York 9 2019 launch/offseason thread

[Sébastien]

14 minutes ago, Macksam said:

The pricing is still in the alleged category right? Because I couldn't make anything out of those tweets.

Based off an instragram picture that showed advertising with "season tickets starting at $399". Since then, reps for York9 have said that season tickets for supporters group would be much lower and I believe there is a possible discount for kids associated with certain youth clubs.

Nothing more official than that has come out re: pricing (if so, I have missed it), so it could very well remain conditional to further changes.

[Bison44]

Have we heard any word on pricing from the other teams??  Lets let a little of this play out before we pull a BBTB and pronounce doom and gloom.  So much can change between now and next spring, we dont know the exact details of pricing, schedule even the number of teams right now.  

[Macksam]

IMO, season tickets should top out around $399, not start from there.

[yellowsweatygorilla]

6 minutes ago, Macksam said:

IMO, season tickets should top out around $399, not start from there.

Based on the interview with Robin, $399 is the base price for regular season seats. $199 is for supporters and york university students. $399 though is pretty steep as the price point for what's going to be the majority of season seat holders.

[matty]

13 hours ago, Bison44 said:

Have I missed the boat?? Are York behind the 8ball?? They have front office, nice colors, nice logo.  Is it the low membership numbers?  It is probably a little easier to get guys to buy into a new club in Halifax, Wpg etc, when there is no other option and the rabid hardcore base has been waiting for years for local soccer.  You guys have TFC, L1Ontario etc, maybe not so starved for soccer like other regions of the country.  If its still a mess come winter and signing etc are slim and the team looks bad, then I would worry.  We are still way to early into the process to throw the team with the fewest memberships under the bus.  

It's that they still have a wonky name, promoting themselves with a really tacky looking douchebagmobile, named their owner their coach and have weird public outreach and events (like having a public meet up during the World Cup final). Also apparently being in York region is a vile mistake and is the sole reason this club is having any form of issues.

I agree TFC are likely the cause of membership, Twitter and Facebook followers and Google searches being lower than other teams and agree we should wait for fall/winter (not just for signings but also sponsorship, like if it's sponsored by a car dealership we panic).

Like I've said before I think this team is less about being a power house of popularity and more about being in the GTA.

Edited August 2, 2018 by matty

[CDNFootballer]

On 8/2/2018 at 10:32 AM, matty said:

It's that they still have a wonky name, promoting themselves with a really tacky looking douchebagmobile, named their owner their coach and have weird public outreach and events (like having a public meet up during the World Cup final). Also apparently being in York region is a vile mistake and is the sole reason this club is having any form of issues.

I agree TFC are likely the cause of membership, Twitter and Facebook followers and Google searches being lower than other teams and agree we should wait for fall/winter (not just for signings but also sponsorship, like if it's sponsored by a car dealership we panic).

Like I've said before I think this team is less about being a power house of popularity and more about being in the GTA.

You must be talking about the Jeep, the Camaro looks spectacular!

[matty]

3 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

You must be talking about the Jeep, the Camaro looks spectacular!

It's like if Shrek was a superhero

[shorty]

Or an autobot. 

[Unnamed Trialist]

On 8/3/2018 at 4:23 PM, CDNFootballer said:

You must be talking about the Jeep, the Camaro looks spectacular!

They do up these vehicles, they have the whole staff chosen, they announce marketing people who are experts who sign up a new fan a day--it is sort of like a glee club, from what I can gather. 

Mr Brennan and his boys are honestly thinking they are going to have stable, well-paying jobs with this set up, is that what this is all about? To me it looks and feels more like a bunch of people playing at making a soccer club, let's be clear--if any random 10 Voyageurs in Southern Ontario spent a weekend together plotting it all out, they would do a better job.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Definitely looks like a bigger budget version of the Toronto Olympians at the moment, but they do still have scope for signing somebody a bit more high profile than Darren Tilley from overseas, if they change marketing strategies. The By Canadians For Canadians approach is going OK in most of the cities so far but clearly not in the GTA, so hopefully the league allows them the flexibility needed to go after certain post-WWII immigrant demographics with their import signings. Given Woodbridge is in York Region the Italian community is the obvious one, which is why I am surprised they weren't all over the Frosinone games against the L1O teams.

