Congratulations to Hector Solario! Read the official announcement here
What Sporting Club May Become...
We love to speculate about the future of Sporting Club since the possible combinations of sports is like a mixed up Rubik's Cube that only Soony Saad could solve.
Looking for Lyrics to Chants?
We have collected as many chants as we could find that you might hear at Livestrong Park.
Is it March yet?
Find out what everyone is saying about the upcoming match.
Well it has been a long time coming, but we finally decided to end our active work with our group. 2014 was a year that saw many people in the group start to have different work/life responsibilities that made it harder to manage the group as we had initially sought out to do. There are many great places to share you SKC spirit online and in person. Please don't be a stranger as the majority of us are still going to the games home and away. Thanks to everyone who supported our effort from the time we were very small in Section 102. We loved the past 5 years and would not trade it for anything. The website, Twitter and Facebook page will all stay up for links and posterity. It's the least we could do. And maybe someday when we retire and our kids are away in college, we can get this started up again!
Congratulations to FC Kansas City on clinching a playoff spot in the inaugural season of the NWSL last night with a 3-2 win against Alex Morgan, Christine Sinclair (no relation!) and the Portland Thorns. I have been to three FC Kansas City games this year at Shawnee Mission NW stadium Verizon Field. I'm a soccer fan and a Kansas City fan and I'm hopeful that all of our teams can succeed here including the Brass, KC Shock, and the Comets. If we are going to proclaim our city "Soccer Capital of America" as Sporting KC has over All-Star Week and with the courting of the US Soccer training facility here, we need all of our teams to flourish even if they don't belong to Sporting Club.
And how do we show our region and our country that soccer is flourishing here and that we deserve to have the US Soccer (Men's and Women's) training facility here? We show case our winning teams in the best venue suited for them. Right now FC Kansas City is drawing 75% (4,597) capacity crowds at Verizon Field which is decent enough for second in the league. But now that they are in the playoffs one would expect some increased attention and potential increased ticket sales. But if you have been to one game at Verizon Field and seen the football lines and the turf, you might wish that when the stakes are really high that our Kansas City team can play on the best field available.
The best field available right now that can hold more than 6,150 max capacity of Verizon Field is Sporting Park. BUT there are potential objections and I would like to address them here in the naive hope that we the fans can better support our clubs.
But this is business: Yes Sporting Club (owners of Sporting KC) and Top of the Arc (TOTA) (owners of FC Kansas City and the Missouri Comets) are different business entities, but in reality them working together makes great business sense to both sides, to the city, to the growth of the sport and to the fans. I don't have any insider information of they get along or they hate each other, because frankly I don't see much interaction between the two groups in the media. It seems like a distant acknowledgement of each other from the front offices.
The TOTA business case for FC Kansas City playing at Sporting Park is easy.
Potential for a very high visibility match in KC and nationwide
Higher attendance, potentially higher revenue
New eyeballs that might never come to Verizon Field
Treating their players and opponents to a first tier field/facility
Potential to make a case longer term for a first class 6,000-12,000 seat stadium for the team in the future that benefits the team and the city
The Sporting Club business case for FC Kansas City playing at Sporting Park is a little more indirect:
Back up the claim that KC is the "Soccer Capital of America"
Chance to show how the facility is can be the frame/environment that makes any match look good
Follow-up on the promise for other teams using Sporting Park
Show US Soccer that it is committed to the Women's game and cooperation in soccer which may help solidify the Training Facility potential
Create more goodwill among soccer fans in Kansas City
Make a case for one day fielding their own Women's team (here or even in an nearby city like Omaha, OKC, or St. Louis even - Sporting Club does not have to be tied to KC if it wants to be a global brand.)
Take a healthy guaranteed share of the gate revenue and even merchandise/food/parking revenue
Staff a SKC STH booth and get more people signed up on the waiting list
Have SKC players do autograph/photo ops.
