** 2023 Sporting Kansas City Thread **

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

Owners are billionaires with B. *shrug*

You’re talking about the Saudi ownership right? I don’t know if I’d consider our ownership group billionaires with a capital B if that’s what you are trying to say. The Patterson family and Cliff Illig are the only real billionaires, but they definitely aren’t anywhere close to being billionaires with a capital B. The team has definitely tightened the wallets since Patterson’s death so it’s definitely not familiar territory to be involved in any major bidding wars. Hopefully it’s a sign that they are more willing to spend big in the transfer market windows now that they are seeing other teams have more and more success with big money acquisitions.

[SithCeNtZ]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

You’re talking about the Saudi ownership right? I don’t know if I’d consider our ownership group billionaires with a capital B if that’s what you are trying to say. The Patterson family and Cliff Illig are the only real billionaires, but they definitely aren’t anywhere close to being billionaires with a capital B. The team has definitely tightened the wallets since Patterson’s death so it’s definitely not familiar territory to be involved in any major bidding wars. Hopefully it’s a sign that they are more willing to spend big in the transfer market windows now that they are seeing other teams have more and more success with big money acquisitions.

I don't even think it's that. It's probably a pretty calculated number based on the profitability of the team sky rocketing by signing him. The dude has 526 million Instagram followers. Mahomes has literally 100x less followers at 5 million. He's in the top 5 most popular athletes in the world. You couldn't print jerseys fast enough to sell. Every game would be a guaranteed sell out. Concessions and other merchandise would set records. Every revenue stream would go up significantly. Once you factor all that in, I don't think it would be quite as much out of pocket as it might seem. I'd also bet that part of it was sporting rounding up a list of sponsors with a guaranteed amount of money that if he signed there then he has this other huge figure waiting if he wants it. Unfortunately I think he's such an outlier in revenue generation that I don't think spending on him means they are looking to just spend in general, but time will tell I suppose.

[Gary Cooper]

Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ

I don't even think it's that. It's probably a pretty calculated number based on the profitability of the team sky rocketing by signing him. The dude has 526 million Instagram followers. Mahomes has literally 100x less followers at 5 million. He's in the top 5 most popular athletes in the world. You couldn't print jerseys fast enough to sell. Every game would be a guaranteed sell out. Concessions and other merchandise would set records. Every revenue stream would go up significantly. Once you factor all that in, I don't think it would be quite as much out of pocket as it might seem. I'd also bet that part of it was sporting rounding up a list of sponsors with a guaranteed amount of money that if he signed there then he has this other huge figure waiting if he wants it. Unfortunately I think he's such an outlier in revenue generation that I don't think spending on him means they are looking to just spend in general, but time will tell I suppose.

What about ticket costs? I can't imagine they'd have Ronaldo playing in a smaller stadium when they could sell more tickets at Arrowhead. Then again, I'm assuming they cannot just move to Arrowhead on short notice.

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by Gary Cooper

What about ticket costs? I can't imagine they'd have Ronaldo playing in a smaller stadium when they could sell more tickets at Arrowhead. Then again, I'm assuming they cannot just move to Arrowhead on short notice.

I think they would have had a few select games at Arrowhead but not necessarily played there all the time.

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

You’re talking about the Saudi ownership right? I don’t know if I’d consider our ownership group billionaires with a capital B if that’s what you are trying to say. The Patterson family and Cliff Illig are the only real billionaires, but they definitely aren’t anywhere close to being billionaires with a capital B. The team has definitely tightened the wallets since Patterson’s death so it’s definitely not familiar territory to be involved in any major bidding wars. Hopefully it’s a sign that they are more willing to spend big in the transfer market windows now that they are seeing other teams have more and more success with big money acquisitions.

Yes, and they are our owners. Not sure how you are disagreeing?

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

Yes, and they are our owners. Not sure how you are disagreeing?

This ownership has never flashed any kinds of billionaire money into the team like you were trying to insinuate and I’m not sure why you used the capital B reference, but maybe I just misread what you were trying to say. I thought you were insinuating that we have a loaded ownership group that it wouldn’t be much of a surprise seeing spend the kind of money it would have taken to compete with a 75 million contract the Saudi’s offered. Sporting has spent money on 3 transfers in its entire history from what I know. Pulido, Kinda, and Omar Bravo way back in 2011. This ownership group has never shown any signs of competing with the bigger markets in terms of transfer targets so, yes it would be very out of character for this ownership group to somehow make a deal like that out of nowhere. Luckily it didn’t happen, though, because like others have mentioned it would have been a marketing and business decision and would have likely not had the best outcome for the future of this club in terms of the quality of soccer being played.