Top Stories

MLS notes: FC Dallas loses stadium sponsor, Impact sign Brazilian and more

DAL_Primary_COL

For the first time since its soccer-specific stadium opened in 2005, FC Dallas won't be playing at Pizza Hut Park. 

Instead, the club will play at the temporarily named FC Dallas Stadium while it searches for a new sponsor.

Pizza Hut is reportedly dropping its sponsorship of the stadium, effective after the Football Championship Subdivision title game is held there on Jan. 7. FCD is now in the market for both a jersey and stadium-naming-rights sponsor as it heads into the 2012 season.

FC Dallas' first game at the rebranded FC Dallas Stadium is against the New York Red Bulls on March 11 and will be the first televised MLS game on the NBC Sports Network under the league's new TV deal.

Here are a couple of more items from around MLS:

IMPACT SIGN BRAZILIAN MF

The Montreal Impact continue to build their roster, this time dipping into the international market to sign 21-year-old Brazillian midfielder Felipe Campanholi Martins.

He was most recently employed by FC Lugano in Switzerland's second division, where he has played or was loaned out from for the last four years. Prior to that he was in Italy's third tier with Padova Calcio from 2007-2009, joining the club as a 17-year-old.

JAMES LEAVES TIMBERS STAFF

Longtime MLS assistant coach Trevor James has stepped down from his post with the Portland Timbers for reasons undisclosed by both coach and organization.

The England native was with the Timbers for one season following five years working under the likes of Frank Yallop and Bruce Arena with the Los Angeles Galaxy. He had an extended playing and coaching career overseas prior to coming to the United States.

——————

What do you think about the FC Dallas stadium situation? What do you think of the Impact's roster to date? Think James would make for a good MLS head coaching candidate?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. I’m sure I’ll make time for some games. I have a longer commute than that right now, and I’ll be @ school on the north side of downtown anyway.

    I’m just PO’ed the Texas Derby is only going to be a one-off next year.

    Reply
  2. I kind of agree with you. I’ve been to Texas once, to Fort Worth. It seemed like most people who live in the city limits of Fort Worth had to drive 30 minutes to the closest grocery store. Everything is far away and spread out. Not what I’m used to as a city, being an east coaster native and resident. If you want close and convenient, come here to DC or the other cities up the northeast corridor.

    It sounds like complaining in the similar vein of “I can’t support the Red Bulls, despite their stadium being on a subway line that connects to Midtown Manhattan, them having a playoff team in a beautiful new stadium because they’re in New Jersey!” Just whining to justify inactivity. I don’t understand how FCD fans can complain. At least they have a stadium (I’m a DC United supporter). And it’s about as far away as everything else in their self-named Metroplex.

    Reply
  3. I think the location of Toyota Park, works for the Chicago area. As previously stated it is near the Polish / Hispanic areas on the Southwest side and is accessible to the suburban families who make up a good part of the fanbase. The problem with TP, is no direct access to the facility from downtown. The Orange line gets you to Midway, then you have to transfer to a bus to make the last 5 miles. Besides, the fact that the stadium is not in Chicago proper, saves me $25 in parking and probably $10 a ticket in taxes.

    Reply
  4. It’s tough to convince someone who doesn’t like soccer to drive out there. But it’s really not that bad if you like soccer and so already are inclined to go. It takes me about 30 minutes to get there; I wish it were less, but the games are fun. I don’t really think about it anymore.

    Reply
  5. The Home Depot Center is out in Carson. I drive from Hollywood which is 22 miles. Takes at least an hour and a half during the week. I feel your pain Dallas but not really an excuse. Galaxy thrives because we draw people from all walks of life from all different neighborhoods and our owners invest in the team and the experience.
    Dallas needs better marketing and an international DP draw as all MLS teams need.

    Reply
  6. This whole, “Frisco is too far away” thing is maddening. If you live in Dallas, and won’t drive to Frisco, then you really don’t want to support a soccer club.

    From downtown Dallas
    Cowboys Stadium in Arlington – 22 miles
    FC Dallas Stadium in Frisco – 28 miles

    It sits along the Tollway, which for Texas IS mass transit.

    There are 3 million people living within 30 minutes of Frisco. It is the fastest growing county in the USA.

    If you live in the DFW area, everything is “far away”.

