No Major League Soccer official expects sellouts for a long time, yet the league’s first few seasons are desperately dependent on healthy ticket sales.
During a workshop for MLS general managers in late August, John Spollster of SRO Ticketing, a Portland-based agency, presented his company’s philosophies and guidelines for selling tickets.
SRO’s successes include dramatic sales increases for NBA teams in Portland and New Jersey, and so enchanted was his audience the league brought him to Kansas City for a special two-day session Sept. 7-8.
Washington general manager Kevin Payne says the presentations changed his perceptions about selling tickets in his market, particularly in regards to season-ticket packages and the personnel required for direct sales.
But Payne came away with a different outlook on discounted youth tickets than did his counterparts in Kansas City and Denver, although he has priced his least expensive ticket lower. According to Payne, SRO discourages selling discounted tickets.
Within the blueprint of its business plan, MLS stipulates guidelines, parameters and marketing philosophies. But there is no set operational formula teams must adhere to, no cadence to which they must march in lockstep, although all ticket prices must be approved by the league.
Teams will play 16 home league games, and several internationals. Payne is including two internationals in his full season-ticket packages. Playoff games and possible U.S. Open Cup games will be sold separately.
“Different markets, different ticket plans, different prices,” Payne says. “This league has to sell tickets to a series of games, which is a lot different than selling an international game or a [U.S.] national team game.
“You have to put a value on the tickets, and one point that was driven home during the sessions was not to give away large blocks of tickets to corporations, or paint the house with free tickets. If you give them away for a charitable cause to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go, that’s different — but if you just give them away, people will think that’s what they’re worth.”
Prices have not been set, but Payne predicts the scale will be $10, $15, $18 and $22 for single-game tickets available to the public. “We think our prices are comparable with baseball, and certainly a lot cheaper than basketball, football and hockey,” he says. “We feel with these prices, people are going to be able to bring their kids anyway.”
The general managers in Denver and Kansas City are taking a different approach. Both believe that offering youth discounts is essential in their markets.
“With all due respect to the SRO people, who have a lot of great rules and great insights [for selling tickets], I believe our consumer fan base is different than that of other major sports,” says Denver GM Rich Levine. “Our fans play the sport, and our job is to reach out to them and their families. We must create ticket plans that are attractive to them, and that includes youth tickets and student tickets.”
Levine projects prices of $9 for the cheapest youth ticket up to $22 for the most expensive adult ticket. In Kansas City, general manager Tim Latta wants to scale his youth tickets at $7 and $8, with adult tickets selling for $12 and $13.
“We intend to skew our prices toward that end,” Latta says, ” and we’ve got to build a strong base of 10 solid franchises offering a quality, exciting product.”
Ticket sales are expected to supply more than one-half and possibly as much as two-thirds of a team’s annual revenues. Although most league executives would not disclose budgets on the record, several have stated privately that operator-investor teams are projecting annual expenditures of $5-6 million and staffs of approximately 15. League-run teams are budgeted at about $3.5 million per year.
The league has projected its average ticket price at approximately $12.50 with average attendances of between 10,000 and 12,500 the first season.
Changes in the Hunt empire
How the Columbus and Kansas City franchises will be run has changed due to the departure of Tim Connolly from the employ of Lamar Hunt. Connolly, a Chiefs employee since 1989 as executive vice president and chief operating officer since 1994, had been moved into a supervisory position with Hunt Sports Properties to oversee operations of the two Hunt MLS franchises.
But Connolly left the Hunts’ employ on Sept. 1 for a position with Ameritech, and also left a void in the soccer franchises’ organizational structure.
Latta says instead of reporting to Connolly, he’ll now report directly to Lamar Hunt — which suits him fine, since he turned down offers from several MLS groups to work in Kansas City.
“Everyone I talked to said to work for Lamar Hunt would be an honor and a privilege,” says Latta, who spent nearly a decade with the San Diego Sockers of the MISL and CISL before taking the Kansas City job. “I couldn’t pass that up.”
Since starting the job two months ago, Latta has laid the foundation for the team’s operations by finding office space and interviewing prospective employees. One of his primary tasks is pursuing the 4,100 season-ticket pledges the franchise received while MLS pondered which cities it would choose for the inaugural season.
“That was a year and a half ago,” he says, “and expecting we’ll fulfill all of them isn’t realistic. But I think if we can get between 3,400 and 3,800 of them we’ll be doing very well.
“I’ve received three calls from major corporations here in Kansas City, out of the blue, asking how they can support the soccer team,” says Latta. “That’s unbelievable. We haven’t even begun to hit the corporate community yet, and it’s not like my face is on a lot of billboards promoting the team.”
Decisions due in Dallas
General managers have been hired in all MLS cities except Dallas and Boston, and the Dallas GM will be named Sept. 19.
MLS senior vice president Harley Frankel is the MLS executive in charge of the league-run teams, and he acknowledges selling soccer in Dallas will be difficult, despite the presence of the powerful North Texas State Association, which has approximately 105,000 registered youth players and about 12,000 adult players.
“It’s Cowboy country, no doubt about it,” he says. “We need somebody who can develop good contacts in the soccer community, someone who knows Dallas, because you can get things done if you know the ins and outs and the right people. Someone who is a leader and can run a good office, and has business sense.”
MLS has been interviewing candidates for other staff positions in Dallas, and is delaying final decisions until a prospective ownership group makes its decision sometime this month.
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney