So the news is LA is the first team in MLS to see black for a year. LA Records a Profit The interesting tidbit for Crew fans though is this: This kind of triggered a question in me as to the relationship of CCS, The Crew, and MLS. Now I think I heard that the way the deal goes is that Hunt runs CCS and all things "Crew" and MLS related(ie. MLS matches, USOC, Exhib, International matches) goes to the Crew and MLS and determines if the Crew are "profitable" or not. However, ever thing else like HSF, NCAAS, Concerts, USNT games ect. goes to HSG, not MLS or the Crew, and therefore doesn't factor into the Crew's profitablity. Is that right? I think it is because if you look at all the events over the last 5 years in CCS, the place has had to have brought in more then it's spent. However, with declining ticket sales for Crew games over the last 2-3 years and thus lower concessions and parking fees, I can see where the Crew haven't been profitable. If true, this has to be a case where SEM has hurt the Crew and MLS because they have to have a certain attendance inorder to be profitable, instead of booking other events to help even the books like other owners do in other sports where they have sole control. Another question is exactly what attendance number does the Crew have to average inorder to be profitable? Last year there was an article that said the Crew only lost 500K last year with an average of 17,429. I kind of guesstimated conservatively(IMO) that each fan spends about 40 a game on everything. That would mean the Crew needed to average 1K more then last year to be profitable(1,000*40=40,000*15=600,000) So 18,429 is the number the Crew have to average. The closest they got to that is 17,696 the inagrual year in '99. If my quesstimate was close that also means the Crew lost 1.1M this year because of the lose of 1K average per game(-500,000+ -600000 =1.1M). However, the numbers might be off by more because I noticed that some concessions were higher this year then last.
it always been said that were close to a profit, compared to other team. i think attendance and corporate sponsorships are what would put us over the top. attendance was down this year, but i sort of remember hearing that we were doing well with the sponsors. we got the huntington club and some other new sponsors, so i'd guess we probably lost about as much as we did last year. i wish they would release this info like they do in england.
Good observation, I didn't even think of the impact of new and/or better sponsership deals concerning CCS and the Crew. Plus I guess you can add the new gameday programs they sold for $3 dollars each as a new revenue source they didn't have last year.
i thought that i remembered reading from somewhere that we have actually turned a profit before. does anyone know if that is correct? on a side note: i'm sure having andrulis here next year will guarantee 20K crowds per game, right? and these include the games that don't have Preciousssss coming to town.
Like most everything, it's all in how you figure it. At this point, I think HSG will be claiming a loss into the next century. In any case. single entity makes any sort of club numbers irrelevant anyway. The league wants to keep crying poor because the second they admit there's some money in all this the players will line up and ask for their cut. Here's an example: The Crew staff got a tip on Stern John from his cousin, Ansel Elcock. They invited him in, worked him out and asked MLS to sign him for them. (As a sidebar, Bruce Arena caught wind of it, and even though the Crew had already submitted a claim, tried to browbeat Gazidis into giving John to DC. He apparently threw a fit, even though he didn't have a leg to stand on. But that's another tale.) Anyway, John was a big hit, and was bought by Nottingham Forest for a widely reported transfer fee of four million dollars. Four million dollars. Now in return, IIRC, we were generously rewarded with John Wilmar Perez. Who, needless to say, did NOT cost four million dollars. Or one million dollars. We fit him under the cap like everybody else, and the four mil disappeared into MLS' coffers. Now anywhere else in the world, and I do mean anywhere, the Crew netted fpur big ones on Stern John. In MLS, the Crew lost money that year. The point is that until MLS starts being a little more forthcoming about their affairs, instead of acting like they're the Old Soviet Politburo or something, we just cannot have rational discussions on any of this. It's impossible, and they want it that way.
as bill said, profit is difficult to determine in socialist soccer. the rumblings i've heard, which have 0% basis in documented, demonstrable fact, are that the crew lose money, but came close to breaking even in '01 and '02. in '03 you have a few things going on, pro and con: sagging attendance in the 2nd half of the year, stadium renovations, the huntington club, the new signs in the three corners, and the perea trade. oh wait -- not that last one. so it would be more difficult to determine unless you saw some numbers. my guess is a fair amount of red ink.
It's hard to believe that the Crew doesn't turn a profit. I think on the company's income statement there is an account called "Keep MLS afloat" expense, in which the club funnels extra funds (above its "allotment") to the eague. It's no coincidence that this expense account always has just enough to keep the Crew just below profitability. Again, this is all speculation - which can also be said for the finances and accounting methods of MLS as a whole.
Along the same lines as Bill was going, you could throw in the transfer of Frediel to that and the loan deals of McBride to Everton and PNE and Cunningham to BL. All money that went into the recess of MLS and never found their way back to Columbus in terms of player aquisition. Now as for the original question, do I have the way the CCS money is divied up right or is that wrong? Like Toon, I can't see how CCS hasn't been profitable with all the events it's held in 5yrs. However, if you take those extra events away I can see how the Crew aren't profitable.
The Crew have no reason to turn a profit as long as DC, NY, and Chicago are all losing money for the league. If memory serves, the Crew pay rent to HSG as well so HSG makes a fair bit off the Crew, the league does not. As a side note, as long as an increase of fans directly equals profit for the league at CCS, why is Columbus not given the breaks of other teams?
Because we are talking about Columbus, which considers a bunch of 18-21 year old football players as its most important sports franchise.
I have some quotes from Jim Smith saying that Columbus did ok this year, but not as well as they would have liked. To paraphrase, the ticket sales were fairly good, but actual attendance was too low. So they had ticket money, but no food, merchandise, parking, etc. money coming in from the missing people. Of course, he pulls out some bad weather excuse in defense, not the crappy team on the field. This was never published because he never gave me enough for an article, but I'm working on that.