I wrote this literally a year ago, to the day, but figured it stewed enough in the pot to finally be released upon the world. Last year I went to the PL Morning Fan fest in Orlando and took it upon myself to ask why someone would wake up at 4 in the morning to watch a TV with other people, but not go watch their local team. Whether I came to a coherent answer is still up in the air. Take any reference to the ghost season of RNY, or 2023 as a reminder of the simpler time 2023 was.
Dateline Orlando, 5:55 AM January 21st 2023. Deep in enemy territory, I am in line at Universal City Walk to get into the PL Mornings Fanfest for the 7:30 Liverpool Chelsea game. I wasn’t expecting to waltz on in, but already there are about 1500 people in front of me. They aren’t just Liverpool or Chelsea fans either, almost every EPL team is represented, with a large amount of Arsenal fans as well. I’m a bit surprised as the big games are being played tomorrow, and as a Liverpool fan I am expecting a goalless draw since the last 4 games against Chelsea have been ties.
If you aren’t aware, PL Morning Fan Fest is at its core a marketing event, for both the English Premier league, NBC Sports, and the city it is in. As it turned out, I was in Orlando already for a vacation. The marketing event also extended to Universal Studios parks as it is owned by Comcast, who also own NBC. There are a few extra activities or freebies for attending, like giveaway bags, a five a side soccer pitch, and free name/numbers to put on your jersey (but only one player per team), but in the end all you are doing is watching a jumbo tron with a bunch of other people yelling at the screen.
Part of my assignment here is to see what the event is, what Florida soccer supports about, who people support, and most importantly why they do or don’t support local soccer.
Behind me in line are some Liverpool fans and I butt into their conversation. We discuss Liverpool’s current form, specifically is it really as bad as everyone thinks it is, and after being asked if I went to the Men’s world cup in Qatar, I start asking about local soccer. They aren’t really local, leaving their house at 4:30 in the morning to get to Citywalk and paying the 27 dollar parking fee, but one of them talks about going to USL 2 side “The Villages” matches in their home town periodically. USL 2 is an amateur league similar to NPSL or UPSL with a fair number of college kids and others who may have missed a pro contract playing in the summers. Doing some research later, I find out that despite not having a finalized 2023 roster, they played 4 friendlies over the last few weeks including against Hertha BSC of the Bundesliga. Yes, the top division in Germany and one of the top leagues in the world. This friendly being setup was helped immensely by their location, Florida, where many teams have their pre-season or warm up breaks, and the time (college break for prospective players, and winter break for Bundesliga. Either way, these types of events are great for lower teams to gain a fan base. After discussing how fun local soccer like this is, we lose each other in the crowd going through security.
Unfortunately the rest of the day would have less stories about attending local soccer and more excuses about why they don’t go. Regardless of EPL team they supported, everyone knew who their local top side was, but they didn’t go to games. I wasn’t even being specific about lower league soccer, just really anything local. Orlando has a number of teams, and for the number of Man U jerseys I saw, I thought there would be more people interested in MLS side Orlando City games to watch Nani, but instead everyone had a reason why they didn’t go. There was a large number of people from Tampa, who at minimum left their house at 5:30 AM to get to the fest. Some complained about ticket prices, with $20-35 being considered too much. For the record, supporter section tickets at Orlando City are $300, Tampa Bay Rowdies are $200, and RNY is charging $140 for this season.
To their credit, most didn’t have a very good reason they tried to defend, and at least pretended they would think about going this year. Many talked about going to games in the past. No one I talked to were season ticket holders or otherwise had plans to attend local games in 2023. I’ll add that I was happy to not hear concerns about the “quality of play” that you often hear from certain fans. For one, No one is comparing a UPSL team to the top EPL teams, but these are still competitive, interesting games, and in person is the best way to watch football. There were some eye opening opinions though, like a Man United fan praising Pep Guardiola for being able to build a team with so few resources. For the record, I did not correct them and quickly left the area.
I don’t know if part of the answers I got about local soccer was embarrassment of realizing the situation they were presented with. What I did hear over and over again from fans was about the local fan support for their EPL team. From any of the fans, they were happy to talk about all of the people who watched games together, and how many showed up to this event even if it was hours from home. This is where the disconnect often lies. If you follow one of the top teams in EPL, no matter where you go, there is going to be a fan somewhere you can talk with. Local soccer, not so much. This isn’t the final answer, and is something which can be overcome, but it is a problem we need to admit exists.
I’d later learn that over 5000 people showed up on Saturday, and 7000 were expected the following day. To put it into perspective, The average attendance for Orlando City last season was just under 15000 fans per game. For a number of reasonable reasons, the biggest one being that MLS games are shown on a rival TV network and the entire area we were in was owned by Comcast, there were no Orlando City representatives at the fan fest or any other non-EPL team.
There obviously aren’t easy answers on how to get fans who will wake up at 4 in the morning to watch a tv screen to come to games at 7 at night. If there were, smarter people than me would have already figured it out. The one light bulb moment I had, is more emphasis outside of game day to go to local EPL bars showing EPL games, and organically promote a local team to start the process of creating a similar community to what EPL teams have already. I started going to Rhinos games again in 2015 because of tickets given to me by Clark, and then interactions with players at the Genesee Brew house at a promotional event. There is a community of local football fans who know each other but they’re in segmented groups, don’t know each other as a whole group, but getting them together as one is needed to hit the critical mass of fans a team needs to survive. One area we have that’s a good thing is there aren’t, for lack of a better term, generation hate between fan bases that there is in England keeping EPL fans apart. Grossly simplifying the math tells us that to be profitable, we need about 3500-5000 fans per game. At the best of guesses, we’re not close to that. To get that to change, we need to create a local community fans feel they are a part of, and that isn’t an easy task.
This also highlighted an issue we’ve talked about a lot here. Local soccer at all levels isn’t just fighting other local sports like baseball or hockey, its fighting getting people to give up their weekend evening plans to come to games. The often overlooked benefit of watching European soccer is that games are on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and then you can get on with your day. You also don’t have an alterative, no one in the US is going to see every Liverpool home game, its only available on tv. . While I’m writing this I’m in PJs, drinking coffee and have an FA cup and Bundasliga game on in the background. I couldn’t be doing this at a RNYFC game. Even if you go to a watch party, its easier/cheaper to find parking at 7 AM then it is at 7 PM. So I don’t entirely blame people for this.
Back to the fan fest, it was a fun event that I would go to again if it was in my town, but not something I would make a special trip for. The highlights of the trip weren’t directly related to the event location either. All of the hosts were staying at the same hotel as me, so getting to see and talk to the Cooligans, Robbie Earle and Rebecca Lowe at points throughout the weekend was great. This isn’t something anyone can depend on happening when they go though. Otherwise, it wasn’t that different than watching at home, or at your local EPL fan group.