[Rocket Robin]

From an article I'm writing for Waking The Red (which may be published by Friday) 

context:  L1O Cup Final at Ontario Soccer Centre with 1000-1200 there on a holiday weekend between Vaughan Azzurri and Toronto FC III.  Vaughan won 2-1 in a very exciting game.  

(last week some York 9 fans hung the Generation IX banner from the far end fence at a Woodbridge vs Vaughan L1O league game but away from the gates so the fans disappeared at the other end).  

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I didn't notice any representation by York 9 FC or their fans. This would have been an opportunity this holiday weekend for a table to be set up just outside the one gate and someone handing out postcards with the web address seeking memberships. I know York 9 has been hitting the youth soccer market hard including Vaughan but this would have been another chance/reminder. I don't think TFC parents would have objected as ex-TFC Academy players like Dylan Sacramento and Anthony Osorio now play for Vaughan and will probably be seeking opportunities for Canada Premier League positions.

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[Watchmen]

On 8/5/2018 at 4:28 AM, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

The By Canadians For Canadians approach is going OK in most of the cities so far but clearly not in the GTA

Do you think that approach is actually working?  Or it is more just "we're bringing a professional soccer team to your market", Canadian fans who have been following it, and the "By Canadians For Canadians" marketing doesn't actually matter?

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Possibly the latter. The most you can really conclude in the other markets is that the membership numbers bar Victoria are reasonable, so pushing the Canadians angle isn't turning people off in a big way.

[Initial B]

On 8/6/2018 at 6:05 PM, Rocket Robin said:

I didn't notice any representation by York 9 FC or their fans. This would have been an opportunity this holiday weekend for a table to be set up just outside the one gate and someone handing out postcards with the web address seeking memberships. I know York 9 has been hitting the youth soccer market hard including Vaughan but this would have been another chance/reminder. I don't think TFC parents would have objected as ex-TFC Academy players like Dylan Sacramento and Anthony Osorio now play for Vaughan and will probably be seeking opportunities for Canada Premier League positions.

See, this illustrates why I'm worried about York9. As a TFC supporter, things mentioned on the message boards about Jim Brennan after he was brought into the TFC front office once he retired from playing. With different leadership, perhaps I'd give York9 decent odds at pulling this off.

[rob.notenboom]

Just FYI, the ‘by Canadians for Canadians’ was not really a topic of conversation in Winnipeg, Calgary, or Edmonton. I was at both the Winnipeg & Edmonton launch events and spent some time in Calgary taking in a Foothills game. But everyone was talking about how this could be a pathway for local players. The point here is that it seems to be less the league’s branding and more the community connections that seems to be driving membership numbers as far as I can tell. That’s not to say the league’s messaging, branding, or promotion have been poor ... far from it. But in each location the feeling I got (and what I heard and saw) seemed much more like a community coming together to support something. 

[Ansem]

 

 

[Shway]

I'm interested to see how they do against TFC. 

The reality is the GTA is a massive hotbed for talented youth players and TFC can possibly get them all. 

With YORK9, the Forge, and Vancouver casting their net wherever they can... Im excited to see the landscape for youth players change massively in the GTA. 

[baulderdash77]

TFC has been successful at corralling a good amount of Southern Ontario talent but the talent base is just much too large to fit on a 1 team academy.  Also kids develop at different paces and so many later bloomers slip through.  Just take at look at how many people are coming through L1O to a professional environment each year.  

By having 2 additional teams in the same market, the funnel for a legit soccer pathway just got 3 times wider.  That’s the most exciting part for our program to compete for the World Cup.  Long term the pathway just got so much easier to come through and the cream has a better chance to rise to the top.

[Unnamed Trialist]

1 minute ago, baulderdash77 said:

TFC has been successful at corralling a good amount of Southern Ontario talent but the talent base is just much too large to fit on a 1 team academy.  Also kids develop at different paces and so many later bloomers slip through.  Just take at look at how many people are coming through L1O to a professional environment each year.

I think this is a good question to ask very specifically: how many kids from a metropolitan area of a city could reasonably expect to make it pro? Or we could ask: how many of each year's crop?

