Atlanta

[Crimson Crayola]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41726695

i know the standard is pi** poor but it does make you a little bitter of what they can achieve in 7 months whilst we still struggle to fill 27,000.

[gl1]

Yeah, but do they have a local ‘rival’ that provides the endless comedy ours does? No, thought not.

[ExiledAjax]

Which two teams were joined together to form this 'united' franchise?

[BRISTOL86]

It’s impressive but Atlanta is enormous (about 2/3rds as big as London I think, population wise) 

Imagine the sort of attendances you’d get if there was only one London club. 

[Crimson Crayola]

Atlanta is 50,000 bigger than Bristol. I know money builds success and that is easier to achieve in mls but 70,000 is still remarkable.

[Crimson Crayola]

3 minutes ago, Just8 said:

Atlanta is 50,000 bigger than Bristol. I know money builds success and that is easier to achieve in mls but 70,000 is still remarkable.

Ignore that. Just seen their metro population is just under 6m

[hoxton casual]

It is remarkable and the fan engagement is incredible. If you look at their tail gate parties flags and music it does sow us the way. We shoukd be bigger and bolder 8n this direction. The Americans often take our inventions and make them better and more successful. Our club is trying hard in this area but could do a lot better.

[elhombrecito]

They've basically got the entire state of Georgia (population 3.7 million) to pull support from. Not quite comparable to us...

Edit: Make that 10m+. Note to self, learn the difference between a country and a state 

[Monkeh]

if there was no city or no rovers and we were a 1 club city the crowds of said bristol club would be around 25k - 32k most weeks (assuming we are where city are in the championship) or 40k if said club was in the prem 

[Leveller]

29 minutes ago, El Hombrecito said:

They've basically got the entire state of Georgia (population 3.7 million) to pull support from. Not quite comparable to us...

Make that 10.2 million.

[Pezo]

Come back to me when they have at least 48 teams in Georgia.

[Spoons]

They will soon get bored of watching the dross served up in the Mls !

[Wanderingred]

The way American sports fans think is totally alien to us. I've got a good friend from Tampa bay. He's really into "soccer" but never followed his local side the Tampa Bay Rowdies because they "suck". (they play in the second league)

Suddenly the MLS gets a new franchise in Orlando and he becomes an Orlando City fan.. Recently there has been talk of a new MLS franchise in Tampa and he's told me that if that happened, he would switch allegeances to them. Just bizarre.

I also knew a guy who moved from St Louis to Chicago and changed from being a Cardinals fan to a Cubs fan.

Don't get me wrong, they can be equally as passionate about their team as we can but the whole deep rooted community aspect of a team to its fans doesn't really apply so much.

[elhombrecito]

41 minutes ago, Leveller said:

Make that 10.2 million.

It turns out that I googled the population of the country of Georgia. I did wonder why it was so low... 

Still, it supports my point even better!!

[Spoons]

25 minutes ago, Raging_Robin said:

I think that's a pretty ignorant view. 

I sit up late watching it. It's awful standard with awful coaching and I would say they would struggle to compete in league two in England. 

Ignorant No. 

[Port Said Red]

I think it helps not having a history in a way, we are constantly trying not only to develop a new fanbase but get some of the lapsed fans to return, The lapsed fans have memories of being let down before and can be quite hard to turn round, if they are the parents of the new fanbase they become a stumbling block.

 

 

[BigTone]

3 hours ago, Leveller said:

Make that 10.2 million.

That's pretty much what I came up with along with Atlanta having a population of 473,000 as opposed to Bristol's 454,000.  Either way they are getting impressive crowds.

[sephjnr]

4 hours ago, Just8 said:

Ignore that. Just seen their metro population is just under 6m

The Falcons are pants, the Braves are worse. Good news has to come from somewhere

[Spoons]

1 hour ago, Raging_Robin said:

I stand corrected then. Please accept my apologies if you watch it all of the time. We will then have to agree to disagree. 

Random question though. If you think the coaching and football are awful, why do you bother watching it? 

