Well, right, and you make a very good point. That said, it's tough to imagine a sponsor making a long-term commitment to putting their sponsorship money in something like Horizon League basketball, as opposed to MLS. I could see early jitters from businesses not knowing what to expect, but put together a good team and a healthy gate and the sponsors will follow. With Peter Wilt on board, they're definitely on the right track. (All of this assumes a Milwaukee MLS side would set reasonable prices for sponsorships, of course.)
A random memory that popped into my head. I once heard a long radio interview with the guy who founded the Arena Football League. As you can imagine he's had lots of experience trying to set up new teams. The best predictor he's found for franchise success? Newspaper coverage. If the newspapers will cover them the team will do well.
In Los Angeles, the Galaxy gets about 10x more newspaper coverage than the Avengers. Hell, even Chivas gets more respect from the Times than the Avengers. But anyway, that guy is right. Newspaper coverage = Free marketing. Newspaper coverage how the major leagues can sell out playoff games in 2 minutes and the lack of it is why MLS can only get 5,000 New Englanders to watch a Revs playoff game
Though I understand and agree with your "newspaper coverage = free marketing" sentiments, that's not why the Revs didn't get decent playoff attendance. There's no lack of soccer newspaper coverage in Boston/NE - frankly, coverage here is probably better than most regions. The poor Revs showing was in spite of newspaper coverage, not because of it.
And that points to a truth about both coverage and marketing: they can alert people to a product, but they can't manufacture interest in it from thin air. You have to have a product to market/cover.
The thing is, it's not so much Horizion league basketball as it is UW-M basketball that a sponsor would be looking to draw off of. One local advertiser tied to UW-M basketball is the Chevrolet dealer in town...they even had Bruce (Satan) Pearl, the former UW-M basketball coach, in their TV and radio commercials.
The Brewers are averaging over 27,000 per game this season. That's 27,000 people per game paying at least $ 8 per ticket (usually more), and eating and drinking and paying for parking (parking at Brewer games is either $ 6 or $ 12, depending on how close you want to be). That's 27,000 people spending their entertainment budgets on the Brewers as opposed to Milwaukee MLS. That's 27,000 people advertisers are going to spend money to try to grab. That's 27,000 people who are fans of a sport that media outlets are going to be more likely to cater to in the first place, without even taking into account the number of people interested. And you don't consider the Brewers to be competition?
You need to do more to convince me. While Milwaukee and Columbus are relatively same in population size according to the US Census Bureau, SLC and Rochester are much smaller and of course they will have less "competition". There is a type of "elasticity" involved with the size of the city and the number of events held in the city that would probably be too difficult for us to figure out. Someone already pointed out Columbus has more to offer than you listed including a PGA tour stop, football teams within the range you had given, etc...Columbus also seems to be a stop made by many major artists for their tours as that was originally included.
As it turns out, I'm a Cubs fan too since the first game of the '89 season because of cable TV and Harry Caray. Making the playoffs in '89 had nothing to do with my allegiance (although it was nice!) and I've stuck with them through the many bad times too. Been to Wrigley Field and attended a couple spring trainings. So yes, we certainly agree, Brewers suck! Fair enough about Milwaukee not being a cow town (like Sacramento, hehe). I never thought of the city that way. In the end, on the issue of "competition", every city has its share of events so "competition" will always exist in whatever city MLS chooses to expand into. I live 15 minutes from the HDC and that enabled me to go from 7-8 games at the Rose Bowl with an annoying drive on a slow freeway to full season tickets. I hope the Milwaukee venue is in your backyard. How many of those Brewer games were against the Cubs anyway? I can't help you about being a Fire fan though. I'll just let that slide.
I have the feeling you don't want to be convinced. SLC is not "much smaller" than Milwaukee, it's 20% smaller or so. Arbitron considers SLC (including Provo) a larger radio market than Milwaukee, http://www.arbitron.com/radio_stations/mm001050.asp. Neilsen, http://www.nielsenmedia.com/DMAs.html, considers Milwaukee only about 10% larger a TV market. But SLC has no Major League Baseball team, which is by far the biggest and most direct competition. It's hard to fathom why you would consider a PGA tour stop to be as much competition as an MLB team, which plays 82 home games with almost complete overlap against MLS's season.
