Revolution lay off seven front office staffers

1) The Wizards merged non-soccer operations with the Chiefs back in 1997.

2) Reading the Herald article makes it sound like they're proud about the current situation (attendance being 4th, despite the team's record).

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Interesting moves, especially with MLS Cup coming up.

 

"Gulati said there is no plan to put the club up for sale, joking that there wasn't a long line of investors lining up to take over the team's operations."

Ha, ha.

I do agree, however, with the idea that it's better to do this now rather than midway through the offseason. You start selling season tix and group sales for NEXT season now and/or at the end of this season, so you might as well as have the sales staff in place who will be doing this.

At least I think this is how it could work.

 

i understand that the football marketers may have more experience or whatever. However, the soccer fan is a completely different beast then your run of the mill soccer fan.

 

huh?

 

A little scary when things like this happen, but really I think it has potential to be a good thing. There is a lot to be said for experience and I would assume that the Pat's people would have that experience. Also, maybe the Pat's people would have more drive to succeed because they have more potential for advancement? In other words, they want to do their jobs better so they can stick out?

 

Yeah, just look what it did for KC's attendance.

 

Gus Martins a couple of weeks ago really laid into Revs management about how the team is run and the direction in which it's heading.

Reading this latest article with that in mind, it looks like he's playing this right down the middle. On one hand this is what Gulatti's saying, on the other, here's what one or more of the workers is saying (not to mention more than a few BS posters).

Which is true? It's up for the reader to decide.

My take on this is if cutting costs was such an issue, why wouldn't they have done it awhile back? On the other hand, maybe opening CMGI required the extra staff.

 

Unfortunately, the cynical side is they won't care enough to build up the Revs, since the Pats are doing so well, or at least once a few mos. surpasses from the cutdown day.

 

Yep. A bunch of ticket sellers who only had to call a handful of folks on a waiting list every season. The Chiefs spent the 90s completely sold out with a season ticket waiting list. They were completely unprepared to actually sell tickets. It's taken time, and I think the current Chiefs/Wizards organization is doing fine, but it sure didn't start out that way.

 

Hasn't Wizards' attendance improved in the last few years? i.e., since the merger of the Wizards/Chiefs sales staff?

Just curious.

 

Yes. But the year it combined was a huge drop. Not, obviously, due entirely to the merger.

Like I said, I think things are doing fine now.

 

Besides, you can't assume that this is going to be exactly the same situation. Actually you could, but then you'd be a pessimist. I think the NE fans would agree that they've shown a fair amount of loyalty so far. Hopefully it'll continue and maybe even grow stronger? Who knows?

 

Maybe they're planning ahead, figuring that's seven less championship rings they'll have to pay for.

 

What are you alluding to here?

Blank minds want to know.

 

Oops.

What I meant to say is that marketing to soccer fans must be completely different then marketing to football fans. They care for different things. Why use people who specialize in marketing football games, and stuff like that.

 

Uhm. MLS Cup at Foxboro Stadium. A lot of empty seats, no sales staff in place.....

 

An MLS Cup at Foxboro Stadium would definitely be interesting.

 

Well, I got that part. I thought maybe something else was afoot - no dea what that would be though.

But how much actual selling of the MLS Cup is there?

As an event, it seems it would mostly sell itself - at least to out of towners. I'm on about every MLS mailing list there can be and I can't remember getting anything in the mail or a phone call asking me to take a little road trip.

 

using quote since commenting on only part of the post

That's the thing. I've felt that, with exceptions, the Revs office has just assumed that if there is soccer there, the hordes will line up for tickets left and right. Bascially, just roll the ball out on the pitch and everyone will come. Well, that isn't the case anymore. Nothing wrong with sending a little reminder/postcard advertising matches. While what the Revs sent me in the past is appreciated, I sent a change of add card twice, and correspondence from them was still going to my orginal addy. I digress.

 

I question your choice of emphasis here. KC's current average is 11.7k, and likely to go up. That's way above past seasons -- it'd be their record, and 25% increase over their best seasons under the old management -- more than enough to justify the temporary drop. I'd imagine if NE had the option of going down to 14k next year to get to 22k three years from now, it wouldn't be a real tough decision.

I'd have to say that, all in all, the merger seems to have gone rather swimmingly in attendance terms.

 

It's less of a question of merging staffs like a car dealer who sells Chevys merged with a Buick dealer and now will carry both kinds of cars. Seems that if you can sell one, you can sell the other.

This is more like a car dealer merging with a shop that sells bicycles. They are both methods of transportation, but you can't expect the car guys to know everything about bikes overnight.

Letting a number of people go who are passionate about soccer and genuinely want to see the game thrive in this country is bad enough. OK, a lot of good workers have lost their jobs in the last couple of years. Then you have a team whose entire marketing strategy for 2002 cosists of "If we build it, we hope you will come regardless of what you might see" and whose owner goes on radio to say that people should come to see the Revs if they want to see the stadium, which is "worth the price of admission alone." Oh yeah, and this owner wears a Pats hat at a Revs game and not only had no idea when the next home game was, he gave out an old web address, even though they run ads for the site (with the correct address) at least a couple of times every home game.

Now do you see why a lot of Rev fans don't think this is such a great thing?

Tom

 

The difference in soccer cred between Lamar Hunt and Bob Kraft seems real enough, but it's also a different issue.

Maybe not, but given a little time to undertsand the audience, a good salesman can sell anything (as long as there is an audience out there for it). I think it's safe to say that for most front-office positions, how good they are as salespeople is more important at this point than their background.