"Lalas: Still Much Work To Be Done"

It's great to see that Lalas is not satisfied with a 15% season ticket base increase. It is a great start but more can and should be done.

Keep up the great work, Alexi.

 

Still, I'm not sure why he would look somber. What does he know that the rest of us don't about exactly how far attendance has to go before AEG will commit to the team for the long-term in San Jose?

I'll shy away from speculation.

 

He left his guitar in the driveway and ran over it.

 

Wouldn't an increase in ticket sales mean that the CA comments had no or even a posative effect? I don't understand how if they were so hampering to sellign tickets that the news comes out now that they're 15% above last year?

 

That's not the reason. I think he knew that the SJ attendance numbers were sandbagged in last few years, and the 15% increase is not real.

Actually I don't know, but there is NO WAY SJ attendance is not fudged somehow. I can tell because I go to the games for many years. Either it was exagerated when Lynn was the GM or underreported when Jonny was the GM.

 

I agree with the first part of what you say: "No effect." The only negative effect was on the people who post here; the hard core. I'll bet if you were to ask the new season ticket buyers, they would say they didn't know anything about it.

 

I personally have no idea. Goodsport has always maintained attendance was exagerated through 2000, and beginning in 2001 or 2002 was reported accurately.

 

Remember: when the CA fiasco hit and Johnny resigned soon thereafter, he said the Quakes, at that time, were "leading the league" in season ticket renewals and in % increase of ST over last year. So much of the improvement took place before the CA debacle (or whatever you want to call it).

I guess some props should be given to the Lalas hiring which maintained a certain level of continuity, despite the crisis.

 

It could be the other way around also. Expectation management is common practice in corporate America. A lot of time when you see a new management team taken over a company, they will under report earnings so that they can beat the expectations and win the hearts and minds of the board and employees.

I can see the same tactic being used in this case, but I don't know. I am not accusing anyone. I am just guessing.

 

You Crazy Hedonist you.

 

You sir. Are my knew hero.

 

Attendance was vastly exaggerated while the Krafts were here. I remember a quote from Garber after they left that was something along the lines of, "We have no idea where those numbers came from."

I think Johnny's numbers were solid, though.

 

I'm positive they were. Wasn't there some remark also from Garber or someone else up there about the "creative accounting" of the Kraft days?

 

Goodsport. That's pretty inflamitory stuff if you're basically accusing every GM in the history of MLS other than Johnny Moore a liar... To throw my two cents in about Lalas and his potential skills as a GM. This guy's been selling soccer to the American public for his whole career. Why would you assume that he wouldn't do well at it now when he's doign it more directly?

 

Do you work for Garber or AEG? You seem quite irritated by Moore's article. I'd recommend going to the local library and checking out the "Cluetrain Manifesto"

That's not a joke, it's a book on doing business in the internet age. Basically, you can't try and hide behind PR flackys and firewalls. Your customers are going to find out what you're doing anyway, so you might as well be honest with them.

By the way, Tom Neale was the FIRST General Manager to report "true" numbers. He had worked under Meterpool and admitted that she did "creative" numbers. When he took over, the front office started actually started to become more transparent. Johnnie just carried on the tradition to the next level.

 

Actually Goodsport may be correct. I think you need to look past the GM's and remember that Tom Neale was GM in 2000 and 2001 and their seem to be some reporting discrepencies between the two years. I had a friend that use to work for the Quakes ticket department and he said that once their current Ticket Operations Director took over in 2001 attendance was reported correctly and before that is was VERY inflated. This would make sense as he would be the one constant since 2001, even with several GM changes.

 

In last year's MLS cup semi-final against KC, the attendance reported was 16000+. There is no way there was just 16000+ at the game. I watched the game on TV and the stadium looked just about full. The stadium capacity is 33000 I believe (give or take a few thousands or so ). If the reported attendance is true, the stadium should have looked half empty.

 

I was there and the reported attendance was not inflated.

 

I think Mr. Que is saying it was deflated.

I think the capacity at Spartan is around 29,000. Remember, there's an upper deck, which you can't see on tv. I don't think anyone was in the upper deck for the game. That might explain the missing 13,000 right there.

 

That's what I meant

 

Goodsie is right on. Spartan actually seats about 30k, but after some crowd disturbances during a Quakes/Burn game in 1996, Peter Bridgewater decided to reduce capactity to a little over 26,000. (Not by blocking off areas, but by not selling all seats in any given row). So for instance if section 113, row12, has 24 seats in it, they may sell 22, to give a little more space to spread out. The lower deck and end zones I believe seat 18,000 in this configuration, leaving about 8k for the upper deck.

Since I have been a game day volunteer doing stats since the beginning, I can confirm what Goodsie says about Lynne inflating, probably about 1,500 per game. Our numbers today are right, maybe they do seem almost deflated! (Our 16k looked like more than New England's 16k in the playoffs last year).

I do know that revenue increase from 2000 to 2001 was duly noted by MLS, so even though reported attendance was not up, because actual tickets sold was, we had more income.

 

I guess, we don't give a lot of tickets away, too, do we?
LA, likely, does that, and then reports sold-outs, even though there are a lot of empty seats, actually.