"We all believe it is in the everyone's best interests to allow additional time off for our players who are training for the Athens Summer Olympics," said Tony DiCicco, chairman of the WUSA Reorganization Committee. "A successful performance by WUSA athletes in Greece will have a significant impact on our efforts to re-launch the WUSA." http://newsobserver.com/sports/story/3516874p-3120286c.html
Translation from TD's PR mumbo jumbo: SAS no longer wants to put up the money to run the junket at Cary.
SAS never offered to pay. SAS was, and is, willing to own the Courage and cover the local team losses. Neither of the two sites under consideration for the third date were willing to actually pay for the festivals, and the league was unable to locate sponsorship dollars to cover the expenses. To be fair to SAS Stadium, they (CASL) learned their lesson by guaranteeing certain payouts for the 2002 Nike Cup. In fact, there are rumors that CASL is going to try to get out of the SAS Soccer Park management business and turn it back over to the owners (Wake County's recreation department). It's still not a pretty picture.
Practically anything Tony D says is spin. "DiCicco-speak" existed well before the WUSA existed. An interview with Tony is a recipe for dullness. Tony, bless his pea-pickin' little heart, can talk more and say less than just about anybody. The shocking thing is when Tony says anything quotable, which happened once that I know of, with his famous 'survival mode' quote prior to last season. Any way you look at it, it's not a pretty picture.
So are both of the festivals being sponsored by different companies? Ie...the Blaine, MN festival is sponsored by companies A, B, and C while the Home Depot festival is sponsored by companies X, Y and Z? I always thought, perhaps wrongly, that the festivals would be packaged together for potential sponsors.
That I don't know. As far as I know both Blaine and the HDC folks put together packages, covering expenses. The WUSA isn't awash in cash.
What sponsors? WUSA LLC still owed make-good ads to both Hyundai and Johnson & Johnson when it shut down operations in September 2003 for missing its TV ratings projections in 2001. That's what happens when you missed your projected TV ratings by 80%.
From today's Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY): http://www.rochesterdandc.com/sports/columns/0424N141F8S_sports.shtml