Chattanooga FC Should Move Out On Its Own and Into a Soccer Specific Stadium

In light of Breezy’s Medium Post “The Future of Lower Division Soccer in America: Part 1” (Link: https://medium.com/@AndrewBresee/the-future-of-lower-division-soccer-in-america-part-1-4307499b8495), I thought it best to weigh in as well. For certain reasons, including the anonymity of some sourcing, I’m going to keep this thing anonymous for now. Here’s the important part: I am a soccer nerd and Chattanooga FC fan, so this post is written from that perspective.

Here’s the skinny: it is time for Chattanooga FC to further its brand by building a soccer specific stadium in its path to becoming a professional franchise. I’m sure there will be an inevitable throwing of rotted fruit this way by the end of the article, but I ask that you hear me out.

The Finley Good

First, let’s get a few things out of the way. Finley Stadium, located in the Southside of Chattanooga, is a great facility. Playing at Finley since 2009 immediately lended a professional feel to Chattanooga FC that other teams in the NPSL simply cannot compete with. Georgia Revolution, for example, have played in two different recreational soccer parks in the last few years, complete with seating for about 200 fans, with orange slices and muffins in tow.

It’s no coincidence that the Knoxville Force were originally thought as a quality franchise in its early seasons, playing at Regal Stadium, the home of the Tennessee Lady Vols soccer team. These days, Knoxville is a joke program playing on a joke field and isn’t a credible expansion target for a pub league, let alone a professional one.

The Finley Bad

But for all of Finley’s positive qualities, there are plenty of negatives to go along. First, renting Finley is quite expensive. Sources close to UT-Chattanooga told me that the facility rental for the UT-Chattanooga Mocs football team runs around $15,000 per home game. Now, it’s worth noting that Finley is open on both sides for UTC football games, whereas it is normally not for CFC’s matches, which we assume reduces the cost by a few thousand dollars. But even if the average cost over the next 20 years is $12,000 per game for a 20 game season, not accounting for likely increases in facility rental, that’s $240,000/year and $4.8M after 20 years. Keep that number in mind, it’s going to matter later.

As with any stadium rental lease, the tenant gets to keep the gate receipts but only a percentage of concessions and parking. I’ve had the privilege to peak behind the curtain of a couple lower league clubs over the last few years and have noticed a pattern in 15% of sales being what’s usually passed back to the club. Indeed, this is the percentage worked out between Kingston Stockade and Keegan Ales for the 2017 season (Link: https://medium.com/stockadefc/stockade-fc-in-2017-the-open-source-soccer-approach-to-creating-a-killer-second-season-5eaf30a4caa9).

In addition, I’ve seen numbers around $4.50 per person in attendance for concessions sold over the years, for teams with both food and beer available for purchase in the stands. With a lowball average number of 4,000 people in attendance for CFC games, we can estimate that concession sales will be around $18,000 per match. If CFC is receiving roughly 15% of that $18,000, that’s the club receiving $2,700 a match, as opposed to $18,000. Over the course of 20 home games in a season, those numbers stretch out to $54,000/year and $1.08M/20 years. However, if CFC owned it’s own stadium, the revenue generated could be closer to $7.2M over the course of 20 years, or $6.12M more than currently. And that’s only at an average of 4,000 fans per match.

The last number I want to look at is lost revenue from parking. If only 1,000 cars are parked for a CFC game at $5/car, that’s a per game revenue of $5,000. Over 20 games, that’s $100,000/year and $2M/20 years that the club is likely only receiving roughly 15% of. That means that the club is missing out on $1.7M over 20 years.

Where does that put us? Estimates for stadium rental, concessions and parking put the club generating an extra $12.62M over 20 years in their own stadium as opposed to in Finley Stadium. Adding in the 15% portions of concessions and parking that the club already receives, and the club would be earning $14M over 20 years. I’m aware that there are some generalities and minor assumptions in the numbers, but I feel pretty good about them as a whole.

Why We’re Even Talking About This

If you happened to read Breezy’s article (linked at the top), you’ve got to be wondering about the seemingly inevitable ascent of CFC into NISA, the new aspiring 3rd division league attempting to achieve sanctioning from the US Soccer Federation for play starting in 2018 (or in 2019 if you don’t think they’ll be ready quite yet). NISA’s strategy of starting with 8–12 teams in an Eastern league then expanding nationally is both ambitious and risky. The rewards are certainly high. However, NASL’s inability to do anything other than tread water the last few years is not encouraging for NISA’s prospects. NISA’s risky proposition, though enticing for the rewards, adds an extra level of risk that would already be associated with a new soccer specific stadium in Chattanooga. If you read the title of this piece, you already know where we’re going with this.

Ultimately, NISA’s viability comes down to the ability to recruit regional rivals to join in a league together. With the recent reports of Birmingham and Memphis being nearly done deals to join the United Soccer League (as of post time, Birmingham should be announced within 8 hours), the stable D2 league in the US, the interest CFC should have in USL has to be higher than it was two weeks ago. Die hard soccer hipsters may not like it, but pro ventures in Birmingham and Memphis will kill off those beloved NPSL teams that play on kids recreational fields. Even though Nashville is a highly regarded MLS prospect, Nashville SC will begin play in 2018 and would likely not enter MLS for a few years after that, adding another potential rival to the mix.

