I know people will say it's not like LA and that's obvious because LA is a much bigger market with a lot more wealthy people to buy a team. But attendance did not kill this team. Just because you happened to be last in the league in attendance doesn't mean it was the attendance that did you in. It's not like the attendance was a 1000 a game or anything. We all know it was ownership mistakes that cost the Athletica. I actually talked to the Athletica office just a few days before they shut down and they stressed to me they were not being partial to the men's team and even told me about 12 different theme nights for the Athletica games that I didn't know about. He also said they expected their best crowd of the season on June 9th since it was summer and school was out. He told me he had no information that the Athletica wouldn't finish the season so it all sounded quite reassuring but obviously he didn't know what was coming either. I know the problem here is getting a local owner, or ANY owner, who would be committed and that's going to be the tough part.
My personal feeling is no. St. Louis was by far the smallest market in the league. WPS needs to be very careful how they expand at this point and while the support in St. Louis was pretty good considering the market size, it would be a big gamble for them to return here, both from the standpoint of support and ownership. Looking at markets (from wikipedia based on 2009 estimated population) 1) New York and surrounding area (incl NJ) 19,069796 (Sky Blue FC) 3) Chicago 9,580,567 5) Philadelphia 5,968,252 8) Washington 5,476,241 9) Atlanta 5,475,213 10) Boston 4,588,680 13) San Francisco 4,317,853 (FC Gold Pride) 19) St. Louis 2,828,990 Now I realize that for instance part of the NY metropolitan area is in Connecticut which is nowhere close to Rutgers (where Sky Blue plays their matches) and that Gold Pride isn't in SF, but this is just to get a general idea. If St. Louis were a larger market like Los Angeles, I think there would be a possibility. But being pretty small and after everything that has happened, it would be considered quite risky for the league to take a chance, when there are several other markets out there that don't have teams. And I can't blame the league for not wanting to risk it. Plus the league has to think larger market from a television ratings standpoint. It sounds like the next team will be West Coast, which makes sense. Gold Pride needs another team out there. Los Angeles would probably get it, assuming they could find a suitable ownership group and a venue that would be reasonably cheap. Other choices would probably be Seattle, with an outside chance of San Diego or Portland. I think Dallas would have a team right now, if they could ever get their venue situation solved. Carolina will also be considered strongly. And there are several more. I think St. Louis falls behind all of them now. The league has talked about eventually expanding to 12. I think it would be the following: Boston, Sky Blue, Philadelphia, Washington, Carolina, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Gold Pride, and Los Angeles, plus one more (not St. Louis). Sad to say, but I think that was our one shot and it's gone.
True plus the league could be all that more hesitant about putting a team in St.Louis after the disaster that's occured. But attendance did not kill this team because I don't think WPS thinks attendance was the killing blow here. It's obvious bad ownership decisions is what did this team in. The Athletica office told me they expected a nice crowd for the June 9th game, the highest since the opener. Plus they said the attendance should pick up during the summer with school being out and all that. IF by some miracle a committed owner can appear who will stick to the plan then I suppose we could get a team back but finding that committed owner is like finding a live dinosaur. At least that's the way it looks now. Maybe that could change someday?
CKC 0-1 RFR If there's anything I've learned from watching both MLS and WPS the past few years, market has incredibly little to do with where new teams go. As long as someone with the $$ is there, it's basically a done deal. Heck, that's why we got a team in the first place. We didn't have the market size (LA, CHI, NY, PHI) or any strong women's soccer culture (ATL, Portland, Dallas, Cary) but we had someone who at the time seemed to be an amazing investor. If we can get someone to be that figure again we'd be fine - especially considering, as CKC said, we actually had really good support considering our market size. I say we should all start playing PowerBall. And I'm only partially joking; I bought two tickets myself on my way home Thursday -I only heard the bad news when I got home, so as I bought the tickets I was still thinking we were just "in trouble" and not "under". Of course I didn't win anything, but a $260mil jackpot (about $135mil actual cash) is still pretty tempting....