    Oh, and the Dallas Stars play downtown, and their attendance sucks right now.
    The Rangers in Arlington, and prior to this current run, their attendance sucked too.

    There is no “ideal location”. If the team isn’t marketed well, and have a good product both on and off the field, people won’t come out.

    The stadium is in Frisco. Get over it. If you want soccer to thrive in Dallas, nut up and drive up there, otherwise you are no better – maybe worse – than those from the northern sections of the metroplex that would not drive to the Cotton Bowl (in downtown) when the Burn played there.

    Good grief.

    Reply
  7. They sell out a few games a year because they concentrate all their group sales into a few games so those people have a good atmosphere when they come. That’s a good strategy for the most part.

    The only problem with that is group sales to me don’t engender long-term support in the same way that an individual making a purchase does. The kids go because the rest of their team goes. The employee goes because their company is going. These people don’t come out of a love for the game or team. This is also hardly exclusive to Dallas only. However HSG is about as creatively bland as they come. The Mavs have Mark Cuban, the Cowboys Jerry Jones. HSG is the boring guy at the party.

    Reply
  8. You’ve got it exactly backwards bottlcaps. MLS pays the salary cap and up to 400k of a DP salary. Also any allocation money used is technically league money. The rules say any salary above that is paid by the individual teams’ owners, though I wouldn’t be surprised if all the teams are paying Beckham’s salary or something.

    Reply
  9. A few Dallas supporters sat in my section the last time FCD was at the Home Depot Center. They all just marveled at our stadium, and talked about how their team had no hope as long as they continued playing in their “joke of a stadium.” Their words, not mine. As one guy wearing red hoops told me, “It’s a thousand miles outside of Dallas, it seats maybe 10,000, It’s hot as balls and offers no shade ANYWHERE in the stadium, the pitch is shite, the lighting is poor, there’s only four bathrooms, and even the barbeque sucks.”

    Pity too – Dallas was striking fear in the hearts of other MLS West teams as recently as July. Now look. Even the worst pizza in the world doesn’t want anything to do with them.

    Reply
  10. Technically, LA made a profit last year. What a lot of people forget that under the MLS salary cap and the Designated Player rules, only the first 400K of a players salary counts under the teams salary cap. In fact the remaining salary of DP’s comes not from the team but from the MLS. This was to insure that even small market teams could afford at least one DP.

    With attendence ranking among the top in the MLS, the Beckham effect promotional sales etc. the Galaxy made quite a lot. In fact they made close to break even, with three multimillion stars on the team!! (without the MLS subsidy)

    But there is a lot of fine print in all this there are give-backs and MLS residuals etc, etc

    I think, even in these bad economic times, the general downturn in profitable sports franchises in any sport (especially in small markets) The MLS’s growth and its profitability for some teams, shows that things are progressing as planed. LA is a HUGE sports market even without an NFL team and the Dodgers going broke it still supports TWO MLS teams

    Reply
  11. Who are they and where have you read this from? I read Glenn Davis’ blog and listen to his show pretty regularly, people have asked about a local ownership group and nothing has been known from his end?

    Is this maybe outside ownership groups you are talking about?

    I would love for the Dynamo to be owned by someone else, maybe then they will get a DP, something tells me Dom’s style of play or the kind of player he likes is holding it more than anything, but with a new owner but him and Cannetti would be under the microscope

    Reply
  12. Their attendance actually did spike, and they had some sellouts aside from the usual ones when they played NY & LA with Henry & Beckham.

    They also sold out their Home/season opener and had about 2 or 3 other sellouts aside from that, after August the games were better attended like in most cities when the weather wasn’t appropriate of the Stadium’s nickname “the oven” or pit or whatever it was.

    I think they had something like triple increase in Season tickets but still a lot of work to be done, they need to maintain the team’s level of play, do better in CCL next time and finish it off when they had such a great start winning IN MEXICO, 1st MLS club to do so, and it would hurt to land a BIG time DP, but it has to be THE right DP.

    I don’t know how much sense it would make but someone like Rodolfo Zelaya, or Eliseo Quintanilla might help from El Salvador and they won’t be huge DP guys, even if they were it won’t be by much…

    The stadium being so far does hurt, they need to hire hungry innovative Marketing and advertising or Sports Marketing grads and revamp the Advertising team. Plenty of people coming out college in those fields need jobs…
    If they sell it properly, they will come

    Reply
  13. The Anschultz family wont own the Dynamo for long.

