The Official 2026 San Jose Earthquakes related Blogs/Press thread

Never did find anything to do with that shovel - I think it's in a closet with my guitar cases.

 

And what exactly counts as “juggling”. I mean if I was there it would be more like trying to juggle.

 

Ted Ramey The Soccer hour 44 minute audio
https://www.thesportsleader.com/soccerhour/

 

Anyone going to this?

 

Yes

 

He is best friends with Bruce Arena.

 

I think Bradley and Bruce Arena are best friends.

 

How the Bay Area Helped Shape US Soccer Ahead of the 2026 World Cup
A new KQED and Arizona State University project examines the people, teams and institutions that made the Bay Area a center of soccer culture and innovation.

https://www.kqed.org/news/12087770/...-shape-u-s-soccer-ahead-of-the-2026-world-cup

 

Complete garbage.

 

Wasn’t sure where to post this—-

Tutul Rahman posted this on Bluesky:

Fwiw, my second year at the Quakes, we were up 30% with in-stadium attendance, which was only second to Miami after they signed Messi.

Driven through mostly new fans to first games initiatives, A LOT of which was outreach to often overlooked audiences, specifically Latinos in the East Bay.
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What year of his tenure could he be talking about, that had 30% increase in in-stadium attendance? Did he join the Quakes in 2021? So that stat would be an increase over Covid attendance? Was he here for the Almeyda bump? Didn’t he leave before Bruce or the Messi game? I just feel like this stat is specious…

 

I believe his second year was 2023

 

2023 was the 1st year we had the game against LAFC at Levi's and the attendance was around 50k. That would account for ~20% increase in attendance right there. There's always an angle. No one's really cracked the code on Quakes attendance in terms of just pure organic fans in the stands attendance. There are ebbs and flows but no major epiphanies.

 

oh that makes sense, attendance up because of LAFC.
Hard to believe the Mika Stahre year was 2018. The suffering seems a lot more recent than that.
Almeyda was beginning of 2019 season to Apr-2022. So we started pulling more Latinos into the stadium during that period.

 

That’s part of it, or maybe most of it. But I don’t think Tutul is being totally disingenuous there. I’m sure there were other successful marketing efforts.

 

Playing popular games at larger stadia to accommodate extra demand doesn’t discount the existence of the extra demand.

There are lots of local Quakes fans who don’t have the money or bandwidth to attend every game. Getting them to one or two per year is where the margins are.

Lots of sports entertainment options in the Bay Area, and absent a perennial winner, an annual Levi’s game against hated LA seems like good marketing to me. (And I say that as someone who hates Levi's and gave away my tickets this year and last.)

 

Agreed, the big event games are valid ways to get people to games, and they do result in some season ticket sales. But Tutul's comment implies that the 30% jump for the Quakes was due mainly to outreach to often overlooked audiences, specifically Latinos in the East Bay. To be fair, that could be outreach to east bay Latino fans that resulted in Levi's game attendance. But if he wanted to list the biggest driver of the attendance increase that year, I think the Levi's game would be it.