...they're on the bottom half of the relegation table with three coaches changed under his 2nd season of owning the team. Said that he can't spend that much until the local government grants him a lot to build a new stadium, which it's not going to happen. Spending doesn't always correlate a winning team. Suburban stadiums and professional soccer doesn't really mesh anymore. Maybe to the soccer moms it does. Recently, the tide has shifted to soccer stadiums in downtown cities. Matthews wasn't a long term option for Independence and with MLS coming, a third professional team in the Charlotte area is fruitless. Oversaturated market. Looks like they doubled down on the branding and now the league is the owner - that's not good. News from @NISALeague: @mystumptown is back, but under league management. https://t.co/zHXrsxQgts— Protagonist Soccer (@ProtagonistUSA) March 3, 2021
No, but charge levied against him was that he’s a cheapskate, not that he’s bad at winning. Look, you’re preaching to the choir here, but I think if you’ve got any hope of making it work, it’s by keeping it hyperlocal. About being run by the league, I thought the original owner was related to Prutch or part of Club 9 or something. I may be (probably am) misremembering, but I could have sworn there was some connection. I guess I don’t worry too much about it given the current situation and NISA’s need for maintaining sanctioning. If they’re still league run in 2023 or something, well, that would be less great.
...you already said it didn't work for another minor league team (Independence), what difference does it make? Branding? Not a dent. The change of ownership to being league-owned kind of shows you how desperate the league is at stability. Consistently sustain at least 8 teams for D3? Shouldn't be hard right?
I said playing outside of Charlotte and calling yourself Charlotte doesn’t work. I also said Stumptown may not work, either, but they can’t do much worse by focusing on being where they actually are vs. the market as a whole. I mean let’s just ignore the fact that it’s a hard time to be in the entertainment industry right now. It’s not worse than Matt Driver or Atlanta pRo Running a business that relies on thousands of people to show up when you cannot confidently be sure you can have anyone there is somewhat disruptive. Maybe you hadn’t noticed.
Let's see: The previous owner bailed(?), they are now taking the place of a former D2 minor league team in the same area that you said that it didn't work out, while the league (lol) is temporary stepping in hopes of attracting a new investor to buy the team, which seems like a desperate move in an already saturated market/metro area. Some leagues apparently don't get the memo. "attracting an investor to buy in a risky market"
Aha! I was right: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-carr Director Club 9 Sports Inc. Mar 2015 - May 2019 Director Prometheus Capital Mar 2015 - May 2019
You keep focusing on the Independence failing to attract crowds to Matthews as why Stumptown will have the same fate. And they will almost certainly fail, but it’s a huge difference to focus on where you actually are than say you’re the big city team playing out in the burbs. Matthews’ population is roughly the same size as Statesboro or Monterey (metro sizes are tough to compare, but this would almost certainly work to Matthews’ favor). Can they support teams? I guess that remains to be seen, but if so, I don’t see why you couldn’t focus on a specific community in a larger metro, especially at D3 and succeed.
So the team was owned by a employee of Pratuch's hedge fund company. I do not want to hear about nepotism in the workforce anymore. They're both minor league teams in the same market. Relax. It won't make any difference. We been down in this road before. Statesboro and Monterey doesn't have multiple professional soccer teams in the same area or even other professional sports teams at all besides college level. Charlotte's metro area is obviously bigger than those two combined, but I'm just skeptical of having three pro soccer teams work in Charlotte area just as like saying that another professional basketball team that's not the Hornets can work.
Well my assumption was Club 9 was involved in starting Stumptown and divested when Prutch became commissioner. I’m not sure how else Prutch would have been involved to take over from Bob Watkins. That’s complete speculation, but it seems awfully coincidental.
it wasn't the branding. it was that they didn't know what they were doing. there was a lower division club in franklin. it went by 'tennessee.' any time you hear a team name and the first question is, 'where/what is that?' that's a branding failure. the nisa is becoming ride with them. 'flower city united' is f***ing stupid. 'stumptown' is stupid. 'chicago house' is stupid. but...if the system disincentives lower-level investment...how come so many goddamned people are investing in lower-division soccer?
I personally don’t care if Flower City means nothing to me for a division 3 team if it means something to someone around Rochester. I am not their market, they don’t need to appeal to me. As far as the system, I didn’t say I endorsed Rocco’s lawsuit, I just said what it’s predicated on. Also, I am not sure there’s really all that much investment in lower division soccer? NISA has a league run team and USL is relying on reserves teams for sanctioning. There are certainly a lot of groups looking for investors or free land for stadiums in lots of smaller cities around the country, but until an actual pro team takes the field, it’s not much different than “USL East Bay”. Mostly it just seems like a novel way to pitch a real estate deal.
