So Let’s Talk About Phoenix FC For A Minute
This recent article in the Arizona Republic quotes the owner of Phoenix’s new USL Pro team as saying the combined number of people who had put down money for season ticket deposits and those who had purchased season tickets is “a little over 740.” That wouldn’t be a bad start, considering it’s a first year team in a third-division league and they only announced three months ago where they would be playing, but if your stated goal is to “sell out every time,” it leaves you with some work to do.
So I went on their ticket partner’s website this morning to see exactly how many seats were available for purchase. The results are after the jump.
Sun Devil Soccer Stadium seats just over a thousand people, they say, but Phoenix FC planned to supplement the existing seating with stands from the recently-completed Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament played just up the 101 in Scottsdale. (As far as I know, a month after the tournament, the process of installing those seats has yet to begin, though it was supposed to soon.)
The website you use to purchase season tickets shows which seats are available for purchase and which ones have (apparently) already been purchased for each section (existing and new) in the stadium. You can see what Section E looked like this morning here:
The greyed-out seats are apparently the ones that have already been purchased. The yellow seats were the ones the site wanted to sell me.
I went through each section of the stadium, counted the total number of seats and purchased seats and came up with this chart:
| Section | Seats | Sold | Pct. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 81 | 1 | 1.23% | |
| 94 | 3 | 3.19% | |
| 85 | 1 | 1.18% | |
| 94 | 26 | 27.66% | |
| 94 | 39 | 41.49% | |
| 129 | 55 | 42.64% | |
| 94 | 21 | 22.34% | |
| 94 | 19 | 20.21% | |
| *85 | ??? | N/A | |
| 92 | 16 | 17.39% | |
| 94 | 18 | 19.15% | |
| 156 | 2 | 1.28% | |
| 309 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| 294 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| 342 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| 309 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| 153 | 10 | 6.54% | |
| 84 | 10 | 11.90% | |
| 165 | 9 | 5.45% | |
| 165 | 4 | 2.42% | |
| 81 | 2 | 2.47% | |
| 84 | 6 | 7.14% | |
| 192 | 28 | 14.58% | |
| 81 | 9 | 11.11% | |
| 84 | 9 | 10.71% | |
| 192 | 2 | 1.04% | |
| 165 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| 81 | 0 | 0.00% | |
| ??? | ??? | N/A | |
| 3888 | 290 | 7.46% | |
| *=Estimate | |||
| ???=Unknown | |||
| 951 | 199 | 20.93% | |
| 1374 | 79 | 5.75% | |
| 1563 | 12 | 0.77% | |
Now, there are a few notes here:
- Enlarged stadium capacity is supposedly around 5,000, but the number of seats on the North, East and West sides totals 3,973. Section 301, the Supporters Section, is obviously not sold out, but the actual number of tickets available in that section is unknown because it’s (apparently) a bleacher section without individual seats. Still, it’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that the additional 1,027 or so capacity could come from that section. We just don’t know how many tickets have been sold there.
- Section J is greyed out, and I don’t know if that means the section is entirely sold out or if they’re using those for internal use or sponsors or what. If it’s analogous to Section C (its mirror section, slightly south of it), there are about 85 seats there.
- Not surprisingly, Sections D, E, F, G and H, on the existing grandstand, have the highest percentage of tickets sold, with E and F especially desirable because of their position at midfield.
In any case, they haven’t yet sold a large percentage of ticket capacity, and the bulk of what they have sold has been on the existing West side. They’ve sold almost no tickets in the North side (which doesn’t actually exist yet), apparently and only marginally more on the East side (whose patrons will be looking into the setting sun most games).
Now, IF Section J is out of play entirely, they’ve sold 290 season tickets as of this morning PLUS whatever has been purchased in the Supporters Section. If Section J is sold out, they’ve sold about 375 season tickets plus the Supporters Section. Have they sold 400-500 Supporters Section tickets? I have no idea. You’d think those folks would be the first to plunk down money for tickets, but I’ve been told some of them felt misled as to what their price point would be.
A rough estimate of the ticket revenue based on each section’s prices and the number of tickets sold is $68,480. If they’ve sold 500 Section 301 tickets at $179 (which would seem like a lot), that would be another $89,500. Let’s say, based on the percentage of the rest of the stadium’s seats sold and adjusting upward for the commitment of supporters, that they’ve sold 200 Supporters Section tickets. That would add another $35,800 to the $68,480 estimate for a total of about $104,000.
Supposedly bringing in the stands from the golf tournament and upgrading Sun Devil Soccer Stadium was going to cost about $600,000, so you can see the need to get some more revenue in the door just to pay off the enhancements.
In any case, their first home game is three weeks from tomorrow, they don’t have all the seats in yet and they’re charging ticket prices that are higher than virtually any other team in USL Pro (with $26 ticket service fees and $35 “facility fees” – tacked on by ASU, which is not one to leave money on the table – added to each order).
If people are taking a “wait and see” approach, that wouldn’t be the first time, especially in this economy and in a market that hasn’t had anyone attempt pro outdoor soccer in a while. But time is ticking.
