The Seattle Sounders and Colorado Rapids, preparing to face off in the MLS Western Conference final starting Nov. 22, were on opposite ends of the league spectrum for many years. While Seattle consistently led the league in attendance, Colorado sat in the bottom quarter. The Sounders ranked as one of the league’s most successful clubs on the field, while Colorado has struggled since winning the 2010 MLS Cup.
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Seattle’s attendance dropped 3.6 percent this year, while Colorado broke 16,000 for the first time.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES (2)
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Much of that changed this season. While Seattle once again led the league in attendance, drawing an average crowd of 42,636, it also saw a 3.6 percent drop year-over-year, the largest in its eight-year history. Poor play was the culprit: Near the end of July, ninth in the 10-team conference, the club fired its coach. A late-season push clinched a playoff spot on the last day of the season.
Meanwhile, Colorado jumped out of the gate energized by
new acquisitions such as Jermaine Jones and Tim Howard. The team finished with the second-best record in the league and the highest point total in franchise history. It averaged 16,278 fans a game, the first time it has broken 16,000 and an increase of 4 percent.
“At the end of last year, we sat down as a team and said that we need to remember what our plan is,” Rapids President Tim Hinchey said. “You can’t predict wins, but you can point the ship in the right direction, so that when the wind comes you can drop the sail.”
Ten of its 17 home games sold out, doubling the club’s record of five. It also has an additional 1,100 season-ticket deposits for next season, which Hinchey said ranks third in the league thus far. While he declined to comment on the club’s ticket base, he said its goal is to have 10,000 to 11,000 season-ticket holders, something it can accomplish in the coming years.
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, the company of owner Stan Kroenke, has also provided assistance in recent years, putting additional staffers to work on Rapids business, especially around ticketing.
Colorado has seen 150 percent revenue growth in the last five years, Hinchey said, and has seen consistent growth year-over-year in every one of its revenue streams. He declined to provide specific figures.
For Seattle, that dip in on-field performance had a direct effect on the club’s business operations.
“It’s not dissimilar to any other team. When you don’t perform as well … it has an effect on the business,” said Bart Wiley, Seattle’s chief operating officer. “You try to build something that is immune to performance, but we also need to be prepared for the ups and downs of sports.”
Wiley declined to comment on the club’s revenue, but said the drop in attendance had an effect, although it was nothing that alarmed him or the club.
Aiming to excel regardless of on-field results, the club has put together a 10-year road map to carry it forward. “No one is satisfied with what we have — we’re happy to celebrate our successes and things we achieve, but our job is to continue to grow,” Wiley said. It was presented to staffers last month, and unveiled to supporters at an event Nov. 3.
The plan has goals, including values that it wants the club to exude such as innovation and collaboration, as well as strategic objectives, which include selling out the entirety of CenturyLink Field by 2026. The stadium has 69,000 seats, but the Sounders have artificially limited the capacity. This goal would remove those limits.
The club split off its business operations from the Seattle Seahawks in March 2014 after sharing them with the NFL team since the Sounders were admitted to MLS in 2007. Wiley said the plan helps to better focus the club moving forward.
“In many ways, these are the same things we talked about nine years ago, and two years ago when we set up our own shop,” he said. “It’s not lost on us that we have an amazingly loyal and passionate fan base. It’s incumbent on us to continue to take care of them and grow.”
