And sports... apparently the guy who tweeted the response is a baseball writer.
@alexilalas22 Alexi Lalas
Hey @JerseyJBradley, if my @Pirates somehow won the 2011 World Series, what would the equivalent be in soccer
Toronto FC the joke of the league...
And sports... apparently the guy who tweeted the response is a baseball writer.
@alexilalas22 Alexi Lalas
Hey @JerseyJBradley, if my @Pirates somehow won the 2011 World Series, what would the equivalent be in soccer
I know, if we were to get any worse i think @alexilalas22 would have to manage the team
Didn't TFC basically save this league?
By making American fans feel good by winning easy games...???Originally Posted by habstfc
"...Money wasn't tight, but it like, it wasn't right..."
By providing plenty of marketing material of goals being scored in a full stadium.
I tweeted after the Philly game:
TFC, helping teams solve their scoring droughts since 2007.
I stand by that tweet. LOL!
By showing how to lose a fan base in record time?
A day or so ago there was a discussion on whether TFC was the worst MLS team ever. I think you could make a pretty compelling argument that they are.
I think you really do need to go to other sports to relate to the kind of ineptitude TFC has delivered over its 5 year existence.
What other teams have a financial advantage over their league counterparts but are perennially shit? The Mets in baseball?
the Maple Leafs
the cubs, the clippers, redskins, cowboys (in recent history anyways), jets (until recently anyways), dodgers, knicks. off the top of my head that's all I got. Could just be harder then we think now that I'm thinking about it. In North America there's very few teams that have a serious financial edge over teams and are consistently good. That list off the top of my head are the Red Sox, Yankees and Lakers. that's all I got.
I hope you are being sarcastic with that? The building of the first SSS in Columbus was what saved the league because it pointed the way to profitability at a time when the three billionaires signing all the cheques were rumoured to be getting cold feet. Toronto was number six in that regard and followed an already well established model. Some people like to believe that TFC introduced a more traditional fan culture to MLS for the first time, but DC United were doing that as far back as 1996 so that's a case of marketing hype as much as anything else. If the Toronto experience did anything it was to finally convince people south of the border that having their own version of the Barra Brava and Screaming Eagles is a positive thing and that the youth soccer minivan crowd isn't the be all and end all of soccer marketing. Arguably another lesson was that a more central stadium location was better than being way out in suburbia like FC Dallas but I think that was in line with common sense.
Last edited by CSO_BBTB; 06-08-2011 at 11:31 PM.
ya TFC have show MLS how to create a great fan support base with great atmosphere.....and then also shown MLS how to destroy it all in just 4 years!!
all tho many these teams havent won any recent trophies i think in the passed 5 years some of them have had at least half decent seasons. Maybe only leafs (of course no suprise another toronto team) and the Knicks can match as bad as TFC with not even making the playoffs.
On side note, Arizona Cardinals once went 20 years without making the playoffs....TFC please dont be as bad as that
I was actually thinking of the fact that this league was going nowhere fast. When TFC joined the league if I remember correctly the league was in serious financial trouble and it seemed that almost yearly a team would fold. The support this team received from it's fan base rejuvenated MLS and it showed fans in america that the authentic soccer experience could be replicated in MLS. It took a canadian team to do it. I submit that without the toronto success there would be no philly or portland or seattle or vancouver etc. In my opinion this league would ahve been done without TFC overwhelming success. (financially anyways)
That may have been your impression but it doesn't match reality. The move out of large NFL and college football stadia was already well underway by the time TFC joined and the scope for profitability in a mid-sized soccer specific stadium by doing so had already been successfully demonstrated in Los Angeles as far back as 2003. Teams also were not folding on a yearly basis. I think you are maybe confusing what happened at the D2 level the Lynx were playing at with what was going on at the MLS level? The single entity ownership of MLS was deliberately designed to prevent a repeat of the NASL scenario of the late 70s and early 80s when teams were often here today and gone tomorrow. With the exception of the one-off two team contraction in 2001 that has helped to make MLS every bit as stable as the four mainstream major leagues in terms of franchises staying in business and remaining in their original location.
Last edited by CSO_BBTB; 06-09-2011 at 12:40 AM.
how many teams post 2007 model themselves after DC United or Shitlombus
ZERO
nuff said
I responded to the question of whether TFC saved the league so that's a non-sequitur. Most of the heavy lifting on turning things around was done elsewhere prior to 2007. Richard Peddie and MLSE deserve praise for being slightly ahead of the curve in seeing the opportunity that had been created (compare and contract with the posture adopted by Greg Kerfoot and the Saputos) but didn't do anything that was hugely pivotal to the league's survival. As for who represents the model on how to do things now do you really think it's TFC? I strongly suspect it tends to be the Sounders.
DCU is getting fucked by not having a stadium,but in a 20,000 seater like ours Barra Brava and co would rock it and Tom Soehn coaching them for two seasons didnt help. Thankfully hes now with the Shitecrabs.
With the amount of missteps TFC has made I don't think they can be credited for the success of anything. Fan hype and fanbase growth was done at the grassroots level on various fan message boards. Supporters groups already existed or grew organically; again at the grassroots level. Anyone remember the days we used to ask where all the TFC marketing was?