March 7th, 2013 at 10:21 am
Kenn, I’ve watched indoor and outdoor teams come and go in Phoenix along with the dreaded “semi-pro” teams. I firmly believe until someone digs in and accepts losing 500K a year (whether indoor or outdoor) for 3-5 years this market will never accept a “Pro” soccer team. Unfortunately, we get flash in the pan teams (Storm, Monsoon, Real Phoenix, etc) that absolutely ruin soccer fans by over promising and under delivering. “Owners” that cannot afford the losses. And a bunch of SUASL and Indoor A/B league players running around thinking they are professionals.
March 7th, 2013 at 10:34 am
I can’t disagree with you there, sir. I think too many teams – indoor, outdoor, women’s, whatever – go in underfinanced and with unrealistic expectations – and they’re not willing to build the infrastructure and devote the resources (in humans and capital) to actually selling and marketing their teams to protect their investments. They seem to figure “I really like soccer, so if I just tell people there’s a team, they’ll all buy lots of tickets.” It doesn’t work that way. It takes people establishing relationships, it takes trust-building, it takes actual humans working the phones every day to sell tickets. Most teams don’t do that. You can’t simply put tickets for sale on a website and take whoever shows up. That’s why about 70 percent of outdoor teams (even amateur ones) fail.
If there was a caveat, though, it would be that the Monsoon/Storm, Real Phoenix, etc. haven’t ruined the market because most people didn’t know they existed anyway (which is part of the reason they no longer exist, I guess). They were failures, but with a small blast radius. This is a higher-profile team in a higher-profile league that has a chance – should it go south – to be worse than those others.
Keep in mind – we haven’t even reached a Thursday night in July at 113 degrees with Antigua Barracuda FC in town.
March 7th, 2013 at 1:38 pm
I’m told there are very likely fewer than 100 season tickets sold in the Supporters Section now. So if you’re looking for an estimate of how many season tickets they’ve sold now, with three weeks to the home opener, <400 seems as good as any.
March 7th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Kenn,
When you say, “humans working the phones every day to sell tickets” is that business/ corporate sales or regular individuals? I’m sure I’m in lots of databases and I don’t think I’ve ever been solicited over the phone for tickets.
March 7th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Business/corporate and groups, mostly. And “working the phones every day” can include all the various forms of communication. Beating the bushes, hitting the streets, whatever you want to call it. Basically, not sitting around hoping for the phone to ring or for people to walk up on game day.
March 11th, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Someone should be taking notes from Indianapolis’s efforts. Peter Wilt has done an excellent job selling the new NASL team. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the owner hired Wilt, an actual professional with actual experience who likely demands a salary of actual legal tender. Both the supporters and the youth clubs have been heavily courted, straight out of Wilt’s manifesto on starting a professional club. The team has started early, not kicking off until 2014. It has a web site. It’s building slowly with (to be expected) ‘name the team’ and ‘pick the color’ surveys. You can bet a ‘select the best logo’ contest will follow. Owner Ozdemir is not taking an ‘if we give it call it soccer, they will come’ attitude, and it appears to be paying off.
I lived for some time in Phoenix and live now in Indy and I don’t think one is inherently better than the other as a soccer market, and neither is, at first blush, top tier. But the difference in professionalism is stark, and I think we’ll see shortly how that translate in terms of corporate viability.
March 11th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Chuck, there’s no question that an experienced staff makes a difference. Money, experience and vision (and, I might add, humility) are key things for a startup franchise to have. Too few of them have, which is why 70% of clubs have failed, historically.
March 12th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
The fact that there’s
1. NO advertising
2. NO social media blitz (outside of the fan group – well done lads)
3. YOU CAN’T EVEN BUY single tickets online.
I’m surprised they’ve sold anything. The number 1 reason for businesses failing is UNDERCAPITALIZATION. The fact that the league does not have requirements to see that the owner has the facility and money to make it happen is unfortunate. Phoenix gets shafted again by poor ownership (Suns, Coyotes, etc). Who’s going to stand up for Phoenix.
March 12th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
There’s a certain number of people who will immediately seek out such a team, to whom little or no advertising is necessary. That number is rarely sufficient to support a team on its own. They’ll have to cast a much wider net.
But you’re right – undercapitalization has been the death of many a team. This costs a lot of money to do well, and it is virtually inevitable that you will lose a lot of money even if you do most things right.
March 12th, 2013 at 3:45 pm
“So Let’s Talk About Phoenix FC For A Minute”
Let’s not and say we did, OK?
March 13th, 2013 at 1:51 pm
[...] And, speaking of the box office, last week Kenn Tomasch reported that, thanks in part to a ticket charge levied by ASU, ticket prices are going to be among the highest in USL. [...]
March 22nd, 2013 at 6:15 pm
Kenn, this was a great post. I read the same “740 tickets sold” quote by the team owner online recently and wondered the same thing, after seeing all of the available seats online. I think this team could have done so much more as far as building up excitement over the inaugural season. On their Facebook page, fans often post comments/questions and the administrator for that page usually doesn’t even respond! It seems they could have leveraged the relationship with ASU, brought on a marketing major as an intern (great resume-builder), and, at a minimum, tasked them with generating a huge buzz about the team using social media. They could have given away free t-shirts or something over the past few weeks, but nadda. I bought my season tix and I hope they play to a sold-out stadium, but I’m afraid that won’t be nearly the case.
March 22nd, 2013 at 6:25 pm
Maybe next week. But what about a Thursday in July against Antigua when it’s 113?