Confirmed: FC Edmonton whitdraws from NASL

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

8 hours ago, Free kick said:

In found it interesting to read Fath’s comments that in order to break even, they needed  to averge 9k per game. I recall at the time that Lynx were around, it was understood that the Hartrell’s needed a 5k per game average.   What this tells us, is that travel costs ARE a major impediment and cost to operating in Edmonton....

Think player relocation costs in terms of contracts that have to be offered also come into it. Bruno Hartrell was able to use a roster drawn mainly from the GTA to be reasonably competitive. FC Edmonton had to bring in a lot of players from other cities and countries and that probably meant a significantly higher salary bill.

[CDNFootballer]

RELEASE | FC EDMONTON PART WAYS WITH HEAD COACH COLIN MILLER AND TECHNICAL STAFF

FC Edmonton regretfully announces that following the discontinuation of its North American Soccer League (NASL) franchise operations, the club has released long-time head coach Colin Miller and team technical staff following the conclusion of the 2017 season. Technical staff for the club's academy continues in place.

Miller, who led the Eddies on the touchline for five seasons, departs as the club’s longest-tenured head coach after having managed over 150 games for the club since arriving prior the 2013 NASL campaign on November 27, 2012.

“Colin brought his vast years of experience as a player and a coach to the Eddies, providing stability and a high level of professionalism to the club when it was needed the most during its early years,” FC Edmonton co-owner Tom Fath said. “A champion for Canadian talent, Colin has played a vital role in the evolution of FC Edmonton into one of Canada’s top professional sides. Not only that, he’s been a terrific friend to me and everyone in the front office. Everyone involved with FC Edmonton thanks Colin for his years of service and wishes him the best of luck in his career."

http://www.fcedmonton.com/news/2017/12/04/release--fc-edmonton-part-ways-with-head-coach-colin-miller-and-technical-staff

[Grizzly]

I am not the biggest fan of Miller's coaching style but it still is pretty crappy to lose your job because a team folds.

[Ansem]

More insight on the demise of FC Edmonton

Colin Miller believes city could have done more for FC Edmonton

http://edmontonsun.com/sports/soccer/colin-miller-believes-city-could-have-done-more-for-fc-edmonton

The city is heavily blamed

[ted]

On 12/3/2017 at 7:07 PM, Free kick said:

In found it interesting to read Fath’s comments that in order to break even, they needed  to averge 9k per game. I recall at the time that Lynx were around, it was understood that the Hartrell’s needed a 5k per game average.   What this tells us, is that travel costs ARE a major impediment and cost to operating in Edmonton.  The Hatrells could bus their players to several, if not most, away games.   

https://globalnews.ca/news/3879663/fc-edmonton-folds-after-7-seasons-in-professional-soccer/

In most cases also, its cheaper to fly from canada to US cities  than it is to fly within canada.  There is more frequencies and competition on US bound routes. 

True that Edmonton is more expensive than TO but I think the difference in attendance averages is also party a result of the difference in the wage bill. 

[Big_M]

So you are a pro sports team owner and you wanted to reach 9000 and break even to operate when you knew it wasn't going to happen..come on now

[YEG Round Baller]

It's a miracle the Faths lasted as long as they did. EVERYTHING went against them:

The City of Edmonton did less than zero to help them, and in fact, did things that actively worked against the club. See Steven Sandor's posts at "the11.ca" for details.

The stadium was poor. All 3,000 to 5,000 of us fans had to squeeze through one ten-foot wide corridor to get into the place. There was one washroom for each gender plus a few porta-potties. The field was covered in permanent pointy football lines and that was only solved due to the FIFA 2015 Womens World Cup installing new turf to use the place as a practice field.  The Faths had to buy and install 3000 of their own seats on one side of the field (those were great seats, BTW, comfy and steep and very close to the field - take note future CPL modular stadium builders). The Faths had to rent their own big-screen scoreboard. The "permanent" concrete portion of the stadium was 50 feet away from the edge of the field and had backless bench seating.

The Faths had to deal with US-Can Dollar currency fluctuations.

Travelling to Jacksonville and Puerto Rico and North Carolina and other places was an expensive, all-day, change-planes-three-times kind of nightmare.

There was little corporate sponsorship.

There was little media coverage. Local television mentions were limited to the fourth story on the supper time news. Derek VD did his best but Post Media newspapers typically ran only two stories per week. Steven Sandor did & still does fantastic work on his, unfortunately, little-seen blog. Live TV games were not advertised anywhere a casual fan might notice and were hidden away on the obscure CTV2 or equivalent local channel (Gareth, Steve, Gene and the technical crews, again, made the best of a bad situation). With the CPL, chances are the casual sports fan would notice the many mentions, segments, and advertising on TSN or Sportsnet, similar to how MLS is covered today, not to mention widely available live games. We all would see OTHER CPL TEAMS play each other too, and thus have some familiarity with rival teams and players. I remember a Tampa Bay Rowdies game when I found out only after the starting lineups were announced in-stadium, that Joe Cole (Chelsea, Liverpool, England national team) was playing. Only the most hard-core fan ever saw a web-streamed NASL game not featuring FC Edmonton.

The only blame I could place on the Fath's was their slow start in marketing the team. They did not reach out to the local youth soccer scene very well, they scheduled games poorly on Sunday afternoons (the City of Edm, and NASL did not help).  Things improved greatly over the last two seasons with Friday night games and improved game-day experiences. Jay Ball's hiring was the best thing the Faths ever did.

