As Baseball Struggles in Newark, Soccer Is Thriving Nearby

I bet the newark bears( the minor league team) are less fustrating than the red bulls. *ducks*

 

Not sure if its worth bagging on a minor league baseball team, but this was hilarious.

 

WRONG there.

I'm just thrilled my tax dollars are going towards the Bears stadium until 2029. Here was a recent piece in the Newark Star Ledger in July about the team.

Newark Bears: A Tale of Sidetracked Baseball Team

 

I love the way that MLS fans decry our lack of media coverage, but the Bears guy talks about how Red Bull gets all this local media coverage and you can't compete with that.

 

I wonder why people in an area with two MLB teams aren't turning out for Newark bears games? I mean surely someone could solve this incredible mystery?

 

This article could probably apply to DC if they ever get a stadium there.

 

Baseball struggling, soccer thriving........................that's great!


Anyone with common sense knows the modern demographics will favor soccer over baseball. I don't really feel sorry for them making such a dumb mistake.

 

major pro soccer beating out a team that plays in something called Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball and shares a market with the Yankees and Mets. Surely this is a sign of future MLS dominance and not, you know, nothing.

 

I'm a soccer fan. But we really can't talk until the Red Bulls compete with the Yankees and Mets for that to be accurate.

 

Are we proud to compete with minor league baseball?.. What a waste responding to this nonsense.

 

the ny times is in a league of its own to come up with nonsense, so i didn't bother reading this.
i'll just say that newark's big bet wasn't on the bears, but on prudential arena a few blocks away. prudential arena is a state of the art facility (it makes madison square garden look like crap) and has been tremendous for the city. iirc there's well over 200events/year at the pru. its location and presence in the urban fabric is better than rba, which tbh sits in a little nook of muddy, industrial wasteland.

 

"Thriving" isn't esxactly the description I would use when talking about the NYRB, but compared to the Newark Bears, the soccer team might as well be the Yankees.

 

Pro soccer > minor league baseball?? Who knew??

 

From reading the posts here, looks like that is a "gotcha" article, since people are reading it.

 

Newark bet on hockey, a few years of basketball and an infinite number of events by buying the Rock. They're not going to regret that decision. By themselves, the Devils sell almost twice the number of tickets the Bulls do over the course of a season, at higher prices.

I'm not being entirely fair to RBNY though. Of the three pro sports teams, only one (RBNY) has an obviously upwards trajectory, which is more important than outdoing a minor league baseball team. While the Devils are having serious ownership problems and suffering a dip in ticket sales, and while the Nets are leaving town forever, the Red Bulls are drawing bigger crowds and can only get bigger with the growth of MLS.

That said, Newark isn't going to regret the Devils/Prudential Center, which is what the Red Bulls should be compared with.

 

If the Bears' owner calls about joint promotions, I'm calling back. Did you see those ****s. I'm weak.

 

The Brooklyn Cyclones average about 7,000 a game.

 

Regardless of soccer, i think baseball is a dying sport in any event. Too slow. Loved it as a kid, but totally lost interest after the strike.

 

The Staten Island Yankees also pull down 5,000 a game or so.

 

In a lot of places, pro soccer isn't > minor league baseball, at least if you look at season attendances. Here's some minor league baseball teams compared with their MLS neighbors in 2010, in terms of total home attendance:

Salt Lake Bees (AAA): 510,000 vs. Real Salt Lake: 256,000
Columbus Clippers (AAA) 651,000 vs. Columbus Crew 220,000
Pawtucket Red Sox (AAA) 592,000 vs. New England Revolution 194,000
Bowie Baysox (AA) 252,000 vs. DC United 218,000
Frisco RoughRiders (AA) 562,000 vs. FC Dallas 162,000

 

I loved this, from the Newark Bears' publicist:

And when, pray tell, was this?

 

In all honestly, if RBNY can't outdraw and outperform a non-affiliated independent league baseball team then RB and MLS would have near fatal problems.

If RB starts challenging the Mets and Yankees for fans and media attention, we'll have a real story.

 

I'm guessing that being an affiliated team makes a huge difference. They can sell the prospects and have natural fan bases to draw from.

 

That story's never happening. All of MLS has a hard time getting as much media attention as the Yankees.