del Prado: ‘A very tough market’
Galaxy general manager Sergio del Prado, on the job since March 1, believes the offseason is a crucial time for marketing.
SOCCER AMERICA: What have you learned about your team and your market?
SERGIO DEL PRADO: There’s 2 million soccer fans in this marketplace. We’ve got to get them first, then we can worry about the general sports fan.
Two NFL teams have left this market. There’s one baseball team doing well, and another in Anaheim that’s struggling. The same is true for the two [men’s] basketball teams. It’s a very tough market.
SA: What sort of ideas or programs do you have in mind?
SDP: We’ve been going around to the other MLS teams to see what programs have worked. Not all of them will work here.
To advertise to both segments [Anglo and Hispanic] is expensive. I think we have to do a lot more grassroots. The team has to be part of the community on the Anglo side and on the Latino side.
SA: There doesn’t seem to be a large youth presence at most Galaxy games.
SDP: If you talk to our fan club and the [youth] leagues, we’ve been a lot more active than we’ve been in the past. How quickly that translates into sales, well, we have to be patient.
SA: Like many teams, the Galaxy receives decent coverage in the written press, but local TV lags far behind.
SDP: It’s pretty much nonexistent. The local TV stations came out for Fourth of July, but it’s not a regular thing.
When we’re not drawing [TV coverage], they say it’s because of your attendance. What’s frustrating is we have one game with 61,000 and three games over 28,000, and we’re still on page 3, 4, or 5. The WNBA team gets front-page coverage every game they play, and they draw 5,000.
We got a slow start this year. Really, nothing happened in the offseason as far as marketing and being out in the community. We’re not going to let that happen again.
by Soccer America senior editor Ridge Mahoney