Because I would rather sit up watching football/ drinking a beer or two / play poker online than GO to bed with the mrs!!!

[BRISTOL86]

4 minutes ago, Spoons said:

Because I would rather sit up watching football/ drinking a beer or two / play poker online than GO to bed with the mrs!!!

[hoxton casual]

4 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

The way American sports fans think is totally alien to us. I've got a good friend from Tampa bay. He's really into "soccer" but never followed his local side the Tampa Bay Rowdies because they "suck". (they play in the second league)

Suddenly the MLS gets a new franchise in Orlando and he becomes an Orlando City fan.. Recently there has been talk of a new MLS franchise in Tampa and he's told me that if that happened, he would switch allegeances to them. Just bizarre.

I also knew a guy who moved from St Louis to Chicago and changed from being a Cardinals fan to a Cubs fan.

Don't get me wrong, they can be equally as passionate about their team as we can but the whole deep rooted community aspect of a team to its fans doesn't really apply so much.

yes we can all agree they do not have the loyalty, knowledge of the game or many other things that makes us City supporters so wonderful but if we could add their marketing, community involvement, game day party atmosphere surely we would be a much better supported club. There are a lot of non-Bristolians in Bristol with young kids, where we want them to watch us rather than follow their Dad's team from wherever he comes from. Ignoring what the MLS can teach us about these things misses a massive opportunity to build our support. We still however have to perform, and remember when were in the 4th Division we had attendences of 4,000 so we like a bit of success as well!

[ExiledAjax]

4 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

Don't get me wrong, they can be equally as passionate about their team as we can but the whole deep rooted community aspect of a team to its fans doesn't really apply so much.

You’re right it doesn’t. But that’s down to the franchise system rather than the fans themselves. If you knew that your team could up sticks at any moment and move to some far flung city then you wouldn’t have that deep rooted loyalty. 

Loyalty like that runs two ways and they don’t have it in US sports. You only have to look to Wimbledon’s plight to see that we do.

[bcfcshorey]

The large attendances is probably more to do with the stadium itself. Brand new and with tickets probably more expensive and harder to come by for the NFL games, going to see an MLS game would be an cheaper and easier way to get to experience it.

[Atlanta Red]

Good morning, first time posting on here but have been a long time reader and avid city fan. I moved over here to Atlanta back in 2002 to coach football (soccer) and have now made it my home. 

Some things to understand on how Atlanta United have made themselves the success they are this year:

1. The owner is Arthur Blank, he also owns the Atlanta Falcons and is the co-founder of Home Depot he has a ridiculous amount of money and genuinely wants his sports teams to succeed.

2. In regards to the Fan base in Atlanta it is very multi cultural so you have people living here from all over the world, the atmosphere in the stadium is unbelievable, 71,000 people in an allseater stadium standing and singing/chanting for 90 minutes

3. They were very smart in how they marketed the team and made it cheap for people to watch the games.

4. The players they have signed, they knew there was a big Hispanic/south american audience here, firstly they brought in the coach who is a South American and former Barcelona coach. Instead of doing what most MLS teams do and overspend on old players from Europe they did it differently. Yes they brought in Kenwyne Jones and Chris McCann but they got them green cards so it did not end up going against their overseas allocation. They then brought in 3-4 South Americans under the age of 25 who want to come and play for a famous coach from that region and know that they will play here and then get sold for a massive profit to European teams.

5. Soccer is the most played sport now in Georgia and a lot of the states around the US, American Football is declining over here, the biggest reason for the change is that the generation who played when they were young are now having kids and there kids are playing soccer rather than the normal American Sports.

6. As weird as this sounds they have  some people going who have never played soccer but have grown up playing it on Fifa!! 

Hope this helps to answer some questions

[Robin Ashton]

7 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

Which two teams were joined together to form this 'united' franchise?

Atlanta Chiefs & Atlanta Apollos?

