SPORTS

Himmelsbach | Burden on soccer team's owners to deliver

Adam Himmelsbach
The Courier-Journal

After Wednesday's press conference to announce the formation of the Louisville City Football Club, a pro soccer team that will be coming to town in 2015, organizers invited fans onto the concourse at Louisville Slugger Field.

The surface had been marked off to indicate the dimensions of the soccer field. Fans were to envision what soccer in a baseball stadium might look like. But really, that part was easy to picture. The bigger question is what the stands will look like when play begins.

Will they be filled? Will people come? Will people care? We'll see.

Yes, there are plenty of ingredients in place to make this venture a success. This is a sports town. A nice and accessible downtown stadium is in place. The season will run from late March to early September, mostly avoiding University of Louisville basketball and football. And whenever a pro team comes to a city that wants to be viewed as a pro city, it will generate buzz.

But ultimately, this is Division 3 minor-league soccer. The United Soccer Leagues' Pro Division is the rough equivalent of Double-A baseball. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it will present challenges. When the initial curiosity inevitably dies down, the onus will be on ownership to show the city why it should care.

I'm a bit skeptical of the ticket price points that are being set. A midfield season ticket is slated to cost $420. Meanwhile, you could have purchased Louisville Bats' lower-level season tickets this year for $415. There are 72 Bats home games and 15 Louisville City FC games, so you can do the math there. Not to mention, you can see Cincinnati Reds play for the Bats fairly often. (Sideline season tickets for Louisville City FC are expected to cost $290 apiece.)

Or we can compare soccer to soccer. D.C. United, one of the most popular MLS franchises, charged $468 for midfield season tickets this year, a 17-game home season. And Louisville FC is planning to charge $420 for a similar seat.

Louisville FC said it had received pledges for about 2,000 season tickets, but on Wednesday principal owner Wayne Estopinal gave a joking nudge that just 278 had actually signed on so far.

Still, give Estopinal and the others involved in this venture credit, because they're dreaming big. There were easily a few hundred people at this announcement, and Mayor Greg Fischer called it one of the most highly attended press conferences he's seen in years.

Several of the organizers reminded people why this team is coming: Orlando City SC was such a success that Major League Soccer is now expanding to Orlando, so the city's USL team is relocating to Louisville.

There's no reason that couldn't happen to our city too, they said. Louisville wants to be a major league city in something, and soccer would seem to be the most realistic option.

"The more noise we make, the more seats we fill, the more championships we win," Estopinal said. "We have a great chance of looking at that."

USL President Tim Holt said teams typically have a mixture of international players, MLS connections and even former college stars from the region. He said average attendance ranges between 3,000 and 4,000 per game, and that would seem to be a benchmark that Louisville is capable of exceeding.

At one point during Wednesday's event, Orlando City owner Phil Rawlins, who will be a partial owner of Louisville City FC, looked at the crowd and said, very strongly: "Now it's your turn. Now it's your job."

Really, though, that's not true. This ownership group has big dreams and big plans, but the onus is on it to make the game-day experience something memorable. The onus is on it to prove to this city that this is all worth it.

Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at (502) 582-4372, by email at ahimmelsbach@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach.