014, the answer would be the same.
The responses are identical to what our boards have detailed out for years now: Game Day Ops staff at the gates being mistaken for people that care. Increased marketing of our club in our own market. Stadium Design for air flow was poorly thought out. Merch and concessions service is craptastic at best.
Saddest part is, much of what needs to be fixed is literally better staffing & management & some care for the customer. Nothing massive but apparently too hard for this franchise
Correct. Also, when our FO went long on the rebrand, informing all of us fans and supporters that the team was a franchise initially, the rebrand was to usher in a new era of not being a franchise but an actual Football Club, hence the FC added to Houston Dynamo. Sure, but if so, why is more care for the customer not the focus that it should be? In other words, investing in the club seats, purchasing HH and more players from abroad, the purple 3rd jersey and urban marketing push, all had some very solid think tank time behind it. Our new owner and new FO cared to move the needle on these fronts. Which is a good thing. However, better staffing and not looking to squeeze the core fan base for more of our hard earned money should as well have greater invested think tank time behind this front.
I do think the customer care part comes with budget impact. They need to spend more money -- and they are expenses not capital investments. I think most everything they do is short-term ROI impact on bottom line focused. Where they will spend money is capital investments and capital renovations because they show up immediately on the balance sheet. They increase the value of the business as the egg-heads value it. (Personally, I'm not a big believer in the way these smarter-than-the-rest-of-us guys value sports franchises -- but the mental giant lottery winners that buy and sell teams seem to accept their nonsense.) Segal will likely be able to sell the team using the hocus-pocus valuation methods used when he bought it. All of it is oblivious to the value of the real asset. The brand and the amount of "good will" or loyalty they have in the Houston market. Another way to say it -- the number of loyal fans they have captured. They don't have any high-paid consultants to know how to value that. Doing so would also require them to face uncomfortable facts. So they put no value on fans.
I think lower level staff recruitment and retention is an overlooked issue for the Dynamo. They do well at the C suite level getting talent from the Astros and the Panthers but there’s a lot of competition among the pro teams for lower level sports industry talent. If you’re 18-25 trying to break into the sports industry through, communications, marketing, ticketing, ect, and wanting to build your resume the name value of the other three major leagues still carries a lot on the resume. Even University of Houston Athletics can carry a certain weight depending on the role. I think the Dynamo need to do a more to retain the staff as well. One example is Andrea Nava. I should preface I don’t know the full context of her situation but as you’ll see how it looks from the outside isn’t too promising. She’s from Houston, or at least went to school at UH, and worked with video production with the Dynamo as both on screen talent and behind the scenes production work. She worked at the Dynamo from mid 22 to mid 23, at which point she left to work for Charlotte FC where as best I can tell she does roughly the similar job. Again without knowing the full context, I do not see how it can be acceptable to let promising young talent leave to just another MLS team, especially when the person is local. Not sure how many examples are similar to her, but hopefully it’s few and far between.
At this point, the Dynamo FO are what they are. The game experience is what it is. If I go, I have low expectations. Segal's been here 3 years now the FO crew has been here mostly about 2 years on average. Probably spent the entire marketing budget on the Purple Drank jerseys. I think they raised STH prices again and I doubt they are selling many new packages for 2025 right now. I wonder what the retention rate was for existing STHs. Looks like they re-jacked club seat prices again (at least what I looked at last week). Media coverage is virtually non-existent out side of Bayou City Soccer & Glenn Davis. Apple TV makes them invisible but the rights fees compensate for the loss of any local interest. Media coverage in all areas of sport are probably down, but MLS seems like its taken a bigger hit than other second-tier sports leagues in the US. BTW, the lack of media attention on the Dash is probably helpful - that side of the club is a colossal failure. They either can't keep a coach or something mysterious happens to them or some nutty HR issue and then it doesn't seem like anyone wants to play here and now the NWSL is doing away with the draft. The GM was fired and no permanent replacement. It seems nuclear toxic there from the outside. I saw they claim like an average of 5,000 fans per game but TV pictures look like they are lucky if 2,000 are there.
The benefits were already pretty next to none. The least you could do when asking for a lot more money is take care of your most loyal customers willing to do it.— Depressed FCD Fan (@sadfcdfans) October 3, 2024 It’s weird to see the same tweets with different logos.