Well, let me take a shot (from the standpoint of someone who lives in Columbus and spends a lot of time in Milwaukee - where the in-laws live): From our good friends at the US Census Bureau, we find the following population rankings (as of the 2000 census; ranking; name; population; % growth since 1990) 27 Milwaukee--Racine, WI; 1,689,572; 5.1% 33 Columbus, OH; 1,540,157; 14.5% 36 Salt Lake City--Ogden, UT; 1,333,914; 24.4% 47 Rochester, NY; 1,098,201; 3.4% As you said, Milwaukee and Columbus have, roughly the same population. But I'd call it a stretch to argue that SLC is "much smaller," especially when one looks at the growth rate over the past decade. To my mind, these three are of similar size, with Milwaukee having the edge now but the other two having growth rates that might cause them to overtake Brew Town before too many more years. (Note, however, that the Milwaukee's stats do not include Kenosha, WI; this is included in Chicago's numbers, though in terms of possible MLS support, I'd expect the city to generate more Milwaukee than Chicago fans.) This is where Rochester lags, clearly; not only is its population substantially lower than the other three, it's barely growing. Not to knock my new home town, but IMHO, there IS quite a lot more going on in Milwaukee than here in terms of larger-scale competition that a new MLS franchise would have to overcome. I agree that it's hard to measure the effect of the Brewers, say, but there is simply no counterpart here in Columbus to the 80+ home games they play each year (and the amount of media coverage they demand). Basically, you can sum up sports in Columbus in three words: Ohio State football; everything else is a very, very distant second. And while I've not spent much time in SLC, from all I've read and seen personally, the competition for RSL is substantially less than in Columbus. While these arguements are fine and dandy, we may just have to disagree on this one, I suppose. For the record, I too support Milwaukee's effort. My (and kebzach's) concerns about the fierce competition the club would face leads us to conclude not that MLS should go elsewhere but, rather, that it really needs to be done right, especially in terms of starting with a new stadium in place, located downtown; and that the team much be marketed from day one far better than most MLS teams are. In Columbus, Crew attendance has suffered only recently, that due to the club's horrific play of late and management's seeming lack of commitment to putting a quality product out on the field. Fact is, bland soccer in a nice venue located in a city without much summertime competition was enough to bring in adequate (from the bean counter's perspective) numbers of fans to balance the books. The club never did much marketing; its coverage in the local paper is almost nil (and on TV, it is nil - though they covered Andrulis' sacking). One wonders how many people would show up if the team were playing attractive, winning soccer, if management were connected to the fanbase, if the club advertised, if the local media covered the Crew and soccer in general. In Milwaukee, because of the in-town competition, I really don't think that the club will be able to coast and still bring in decent crowds they way the Crew have been able to.
I think any analysis of Rochester needs to somehow include (even if discounted) Syracuse- which is very close and also supports soccer well. The argument for Rochester should include the Salty Dog/Rhino attendance last year..which was quite good. Rochester, in a lot of ways, is every MLS SHOULD be about...however, I don't blame DeRoss and co. for not wanting to pay an expansion fee, and remaining A-League. We need a strong 2nd tier league, and in some ways, the A-League business model makes more sense even than MLS..
Google maps lists Syracuse as 87 miles and an hour and a half drive from Rochester. I don't think very many people will make that trip on a regular basis for a soccer game.
This is almost exactly how far my house is from Milwaukee, and I'll be driving if there's a new MLS team.
Yeah, but (1) will you do it 15-16 times a year, plus playoffs (including weeknight games) and (2) how many other Appletonians will be willing to do the same?