With several regional rivals joining USL and likely out of the NISA running, USL becomes the league more likely to provide regional scheduling, allowing CFC to compete in rivalry matches more often and allowing the traveling fans a better chance of attending away matches. Moreover, USL is a much lower risk in terms of league stability. Yes, the league’s structure and operational makeup is not exactly what a club like Chattanooga FC would prefer, but the benefits might just outweigh the negatives as a whole.

If CFC starts to seriously consider USL in this way, we should consider the league’s stadium requirements (which can be waived, but that’s dumb). USL wants all of their teams to be in soccer specific stadiums (SSS) or be the primary tenants in their stadiums in order to have more control over scheduling and revenue opportunities. In Finley, CFC currently meets neither of those criteria. Even though CFC would play 3.3x more home games than UT-Chattanooga, the Mocs will always be Finley’s primary tenant. That’s reason enough to strongly consider building our own stadium.

A New Home for CFC

Okay, random human on the internet. Maybe you want to build a stadium.. but where are you going to find $200M laying around? Or even $50M? The answer is simple: we don’t need $50M for a new stadium. We just need closer to $20M.

Downsides (It’s the Money, Stupid)

There are none! Just kidding, they are two in particular. One, building a stadium is not cheap. Two, the process of working out a land deals just makes me want to stab my eyeballs out. Getting past those are challenging, but they can be done. And it probably doesn’t hurt that the club has a financial institution as a sponsor, either.

Solution: Modular Stadium

The first question to consider when cost comes into play is what kind of stadium would we be looking for? The good news is that Chattanooga doesn’t need anything that resembles the Rose Bowl. A concrete paradise with 90,000 seats just isn’t what we’re looking for. In fact, we don’t even need to build the whole stadium out of concrete at all. Enter: modular stadiums. Sometimes, they are called temporary structures.

A lot of events around the world feature some sort of modular or temporary structures in order to house a serviceable amount of fans. Think about most major golf events. The stands at those tournaments are often built in a temporary manner. Easy to install and easy to remove. In fact, Vancouver once put up a 27,000 seat stadium in Hastings Park just for 2 seasons of the BC Lions and the Vancouver Whitecaps’ inaugural MLS campaign while the roof of BC Place was being renovated. Adjusting for inflation and converting CAD to USD, Vancouver did it for $16.2M, or $600/seat.

Now, there’s no way Chattanooga FC would need a 27,000 seat stadium, but the price point all of a sudden looks more manageable than before. Even considering one of the most recent modular stadiums constructed in the US soccer landscape, H-E-B Park, in Edinburg, TX, cost roughly $16.8M and seats 9,700. H-E-B Park was built as a part of a much bigger development project, but probably features many of the same amenities that a soccer club such as CFC would wish to include in a stadium.

Photo credit: Darren Abate / San Antonio FC

Toyota Field in San Antonio was recently bought by a combination of the City of San Antonio, Bexar County and Spurs Sports & Entertainment for $21M. It’s a 8,296 seat stadium, build to be expandable to 18,000, with a similar amenities set that H-E-B Park possesses.

Even if a new CFC stadium would cost around $20M, we’re in a much different place than $50M or the $100M that the San Jose Earthquakes spent on their (beautiful) 18,000 seat stadium.

Upsides

• It’s our stadium. We own it. We can do what we want with it. Pretty cool.
• By being the primary tenant of a stadium we own, we will now be able to have first access to scheduling events. This is going to come in handy more when a summer league season suddenly turns into a February-October/November calendar and we start needing to compete with UT-Chattanooga for access to Finley Stadium.
• No more of those stupid, awful, annoying and wretched football lines.
• Additional revenue generating opportunities. Stadiums are great for things like concerts, or high school/college games. Why wouldn’t we showcase our beloved stadium and give kids the chance to play in the place where they aspire to play as a member of the CFC first team?
• GRASS. FIELD.
• Parking and concessions staying in house, adding roughly an additional 85% of revenue earned back to the club.
• It may not be much, but putting together a stadium rights deal would help the club earn more cash every year. The Chattanooga Lookouts deal with AT&T is good for about $100,000 a year.
• Finley Stadium rent is going to go up. That’s just a fact of life. Wouldn’t it be better if we could control our costs a little more effectively than dealing with a landlord looking out for his or her own interests?
• Selfishly, from the Chattahooligan perspective, we would have the opportunity to craft a safe standing area with rails, allowing the fans to be a little safer while cheering the team on.
• I saved this one for last because it matters where the stadium is located, but here’s the gist. We would have an incredible opportunity to be a part of a development to make our city a little better, using soccer. The growth of the Southside has been fueled in small part to Chattanooga FC. What better way to help spark another renaissance for a Chattanooga neighborhood than to bring people and the beautiful game together?

Photo Credit: Ray Soldano

Conclusion

To be honest, 2100 words ago this was a just a silly “what if” exercise. CFC has a good, professional place to play soccer and the future looks bright.

But what if we can make our future brighter still? What if we can do something that’s both smart business and inspiring? What if this is one of the ways that we can #GrowtheGame in the market of American soccer? Maybe this is the success story that helps show people across America that you don’t need a billion dollars to start a local team. You don’t need a television deal and a city of three million people. You just need a few friends with a little bit of money to start a team. And you just need a few more friends that want to watch some soccer. And you just need some young and hungry players that want to chase their professional dream. And you just to give a city something to cheer for, to be a part of, to take ownership of and to love.

Chattanooga, it’s time to realize our place as a leading professional soccer city and it’s time to build a stadium that cements that legacy.

Thank you,

The Unsigned Author