Well . . . also blame DC area gov't. for stiffing DC United and the Freedom - forcing United to play in an unprofitable, white elephant stadium while waiting to move and the Freedom to play in the kind of venue Dallas Sting was unwilling to bother with after they bought the rights to a team. All while handing $700 million public dollars straight to the Lerner family. The truth is that a pro team can't be profitable playing in Germantown - away from most of the population. A 15-20,000 seat stadium inside the beltway and you've changed the world economically. I just think it shows that people in DC are too savvy to go with a loser, especially when it took MLB 40 years to pry a stadium ought of the public and everyone else just gave up and built their own. Also, give me a break on Will Chang putting his heart and wallet into anything. He's run DCU on the EXTREMELY cheap waiting for someone to build a stadium he can move the team into, double his money and get out. As a DC fan, I'm hoping some municipality in DC sees that it's potentially a win-win (especially as a hotel/tournament complex with a stadium) - that would mean a new WPS team with local owners almost instantly. But there just wasn't a way to draw 10-15k fans to the Soccerplex.
First, I am not from the DC/MD/VA area, nowhere close as a matter of fact. I don't even give a crap about whose fault it is or who's to blame. That's not even the point. If all six teams moved into venues that held 1200-1500 people, the league would fold tomorrow. If you ever want anybody other than hardcore women's soccer fans to take this league seriously, you can't be playing in stadiums that essentially have less capacity than most of the local high school stadiums in my area. If this league is going to survive, they have to grow their audience. This isn't the way to do that. I don't care who the owners are.
Not if they, by doing this, get control of parking/concessions/etc. and get away from paying serious rental fees. Especially if their 1500 seat stadiums feature 2500 "standing room" spaces on the opposite side of the field.
magic's stadium will be expanded to 3000. wild guess the university is charging them very little if anything just to have their presence on campus. you're right if you control parking, concess, etc. those are big. toronto in mls makes 11$ extra a game per fan. that's like each fan purchased 2 or 1.5 tickets to a signal game.
Any news on MajicTalk? Like where will they hold pre-season trainings? Is there a list of all their pre-season games, etc.? You know folks, publicity and getting the word out and talking about your team is how you get fans interested and wanting to come see you play. Right now nothing but mystery surrounds this team with the deafining sound of crickets.
borislow owns his own fields in west palm beach that he uses for his u14 games. Guessing they are training there.
is there anything new on his latin signings because his current roster cant be sold to the latin community? he said in an interview about having latin players on the team. i guess that went out the door when martha signed with wny. hint: erika, maurine, formiga, top national player or 2 from argentina and/or mexico. cristaine resigned 2011 with santos. he may not need to expand the stadium this season.
Concessions and parking are based on attendance. Lower capacity...lower attendance...lower ticket revenue, lower parking revenue, lower concession revenue. So if you get $10 extra per person at 1500 attendance for 9 games, you are talking about $135,000. That's an extremely optimistic number and you are assuming the high end (1500 capacity vs. 1200 capacity) and you are assuming all sellouts (extremely doubtful unless Borislow makes his employees buy tickets). It takes at least $2,000,000 to operate a team and that's conservative. You have salaries for players, salaries for staff and coaches, travel, offices, supplies, insurance, etc., etc. Income from standing room? Forget it. If there is any, it will amount to a very small amount. Might pay for Abby's boots, if they're lucky. I'm really not trying to be that negative, I'm just trying to be realistic. I saw a team go down the tubes that had a lot more going for it than this team will in Florida. Supposedly, Cooper got Soccer Park for free and owned it. One of the reasons mentioned for the team shutting down was the expense of opening the stadium for games (in spite of $10 per car parking, volunteers working the games and lots of concessions). Cooper originally bet that a small staff could market the team enough to make it work. It didn't. You have to have a hardcore base of about 2000 fans and you have to market like crazy for another 1500-2000. I agree Borislow is probably saving on rent, so you can probably knock a little bit off for that. And don't bet on the future. The future lasted one year for the Sol, one year and a couple of months for Athletica, two years for the Red Stars and the Pride. There is no future in this league, there is the here and now, which is why I don't believe in trading for future draft choices. So this Borislow will expand the stadium to 3000 in a couple of years or whatever is like me still expecting St. Louis to get an MLS team and then expanding Soccer Park to 10,000 capacity.
Cville KC - you have hit the nail on the head - nearly perfect. Speaking from experience - you never get to keep all the revenue from everything you describe above - for example - at SBFC we got the parking revenue but $0 on concessions. Each stadium and deal is different. And, I think the cost for running the franchise will be much closer to $3.5MM. My guess is they will see a loss of between $2.5 - $3MM in 2011. They have done nothing to generate sponsor revenue and as far as we can see they have no season tickets sold. They have no ticket sales staff - if they think the college will be able to do that for them they are really mistaken - I don't think you will see more than 1,000 per game after the opener.