Not very many. That's why it drives me nuts whenever folks tried to tie Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham to the Greensboro MLB/MLS efforts or Greensboro to Raleigh-Durham... A few diehards, sure. A measureable amount of fans? Probably not. College football with their 5-6 game home schedule and NFL football with their 8-10 game schedule get large travelling crowds. But once you get to 15/40/80 games, you really begin to water down the travel effect. Sure, some Syracuse folks will make the trip. It's likely that some already do.... Just as some folks travel from Richmond to DC games. But the vast majority of attendance will be from the Milwaukee metro area. And frankly, Milwaukee's losses to the Fire won't be offset by any gains from Appleton. Go Foxes!!!!! (I think I've got a 1985 or so Appleton Foxes card set with Tom Gordon and Kevin Seitzer somewhere) ------- And Doug, I think you need to be careful about discounting the Clippers effect on the Crew. Sure, it's not the 27k/game Brewers, but most AAA teams tend to draw around 10k or so on Friday/Saturday nights.
I don't understand what you mean by Milwaukee's losses to the Fire. Do you mean people going from Milwaukee to Chicago or Chicago to Milwaukee? They're the Wisconsin TimberRattlers now and they play in a beautiful new stadium.
I agree with you that every MLS team will face competition. And, as someone else has mentioned, I think major league baseball is the most direct competition for the fan's attendance, concession, parking and merchandise dollar, however, other teams and sports, even winter sports, can be considered competition as there are only so many advertisors/sponsors to go around. The Milwaukee stadium at Park East would be about 10-11 miles from where I currently live, and about 1 mile from where I work. Not a bad deal at all. It's not going to replace the Fire in my heart, but at the same time, I will plan on going to SEVERAL (4-6 or more) games per year up here, in addition to my staple of 10-12 Fire home games and the occassional road trip game. In the last 2 years, I've seen the Cubs 6 times at Miller Park (compared to only once at Wrigley). But, I've also gone to see the Red Sox, Diamondbacks, Astros, Marlins, Padres, Rockies and the Braves at Miller Park too in that same period.
20% is a decent chunk. Still, I think SLC is not the norm. It has been a heck of a fit for MLS so far and hopefully continues to be. I don't think we'll find so many cities like that. I didn't consider a PGA tour stop to be as much competition as an MLB team...can you quote me on that??? My original post basically stated that no matter where MLS goes, there will be some type of "competition" to deal with and that it should not deter them from going into markets. I believe the original list of enertainment including minor league sports, concerts, etc... was a bit overboard in detailing "competition.
Andy, Maybe. Certainly, I shouldn't discount it totally, but I don't think it's an apples v. apples situation, at least not right now. I've never been to a Clippers game, but in talking to a neighbor of mine of goes occasionally, and in reading stuff about the team, a few points are clear: they don't draw all that well (there's been a steady slide in attendance over the past decade) and it's cheap entertainment. In other words, I don't think Clippers v. Crew is the kind of either-or situation that would exist for a lot of people if MLS's competition here were from a MLB club. Clippers tickets range from $5 for general admission to $9 for box seats. Parking is $3. And, again, there's not much of a supply-demand problem right now at Cooper Stadium; if the weather's nice and you want to take the family to a game, you can do so at the spur of the moment (most nights anyway) and it won't cost an arm and a leg. I know a fair number people who follow both the Crew and Clippers, in part because they can afford to do both. The real question is what happens if/when the Clippers get their new stadium downtown - an estimated $55 million project. I would imagine that the costs of attending games would go up substantially, both in tickets, parking and, possibly, concessions. Plus, the logistics of getting downtown and home again might turn some people off. Then what happens? I mean, I used to go to Bulls games in Durham, but I never much cared about the game; I was just soaking up the atmosphere, so I was content going a few times a season. Again, to me it was minor league baseball, so while I enjoyed the games, it wasn't something I was all that emotionally invested in. So, if the costs went up substantially, I'd (just my opinion) be less inclined to dig deeper and pay up;I'd just attend fewer games. So what's the emotional tie to the Clippers among fans here in Columbus? I really don't know. Will the glitz of a new stadium over-ride the increased costs of attending games? Again, time will tell. But, for now, in a fairly well-off city of more than 1.5 million, I don't see the current competition from the Clippers as being a big deal for the Crew; I'd imagine that it's a bigger issue for the Clippers on occasions when the two teams compete directly. It seems to me that a new Clippers stadium (if it happens) would raise the ante somewhat, however.