Comments on: Monetize, commercialize and “Americanize” the stadiums of Europe? I say “Be careful what you ask for”

By: dws110

dws110 — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:16:10 +0000

Just finished the original article, and what bothers me most about it is that it accepts as a given that the future of soccer in England (and by extension, the rest of the world) is to increase the gaps between The Big Number of clubs with insane resources and the rest of the league. The article reads like the sales brochure of an instruction manual to, say, Chelsea, on how to keep up with Man City in terms of $$$ to spend, and vice versa.

That’s the kind of thinking that drove wages/transfer fees/ticket prices into the stratosphere in the first place.

By: archlobster

archlobster — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:40:01 +0000

I have to say, with American Football at least, it is better to watch on TV, so the big American stadia argument makes more sense because, like dfstell said, we have awesome TVs now.

But with soccer… eh. What do people expect? The wages being demanded require cold, hard cash to be paid. Supporters, fans, merchandise are all just individual pieces to a massive paycheck.

Or you can be a league 2 team I suppose.

This is reality, and will continue to be. Running away from it and throwing temper tantrums only serve to delay the inevitable. I hate it but I’ve accepted it as the fact that it is.

By: dfstell

dfstell — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:30:36 +0000

I mostly miss watching with other people who are passionate fans. But….the blow of the good, old-fashioned stadiums going away is that we have much better televisions than we used to and do things like stream games on our iPhones. It’s not a true replacement, but imagine how awful it would be if we didn’t have technology making it better.

By: pmacd82

pmacd82 — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:09:07 +0000

Yankee Stadium and Citi Field were two stadiums built to maximize the “fan experience.” Yankee Stadium, that luxury only exists on the levels where people have money, and in both stadiums’ cases, there are areas that have poor sightlines or obstructed views, something that shouldn’t happen in a modern stadium especially when being able to watch the game should be most important. So, agreed, be careful Europe.