I just don't see why the NASL would even be listening to this ownership group given it's inability to launch in the past. Is the addition of Rayo really gonna make the ownership anymore stable than what it has been? In my mind, no given the fact that Rayo is just coming back from nearly going bankrupt. Even so how is this any different than what we currently have with Energy FC? Sorry, I just don't see this going anywhere.
Will just have to wait and see. I have this on pretty good authority. But like I said before, if this doesn't happen, I'll buy nrg ST's the very next day
Trust me. I hear you. I would NOT bring it back up this time if I wasn't absolutely sure of my source. And also, the source is NOT me, btw
Totally understand. This is my last time to let Lucy hold the ball for me. If she pulls it away this time, I'm choking the bitch
If I remember right, one of your big hangups against the Energy was the affiliation with SKC. That ended today with the announcement of SKC starting their own USL team. As of today OKC is independent. So that's one more reason to support the Energy. Come on over. The playoff games were a great time.
Yeah, you gotta stop that Media attention ... don't let that seep into your sports organization, it's like a cancer because worse case is you never get rid of it. It's the worst!
The suddenness of it, after having lived in this market my entire life, makes me suspect that it's bought & paid for, which will suddenly dry up when they stop paying for it all over the NewsOK / The Oklahoman & KOCO (the younger demographic TV station).
Understand, hard to believe such a crap ownership group would spend money on media coverage ... and it's also hard to believe that it would be an issue if they did (since the area has proven to not get covered any other way). Sometimes you gotta pony up to get some stuff started and then once it's proven to be a relevant product it will get covered adequately (or at least to some extent) going forward without payment ... not sure.
This is the exact same theory that results in "Well, if we give all the tickets away, those people will enjoy it and they'll pay next time!" Except they don't. They get conditioned to get free tickets. The papering the house thing doesn't really work. And I don't know what the media landscape is like in this new soccer land in which we live, but back in the day, I was told outright the local sports talk radio guys would talk about us if we bought advertising, and I'm certain there is still some of that (as well as protecting the teams with which the media outlets have cozy relationships). But the idea that you can pay for coverage (essentially) and the benevolent media will then carry water for you without the quid pro quo....I can't see it. I can't see how the people who run media outlets would have changed that much over time. What you really have to do is prove you're relevant from the jump, like, oh, to take a couple of places completely at random, Seattle and Indianapolis. We couldn't get looked at twice (without the aforementioned media buy/bribes) when I was involved with an A-League team from 1997-2000. Now the Indianapolis media is all about Indy Eleven. Kudos to the folks there for making themselves viable from the jump (and they are playing in a much different environment than we were, when the idea of "supporters" hadn't taken hold). Which is what you actually do.
That's the track record for this ownership group and all their previous local sports holdings in this market. They buy, they get coverage, it gets expensive, the stop paying for it, it goes away and it all goes back into obscurity This market has 4 coverage points | OU and to a slightly lesser degree OSU Sports, OKC Thunder (Which splashed around the cash initially to build their brand) and the Dallas Cowboys & to a similar lesser degree as OSU | Kansas City Chiefs. Everyone else is scrambling for scraps. I have no experience on the local Kansas City sports media market, but since you feel adequately informed to comment on OKC, I figure, if I have some free time, I'll tell you how things really work up there.
No, I really don't. I'm just trying to understand ... you make a comment about Media Coverage suddenly happening and I try to fill in the blanks ... thanks for helping me out!
It's possible that's what is happening in OKC as well. I was just trying to respond to someone "suspecting it's bought and paid for".
Well, since the NewsOK sports page had a special background layer that was a clickable link to tickets, I feel pretty sure in that that was paid for. And I suspect that the KOCO editorial was as well since the guy that does them for the station pretty much only does them when someone has paid for a pimped message about fracking, energy or "teh gayz" not really needing civil rights.
When the anchors who used to collectively roll their eyes and only talked about soccer when there was a riot, all show up en masse to the stadium, decked out in gear and make painfully, woefully ignorant statements and talk about their long time love of soccer, you must color me suspicious. The other times they do that is when they show up to a horse show or rodeo or some other cross promoted event, with the same laughable results.
Something that has frustrated me is that most of the time when I see a story in the Daily Disappointment about the NRG, it is usually just a reprinting of a team press release. No questions. No investigating anything. makes me agree with @Mr_Warmth that these are just paid placements. Talk radio still won't touch soccer, not really. On one of the channels, STILL, if you call in and mention the word "soccer" the host will hang up on you. Also I noticed that the games were originally being broadcast on a country music station, then they disappeared. What happened there?
To be honest, a lot of teams get very little coverage in their local markets. Sporting has just recently (came around the time of the brand change) ... and have a local sports talk guy as their play by play guy helps, winning trophies has helped, and really, the rise of popularity in the sport has helped. It's slow but I'm wondering if EVERY market and EVERY minor league team conducts themselves very similar to the Energy group. If they don't ... there would be no coverage. I'm not sure it's the Energy's fault in the same way I don't think it's NASL's fault they likely had to pay some English news groups to put out a few stories on them recently. I'd guess the OKCFC group will need to resort to the same "tactics" to get coverage as well. The news (print and talk radio) talk about things that they know people care about ... if soccer is still "unknown" to them, then they won't talk about it. Sports Radio still only mainly talks about Soccer when callers bring it up, and now, more callers bring it up. There are some regular guests though from the team that do come on so it's getting talked about more and more. Having a couple players from SKC go to the World Cup didn't hurt anything either.
You know what really helps? Selling tickets. Landscape-wise, we have also progressed from "I HATE SOCCER IT'S ONLY FOR WOMEN AND PANSY EUROPEANS AND THE MLS IS GOING TO FOLD TOMORROW" to reluctant acceptance to (in some cases) cheerleading. Take the money you were going to spend buying the media's complicity (very sexy) and put it toward ticket sales people (decidedly NOT sexy) and infrastructure and you begin to build an entity that MATTERS. That's the endgame. To MATTER to people.
A lot of owners at all levels of US Soccer think it is almost as good to give away or discount tickets. As in, "If we get people to show up and they see how wonderful our product is they will come back and pay full price for a ticket."
I'm sorry. I guess I've never been put in a position to ask these owners directly and to hear that response come from their lips as you obviously have. I can see where one might assume some of those things, but that's one thing ... you obviously have heard it from them. The issue with those out there that assume this is that they likely don't know what was done before an ownership group got to the point where they thought giving away some tickets was the best solution. Heck, some of them may even know it's not the best solution but it's the only thing they're willing to pay for at the time (giving away vs paying for marketing/sales staff, etc). Just because some of the owners do give away tickets ... it's a pretty big leap to say "they think it's is almost as good to give away or discount tickets". I wish I had their millionaire problems though.
The owners allow their front offices to give away tickets and there are FO people and owners who have gone on record decrying the practice so I didn't have to personally have an owner tell me they did this.
There is nothing wrong with discount tickets. That is just basic supply and demand. You might make more money selling your tickets for $5 instead of $10. Even in major league sports if a team is having trouble selling tickets they lower their prices. Free tickets though, those are only good on a limited bases (i.e. donated to sick kids, or a contest). Maybe there is some benefit for doing it on a mass scale for a single game? Doing it on a regular bases, though, just devalues your brand.