there were earlier suggestions and indications on this board, several weeks back, that the chesapeake athletic dragons were undergoing a transformation of sorts and would return for the new pdl season a new and better organization. that may be in the works but, unless i'm missing something, i have yet to see any indications that anything new is afoot. certainly, one of the hopes was that improved marketing and public outreach could make the public more aware of what could be a terrific product. but the only thing apparent to a prospective fan, so far, is a new and better looking homepage on the dragon website. the site, itself, however, remains virtually dormant. inexplicably, even the "purchase ticket" page is not accessible. and the season opener is just over two weeks away! i'd love to see the team "take off" with a couple thousand fans at every home game. And i certainly don't want to be overly critical. But, at this rate, who is the fan supposed to get behind and support? unless the word gets out, who's gonna even know they're playing?
I like your thinking. A couple thousand a game for a PDL team a half hours drive from the best franchise north of the Rio Grande. That would be great.
hey, why not go for it? if a pdl team like the "des moines menace" can manage an average home attendance of 4400 per game, as they did last season, a metro area like the one supporting the dragons, with several million people, can and should be thinking at least as large, or larger! i'm convinced the soccer community is big enough and enthusiastic enough, if only they're made aware of the option. truly, with the right sales and marketing of a quality team, it's not an unreasonable expectation.
I think being in a Metro area that size might be a deterent as well. Too many other things to do, plus you have DC United right there competing for the same dollars. The Menace are the big dog in town and have a 12 person staff to run the PDL and youth club. They also have large tie-ins to corporate sponsorships that the rest of the league can only dream of.
dragons update We're finalizing the player roster. Just signed four players from University of Maryland. The season ticket page is active -ONLY $25!. The individual ticket page will become active a week before the opening game and of course, you can always get tickets at the gate. Schedule cards and posters are set up around Bowie and we will expand the distribution area for promo material. Now if we can only get the Maryland State Youth Association to allow us to purchase their mailing list, that will help us a lot. Until then, we'll continue to make the most of our resources. Hope to see some bigsoccer faces on May 11.