Good observations SiberianT. I'm sure you were referring to some of the absolute horrid attendances MLS has had over the years yet many of those teams still remain. Over the years I've seen postings about how only 3 thousand fans showed up to a game. AND THAT'S AN MLS GAME. Some WPS teams have also drawn flies to games. Yet many of those franchises remain and they do so because their owners were COMMITTED. Cooper doesn't know the meaning of the word.
As long as there's Soccer Park, St. Louis remains a great venue for WPS. Remember this was one of the league's less costly franchises to run (hence it was less unprofitable than some others, I would think). Soccer Park needs as many pro home games as it can get, so there will always be a spot for WPS. The problem here was, as it often is, stupidity. USSF should've stepped in and stopped the guy from starting a men's team until he had the money to run two teams, or the expertise to organize a one car funeral (the obvious problem being who at Soccer House could possibly judge that - really we should just hire the people who run lacrosse to do it). We should revive the Athletica now, there's a stray cat in my neighborhood who could be the owner of record, and I have $5 in my pocket - we'd have more capital and better leadership.
While I enjoyed watching the Athletica play, the WPS is NOT a real smart investment right now. The biggest reason is the salaries of the TOP players. Look at how many Athletica players were making $100k-plus. I've also heard from a source at KTRS 550am in St. Louis, where Hope Solo did a weekly interview, that she alone was making $250k. The team didn't make $250k in ticket/sponsorship revenue in all of their home games combined in 2 years. So either you have to pay every player about $20k....or you better be able to sell about 6k tickets per game at $20 each and then bring in a great deal in sponsorships.
There is a salary cap, so only a select few (like 2 or 3) could be making $100k, without outside sponsor money which would have been paid by someone else. My guess is that if the Solo number you quote is accurate, it includes her pay with the USWNT and her personal sponsorship contracts, not just what she was making from Athletica. KTRS? As a source? If you say so, but....please tell me it wasn't Frank O. Pinion.
There's no way Solo could have a $250k salary from Athletica. Even if every other player on the team were making $20k, that would still put the team over the salary cap. Note that even in the profligate WUSA, the highest-paid players made less than $90k, and that went down when they finally started trimming costs in the final season.
Your sources on salaries has got to be really misinformed. Or else they are conflating WPS salaries with total soccer earnings (eg WNT salaries, Nike/PUMA/etc deals, appearance fees, etc). If the WPS salary cap is 565,000 as cited in at least one place, then a team would be hard pressed to pay 4 players $50k. It would be conceivable but still leave 14 players on ~22k (with the 4 developmental folks making $12k). So your source and your post is wrong. Or they could be confusing the Athletica salary budget w/ the ACSTL budget which is known to have multiple high earners (cited several places that 3-4 ACSTL salaries were more than the entire Athletica salary budget).
Actually, there's apparently something called off-contract compensation that might be part of the issue. See this blog entry over at the Equalizer:
Actually I was thinking in a purely hypothetical manner about doing what the Green Bay Packers did i.e. have the FANS own the team so they won't just disappear in the middle of the night. I figured we'd need about $2 million a year but it seems we'd need about $4 to $5 million up front but we'd get some of that back in ticket sales and sponsorships. Hopefully close to a million back. If you could get 2,000 people to put in $1500 annually that would be $3 million or if you could get 5,000 people to put in only $600 annually. I'm pretty sure $3 million a year would be enough to run a WPS team. You would need to get good representation and league approval of course. I agree that right now isn't the best time to get involved in WPS but once things stabilize you would think this could definitely be done in such a tiny league like WPS since it's been done in a HUGE league like the NFL where teams cost in the HUNDREDS of millions. Of course you need to have a committed group of 2,000 to 5,000 investors and the top core members would need to step up in case too many people dropped out. The advantage here is the costs would be a lot less than any other pro sports team.
I agree that there is no way Hope was making $250K just from the Athletica. I've heard the 2 top players on the Athletica were Solo and Chalupny both at $50K. Hope's extra money must come from sponsorships and the USWNT.