Fort Report

This is a bit off the reservation, as it’s not in keeping with the series.  However, I needed a proper format to write this and the Midnight Riders blog wins by default.

Gillette Stadium is a modern American stadium.  It’s the home of the New England Patriots, who rake in millions hand over fist for the team and stadium owners: The Kraft Family.  They did a wonderful job in privately financing it when their search for a new home in Boston (and then Hartford) failed.  People are always impressed with it’s character and the new Patriot Place development has only added to it’s esteem.

However, few would argue it’s the ideal home for the New England Revolution.  Two other teams currently play in NFL stadiums:  New York Red Bulls (who are moving into what will be the greatest US soccer stadium for at least a decade) and Seattle Sounders (who draw 27k+ per game currently).  DC United play in a former football stadium.  However, the seats that were eliminated for the baseball Nationals will make it a suitable MLS venue for however long it remains standing.  The obvious problem with playing in such a huge structure is a normal soccer crowd gets dispersed and seems tiny in a cavernous environment.  This makes the crowd look dead and was very apparent when Colorado and Kansas City also shared their home with NFL teams.  To increase fan concentration, the Revs place a large tarp on one side of the stadium so it looks better on tv.  However, it’s tough to say that crowd noise is better, especially for the players on tarp end.

This has created an elephant in the room for those attending games and watching on tv.  Closing off one side of the stadium just doesn’t look right and I can’t point to any other such example in major American sports.  Most stadiums seem to want their fans as close to the action as possible and vice versa.  For those with sideline seats at Gillette Stadium, looking across the field to no fans watching what you paid to see is a tad demoralizing.  To most, that’s a bit of an embarrassment.

Now, some fans have analyzed statements from MLS commissioner Don Garber and think the league would at some point force the Revs to move out of Gillette.  I say hogwash.  Kraft kept the league alive during it’s dark days.  He’s a founding owner and when it’s paid off, will own the stadium outright.  It’s not like the team is weighing on the league’s finances like several other teams that don’t control their revenue streams are.  As long as the Revs are committed to move to the Boston area in a SSS if that becomes possible, MLS won’t be relocating any team playing in a place their owners 100% own.  That’s just a foolish notion.  MLS has had to live with the silly set up so the team could save on operating costs.  The league never really had any leverage for the team to do something about their current situation, until now.

Enter Seattle Sounders FC.  The wildly successful expansion team is selling out Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks.  The stadium itself seats 67,000 (much like Gillette), with a newly raised soccer capacity of 32,000 (up from just under 28k).  Now, that kind of crowd is twice our attendance on a good night.  So, it may seem like apples and oranges.  After all, Gillette looks just fine when Beckham comes to town.  When Brazil plays there in front of 60k+, the place is electric.  However, Seattle’s owners were committed from day one to make Qwest field as accommodating to the soccer crowd as possible.  Here’s what Seattle does to make the stadium more intimate:

As you can see, they tried for the “stadium within a stadium” look.  The kicker to this is the Seattle ownership aimed high and got even higher attendance than they thought they would get.  From several statements I’ve read, they were fully committed to tarp off some of the upper sections on the sideline if they were to draw the typical MLS crowd.  It was of the utmost importance to not appear to be playing in a stadium with a bunch of empty seats, and they certainly weren’t going to close off one side of the stadium to save on money.

Now let’s take a look at Gillette Stadium in front of an outstanding soccer crowd of 20,000:

You can barely see the start of the tarping off in that picture, but it does go to show what a concentration of 20k looks like.  Here’s a better view of the tarp, albeit not at a Revs game:

The positives from such a setup are:

1. Enables partitioning off the stadium, reducing staffing and thus operating costs.
2. Some sort of fan concentration on one side.
3. Looks better on TV (as long as the camera stays on one side).

The negatives:

1. Looks silly to most sports fans.
2. Allows more fans to be farther from the pitch (less noise reaches the field).
3. Isolates the supporter (loud, organized types) section from the rest of the stadium.
4. A lot of the noise generated gets mitigated by the open space in the gap.
5. Sideline spectators are watching a game that has a solid background, very unusual to the fan experience worldwide.

Essentially, it looks weird, abnormal, and some would argue epitomizes the failure of the team to grow a sizable fanbase over it’s 13 years of existence.

MLS HQ has a master plan to have all it’s teams in their own appropriately-sized stadium.  It’s one of the prerequisites for an expansion team to have a stadium plan in place, and a team has been moved to Houston because they were bleeding money in their current stadium with no stadium prospects on the horizon.  The reason why the Revolution have been exempt from league pressure was mentioned earlier, and the original Quakes would likely still be there if they weren’t owned by AEG, who ran multiple MLS teams at that point.  However, that doesn’t mean the league likes the situation at Gillette.  Add in the fact that soccer specific stadiums (SSS) built outside city centers haven’t been remotely as successful draws as they promised.  Unless the Revs can get a stadium built in the Boston metro area, and there’s a decent chance that it will never happen, we should be resigned to the fact that the team will be playing adjacent to the Patriot Place project for many years (if not decades) to come.