And potentially make the argument that someday big Sporting KC games should take place at Arrowhead.
No one in KC but the owners care that there are two different owners. The players show up at each others games. I stood in line for a Port-a-John with Sinead Farrelly and Desiree Scott in the Parking Lot of Sporting Park. SKC players have been seen at FCKC games. The fans for both teams overlap as well. Sure there are many many more SKC fans as attendance and apparel numbers will tell you, but there is plenty of overlap. And we as fans don't really care that you are owned by different organizations.
Just because SKC is wildly successful now, they need to be a little more humble and remember what it was like to be struggling and help out other soccer teams that are trying to make a mark on our city. It will attract more talent and more attention to the city and I doubt that NWSL and FC KC will take over popularity from Sporting KC and MLS just because they let FC Kansas City play a few games at Sporting Park.
Come on Robb Heineman and Brian Budzinski...work this out for Kansas City and the fans for both your teams.
(links added as they get posted online- check back often)
April 14th at Livestrong Sporting Park
Real Salt Lake (5-1-0, 15 points) at Sporting KC (5-0-0, 15 points)
Previous 2011 match
Loss
Sporting KC 1 - 0 Real Salt Lake at Rio Tinto Stadium September 17, 2011 - Recap Previous match highlights: Referee Preview: TBD via RefRefs
Sporting KC Video Preview with Interviews:
Opponent Video Preview with Interviews: Links to Previews (from SKC sources):
Lyrics:
C is for Collin, he's good enough for me CLAP CLAP
C is for Collin, he's good enough for me CLAP CLAP
C is for Collin, he's GOOD enough for me OHHHHHHHH
Collin, Collin, plays for SKC CLAP CLAP CLAP
Chant video (coming soon hopefully):
Original Song:
Chant Origins:
Calvin L suggested this in the Facebook group for New Songs on March 31st, 2012. A couple variations were suggested and this is the version most people agreed upon. The song is well known in America among people aged in their 30's since originating in 1972 on Sesame Street. Seen referenced by a UK blogger as well.
Heard at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park: Being tried starting with the April 7th game against LA. Heard from other MLS supporters groups: None - an original! Although their was talk in 2008 of Rapids fans using it for the Rapids player Terry Cooke. I cannot find any recordings or evidence it went beyond just talk.
Why it works: simple well known children's song, minimal lyrics, fan favorite player reference, positive and supportive, incorporates clapping which keeps everyone closer to the beat Why it might not: Never been done before, a little change on the bumber of Collin/Cookie references on the last line to get SKC to fit may throw off people learning it for the first time.
The basic idea is SKC fans like to see our team score goals, especially at home when we are cheering them on. If we harnesses the excitement and passion about Sporting scoring and tied it to supporting important endeavors in our community we could have a championship team AND a make a big charitable difference. With 18,500+ people attending each game, just imagine the power of each person pledging $1 (yes, you can pledge more!) per KC goal. With 29 goals scored at home last year that could be $536,500!
Because I like to read all things Sporting, I wanted to collect all the season previews/predictions/depth charts I came across from known SKC sites and outside sources as well. If you see one that I do not have send it my way. I will add them as they get posted to their sites. And at the end of the year we can see what came true and what did not.
We were waiting to unveil the Ad Astra SKC shirts once the South Stand SC finally hit 80 founding members. And today it happened. We have had these in hand for almost a week and it has been killing us to release them before the home opener.
The design was donated by Mike Gravito and David Streeter fans of Sporting Kansas City. More on that story later.
You can order them online in the South Stand SC store today and pick them up at home games or South Stand watch parties (Watch the South Stand blog or Facebook group for details.)
We hope you like them and wear them proudly.If you would like to send us a picture with you in your shirt we would be happy to post it here or in the store.
