A last word on "Move the Crew"
2009-11-12 21:00:00
To all you self loathing Seattle fans waiting for my mea culpa after the Houston game? No, I don't want to deal with the loss either. Shit, did you see what I had to say to Creepy Jose Romero yesterday?Right now I'm not anxious to watch MLS games. I don't want to go the Home Depot and watch the Galaxy game. I don't want to watch the Chicago game live because that tears up my heart because I know we were able to beat all those teams and we're as good as those teams.
So if it's ok with all of you, I'd rather talk about other things.
You may remember my deconstruction of the MatchFitUSA post that (jokingly?) suggested moving the Crew. Well, of course Duane picked up on it (still frothing at the mouth from Columbus losing to RSL), and Davis revisited the issue a couple days ago. Davis:
Because, although I don't hold to the views set forth in my piece in reality, there is a kernel of truth there. It's hard not to be when the most successful side in the league over the last few years can't fill half of their stadium for a playoff match.
Two years. And Duane:
Although Match Fit USA does admit that there is an element of "tongue and cheek" in its argument, the premise - that MLS teams need to perform on and off the field to be considered a true success -- is solid. And, many of Match Fit's readers seem to agree.
...
C-Bus is a symptom of a larger problem. How can this league grow when it continues to fail to make inroads into markets like Columbus?
Before I begin here, I hope readers realize that when Duane later says, "Basically, there are no valid arguments to justify [the attendance]," he's showing you his whole hand. He despises Columbus so much that I'm not sure he could ever write objectively on the team. He didn't convince many people the Crew were bad for MLS on the basis of non-league attendance, so now he's going after midweek playoff attendance. He also plays fast and loose with the facts, claiming the Crew have no competition for the professional entertainment dollar in the summer, when in fact this year the Columbus Clippers AAA baseball team became an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians and moved into what some are calling the nicest ballpark to open this year.
So with that in mind, where are we at? Neither Duane nor Jason now think that the Crew should actually be moved, and neither claim to have ever suggested such a thing outright or in seriousness in the first place. I think an unbiased arbitrator would award a point to the Fake One based on that, but let's move on. What we're left with is an amorphous "problem" that Columbus's half full stadium either symbolizes or causes, and a lot of people are "concerned".
First of all, I don't think the Crew's attendance numbers do anything to diminish what the team has accomplished on the field. I don't buy into Duane's "true success" line of argument. When people talk about the 2008-2009 Crew, they'll talk about how good Schelotto was and how in 2008 that team rolled to the double and then ran out of gas at the end of 2009 even though it was clearly the best team in MLS. Nobody's going to say "Yeah, they were good, but they weren't *that* good because only 10,000 people came out to watch them in the cold, late playoff game on Thursday night." Well, maybe Duane will. But he'd be wrong.
Second, Davis points out that there are a lot of MLS fans resentful about Columbus having a winning team without selling out their stadium. For me this has no bearing on anything. There are MLS fans who want promotion and relegation. There are MLS fans who think Freddy Adu was the greatest DC United player to lace up cleats at RFK. And so on.
Third, while Duane doesn't want to hear this, Crew Notebook writer Steve Sirk ran the numbers on midweek playoff games and found an announced average attendance of 12,759 with a median of 11,224. He went on to say that only DC and LA have drawn midweek playoff crowds of 20,000 or more after their inaugural season. Sirk claims that 10,000 paid attendance in the overall context of things is not that bad. At some point in the future I'll take a harder look at announced vs. actual attendance and try to put the Crew in some kind of league-wide context, but that day is not today.
Fourth, in my last post on the topic I talked about how far the Crew have had to come to build back their fan base. Regarding Duane's criticism of the front office, I think it would have been very valid in 2002 or 2003 - not so much now. I don't think anyone would argue that Columbus's front office has totally found it's footing, but it has shown continued improvement in ticket sales and revenue in a challenging economic environment. And you can't ignore the current on-field product. So while I won't give the front office a total pass, I think it's more or less moving in the right direction.
Fifth, I'm not sure that because they won the MLS Cup the Crew should be held to a different standard than say, the Revs. In the last eight years, New England has qualified for the playoffs every season, made the MLS Cup Final 4 times, won the US Open Cup, won the Super Liga, and to quote a certain fictional professional sports team owner, don't draw dick. Or a team like the Fire that has missed the playoffs exactly once in its history and over the 2009 regular season averaged just over 240 more fans than the Crew did. If we're going to play this game, almost every team in the league has some sort of skeleton in their closet that can be brought out.
Sixth, Columbus's attendance doesn't seem to have stopped the wave of expansion, nor record crowds in Seattle. So I think it's foolish to argue that the Crew are holding back the growth of MLS. But that misses the point -what Duane's really saying is that teams like Columbus are preventing the salary cap from being raised. From a post on the New England playoff attendance a year ago:
Between packages and freebies there are a lot of semi-interested fans at a typical MLS game (in the US. No one in Toronto is getting into TFC games for free). It's a problem in a league that shares profits. And, it's especially frustrating for Toronto fans who are essentially propping up teams that are then beating them on the pitch (which is something Toronto sports fans are pretty much used to). Somehow, in soccer, it seems worse that the two most profitable teams can't spend the money they make to take advantage of their popularity than it does in other salary cap sports.
It's widely understood that MLS needs to raise its cap to attract a better middle class of players and until it does that it will suffer in the eyes of certain soccer fans.
. . .
MLS needs to find a way to reward teams that make money. That's a capitalistic viewpoint, but this is a capitalistic world and a capitalistic sport. Take the DP off the cap books and teams like Toronto, LA and Houston can benefit from the good work they do off the pitch.
We've been through this before, so I'm not going to revisit it here except to say that the league seems to have no current problem attracting new fans in new markets without widening the parity band or raising the salary cap to absurd levels. Furthermore, by virtue of being in their own stadium, I'm willing to bet that the Crew's game day revenues are comparable to or surpass those of other teams like New York (duh), DC United, or even Houston. So to say MLS is missing out on revenue that the league would get if some other team had made the playoffs is an incomplete analysis at best.
What I will concede is that the 10k figure all by its lonesome sure looks bad in relation to the other playoff games- and yeah, I'd love to see CCS sold out for that game. But given the context, I don't think MLS fans should overly concern themselves with the attendance at Crew Stadium. The team is young, the fan base is passionate and growing, it has an iconic stadium and a stable ownership group that has committed to the city. The idea that the Crew are holding back MLS or are a symbol of stagnation doesn't hold water at all.
As for the league itself, overall attendance in the playoffs this year has been great. 2010 is shaping up to be a great year. So let's put this whole topic to rest and enjoy what's about to transpire.
Fake Sigi out.
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