I believe the time has come for both the league and soccer fans to put pressure on the team to adapt Gillette to better accommodate a MLS crowd, much like the Sounders were planning to do when they were awarded expansion rights.  There are a few things they could do right away, but most would have to wait until next season.  Here’s what I think they could do:

Right now: Concentrate The Fort Closer To The Field

The Fort, as a standing supporters section at Gillette, started in section 143.  Overflow had been in 142 with that section officially becoming part of it this year.  With the Defend The Fort campaign, the team supports and hopes it will expand to section 141 and so on.  On a good night, both of the current sections fill up.  Participation levels in the festivities is another topic for another day, but one of the things we have learned from the increased pedestrian crowd is that loud, boisterous fans in the 30th row aren’t heard all too well in the 1st row, much less on the field.  A lot of that has to do with the gap, but it also has to do with distance.  The lower bowl, with a few exceptions, runs 38 rows deep.  Most MLS stadiums, built to accommodate no more than 20,000 fans, typically run 20-25 rows deep, sometimes even less.  One of the first things the team can do is force fans in the north end to the first 20 rows of sections 141-142.  This can be accomplished by covering the top rows.  That’s what they did for sections 140 and 139 on Saturday, BTW.

Take a look at The Fort from one of the Superliga games last year:

That’s about the average for a typical MLS summer night game.  The top 15-20 rows would be cut off in this idea, dispersing those fans into the empty areas in the section below.  Those up top typically sit up there for a bird’s eye view of the action.  If it’s that important to them, they can go to the other general admission area on the opposite end of the stadium.  Often, this arrangement forces those who participate in the atmosphere to the top rows.  If the team is serious at helping the supporters have a loud, unified section, this will go a long way towards achieving that.  More fans closer to the action would add to home field advantage, and in a pinch they can always uncover some of the seats.  I’m not a total mark for security, but I would imagine a section 20 deep is easier to police from above than one 38 deep.  The important thing is they are acknowledging the limitations of the fanbase and getting them closer to the field.  Besides, it would just plain look more appropriate.  The next, and most important step, would take some persuasion and this would be where MLS could apply pressure:

Next Season: A True Stadium Within A Stadium.

The same setup could be applied to the rest of the stadium.  In short, the idea would be to cover up all but 20 or so rows in the lower bowl for a typical MLS home game.  This would bring more or the people on the east end closer to the action and encircle as much of the field as possible.

Take a look at the seating chart from last season:

When the play is on the East end, it has to be quiet over there.  Getting up to half of the crowd to the other side would mean getting more fans supporting their team over there, more people telling the lineman they disapprove, and more people cheering on the Revs while booing the opponents.  Less of the sound is lost in the elevation and openness and thus reaches the field.  When you look across the stadium, you see fans engaged in the action instead of a blank canvas.

This is what a seating chart of this setup could look like:

I basically went with covering about half of the seats in a section.  The green sections would rarely be used unless there were very large groups going to well-attended games.  I kept the current southern GA section uncovered with the Cat III section next to it.  The people who like to lounge atop The Fort when attendance is low can go sit in one of those sections.  I did some rough estimates, and with the green sections closed, this setup would seat 12-13k not counting the club seats.  There’s many different factors in determining the number of rows in a section, which would of course affect capacity.

Other potential benefits with this setup:

1. The team could wait to open up the Southwest Cat II and Cat III sections until the others are sold out (unlikely for most MLS games) and still get the same effect.  The seating chart may not show it, but Cat II starts right around the Penalty Box.  That would help to further concentrate fans while still looking “acceptable”.
2. This opens up the opportunity for more practical tv side in-stadium ads on the coverings.  Maybe even do some Defend The Fort branding above those sections.
3. You can always take off the coverings or raise them up a few rows in GA sections if you expect a bigger crowd.

Now, this looks like a much more suitable setup for an MLS team.  The major problem comes with cost.  You would need more ushers for more rows, security would need to cover more area, and more sections means more places to clean.  I don’t foresee the need to open up the main concessions on the west side.  There’s concessions at the north end and restrooms in the northwest corner.  Could they have a few collapsible barriers to avoid a new usher in every new row?  Maybe.  Would security need double the manpower if they have to watch the same amount of people?  I sure hope not.  They would be looking more horizontally than vertically, after all.  They could even station people right in the middle of the stadium sections and get a bird’s eye view of multiple spectator sections.  I believe it would cost more, but they could intelligently mitigate that increase.  There could also be the insistence on opening up the main concessions on the west side to keep sales level.  That would obviously require more maintenance personnel.

This transformation would cost the Revolution operating dollars, but I think it is necessary to eliminate what many feel is an awful soccer setup.  This stigma has detrimental long term effects on how players and fans alike view a game being played there.  Like I eluded to before, this could be the home of the Revolution for the life of the stadium.  A deal for a SSS in a prime location may not be attainable in the near future, if ever.  It’s doubtful they would build a suburban soccer stadium and share revenue with a new municipality after seeing some of the attendance figures in places like Dallas and Colorado.  So, we may have to live with the “Razor”.

This is where MLS and/or the soccer community can come in.  The amount of attention to detail the Sounders ownership have put into game presentation is obvious.  The novelty of the new franchise has a lot to do with it, but those who have become fans in Seattle love their club for that very reason.  That’s a loyalty that will pay off for years to come.  They know their owners/operators are behind them.  On the other hand, the Krafts are widely viewed as favoring the bottom line over gameday experience much to the chagrin of the team’s fan base.  If Gillette is indeed the long term home, and there’s nothing to believe they won’t be there for at least the next three seasons, something must change.  MLS shouldn’t allow the team to operate like that while another playing in an NFL stadium is putting in so much attention to detail for their fans.  MLS and Revolution supporters should mention the tarp to Revs FO personnel if it bothers them.  Letters should be written, e-mails sent, etc. because the time line for a new stadium keeps getting pushed back and long spans of silence are the norm.  We need to have the best possible experience at Gillette.  It’s about time, don’t you think?