Euro fans
MF: So there are hardcore soccer fans, who would rather watch Man U on Saturday, who do not care about the Metros at all.
NS: And that's a shame. We're really at a loss how we get those people to come to our stadium.
MF: The 80,000 who are there for Man U, many are real soccer fans.
NS: They are hardcore soccer fans.
MF: But we see less and less of them every year, and those who are out there, make fun of the Metros because we're not Man U. Are you doing anything to reach out those guys?
NS: Oh, we're trying. But they're probably, of the whole universe of soccer fans, that group is the toughest and the least responsive. But we're trying.
MF: You care to comment specifically on what you're trying to do?
NS: We have their names, we have their phone numbers and addresses, we write them, we call them, we try to sell them group packages, we try to sell them season tickets, in some cases, we're able to get them. But we have a decision to make here internally. We can either really focus all of our time an effort and on that tough group, or go after an easier group. Youth soccer, kids, kids who eat, drink, and sleep red and black stripes. They are more easier to sell and more apt to by our tickets, you can't completely ignore that group, because otherwise they wouldn't come to the stadium either, and we'd spend all our time and effort on the hardcode group. So it's a very tricky thing to balance, and there are only so many hours in the day, and I can't hire a small army of people. We have 40 people in this front office which need to get as many ticket sales as possible in a short period of time. That hardcore, I call them the Euro soccer crowd, it's a very difficult crowd to convince, because their standard is so high. They are fans of Real Madrid, and Man U, and Chelsea, and I'll be honest with you, I'd be lying if I thought our product was of equal quality to that. But then there are not a lot of teams in the world, whose product is close in quality to that.
MF: Yet there are fans of English teams like Carlisle United and York City, teams whose quality is worse than the Metros'. Lots of these guys, who come from England, they would be say a Liverpool fan and a York City fan, so you support your local team as well as the big one, but these same people would not go see the MetroStars.
NS: Why is that?
MF: I don't know, I am not like those fans.
NS: I don't have the answer to that one either.
MF: So you haven't explored that whole thing?
NS: We have.
MF: And you can't come up with the answer.
NS: We don't get consistent answers. Actually, a lot of our fan surveys have come back and they do believe that the Carlisles of the world are better that the MetroStars. They do believe that the quality of football of the second and third division in England is better than the quality of football in MLS. And you and I both know that's not true, but perception is reality.