By Ridge Mahoney
Senior Editor, Soccer America Magazine
A 145-acre soccer park 30 miles north of Dallas is the setting for MLS's newest stadium and another sign of American soccer's progress.
The ball traced a precise parabola through the warm Texas night, looped over the forlorn figure of the hopelessly beaten goalkeeper as he gazed upward in despair, kissed the inside of the post, and plunged into the white squares of the goal net.
It was a goal fit for a final, but in this case it signaled a historic milestone for American soccer as it fights for a foothold where the country's own version of football is king.
So mottled is the history of soccer in Dallas, though, that not at all surprising was the fact that a Frenchman, not an American, scored the beautiful goal against, not for, the home team.
Youri Djorkaeff's lovely lob helped the MetroStars spoil – somewhat – the inaugural game at Pizza Hut Park Aug. 6 by tying FC Dallas, 2-2. Carlos Ruiz, a Guatemalan, had scored two nifty goals of his own to provide a 2-0 lead but the aesthetics of a new stadium and 17 surrounding fields set among vast green spaces and hundreds of trees couldn't stem a bothersome FC Dallas propensity for squandering leads and conceding goals.
To their credit, amid the marveling at a superb new home in which to play, the players preferred references to the practical.
''We're not getting the job done, even if it's the new field or the old field,'' said feisty Irishman Ronnie O'Brien, who assisted on both Ruiz goals and is brimming with enough zeal and zip to perhaps win league MVP honors. ''We have to get down and start over.''
Commissioner Don Garber is fond of preaching, justly, that the opening of entertainment facilities with soccer stadiums as their centerpieces addresses many of the league's business concerns but is certainly not a ''magic bullet'' that will guarantee prosperity.
Such is also true for teams that have their own facilities: Columbus Crew Stadium opened in 1999 and Home Depot Center was inaugurated in 2003, but the Crew and Galaxy haven't reached a final since moving into their own digs nor have they played in a final as hosts.
So spoke a former Galaxy defender in 2003: ''We'll be fine as long as we keep in mind that the stadium doesn't play the games.'' Alexi Lalas threw a party to commemorate the HDC opener on June 7, 2003, but the former musician knows well that a fancy ballroom does not a star make.
Since then, the Galaxy has compiled a great home record and developed a phobia about winning on the road.
FC Dallas got it wrong the following week as well, dropping a 2-1 decision to New England in what some observers speculated could be a dry run for MLS Cup, to be played Nov. 13 at Pizza Hut Park. By then, there will be enough restrooms and concession stands and parking lots to accommodate a sellout crowd, the lack of which had Lamar Hunt both fretful and frantic as zero hour approached.
''It almost breaks your heart because you can only have one opening game but it will be spectacular anyway,'' said Hunt as dozens of workmen scrambled to finish those structures that would be needed for the opener, with the main ticket windows drawing high priority. ''And frankly, one of the things we're wrestling with is what do we do with people who come without tickets on game day.''
The opener was declared a sellout when ticket sales reached 15,000 yet a few more were squeezed in. Still, construction delays forced team officials to limit attendance to an announced crowd of 16,750 for the opener instead of the 21,193 the stadium is designed to hold for soccer.
WHAT NASL DIDN'T HAVE. Hunt, the driving force behind Columbus Crew Stadium and Pizza Hut Park, didn't need much prompting to reflect on the days of the Dallas Tornado, the North American Soccer League team he bankrolled – along with a few others, behind the scenes – from 1969 to 1981. Like many NASL teams, the Tornado lived a nomadic life for much of its existence.
''I don't remember anybody talking about building their own stadiums,'' said Hunt of his fellow NASL owners. ''The Dallas Tornado did play at Ownby Stadium on the SMU campus and that was a number of years into the league. We'd struggled. We'd played at a minor league baseball stadium, we played in a high school stadium, we played at Texas Stadium and the Cotton Bowl, and ultimately we settled at Ownby and made an investment of about a million dollars in improvement. SMU wasn't playing football then.
