i wont be able to make it to the pub tonight, but I'll be at the tailgate party tomorrow. See you guys there! and yes QB, its me! no longer exiled from Tampa. living here permanently now. woot! U.S.A.! U.S.A! U.S.A!!!!!!
Matthew - had a great time at the party at MacDinton's last night. A lot of money was raised for a good cause, got to see Rob Stone do a fantastic job on the auction -- his stock has gone way up in my book -- and even though Wynalda was not much of an auctioneer he did a HILARIOUS little Arena imitation. Waldo and Scott Garlick were both great sports. Leaving for the game right now, see you all there!
Warren: (and others who were there) Nice photo. That ball ended up costing me a bunch of money....all to a good cause. I have a 9pm hangover, but i'll try to give a full report in the morning. For now, however, it looks like that through soccer fan love, we raised about $6.5k for a family that could use a little help. The three highest bidded-upon items were the FFC/boca jersey signed by FFC teamates, the FFC/Dempsey jersey and the US signed jersey...and, of course..the ball... All went for about $700 each. Stoner was on fire at that auction. I should add that it did not hurt that his assistant, the lovely and talented Melissa was ...was ...welll.... lovely..and talented.
Tampa Tribune's Bill Ward has a real nice 12 minute report on Sam's Army at www.tbo.com/sports Click on the Video tab for the report. I think it will be up for only a couple of days. I guess the crowd was maybe 5:1 for the US.
Had a great time!! I'll post some pics/video and add some more thoughts from the game and Macdinton's both Saturday night and today when I get home sometime tomorrow night. Right now I still feel rough and I'm as red as a lobster!!! I though we had the sunscreen in the car but aparently left it in the hotel room. It was great of the guys at Macdinton's to host us and Matt it was good to meet you (and the others I met) that was a great event and all to a good cause. Rob Stone and Wynalda were great. I had a coversations with both and they were both in rare form, very laid back and approachable. I'll have to watch the game on Tivo so I can get an idea of how we played it's kind of difficult to keep up with the game from the Sam's Army Section.
What a great match! This was my first international cap in a while, been away at college here in florida so havnt been able to get to to many games...until the mnt decided to come to tampa. I drove up from school in sarasota with my friend who has never been to a big soccer match before, he was really surprised how fun it was. We where surrounded by loud usa fans, including myself of course, and it was just a great atmosphere. I really think it was a good advertisment for the type of crowd tampa and the surrounding area can turn out. was a great match to be at, cant wait to get to goto another soon.
The game was excellent and the atmosphere was great. I have to say that either ticketmaster or US soccer dropped the ball at the ticket lines. There were a ton of people who purchased tickets online and had to wait in the same lines as people buying tickets at the game. No will call window and they still had at least 6 or 7 windows closed. Someone should have known that the walk up is always big and a couple seperate windows for will call should have been open. I was not affected but I heard a lot of people asking for refunds when I went outside at halftime. The lines where still really long out front. But again the game was awsome and the atmosphere was awsome. Damn I wish the Mutiny was still here. Oh yeah I bumped into Scott Garlick (former mutiny goalie) picking up the tickets.
My Dad earned his first cap yesterday and was impressed by the crowd. It was great to see him stand up and give LD an ovation as he left the field. Props to everyone who was out there and good to see you Warren.
Here's some quick numbers on the Supporters' party and auction: Total raised was about $7,500 (raffle + $10 donation + misc donations + live auction) Auctioned items and what they went for: Dempsey US --- $255 Donovan Galx--- $180 Beasely US--- $200 Twellman--- $200 Winning bidder was Eric Wynalda Reyna--- $225 Olsen DC $200 Purchased by Mom Boswell!! Boswell DC $300 Bocaneg FFC $675 (signed by Boca and FFC players) Convey US $225 Dondovan US $400 US game tickets $45 US autogr/jersey $700 Demspey FFC $600 US signed ball $675 It was nice to finally meet some you guys. I had a blast.
I would think that neither ussoccer or ticketmaster are to blame for mismanagement at the staduim. Tampa Sports Authority is where you should vent... They have an online comment card: http://www.tampasportsauthority.com/tsa/commentcard.htm
I was in town from Minneapolis visiting a friend in Tampa so we bought tickets well in advance to go to the game. Ticketmaster called my friend a couple days before the game to say there was some problem mailing the tickets to him and so he agreed to pick them up at will-call, thinking (as I would have) that it wouldn't be a big deal. We got in the huge line at 11:30 AM or so. You could argue that we should have been there earlier, and in hindsight I'd agree....but this should have proved to be plenty of time. There are 24 ticket windows at the south end of Raymond James Stadium. Precisely 8 were in operation. None were dedicated solely to will-call ticket pickup. Things were devolving into chaos up near the front of the lines with all the people trying to cut ahead of others. Police were summoned to defuse a couple situations and escort belligerent line jumpers away. By noon, when we heard the national anthems starting, we were hundreds of people away from the ticket window. It seemed obvious we might well miss most of the first half. I would estimate at this point (kickoff just after noon) that there were still 2 to 3 thousand people in line. Probably half of whom had purchased tickets beforehand, and had printed confirmation pages from Ticketmaster in hand. While waiting, several people got on their phones. Some with Ticketmaster. Some with the USSF. Some with whoever it is that operates Raymond James. None took responsibility, and in fact each seemed to pass it on to one of the other two. Ticketmaster said they couldn't do anything, the event had already started. Raymond James folks said they couldn't do anything because Ticketmaster is responsible for staffing the ticket windows. We attempted showing our confirmation page--proving we had purchased tickets--which shows our exact seat location. No dice, we weren't allowed in. We hear the roars for the two first half goals. 1 PM comes and goes. We finally get close to the ticket window, just one couple ahead of us. The lady behind the window says "she'll be right back" and disappears for literally another 10 minutes. We finally gain entry to the stadium, make our way around to the north end to our seats, and get situated. At this point it's the 65th minute of the match (!!!!!!!). There were still a few hundred people in line at this point. We did see Donovan's two 2nd half goals just a few moments after getting to our seats, so that was good. But make no mistake, this was an utter debacle of the highest order. I understand how beholden the USSF is to ESPN, so I know it would be foolhardy to have expected that some clever folks with two-way radios could take stock of the situation outside, see that they had THOUSANDS of paying customers who weren't in the stadium yet, and delay kickoff by a half-hour. I know that isn't reasonable when TV calls the shots. But wow would it have helped (and, it seems to me, would not have been too very different from a rain delay in baseball). Someone did give us a sheet of paper that was a photocopy of the USSF's ticketing manager's business card so we could complain. I'll give her a couple days because I imagine her voice mail and email server at work have been engulfed in flame by now. Hopefully we can get some sort of refund from Ticketmaster or the USSF in time. I'm not particularly concerned who exactly cocked this up, but it's simply not possible that it's no one's fault. Someone has to carry the can for this. We are in good spirits about it all things considered. We saw some of the game (barely) and even a couple goals. But it's hard not to feel cheated after how it all played out.
Damn! I know it wasn't my fault, but here's an apology from one Tampa resident. So sorry you guys had ticket problems. That sucks.
Someone did give us a sheet of paper that was a photocopy of the USSF's ticketing manager's business card so we could complain. I'll give her a couple days because I imagine her voice mail and email server at work have been engulfed in flame by now. Hopefully we can get some sort of refund from Ticketmaster or the USSF in time. I'm not particularly concerned who exactly cocked this up, but it's simply not possible that it's no one's fault. Someone has to carry the can for this. We are in good spirits about it all things considered. We saw some of the game (barely) and even a couple goals. But it's hard not to feel cheated after how it all played out.[/QUOTE] Regardless of who was at fault, the folks at US Soccer need to hear about what happen in the same clear and concise fashion that you explained above. Someone made a serious miscalculation somewhere and it needs to be addressed. Sure, you can't ever accurately predict a walk-up crowd, but the day before the match, they knew they had sold 27k tickets and they knew how many tickets had been distributed. Those two numbers at least give you what you can expect as "will call" customers. Wonder what that number was?
I'll add my 2 cents. I got to the windows a full HOUR before kickoff. I had ordered my ticket the night before the game via ticketmaster and elected teh will call option. When I get there, there is no will call window, there are only a handful of windows open at all, and there are thousands upon thousands of people trying to get to those few windows. I immediately knew it was going to bad and that someone screwed the pooch big time. I waited an hour and 20 minutes to get my ticket, missed the first 20 minutes and first two goals not to mention the pregame pagentry. Hard earned money went down the drain and I'm pretty pissed off. My heart goes out to anyone who came in during the middle of the second half. A group of people came to sit next to me halfway in teh second half and said there were still hundreds outside waiting for their tickets. Wow, simply WOW! There is no excuse for that, 31k at that stadium should be no trouble at all to move in and out. The Glazers, Tampa sports authority, USSF, Ticketmaster, whoever all need to know they fvvcked alot of fans and when you are trying to build momentum for soccer in a community already screwed twice in this sport the events at the ticket windows do nothing for your cause. Pathetic, in one word. Lucky no real fights broke out or noone got seriously hurt. There were some very heated moments before I got my ticket and I can only imagine how much worse it got after I finally got in. Lucky there werent 40k plus at this one, lucky or something aweful could have happened. Great game, great atmosphere and hopefully in the end a great advertisement for the sport in this community. But for those fans ,and even future fans just trying the sport out, who got screwed it was a terrible experience. Can you please post that contact info here? I want to call and let 'em know one more long time supporter of our national team and tampa soccer enthusiast is pissed about the treatment and lack of planning we recieved. I'd ask you to PM it to me, but my box is full.
You made a good point that I meant to but forgot about in the course of getting carried away with everything else I posted. They only filled the lower bowl of the stadium and this happened. What on earth would we do if our national side could actually draw a big enough crowd to fill 60-70,000 seat stadiums? The mind boggles. In England when there is a problem with local transport they will delay kickoff by 15 minutes or whatever is needed to get fans into the ground so they don't miss anything. I really don't think something like that is out of line, no matter what the TV contracts say. Anyway, the woman's contact info that we were given is as follows: Teresa Oles Ticketing Manager tel: (312) 528-1249 fax: (312) 808-9295 email: toles@ussoccer.org
Well I hope you still complain and hopefully can get a refund, but the same thing happened to me a couple of years ago down at the Orange Bowl vs Argentina. The ticket staff was really understaffed and they didn't have a clue of what they were doing. Thankfully ticketbastard gave us a refund, because paying $6 to stand in a 1-1/2 hour line and miss most of the game is insane. This all leads me to believe that no matter what, the same thing is destined to happen in the future. I refuse to buy from Ticketmaster again, and I was lucky to get in line around 11:15. I made it in just in time for kickoff, and remember seeing hundreds still in line.
I'd like to thank US Soccer and especially Mike Squire for helping me get the drums etc. into the SA section. I held several conversations w/ Mr. Squire and warned him that Tampa is ALWAYS a big walkup crowd and the box office is ALWAYS caught off guard. (The first time it happened to me was in '96 at the first Mutiny vs. Galaxy game and I missed most of the first half because of the lines at the box office.) Mr. Squire said that they had talked to the Tampa Sports Authority and were assured that they would be ready for the walk up crowd. US Soccer is not at fault in any way at all. Today, Bill Ward's features on www.TBO.com have expanded from a 12 minute video to a 12 minute video, a picture slideshow w/ audio, a story about the game AND thumbnail pictures. Of course, the St. Petersburg Times gave the game less press but at least it was on the bottom of the first page of their sports section. Bill Ward and US Soccer benefit if you go there and run the video. so everyone should do a little click-flooding on their site in your spare time. Here's the link directly to the video: http://www.tbo.com/video/xml/MGBUUNJ8QZE.html Direct to the thumbnails: http://snap.tbo.com/pages/gallery.php?gallery=311552 Slide Show in Sam's Army: http://www.tbo.com/sports/special/usaecuador.htm Main Sports Page: http://www.tbo.com/sports - You'll have to look down towards the bottom in their "Multimedia" section. As far as Tampa Sports Authority goes, I'd again like to thank them. The Hillsborough CO. law enforcement team was very cordial and accomodating. How about a winter league in FL/TX/Arizona/SoCal???? Anyone want to give me enough $ to make that happen? Anyone?
I'm finally home!! I make my first appearance in the Tampa Tribune video at 1:02 I ended up with 183 pictures from Macdinton's and the game as well as 9 short videos. Quite a few of you guys make appearances. I'll try and get them hosted somewhere tonight. I'll post some of them here or start a new thread and post the link to all of them. I haven't watched all the video but I think I got some pretty good video of the drums after the game.