Every new stadium is a real estate deal. In any sport nowadays. Sometimes including housing and retail surrounding it. Beats asking for public money.
why are they putting teams in Major cities with MLS teams. Its fustrating to see these "organic" teams being set up in chicago and NYC while midmajor cities like Witchita , Sioux fall etc.. have nothing.
Because everything has to be like Europe, or Anglophilic at least. People actually believe Charlotte can be London by consistently supporting 6 professional clubs. All that points to the contrary realistically and culturally.
Well, no. They aren’t “putting” teams anywhere (well, setting aside Charlotte- but, again, I think there might be some historical reasons for that). If nobody in Sioux Falls or Baton Rouge wants to bootstrap a club, you won’t have a club there. They are, however, affiliating with a whole cross section of regional amateur leagues to incubate the next wave of clubs, which will hopefully then open up pro soccer in a whole new set of cities. But, regardless, MLS isn’t accessible to everyone even in the markets they’re in. The average ticket price for Atlanta United is $76. My Chattanooga FC season pass costs $135.
D3 teams don’t need 15k/game to succeed. If you average between 3-4K, you should be able operate fairly sustainably. Charlotte can’t have 6 teams, but it can easily have more than one across the pyramid if those clubs can understand who their market is. Somehow Atlanta is able to support the Falcons, Georgia Tech, GSU, Morehouse, Kennesaw State, etc. We don’t wring our hands and suck our teeth and wonder how it’s supposed to work when there’s an NFL team there.
More than >1? Depends. We haven't seen if Chattanooga barely can support 2 teams in a smaller market yet as an experiment. If history has shown us, even 2-3 professional teams in the same area and in the same league didn't work for any other sports leagues. New York had 3 professional baseball teams. The Giants moved to San Francisco because of a decrease in fan support and lack of newer stadium facilities. Philadelphia, Boston and St Louis all used to have a second or more professional baseball teams at some point in the same time. Soccer is fertile as a sport domestically here. At best America's fifth most prominent sport, that's why it's tough to appeal the fanbase that wants "the best" with as many sports attractions available as any other country. Without NCAA influence, would you say those college teams can compete with the NFL instead of being a feeder pathway system for 22 year olds to get into the NFL draft?
What does NCAA influence mean here? I’m pretty sure the only one that would be remotely benefiting from it is Tech. I think they’ve all created a following in different ways: Tech by being UGA’s plucky rival; GSU by its large alumni base; Morehouse by it being an HCBU; Kennesaw by virtue of it being way more convenient for the northern suburbs/exurbs (and alumni that settle there). Your baseball examples are all teams trying to compete at the highest level. That’s quite different since the necessary resources are so much greater.
Yeah those three Stanley Cup winning teams in the NYC market might have a bone to pick with you... The Rangers have the highest value in the NHL with the Devils at 15 and Islanders at 18. Sure, the latter two are firmly in the middle of the valuation, but we're still talking about $500 million plus.
There's a difference between amateur colligate sports and professional sports. Correlation vs causation. Of course football/basketball is popular domestically, from professional to collegiate level. With soccer, I don't think SEC schools even have men's soccer programs. And like I said, soccer isn't the only popular sport here. Major/minor or not, it happens in all levels. To be fair, the Devils were a relocated Colorado Rockies (unrelated to the MLB team) that was sold to John McMullen. He wanted the franchise in NJ (where he's from). Colorado later on got a NHL team from Quebec relocation.
Yeah, and they were KC before that. They didn't thrive until they became the third NYC market team. They've been in that market for all but four years of their existence. They've been successful for most of that time, as have the Islanders. They Rangers have always been a top dog.
Pre-pandemic the 8-team league was averaging 1K fans in 2019. Stumptown averaged 600 fans. Anyone here thought 600 fans in the Charlotte area screams of "sustainability" so much that the league now has to step in and franchise the brand? That doesn't sit well to potential investors or sponsors. Not when there's other competition in an oversaturated market.
This is massively out of context, though. The “fall showcase” was hastily thrown together in less than 2 months because Founders Cup fell apart and Miami and Oakland jumped to NISA. There almost certainly would have been no 2019 season if that hadn’t happened. Stumptown played at a stadium that no one had heard of or knew where it was because they couldn’t get in the Sportsplex. Atlanta literally played every game at a different location which wasn’t disclosed until days before the match was played. 2019 isn’t really representative of anything. These aren’t excuses: 2019 was totally slapdash, and it’s reflective of that. 2020 would have brought in Detroit, Cosmos, and Chattanooga so half the league would be averaging mid-table in USL-C. Yes, you’d still have the Stars bringing that down, but that’s just how the league works. It’s the individual clubs, not the league. Reviving Stumptown is 100% about maintaining sanctioning in the face Cosmos going dark.