Portland & Seattle already had a great fan base. Philly already had a strong core calling for a team. TFC get ZERO credit for that. Same can be said for the core fans throughout the league.
MLSE/TFC get credit for cutting the check to buy a team. They also get credit for cutting a check for a new training facility. So, they are good at cutting checks. Not sure if there is much else we can be celebrating ... yet.
The thing that I think is conveniently forgotten by some is the effect of David Beckham's move to the Galaxy being announced midway through the season ticket sales drive. Things were going better than most expected prior to that but the Beckham hype provided the surge of publicity and interest that made sellouts very much the norm in year one. The heavy lifting was being done elsewhere in other words but Richard Peddie had the foresight to see a huge opportunity where most saw only probable instant failure.
TFC did do something great for the league, which was help MLS to ratchet up expansion fees bigtime, from $10 million, to $35-40 million. Those great early days seemed to be confirmation of the idea that MLS was ready to takeoff, that it was about more than Beckham.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Could just as easily have happened somewhere like Vancouver or Seattle.
^ but when ? And to the same degree ? I'm inclined to agree that TFC may not have necessarily 'saved' the league, but it did a lot to accelerate it's growth as well as the evolution of fan culture.
Seattle for one picked up on that. They saw Toronto (or rather, Drew Carey et al did) and thought 'I'll have some of that, but like this'.
If it was done the other way around, would people like Carey get involved in Seattle, or would the existing Sounders A-League team just move into MLS with minimum fanfare into a middling league ?
a ha ha heh he hoo.. ha
Agreed.
TFC showed the league how to market to real football fans. That was a genuine business achievement, and swung MLS away from catering only to families (those of us who followed the league before 2007 know this to be true). Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are the beneficiaries of their playbook. It won Paul B. (a former Raptors guy) a league award. Marketing is ML$E's forte. Anyone with a die-hard Leafs fan as a neighbour or co-worker will know that this is true.
Running winning teams in any league in any sport is quite another story altogether. It tends to undermine any marketing strength that they exhibit. Even the Leafs are suffering from non-renewals because of their long playoff drought.
As far as TFC's team goes... it's an easy 1 or 3 points for any opponent. It's like RSL for their first 4 seasons. TFC's sucking is now 5 seasons and counting...
Last edited by Oldtimer; 06-09-2011 at 07:56 AM.
*plugs ears*As far as TFC's team goes... it's an easy 1 or 3 points for any opponent.
[mantra]rebuilding year, rebuilding year, rebuilding year [/mantra]
not only that but if there is a way to fuck something up, or set a league record that is an embarrassment to this team...TFC will find a way.
I don't think TFC FO deserves any credit as great marketers. In terms of TFC's initial buzz they were lucky, not smart.
The soccer market came to them, they didn't find it.
There are so many things that fell into MLSE's lap that you can not give them credit for.
-The CSA/3 different levels of government gifted MLSE an essentially free stadium, with out that TFC doesn't even get off the ground.
-For the initial season ticket drive there was very little marketing, it was the grass roots soccer base that drove the numbers to about 7000.
-The Beckham announcement pushed the season tickets to 14,000 and helped create a little buzz for the team.
-The first few home games, culminating in the Dichio goal gave this team a buzz as a great place to go.
This club has lived off those initial few weeks of the 2007 season for nearly 5 years now.
But whenever they have had to do real work and market this team it has not been successful at all.
I don't give them any credit for marketing.
The only thing I give them credit for is ruining something special that was handed to them on silver platter.
Last edited by menefreghista; 06-09-2011 at 08:00 AM.
RSL still hold the all-time goal-less streak record crossing 2 seasons. Maybe TFC could try to break that record. They'll have to keep their poor form well into next year and make their poor form even poorer in order to do that.
I suspect that you didn't follow the Lynx.
Bruno Hartrell himself said that TFC would be lucky to get 3,000 in the stadium, even playing in MLS.
ML$E knew how to mobilize the grass-roots soccer base, something that the CSA hasn't managed with the CMNT. It wasn't "automatic."
The current groupthink is that ML$E can't do anything right in any area. That's kind of revisionist thinking that comes from disillusionment with the team. All you have to look at is this very board 3 years ago and you will get a very different idea. They mismanaged the team, but their marketing was the best in the league. Only LA knew how to hype a poor team better.
Last edited by Oldtimer; 06-09-2011 at 08:08 AM.
Take a look at this thread to see an example of how poor other teams' marketing was:
http://www.redpatchboys.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=311
or... how about this thread?
http://www.redpatchboys.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=207
How about the naming of the earlier MLS teams?
http://www.redpatchboys.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=1161
...and going back to playing quality, here's an interesting thread on how LA was an "embarrasment to the league"
http://www.redpatchboys.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=1309
Last edited by Oldtimer; 06-09-2011 at 08:20 AM.
Expansion fees are one thing and the revenue share on operating income was another.
Forbes had only 3 teams posting a profit in 2007-08. TFC was 2nd, behind the Galaxy.
All of this financial success was predicated on 2007-08 price levels. Greed has destroyed what was once a very positive thing.
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