    From what i’ve read there are 3 separate party’s with enough money, who want their 50% of the stake to the Dynamo.

    Reply
  14. The location of Toyota Park works theoretically because it is really close to major Hispanic and Eastern European neighborhoods and suburbs of Chicago. Plus it is a decent location close to I-55 and I-294. So it makes sense. And yeah, attendance in Chicago isn’t too terrible. I mean there’s no way of telling if the stadium was moved to a trendier neighborhood that attendance would increase.

    Reply
  15. Pretty sure he’s trying to say that Pizza Hut’s Pizza sucks not pizza in general or the one according to you he might of offended…. lol

    Reply
  16. Uhhh yeah, I feel your pain, but FC Dallas is NOT making profits right now.

    Not even my beloved Galaxy has made a profit the last 2 seasons because they been blowing money on DPs trying to win that damn 1st championship since the last time a Guatemalan won it for us, Thank You Pando & Ruiz, and with no TV money from anyone I can see why LA is probably slightly but still below the red line.

    Dallas made a profit in the 1st few years that it had been playing in Pizza Hut Park, but around late 2007 when they started to lose some of their stars and fans, then had a bad 2008 season and so on until 2010 when the turned it around but attendance was pretty bad as we all know.

    No Shirt sponsor, barely any money from tickets and food/merchandise sold at stadium and failed DPs with Denilson & Daviño led to them being in the red.

    Right now I believe only Seattle & Toronto are making a sure profit. Portland has some investments and start up costs to cover but they’ll be there soon. Not sure how the situation is for Vancouver at BC Place but they get lots of fans so I imagine they stand a good chance. Philly might turn a profit soon after a while for the same reasons as Portland

    But Dallas my friend is not well off in money, and kudos to HSG for still trying to bring in a star or 2 and keeping team alive, just wish the crowds would show more often…

    Reply
  17. HSG only put 25 mil into the stadium, the rest was paid for by bonds from the county/city and the frisco independent school district. Notice the change takes place after the last high school football game. Pizza Hut had agreed to 20 year 25 million dollar deal, times are tough and they wanted to spend less. From what I’ve seen elsewhere Pizza Hut wanted to not serve pizza in the stadium and some other issue. FCD told them to piss off.

    Pizza Hut limited our opportunities with other sponsors. I look at this as a positive. Once upon a time Texas Instruments was nearly a done deal for our jerseys, something went down hill fast.

    As long as the place doesn’t sit without a name on it for too long it doesn’t matter. Many people like to comment and make jokes about how low the attendance is at FC Dallas games. For those who relate low attendance with not making money; you’re wrong. FCD is one of the first teams to make a profit in the MLS and they have continued to do so. From what I have been able to find about financials, not a lot out there, FCD has been making a profit since 2007.

    Speaking of team woes. We competed well in 3 competitions 2011 falling short from doing anything notable in any sadly. 2010 however FCD were league runners up. Putting together a playoff making team and turning a profit every year is enviable by most teams in this league. FCD also runs one of the top quality youth programs in the country. Knock them if you will, just take in some info about them before looking too harshly at what’s being done their.

    Reply
  18. “Frisco is a part of DFW, not “out of the area”

    NO IT IS NOT!

    “FC Dallas’ biggest issue is not location.”

    NO IT IS ONLY ISSUE 1b

    1a Being Advertising the team.

    Reply
  19. Although, I believe Chicago receives fairly decent attendance at their games, this year might of been a down year because of poor performance on the pitch and no playoffs (or at least urgency in the beginning of the season) FC Dallas’s situation seems much more difficult.

    Reply
  20. you can add toyota park to the list of places built in BFE that no one in their right mind would travel to from the actual city. From the northside it is a good 60-90 min every single time i have been out there. none this year for that same reason…if only the built it in those empty lots in old town where cabrini green used to be.

    Reply
  21. Dallas Cowboys stadium is in Arlington for the same reason FC Dallas stadium is in Frisco, the local government agreed to pay a large portion of the building cost. If Dallas would have caved to Jerry Co., the stadium would have been in Dallas. Also, the Cowboys are the holy grail of DFW sports so no matter where they build a stadium, people will come.