And the opener assumes that someone will be publicizing it. Considering that the knowledgeable South Florida soccer media knew nothing about this until about a week ago, I wouldn't bet on this.
is 3.5M based on adding the 1.25M franchise fee to a 1st yr total? if you are buying into the league that should be an automatic write-off because you arent going to recoup it. there's no way it will cost fitz that much to run atlanta this season. i'd love to see a break down off the numbers on a budget. if you're salaries are at 500k or far, far, far less in atlanta, you have the cheapest coaches, etc...how do you get up to 3.5M? i can see franchise and marta pushing sahlen to 3.5M but that's for the 1st season. teams get ticket sales, main jersey sponsor and something from concessions and/or parking so maybe you make 800K-1M. boston probably does better. 2M to run the team. atlanta maybe 1.7M or so. so you eat 1M a season after the 1st yr. sahlen will probably make up that difference long term getting his dogs and deli meats to visiting markets. he seems to be only owner who has an idea that the team will work in the red but is a good vehicle to get his products in other markets i'm not sure about the other teams. most of their owners have consulting companies...not consumer goods companies. as far as magic...he'll sell his jacks online and at walmart/bestbuy with/out the team. no franchise to get washington but no one at games this yr so he will lose his shirt the first season. university said they could get 3000 seating this season but will there be 1000 who even know about the team there? as far as folding teams...the guy is st louis was interested in a mls team but didnt have the pockets for one, and thought he could use the wps as leverage, never had interest in that team. he couldnt even afford to keep his men's team running beyond 1 yr. as soon as one of his investors stopped calling he jumped ship. Gold Price should have left san fran, should have relocated them further south. it's obvious even with marta the young facebook tech crowd in that area wasnt interested in women's soccer. i'm not sure about chicago other than get a smaller stadium and dont pay cristaine 90k. and do we even count la sol and aeg which are completely out-of-line with the wps budgets and the reason for the ridiculous contract marta has? it still amazes me that the contract wasnt voided when they jumped ship. why in the world did the commish allow the league to sign for that contract knowing aeg was gone after one year. and marta and her agent played it well. it will take so much for us to leave sweden because we love it here. 250-300k plus her little perks and she would have been in the wps on the next flight because the team in sweden was folding trying to carrying 180/k. bottomline...marta will play where you pay her. with/out league approval she is in a santos uniform for six figures and her agent plays the game of we dont know and santos stops calling when you ask for a fee.
New south - you are not even close on revenue - not even close. I can't give you exact numbers - but the revenue realized is more likely in the $250,000 range for tickets - do the math - average ticket price X PAID attendance - not announced attendance X number of games. Sponsorship is NO WHERE near what you think, and concessions and parking are paltry - maybe another $75,000 maximum. On the expense side did you factor in the cost of travel, Workers Comp insurance - which is HUGE, health benefits, front office staff, game day staff, rent for offices and facilities, housing for players, cars for players, plus, plus, plus. Trust me when I tell you the numbers I gave you are real. You are also incorrect on the franchise fee, and no I wasn't counting that in. Sahlen is getting any product into visiting teams markets - no one in NJ has ever heard of his products because they aren't sold here - doesn't mean they aren't good - we just have no place to buy them. You are also WAY off on the Marta contract numbers - way off. I love how you very cavalierly say - "so you eat $1MM after year 1". Nice if it's not your money - but even wealthy people don't like to lose $1MM - whether they planned for it or not. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that second year teams across the board last year lost more than $1MM.
no i'm not getting it. how in the world do 6 wps teams have the money burn rate of the XFL which i think vince mcmahon lost 30-35M on? what is martha's number? i've seen 500k, plus a house, suv and phones so of course it goes beyond 500k. i ran a contracting company so i'm very aware of General Liability Policies, bonding, health and WC insurance. Group rates have to better for the WPS than I paid for 7-10 individuals. how many people do you need in a front office of an wps office? if my bottom number of 700k isnt what boston is even taking in...then the league will fold? you're saying with top attendance and six figure number, probably 100k from its' main sponsor, boston isnt bring in 500k a yr but spending 3M. how in the world is their GM talking about breaking even at some pt? why in the world are other groups be interested in the business model if it is as bad as you are saying it is? you're the ex-GM so how about some light??? I'm only asking because you are the one who said it costs 16-20M for a stadium. that's fitz stadium...not silverback where the beat should be playing. you're saying in some cases wps teams cost as much as a usfl or xfl football team to run and football team carry twice the roster size and salaries even at the usfl/xfl level and equipment which is more than 500 per player and far more injuries than a soccer team, esp women, will ever see??? does the league give any financial advice, asst or anything to the teams once they pay their franchise fee? maybe the model should be changed to something like the mls. they've made it after being in the dog house for years.
I seriously doubt it. It's pretty much assured that a WPS team is going to have to pay major medical expenses for several of its employees (players) during the course of a season. That's got to drive the insurance rates way up.
no way rates can be greater than a football team...just based on contact and collusions. no way hartford or some of the other insurances would charge the same for 22 soccer players as 22 pro (contact with equipment) football players. it cant cost the same to run a wps team with 22 players vs a pro level football team with a roster of 40-45. somebody doing bad book keeping in the wps. it's insane to compare the two cost wise final. one reason contact football wont make it outside of the usa big is the cost to suit up each player vs soccer which equals a field, net, shorts and a ball. come on.
I was comparing WPS rates with the rates you dealt with running your company. I made no reference to football teams.
still not comparable since my company had workers outdoors 20+ stories above ground so GL policies and insurance was a monster just for 2-3 workers. football is a better comparison with the WPS. i just cant believe it cost 3.5M to run a club at bare minimum.
Has Borislow started marketing the team in south Florida yet? How does he to sell a good amount of season tickets when the seaon starts in 6 weeks? You here nothing about this team. I've never seen anything like it. Giving out snipits in interviews is not going to do it.
Well preseason starts tomorrow does it not? Does anyone know ANY info on where they are holding preseason, etc.?
As far as I can tell, you can't order season tickets yet. All that directs to Washington Freedom information at the Soccerplex. If we're already in preseason and no tickets are being sold, this could be very disasterous. People want to annoint Borislow the 'saviour' of WPS but this currently seems to be a very poorly managed team, between the tickets, lack of publicity, lack of communications, etc. Big ideas with little follow through isn't going to save this league.