[JoeAman08]

10 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

The way American sports fans think is totally alien to us. I've got a good friend from Tampa bay. He's really into "soccer" but never followed his local side the Tampa Bay Rowdies because they "suck". (they play in the second league)

Suddenly the MLS gets a new franchise in Orlando and he becomes an Orlando City fan.. Recently there has been talk of a new MLS franchise in Tampa and he's told me that if that happened, he would switch allegeances to them. Just bizarre.

I also knew a guy who moved from St Louis to Chicago and changed from being a Cardinals fan to a Cubs fan.

Don't get me wrong, they can be equally as passionate about their team as we can but the whole deep rooted community aspect of a team to its fans doesn't really apply so much.

Not all of them. I was born in Philadelphia and am a fan of all teams there. I may have had another “favourite” sides outside the city at various points(usually due to players I enjoyed watching)but it was never another northeast team(NY, DC or Boston). 

I keep an eye on that Atlanta team though. They’re very forward thinking when it comes to recruitment. They’ve been targeting South American players as they don’t have the same work permit issues as they would in England. Obviously they can’t beat most German, Spanish and Italian “Big” clubs to players but they have gotten some good young talent from those regions. Similar to us, they want to nourish the talent and sell it on rather than get the journeyman type players. They’ll be a force in that league soon enough. If only they could get their hands on some decent defenders and keepers. Flint could be a mega star there for example. 

[hoxton casual]

6 hours ago, Atlanta Red said:

Good morning, first time posting on here but have been a long time reader and avid city fan. I moved over here to Atlanta back in 2002 to coach football (soccer) and have now made it my home. 

Some things to understand on how Atlanta United have made themselves the success they are this year:

1. The owner is Arthur Blank, he also owns the Atlanta Falcons and is the co-founder of Home Depot he has a ridiculous amount of money and genuinely wants his sports teams to succeed.

2. In regards to the Fan base in Atlanta it is very multi cultural so you have people living here from all over the world, the atmosphere in the stadium is unbelievable, 71,000 people in an allseater stadium standing and singing/chanting for 90 minutes

3. They were very smart in how they marketed the team and made it cheap for people to watch the games.

4. The players they have signed, they knew there was a big Hispanic/south american audience here, firstly they brought in the coach who is a South American and former Barcelona coach. Instead of doing what most MLS teams do and overspend on old players from Europe they did it differently. Yes they brought in Kenwyne Jones and Chris McCann but they got them green cards so it did not end up going against their overseas allocation. They then brought in 3-4 South Americans under the age of 25 who want to come and play for a famous coach from that region and know that they will play here and then get sold for a massive profit to European teams.

5. Soccer is the most played sport now in Georgia and a lot of the states around the US, American Football is declining over here, the biggest reason for the change is that the generation who played when they were young are now having kids and there kids are playing soccer rather than the normal American Sports.

6. As weird as this sounds they have  some people going who have never played soccer but have grown up playing it on Fifa!! 

Hope this helps to answer some questions

great post - welcome to OTIB.

[hoxton casual]

1 hour ago, JoeAman08 said:

Not all of them. I was born in Philadelphia and am a fan of all teams there. I may have had another “favourite” sides outside the city at various points(usually due to players I enjoyed watching)but it was never another northeast team(NY, DC or Boston). 

I keep an eye on that Atlanta team though. They’re very forward thinking when it comes to recruitment. They’ve been targeting South American players as they don’t have the same work permit issues as they would in England. Obviously they can’t beat most German, Spanish and Italian “Big” clubs to players but they have gotten some good young talent from those regions. Similar to us, they want to nourish the talent and sell it on rather than get the journeyman type players. They’ll be a force in that league soon enough. If only they could get their hands on some decent defenders and keepers. Flint could be a mega star there for example. 

They sound like they have a similar strategy to us!

[JoeAman08]

12 minutes ago, hoxton casual said:

They sound like they have a similar strategy to us!

Yea basically think a quote I read is that they want to supply Europe with the talent instead of trying to get the talent from Europe. If they scout alright it’ll work out well. They’ve got a geographical advantage for South American players as well on top of the USA having lots of people that speak Spanish. 

[pillred]

a small error anyone could make!!