Colorado And Dallas: Parallel MLS Pasts And Presents, In Failure And Success

Both franchises came into Major League Soccer at the very beginning, opening play during the 1996 season.

The next season, Dallas won the U.S. Open Cup and the Rapids made it all the way to the MLS Cup final.

Unfortunately, it’s been mostly downhill since then.

On the field, neither team has enjoyed the same level of success since. Until this year, the two teams had combined for just four playoff round victories since 1998.

Off the field, it has been just as bad. Despite both teams playing in stadiums built for soccer, they regularly rank among worst attended teams in MLS. FC Dallas has ranked in the bottom three in attendance six of the past eight seasons and has never drawn at the league average in any of its 15 seasons. The Rapids have been in the bottom five in attendance each of the past five seasons and have underdrawn the league average in all but four seasons.

In a single-entity league where the commercial success of one team has a direct effect on the others, it is an obvious problem when two teams are consistently underperforming at the gate.

It begs an obvious question: Is there any hope for better days in these markets?

Having never set foot in either metro area, I felt it would be good to discuss their situations with people much more familiar with the particulars of those situations than myself. So I picked the brains of Daniel Robertson of Big D Soccer and UZ of Burgundy Wave in an attempt to get a better sense of what has gone wrong and how it might get better.

Dallas: Burning Down The House

In Year 1, more than 16,000 people attended the average Dallas Burn game at the Cotton Bowl. It wasn’t quite league average, but it was a respectable number that showed some real potential.

The next season, attendance dropped to fewer than 10,000 a game and it never really recovered. During the 2003 season while playing in Dragon Stadium — an 11,000-seat high school facility — Dallas’ attendance bottomed out at fewer than 8,000 per game. No MLS team other than the 2000 Miami Fusion has averaged fewer fans.

Somehow, the Dallas ownership still saw fit to invest millions of their own money in a soccer-specific stadium and moved into Pizza Hut Park about halfway through the 2005 season. In the two seasons following the move, now rebranded FC Dallas drew solidly, averaging a little better than 15,000 people per game over that period.

Attendance has steadily declined since then, though, with FC Dallas averaging just 10,805 per game this season despite playing in MLS’s fourth biggest market (more than 6 million people live in the metro area).

Most pundits have looked at this situation and come to several conclusions: 1.) Dallas does not like MLS; 2.) Whatever fans there are simply aren’t willing to drive to Frisco where Pizza Hut Park is located; 3.) MLS should probably cut their losses and move the team.

Robertson, whose followed the team closely since attending his first game in 2004, sees the situation as considerably more nuanced.

He points out that some of the largest drawing soccer games ever played in the United States were played at Cowboys Stadium, proving that Dallas is definitely a soccer-friendly market. He says more than a million people live within 15 miles of Frisco, so the stadium is not as remote as it may seem. He asks us to consider what has happened to attendance at Texas Rangers games where the team only started drawing impressive crowds once they won a playoff series, but captured the heart of the city soon after.

I asked if simply winning is enough to cure these ails?

“I really do believe so,” Robertson said. “Seriously I can’t express to people who don’t live outside Dallas-Forth Worth how much winning matters. Dallas is a total front-running town.”

Compounding the poor on-field performance has been a series of public relations missteps. Ownership has been notoriously cheap, leaving a skeleton staff to run ticket-sales and promotions at the end of 2009 out of fear of an extended work stoppage.

Decisions like that have helped feed a perception in the area that FC Dallas is a minor-league operation in a town that is used to seeing its high school teams behave like major league organizations.

“In my opinion, if FCD wins the championship there’s no excuse for not selling out the home opener,” Robertson said.

Colorado: Rapidly Circling The Drain

The Rapids couldn’t have gotten off to a much worse start than they did. Their inaugural season featured a league-worst 29 points and a league low average of 10,213 fans per match.

Over the next few seasons, though, the situation steadily improved. Year 2 saw the Rapids make the MLS Cup finals and become one of just three teams to improve their average attendance from the previous season.

That started a relative run of success in which the team made the playoffs in nine of 10 seasons — but never returned to the finals — and attendance steadily increased to the point they led the league in 2002.

Although the team continued to play relatively well, the gate numbers began a downward trend the next year. The Rapids were second in average attendance in 2003, but that represented drop of more than 3,000 fans per game from the previous season and was the first of four straight seasons of declining attendance.

The opening of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in 2007 halted the attendance slide, but they still only drew 14,749 while playing in what was considered the best soccer-specific stadium in the country. More frustratingly, attendance dropped each of the next two seasons — bottoming out at 12,331 per game in 2009 — as the Rapids missed the playoffs for three straight years.

Like in Dallas, pundits are quick to point out the Dick’s suburban location as one of the major problems. Like in Dallas, the Rapids face a crowded professional sports market and they are the clear No. 5 team. Like in Dallas, the team has never been good enough to draw the bandwagon fans every team needs to increase buzz.

Fans have been slow to flock to the Dick partially because it can take a couple hours and numerous transfers to get there from Denver proper via public transit. Commerce City, where the stadium is located, is a suburb in every way. The stadium is surrounded by other athletic fields and the most notable structure nearby is a post office.

“Your average attendance of Rockies, Avs, etc. games include maybe 20 percent of people that have come via Lightrail,” UZ said.

UZ, like Robertson, does not see these as insurmountable odds. The Rapids have obviously drawn reasonably well before, had nearly 18,000 show up for the Eastern Conference final despite freezing temperatures and have seen their supporters groups grow significantly this season.

The MLS Cup appearance may be the thing that shoots the Rapids into the public consciousness.

“Take a look at the Avalanche’s attendance when they began to tank in 2008, or the Nuggets attendance in the ‘90s,” UZ said

“There never has been a period in Rapids history since 1997 where the team has been a worthy draw, so we have nothing to compare it to. My guess is that if the Rapids win a cup and continue good form into next season, we’ll start to see attendances go up. It will probably take much longer than that to get the place sold out weekly, but we’re working with baby steps here.”

The chances of the Rapids joining the league attendance leaders is unlikely, but UZ thinks the Rapids should draw closer to 15,000 a game next year, which would represent about 2,000 more than they drew this year.

Lost Causes? Hardly

The point here is that as frustrating as it may be to see the Rapids and Toros constantly toiling away at the bottom of the attendance table, these are not lost causes. Both metro areas have shown a willingness to support soccer in general terms and there’s reason to believe enough of those people will eventually gravitate toward MLS.

Obviously, Robertson and UZ have biased opinions. They’ve been rooting for their teams since they were teenagers and would hate to see them folded or moved. But they both struck me as willing to take sober looks at their teams situations and make compelling cases for their team’s outlooks.

We should learn a lot about both of these teams next season. If a MLS Cup finals appearance can’t get people to pay attention — the way they have in Salt Lake, for example — maybe this all needs to be rethought. In the meantime, let’s at least allow ourselves to believe that better days are ahead.

Match Card, project lineup and statistics: mls cup final lineup