Via the New York Times.
http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/0...ty-these-days/
Sporting Kansas City Is Sitting Pretty These Days
Greg Cotton and Robb Heineman sat behind an outdoor stage in downtown Kansas City, still unsure about the announcement they were about to make.
It was November 2010, and Heineman, the president and a co-owner of Sporting Kansas City, was about to unveil the rebranding of the team that had been known as the Wizards since 1996. The problem was, although the team had tried to keep the announcement secret for months, someone had leaked the new name and shield on the Internet earlier that day, and fans were not happy. Hundreds said they would cancel their season tickets over the name change. Cotton, the team’s chief operating officer, had helped write a speech for Heineman earlier that day, trying to explain the vision behind the change.
“I remember going back in the green room,” Cotton said. “And it was just me and Robb sitting in a room looking at each other going, ‘I’m still not convinced this is a great idea, man.’”
Both had been planning this day since 2006, when Cotton helped negotiate the sale of the Wizards to Heineman and four other Kansas City businessmen. Back then, the owners had been hailed as saviors for buying a team that had never been truly embraced by its community, and preventing its move to another city. Other teams had not been so lucky.
Now, however, the owners felt more like villains. Cotton, a season ticket holder since the team’s inaugural year, understood the apprehension but also knew from the beginning that the franchise needed a makeover. The Wizards ranked last in the league in almost every popularity category, from average attendance to merchandise revenue.
“We had nowhere to go but up, really,” Cotton said.
How high the team would go in the next two years, however, no one could have imagined. After a disastrous 10-game road trip to start the 2011 season, Sporting opened its new stadium in June and began a run that took it within one game of M.L.S. Cup. This year, the team won its first seven games, the best start for an M.L.S. team since the Los Angeles Galaxy won their first 12 in 1996. Sporting’s unbeaten start came to an end Saturday night, with a 1-0 loss at Portland.
But the team’s record is not the only improvement. Season ticket sales have increased from 600 to over 10,000 in the past five years. Merchandise sales in 2012 have already topped $1 million – a far cry from 2006, when the Wizards earned only $30,000 in merchandise sales for the whole year, according to Cotton.
“I think it’s night and day,” said Matt Besler, a Sporting defender who grew up in Kansas City, “just the buzz we’ve created among the city. You can’t drive down the highway without seeing an SKC magnet on a car and SKC hats all around town.”
“Anyone that says they could predict this, they’re lying.”
As a midfielder for the Wizards from 2000 to 2008, Kerry Zavagnin was part of the team’s highest moment – the 2000 M.L.S. Cup title – and its lowest – the 2005 season, when Lamar Hunt announced he was selling the team. The Wizards missed the playoffs that season for the first time in six years.
For most of that decade, the team had been an afterthought in Kansas City, playing in mostly empty football or baseball stadiums. Commissioner Don Garber visited in 2005 to discuss the possibility of moving the team with the players. Even the team’s own training facility for the first part of the decade didn’t feel like a home.
“The showers were clogged up, so if you weren’t one of the first five guys, you’d be standing in a half a foot of water because the drainage system was so bad,” said Zavagnin, now an assistant coach with the team. “We had rats, mice, and every other kind of visitor you could imagine.”
The training center was one of the first things the new ownership group renovated after taking over. They wanted to send a message that they were serious about changing the atmosphere and perception of the team. “We may not be brilliant sports guys, but we’re pretty good at our jobs in different niches, and we all like to think a little bit differently,” Cotton said. “So if we’re going to do this, and if we’re going to risk our fledgling young careers here, let’s go try and do something really big.”
They cemented their commitment with something really big, indeed: Livestrong Sporting Park, the $200 million soccer-specific stadium widely hailed as one of the best in North America.
For both fans and players, it transformed the team from the very first practice held on the field. “From that moment, you knew everything was going to change,” said midfielder Roger Espinoza, who joined the team in 2008. “Every player was committed at that point.”
The first game in Livestrong was the first time Cotton had seen a truly rabid, intelligent, engaged soccer crowd in Kansas City.
“I don’t mind telling you that I cried like a little baby when that crowd just erupted and the players were out on the field,” he said. “It’d been such a long journey and it had been so satisfying to see that first game. But we were still in last place.”
They weren’t for long. Sporting went on a 12-game unbeaten streak and ended the season losing only three of its last 24 regular season games. This year, the team hasn’t lost any momentum. Only the Red Bulls (17) and the San Jose Earthquakes (13) have scored more goals than Kansas City (12), but only Sporting went 335 minutes without allowing a shot on goal through a four-game stretch. Through eight games, Sporting is nine points clear of second-place D.C. United in the Eastern Conference.
But while Heineman and the owners have made it clear that winning championships is the club’s goal, Cotton said that continuing its remarkable surge in popularity depends on the leadership being “agnostic” of wins and losses.
“We think we’re in the joy business,” he said. “We deliver communal joy to people who come out to the game. It’s not sports, it’s not entertainment, it’s not even soccer. It’s joy.”
And after years of irrelevance, there’s plenty of joy to go around now. The only question now is whether the team, and its fans, can sustain this momentum. For Zavagnin, however, that isn’t a topic worth considering.
“I only think about winning and what we need to do to win,” he said. “So there’s no real thought of, ‘What if this fairy tale ends?’ or ‘What if this magical moment ends?’ Why does it have to?”