Overall, my non-soccer-fan friends didn't even know the team existed.  Being part of CanPL would, in itself, help to START solving most of these problems.  The stadium situation is more difficult. I cannot stress enough that having a great game day atmosphere is vital.  Do not put 4000 fans into a huge CFL stadium unless you are willing to PROPERLY down-size the place, a-la BC Place. Do not try to use some small amateur track-and-field stadium with stands far away from the field.  Do not use some small amateur pointy-football field without properly erasing all those lines and hash-marks. Put as many people in the stands as possible, even if you have to set prices at two dollars (you're going to lose money the first few years anyway, don't price casual fans out of the market).  The FIRST IMPRESSION is vitally important.  Pop-up modular fields can work if you do it correctly (food and beverages close at hand, washrooms nearby.)  Real grass if possible, please.

I think the Faths might be tempted to come back (nice little modular stadium somewhere on the Northlands property? Are you listening city council?).

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

2 hours ago, YEG Round Baller said:

.....Overall, my non-soccer-fan friends didn't even know the team existed.  Being part of CanPL would, in itself, help to START solving most of these problems....

Like it did with the Brickmen? It isn't enough just to have Canadian in a league's name for it all to start working unfortunately, or it would have happened a long time ago.

[Ivan]

7 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Like it did with the Brickmen? It isn't enough just to have Canadian in a league's name for it all to start working unfortunately, or it would have happened a long time ago.

I don't think this statement is fair.  Soccer visibility in Canada today is night and day compared to the late 80s/early 90s.  

[dyslexic nam]

43 minutes ago, Ivan said:

I don't think this statement is fair.  Soccer visibility in Canada today is night and day compared to the late 80s/early 90s.  

That is what bugs me about the over-reliance on past failures.  The context is entirely different.  Whether it is immigration patterns, familiarity with the game driven by massive numbers of adults that grew up during the youth soccer explosion in this country, or the demonstrated success of soccer in 3 (admittedly major) markets, it is clear that things have changed in a substantial way.  That may not guarantee success, but it surely suggests we can't look at past ventures and draw any conclusions.  Hell, even when you think about the sheer number of games you can see on TV, and the ratings they draw (and the major networks make these programming decisions on the basis of hard evidence), it is clear that soccer is far more popular now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

3 hours ago, dyslexic nam said:

That is what bugs me about the over-reliance on past failures...

The point I made was that having a Canadian league doesn't automatically lead to a different outcome from what happened with FC Edmonton. The Brickmen were part of a league that had a game of the week being shown on TSN along with regular coverage on SportsCentre and there was never any problem getting CSL related match reports and standings into the inside pages of the sports sections of daily newspapers at a time when circulation was a lot higher than now so it wasn't quite as low visibility as Ivan is implying, but most people still found a way to be oblivious to it as happened with FC Edmonton, who also did get a reasonable level of media coverage and were not some huge hidden away secret.

The biggest problem then and now is getting the large numbers of soccer enthusiasts that are out there to take the local product seriously and start buying tickets at prices needed to break even rather than only showing up sporadically if you hand out lots of freebies or have massively discounted group sales. MLS uses reasonably high salary budgets and DP signings to overcome that hurdle that arguably place it ahead of the CFL in that sort of regard. It's not clear that a scale of investment  comparable to the USL and the NASL gets the job done effectively enough in terms of being sustainable financially because the economic model for doing it successfully in North America has yet to emerge, although there are some encouraging outliers like Cincinnati to provide some reasons to believe.

[dyslexic nam]

I don't think anyone was saying that it will "automatically lead to a different outcome".  They are simply pointing out that FCEd in NASL, with higher salary costs, limited coverage and lack of relatively relevant rivals, is a different proposition that FCEd in CPL, wIth a lower wage bill, potential for strong local rivalries, and leveraging the likely media attention on a new Canadian pro league in a sport that has come extremely far in terms of overall interest and fan support. 

[Free kick]

On 12/9/2017 at 10:22 AM, dyslexic nam said:

That is what bugs me about the over-reliance on past failures.  The context is entirely different.  Whether it is immigration patterns, familiarity with the game driven by massive numbers of adults that grew up during the youth soccer explosion in this country, or the demonstrated success of soccer in 3 (admittedly major) markets, it is clear that things have changed in a substantial way.  That may not guarantee success, but it surely suggests we can't look at past ventures and draw any conclusions.  Hell, even when you think about the sheer number of games you can see on TV, and the ratings they draw (and the major networks make these programming decisions on the basis of hard evidence), it is clear that soccer is far more popular now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Hmm. You darn well better look at past failures to learn about what works and what doesnt.  Why did MLS insist on a strict salary cap?  Because they saw how over spending on big stars by clubs in the old NASL of the 70’s and 80’s led to its demise.  Why did MLS insist on building soccer specific stadiums?  Because they saw how playing in supersized Football stadiums with astroturf and football lines hurt the credibility of the product. And by having so much capacity to sell, there was seldom advanced purchases for tickets and the optics of 25k fans in a 60k seat stadium looked terrible for television.   Why was mls slow to increase the TAM and DP spending?  Because thye saw the problems that NASL had in growing too fast. 

The leason that they did not learn was the one about expanding by adding too many teams. 

I also would argue you last point.   Soccer was very popular in the seventies and eighties in North america.  The NASL failed for the reasons i mentioned above.  But it was still well supported and very well coverred by the media at that time.  

The best things that mls has going for it, was in fact the past failures. You learn most from history.