If you look at similar sized cities, with multiple pro clubs, it may not be that much more than the GTA is producing. 

I doubt if there are more than 50 guys making a pro salary right now born and raised in greater Madrid, and it might be the same for Rome, or for Birmingham. So even with a couple pro clubs, and some lower division teams, I suspect you cannot reasonably think that the GTA should have more than a few dozen active pro players in the world at any given time.

The difference between having one pro club, and maybe two or three, might just be that little bit, a half dozen more in each case. 

I am arguing this understanding that a lot of players in Europe, for example, are from smaller outlying cities, as larger cities do not produce proportionally to their size.

 

[baulderdash77]

It’s not GTA specific though.  It becomes regional.  

Southern Ontario has about 13 million people living in it and currently has 2 pro teams (Toronto FC and Ottawa).  That’s more than the population of Belgium for example or about the same as London and Rome combined.

In that context the jump from 2 to 4 teams is going to open the development pathway by more than a half dozen guys.  Right now the development pathway is drinking from a firehose because there’s way too many talented kids for way too few spots. Even with 4 teams it’s still drinking from a firehose.

[Unnamed Trialist]

10 minutes ago, baulderdash77 said:

It’s not GTA specific though.  It becomes regional.  

Southern Ontario has about 13 million people living in it and currently has 2 pro teams (Toronto FC and Ottawa).  That’s more than the population of Belgium for example or about the same as London and Rome combined.

In that context the jump from 2 to 4 teams is going to open the development pathway by more than a half dozen guys.  Right now the development pathway is drinking from a firehose because there’s way too many talented kids for way too few spots. Even with 4 teams it’s still drinking from a firehose.

Oh, I 100% agree. But a region is different from a city, major large cities do not tend to produce athletes in proportion to their population, for many reasons. 

Belgium has a complex tiered structure like the rest of the world, you could be 16 and have a good year in your modest local club and Anderlecht could sign you, or any of 30-40 pro clubs. The captation is way better, and since clubs compete authentically, one may sign a kid for one reason (eg height) and another may opt for another criteria (ball skills for a CB), every club looks for its advantage. In many countries there is a lesser known pro or semi pro academy of high quality that grabs kids being dumped by the higher profile pro clubs, for whaatever reason, and many take a less illustrious career to pro. More options, IMO, means it is far fairer for all kinds of kids playing, all kinds and forms of talent would have a pro outlet, which is not the case now. 

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

There's definitely room for more pro teams in southern Ontario, but I would be surprised if the scale of investment in academy systems gets anywhere close to what TFC are doing because of how expensive it is to do properly with full-time paid coaches and no pay-to-play element. Worth noting that the Fury eventually closed their's down and stopped trying to compete with the local youth clubs in that regard that are now happier to provide them with lots of group ticket sales. What the CanPL teams are going to provide is somewhere for more of the players coming through the MLS academy and homegrown player system that are not quite good enough to play regularly in MLS to still be able to carve out a pro level career.

[baulderdash77]

Yes our system is so disjointed.  Ontario has the “best” or most developed system and navigating youth soccer is a crazy thing now.  OPDL, Rep soccer, SAAC academies, non SAAC academies; it’s just a real maze.  I think L1O is starting so do some of the corralling but I’m not sure either.

[baulderdash77]

BBTB- also some of the late bloomers.  Some kids, especially smaller faster kids, don’t physically develop as quickly and get screened out early but become excellent when they hit puberty and their body catches up to their speed.  

By then they’re in the firehose and it’s hard to get noticed.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Agree on the late bloomer angle. More pro level opportunities the better obviously. We don't want MLSE doing to soccer what they have done to hockey in pro level terms in most of southern Ontario. There are no easy answers on the development system. L1O is very much in the pocket of the larger suburban youth clubs that control a lot of the district associations and hence the OSA and hasn't really provided the solution in integrating the academies for just that reason, unfortunately. It also hasn't managed to kill off the CSL like it was expected to, and it's not clear that it is providing something that is really enough of a step up from Ontario Cup participants in leagues like the OSL, HDSL and WOSL to merit having separate tiers rather than an all in pro/rel type system similar to what they do with the NPL in the different states in Australia.