In the past few weeks we have covered Twitter and Facebook for Major League Soccer Teams to see how they engage their fans. We will use these stats as a baseline to compare who makes the biggest gains this year and figure out why some clubs shine and others fall. All of this is done without a sense of competition, but more out of a sense that successful clubs who engage their fans, get more attention for MLS and soccer as a whole in the US and therefore indirectly bring more value to the games that we love as hopefully stadiums continue to sell out.
One caveat with these stats is the MLS site does not always use YouTube as the source video. They use Microsoft Silverlight, therefore some teams may have high views on the MLS website that are not captured in these stats.
These stats were gathered in January 1, 2012, and as before we will start by tying them to the Metro Population as a way to reduce the impact size that a large or small metro may have on eyeballs checking out your team's content.
This first table is sorted by Metro Population (as described previously), so that you can see how the large cities generally outperform the smaller ones. But you also can see some interesting anomalies here, like the San Jose Earthquakes getting 4 million views (which I'll explain in a bit.). I took two basic stats for this table (views and subscribers). In later editions I will also be including # of videos uploaded.
Here is the same table sorted by views.
The top 5 teams have a few different reasons why they are at the top of the list by raw numbers of views. San Jose: Fluke goal. They have one video with 3.9M views. And it deserves a lot of views. SJ Goalies scores a goal in a friendly against West Bromwich. Take that away and they are a still respectable 8th on this table for a team that has not done to well with Twitter or Facebook. Dallas:Moral outrage. Has one video with 300k views about cheerleaders, that seems to be getting negative attention because the dance team leader talked about testing them for body fat in tryouts. Take that out and they still top 1M for a club that has not been a leader in attendance in a crowded local sports market. The majority of their other top views are from 3-4 years ago. Vancouver:Sex sells. Has one video with 458k views. Why so popular? It features their 2011 kit unveiling...being painted on a naked female. But again you take that away and they still have a near the top 800k views. and they are second in number of subscribers. So there is some success there. Probably helped with them being a new MLS club too. Los Angeles Galaxy: Beckham Plus. The addition of many international stars and being near the top of most lists on social media engagement in MLS and the recent Supporter's Shied and MLS champs are cleary the reasons to see LAG so high. Kansas City:Rebranding works. Plus a charismatic rookie serenading women's soccer most recognized personality helps to (405k views). Savvy marketing department helps get views beyond a smaller market. (Hometown bias a bit here, but they are onto something.) Plus it should be noted these counts do not include the Wizards96 You Tube Account (abandoned Nov 2010), which would add 750k views.
On the other hand, Toronto FC's pathetic showing here has a simple explanation: no videos. Since their inception in 2007 they have contributed around 80 videos. Vancouver meanwhile has almost 700 videos. Maybe TFC is using another platform? I cant find another explanation.
Now lets sort accounting for metro population to see if any new patterns emerge:
YT per 10k = (YouTube Views/Metro Pop)*10,000
So now the top 5 are slightly different. San Jose stays at the top with the popular Goal by Goalie video. Vancouver with the smaller population shows how significant those 1.2M views are now. KC stays near the top and moves up a few spots. And Real Salt Lake rockets up from 10th, similar to other big improvements on previous posts on Twitter and Facebook. Biggest Winners: +6 Spots: Columbus 12->6, RSL 10->4 Biggest Losers: -7 spots: Chivas USA 7->14, New York 9->16
(Side note: if you wanted to calculate the YT Views per 10k for SJE, I already did it for you. 3,235 putting them in between SKC and RSL).
Having a lot of subscribers probably helps, but it didn't seem to tell a lot of stories so I did not incorporate it in the analysis except to show you.
So it pays to have at least one video go viral (hopefully for good reasons, not like FC Dallas), but as we go through the season I hope to be able to bring you other good tactics being utilized by teams using social media. What patterns do you see?
If you would like access to this data on Google Docs or are interested in this project please email me at Christian@adastraskc.org
I'll leave you with a great example of YouTube marketing from Sporting Kansas City to their fans for the 2011 Winter Holidays.
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