''That's the closest anybody came to it that I can remember. Nobody thought of anything as venturesome as Home Depot Center or what's now Pizza Hut Park or Crew Stadium. I don't know if it just didn't dawn on people or it was too much of a financial bite to chew off. Probably the latter.'' Hunt Sports Group will pay approximately $25 million, including overruns, by the time work is completed on the facility. The soccer stadium will also be used to stage high school football games, so FC Dallas and MLS haven't been able to completely escape the other brand of football.
Yet without the cooperation of the Frisco Independent School District, whose sports teams will use the facility, Pizza Hut Park might never have happened. Frisco, a small city of 77,000 people, emerged as a possible venue in the aftermath of a reversal by the city council of nearby McKinney, which voted 7-0 in February 2002 to overturn its initial vote of support for a stadium project.
''We were stunned, absolutely stunned,'' Hunt says of a flip-flop spurred by political forces. ''I've been around politics and governments and city councils a long time and I didn't think anything could surprise me ever again, but that just came from, well, I don't know where it came from.
''It [Frisco] didn't happen overnight. We were encouraged by a meeting at which the city manager of Frisco was in attendance, George Purefoy. Before the meeting was over, he passed me a note – he was sitting two seats away – that said he thought he had some real potential and we should try to meet privately. We did and had a further conversation and he was really instrumental in getting the thing rolling.
''He knew things that we didn't know, like the fact that the Frisco ISD was about to build an $18 million football stadium. So fairly easily this project morphed from that and they put that money into the stadium in a different form and they have the right to play there.''
DOLLARS & SENSE. Collin County and the city of Frisco each contributed $20 million and the school district $15 million to the total cost of about $80 million. Hunt Sports Group will pay Frisco annual rent of $100,000 and will also pay for all maintenance, which is estimated to cost $500,000 annually.
On the plus side, just for the 18 luxury boxes – eight more will be built in the future – revenues will be $630,000 (18 times $35,000) per year. Parking will generate between $20,000 and $30,000 per game.
''Obviously there are a lot of cost obligations involved,'' says Hunt. ''Taking care of 18 soccer fields instead of one is a big bite to chew off but it gives us the opportunity to sell a naming-rights sponsorship and we're very fortunate Pizza Hut has stepped up there for a long-term commitment. It enables us to have our signature sponsorships, seven or eight on board, Dr. Pepper, Chevrolet and Bayer Health Care, and so forth.'' Pizza Hut signed on to the tune of $1.25 million per year for 20 years to put its name on the complex, which marks the first time a quick-service restaurant has invested in a sports facility to such an extent. HSG has also worked a deal with AEG Live to stage concerts, for which a permanent stage has been built at one end of the stadium.
''They can generate revenue from permanent signage, parking, concessions, naming rights, marketing programs, promotions, facility rental,'' says Randy Bernstein, the president and CEO of Premier Partnerships, a Southern California agency that represents the facility. Bernstein was formerly MLS chief marketing officer and senior vice president of corporate marketing for the 1994 World Cup Organizing Committee.
''That financial plan that once was upside down, will be right-side up. Facility revenue in other sports is the reason why the value of franchises has increased, why athletes make so much money, and why professional sports is such big business.''
UNIQUE SYNERGY. Along with the unique melding of city and county government, school district, professional sports team and local youth soccer organizations, the business aspects have proponents citing it as the way of the future.
''I don't have an answer as to why people don't do it, because I look at what we've done here and I don't know why you'd do it any other way,'' says John Sutter, president of the North Texas State Soccer Association. The prestigious Dallas Cup tournament will be played at Pizza Hut Park starting next year and thousands of games will be played at the complex annually.
''We just had that perfect storm of Frisco and the ISD and Collin County and Hunt Sports Group. They took it as their own and ran with it and took it to a height I never could have imagined.
''When you have that synergy that pulls the sport together, when you have the foundations that we have of the grassroots and up to the semipros and the pros, that gives it a strength that very few other sports have.''
(This article originally appeared in the August 22, 2005 issue of Soccer America Magazine.)