By Paul Kennedy
A lot of life is about second chances and how you take them.
The second chances of two MLS clubs have dominated thenews this past week.
Everything about the do-over of Chivas USA has gone wrong from its last place in the Western Conference standings to its dwindling attendance to the p.r. nightmarethat was the airing of a segment about the club on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
We’ve been told for months about how we should be patient and how Chivas USA has a plan, but theonly plan you hear about is the systematic plan to exclude non-Mexicans alleged by the former academy coaches, Dan Calichman and Ted Chronopoulos, who have sued the club, and by others who came forward in the HBO piece.
(It’ll be up to the courts to decide whether the club’s practices arediscriminatory, but the fact is that the team has been transformed from one that often fielded no players of Mexican descent in 2012 to a team that finished Sunday’s match against Seattle with all 10field players being of Mexican descent.)
Last week’s HBO segment might have lacked the gotcha moment you used to see from Mike Wallace on 60Minutes, but it certainly painted Chivas USA as amateurish. Its response after the fact, releasing a statement that the report was one-sided, only reinforced the notion management has no clue whatit’s doing.
Just how ridiculous Chivas USA looks is all the more apparent when you look at the other end of the spectrum of second chances and Sporting Kansas City, host of the 2013AT&T MLS All-Star Game.
Like with a lot of second chances, good timing and good luck have been critical to Sporting KC’s success, but it wouldn’t have been possible without goodmanagement.
Sporting KC’s second chance starts out like that of many other MLS clubs that were sold in the last decade: new owners come armed with plans to build a new stadium and rebrandthe club. But what OnGoal, the ownership group, has done in Kansas City is unique.
If you were asked a decade ago to pick an MLS team that would sell out every game, Kansas City wouldhave been the last team you’d have named. The Wizards, as the team was then known, played in cavernous Arrowhead Stadium and drew some of the worst crowds in MLS.
Sporting KC sells outevery game. It even started a waiting list for season-ticket holders after capping sales at 14,000. Its success story has been been chronicled in national media as one of the great turnarounds in thehistory of American sports.
“It’s been beyond our wildest dreams, frankly,” says Sporting KC CEO Robb Heineman.
Among MLS markets,only Seattle and Portland surpass Kansas City in terms of the intensity of their soccer fever, and the Pacific Northwest clubs have the advantage of much deeper soccer roots.
To be sure,pro soccer in Kansas City goes all the way back to the initial launch of the old NASL in 1968 — the Spurs were one of only five teams to stick around after the league’s initial collapse — but it wasstill going nowhere after a decade in MLS.
Good timing came in 2010 as Sporting Park was going up on the Kansas side of Kansas City. Like other teams across MLS, the Wizards as they werestill called at the time, used the World Cup in South Africa to promote the team, drawing thousands of hard-core fans who filled the downtown entertainment area, Park & Light District, to watchmatches on big screens.
Good luck came in the form of the Wizards’ exhibition victory over Manchester United the same summer. The 2-1 victory before 50,000 fans at Arrowhead Stadium mighthave been a fluke, but it helped win over fans skeptical about MLS.
They don’t call Kansas City Silicon Prairie for nothing, and new Sporting KC instantly connected with those soccer fansin the 18-to-35 demographics drawn to the area because of jobs in the creative, digital and service industries and because of affordable housing.
It helped that two of Sporting KC’s fivefounders, Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, started Cerner Corporation, a pioneer in electronic medical systems. Cerner’sstanding in the community helped allow Sporting KC and its stadium project to be embraced by local government, and its technical know-how was invaluable in helping make Sporting Park astate-of-the-art digital facility.
“Cliff and Neal are quiet Midwest guys, run-quiet, run-deep guys,” says MLS Commissioner Don Garber.
Sporting KC is at the forefront in the sports industry in creating innovative digital fan experiences. Since it sells out every game, Sporting KC must find ways to get fans to spend more money ator around the game if it wants to grow revenues. The data the club collects via their digital experience allows it to better serve its fans. Translated: it knows what products and services to push.
None of this would be possible if the fans weren’t having a good time. Back-to-back regular-season conference titles don’t hurt. The biggest change is the intensity with which Kansas Citysoccer fans follow their team. It’s reflected in the spike in coverage on television, radio and in print and, of course, how fans interact in the world of social media. They now debate the club’sstrengths and weaknesses just like their elders have done for years following the more traditional Kansas City sports teams, the Chiefs and Royals.
Asked what advice he gives toprospective MLS owners, Heinemann says, “Be a fan. Think like a fan.”
That connection Sporting KC has developed with its fans is unique, and Heinemann is cautious about his club gettingtoo far ahead of itself.
“We don’t take anything for granted,” he says. “We remember the lean years.”
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I disagree with Kennedy’s assertion that the HBO interview had no “gotcha” moment. What do you call it when Chivas’ “spokesperson” runs away during the middle of the interview if not “gotcha?” Think again, Paul.
So time to invoke a single-entity form of relegation. Let the league buy Chivas cheap, and move them to the second division. Replace them with a city that wants a team. You could move them to another city, but who would want them? Mexican arrogance about “their” football punished appropriately — what Chivas deserve for assuming they could field a B-team and trounce the Gringos.