Red Bull Continues To Invest In MLS Club’s On-Field Product

Red Bulls, Arena Focusing Attention On Improving On-Field Product

Fourteen months after buying its MLS team, Red Bull has “delivered on its promises to bring big-time thinking to a club that was often stuck in a rut,” according to Beau Dure of USA TODAY. The company hired former U.S. men’s national team coach Bruce Arena and signed two designated players, MF Claudio Reyna and F Juan Pablo Angel. However, the average attendance at Giants Stadium for four games this year is under 10,000, down from 14,570 in ’06. Red Bulls Managing Dir Marc de Grandpre said he is “absolutely not” pleased with ticket sales this season. But he said that the team’s business plan “projected a slow start at the gate.” de Grandpre: “We’ve already made a strategic decision to invest all our resources into the sport. It came down to a simple decision: Do we want to have a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in the New York-New Jersey area, or do we want to have the revenues to bring in Juan Pablo Angel, Claudio, Bruce?” According to MLS players union figures, salaries for Reyna ($1.25M) and Angel (almost $1.6M) total more than the payroll of ten of the other 12 MLS teams (USA TODAY, 5/24).