    Frisco might be growing fast but it is still ‘out there’. It is closer to Denton then Dallas and it will take a lot of years for the population to catch up to the point where the casual fan will be enough to fill the seats.

    Yes, the team has been horrible at marketing but the location of their stadium has only made that marketing harder. And even when they made their run to the MLS Cup last year their attendance didn’t spike.

    Now imagine if they had build the stadium where Reunion Arena sits. Do you really think that would be a bad thing? I think they would be hitting the 20,000 a game mark. But the Hunt family wanted to go cheap and went where they could get government money.

    Reply
  22. The stadium is only a couple miles from Lake Lewisville and Denton County. Yea, technically its the DFW area, but it might as well be Canada for most people in Dallas proper.

    Reply
  23. If they built this in Plano or along the DART we would not be having this conversation. Frisco might be a part of the DFW area but its so far North from those said people you are trying to advertise the game too.

    Reply
  24. Obviously you have never been to the DFW area. Frisco is a part of DFW, not “out of the area”. In fact, the Frisco area is right now the most fast growing part of DFW.
    The complaint are coming from people in the downtown Dallas area and south. But downtown Dallas was not and is not an ideal place for a new stadium. See the Cowboys who’s new stadium is in Arlington – they also passed on a Dallas downtown stadium.
    FC Dallas’ biggest issue is not location. It is poor marketing and failure to field a championship team. I high profile hispanic play would help too.

    Reply
  25. Good riddance to Pizza Hut. I hated going to a place called Pizza Hut Park. The thing that hurts FC Dallas attendance is that fact that the stadium is so far outside of town. It’s almost closer to Oklahoma than Dallas proper. They decided to bank on families and soccer moms instead of 20 and 30-something men and the Hispanic population.

    It’s a nice stadium, but its such a haul. I use to go to every game at the Cotton Bowl. Getting the DART line out there would probably save them.

    Reply
  26. Bingo! If only they held out for a few years, they probably could have built a stadium where Reunion Arena stood and probably could be able to pack the stands each game.

    Reply
  27. Compare the teams owned by the Hunt family (Columbus Crew, FC Dallas) to those owned by Anschutz (LA Galaxy, Houston Dynamo). Who would you rather have as owners of your MLS team?

    Reply
  28. Wonder if it has anything to do with the owners? The(Hunt Family).
    They also own Columbus Crew. The Crew also has jersey sponsorship, stadium sponsorship, and attendance problems. There seems to be a few parallels.

    Reply
  29. It’ll be interesting to see if the team can score a jersey sponsor. One thing I find curious — just found a great site that breaks down the stadium deals and jersey deals — is that DC United is doing so badly financially. I know they’ve got the worst lease and no TV money, but they do have the third best jersey deal. The jersey deal alone should cover the stadium rent. Even their coach comes cheaply. Their attendance is way off, but I’m still surprised the team isn’t at least treading water.

    Reply
  30. How many Pizzas would they have to sell to cover the 1.2M/YR costs?

    It never made any business sense and that fact has only been exasperated in a down economy

    I say good riddance. The name was corny and the pizza sucks anyway

    Reply
  31. This development out of Dallas is a shame because it most likely stems from the fact the attendance is pretty dire. It has been getting a bit better so its a shame but they need to get a sponsor for either their stadium or jersey by offseasons end.
    As for Montreal, doesnt seem like a player worth signing on… They will probably end up with a few superdraft selections making a bigger impact (no pun intended) than this kid.

    Reply
  32. The FC Dallas stadium situation? It’s bad. Not DC United bad, but not that much better, either. It’s embarrassing if Pizza Hut mgmt doesn’t want the name associated with the stadium any more. Ya gotta think a Dallas-area team could succeed, so their struggles are puzzling. With the investment in the stadium, Frisco surely doesn’t want to lose the team, and the team probably sank enough money there that they’re not moving any time soon.

    Still, ya gotta wonder. Plus, there was that poll MLS conducted a couple of months ago in Baltimore, asking about an expansion team, as well as moves by either DC United or FC Dallas. It would not be good public relations for the league to move the team so soon after a stadium was built, but…ya gotta wonder.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Cavan Cancel reply