It's no rumor, was reported by Dave Brousseau(reporter for the Sentinel, pretty much the only media guy covering the team) on the Ultras show this past Monday. What we don't know is how far along they are, how big of a sponsorship it would be and what it would entail. Brousseau said that upgrading Lockhart to some extent was in the cards, I imagine a shirt sponsor deal too. We'll see if it comes to fruition. Fingers crossed.
Hope so. Let Bacardi buy the team. Inject the team with some money. Improve the stadium. Advertise, advertise, advertise. Free rum shots for all! (21 and over of course *cough* *cough*)
We hope that this is one "rumor" that does happen. We've heard so many that have proven to be nothing this season that it is sad.
Of course I have no clue how big the sponsorship would be or what plans the team have, but this is how I would upgrade Lockhart: Phase 1: Demolish one of the sideline stands. Replace it with something similar to the enclosed section at the planned Scorpions stadium or the original Saputo: Since I'm just making stuff up, I would also have a stadium club built into the stands run by or through Bacardi. Given the climate, access to a club with AC for the middle two or four sections could be good for pricing power (as would all the enclosed seats in bad weather). Teams around the world do a lot of things with a stadium club year-round. Build, or leave room for, suites. Phase 2: Demolish the unused endline seats. Build a team fitness center about 20 yards from the pitch with some medical office space (this will be known as a "wellness center" when pitched to the city). In the near-term, put up tents on gameday. Beer garten, kid's area, party tent, etc... If the need ever arose to add capacity again, you could build a newer stand over this area. Make sure all the kids are out of the bouncy castle ofc. Alternatively, you could build a stage on this end and make the stadium an off-season concert venue. These two phases would bring modern stadium amenities to allow pricing power while reducing capacity for a more intimate, and hopefully louder, experience (I'd estimate the new NASL capacity around 13-14k). The other stands would stay up for more affordable sideline seats (groups, charities, etc...) and for the cheap endline seats. If MLS came calling, you could knock down the other sideline stand and put up a much larger one. FIU only took a a couple of months to do their last stand replacement.
Here is the show where the info first came out via Sun Sentinel's Dave Brousseau: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/soccersupportersradionetwork/2012/07/10/ultras-alive-56
I continue to maintain that the biggest thing keeping this franchise from really growing at this point is lack of marketing. If this team was actually marketed to the tri-county area consistently, we'd see a lot more people coming to Lockhart. Then the key is getting them to come back. If they are able to get a sponsorship deal with Bacardi, and it does result in a significant influx of operating capital, I think first has got to be stepping up the marketing. Doing some upgrades to the stadium is a more long term project. You can't do anything significant during the season anyway, except maybe replacing that scoreboard behind the east goal so that it actually has stats from the game displayable, and says Strikers instead og "home." Same kind of goes for the roster. 17 games into the season you can't really do a whole lot more with your roster, you need to hope some of your players step it up down the stretch so we at least make the playoffs, and hopefully even host a first round game. The top two is looking more and more unreachable at this point, and it's going to take a pretty solid stretch to hop over the Stars and Railhawks into 4th even. Having said all this, I think there is probably no immediate rush to get a deal done, at least not until the season is over. Anything major at this point is something not likely to go into effect until next year anyway, so it's probably just another situation of having heard something very interesting come out, but being forced to wait awhile until when/if it comes to fruition. Lockhart was nice and loud Saturday night. It had about the best atmosphere it's had all year so far along with the Tampa win. With some money in the club coffers, the opportunity would be there to do the kind of things that could enhance the gameday experience, and most importantly grow the fanbase. For the rest of this year though, you probably need to rely on PMI to improve the sales enough to keep us from falling too far below last season's average.
Long time reader of the forum, first time posting. How much sense does spending this money (if it comes in) really make considering that the stadium sits on land owned by the FAA. Last season they managed to get the lease extended but over time one would have to imagine that this would come up again. At that point would you want to have spent any major sponsorship money on leasehold improvements that you would have to walk away from? Also, does the lease afford the Strikers the ability to make such leasehold improvements? In terms of marketing the team, I think the key actually lays at the league level. The fringe sports fans in south Florida (the target in our case) will pay attention to things that feel like "an event", or a "popular product". In our case the product is Division II Professional Soccer. Not the Strikers per se. If the fringe sports fan were able to see that Division II pro soccer is something that other communities care about then I think they themselves may see that they have that same product in their own town and that person may be inclined to care themselves enough to support the Strikers. It is the same line of thinking that people subscribe to when they feel that only MLS will be able to draw a crowd.