20
1st QUARTER 2014
there’s a lot of work to be done, the New York
Red Bulls are now averaging close to 20,000
fans a game. Our goal is to sell out every
single match.”
He sees a largely untapped market in the
New York area and the U.S. overall, pointing
out that research has found soccer to be the
most-practiced sport by U.S. children under
the age of 14. But then it drops off when they
reach high school and college years.
With this in mind, the Red Bulls are active-
ly working to engage the community, run-
ning training programs for boys and girls
at residential day-training camps as well
as providing coaches for their teams.
Garcia estimates that through
all the organization’s programs,
they are involved with about
34,000 kids each year, helping to
cultivate interest, appreciation,
and skill in the sport among New
York-New Jersey youths.
“We have a huge influence in
terms of soccer in the area, and
we are trying to actively work with
many of the soccer clubs locally and
other organizations to try and promote
and develop this sport,” says Garcia.
“We are New York’s soccer club and aim to
remain as such in the long term.”
Redirecting the Red Bulls
When Garcia first joined the Red Bulls, he
outlined his priorities with the organiza-
tion’s owners fromRed Bull GmbH, which
acquired the team in 2006 (it was formerly the
Metrostars, founded by AEG in 1995). First
in urgency was to focus on the basics —mak-
ing sure the Red Bulls had the right controls
and compliance and were meeting their basic
obligations to third parties, such as Delaware
North (or DNC), the stadium’s exclusive con-
cessionaire, and with internal communications
to management.
He also took a closer look at controlling
costs, going line by line through the team’s
expenditures on travel costs, finding ways to
reduce maintenance expenses of the facility,
catering purchases, traffic management spend-
ing, and more. For example, simply by booking
travel earlier, the organization has seen signifi-
cant savings with no reduction in quality.
“We now make sure that we can make the
arrangements in advance, more than a couple
of months out,” says Garcia. “In all the areas,
we are just trying to work more closely with
our third parties.”
The organization had been going through an
annual business-planning process to make sure
that every department was keeping its budget
at a “realistic level.” But Garcia deepened this
scrutiny, so that they were tracking against bud-
get on an ongoing basis, spotting imbalances
earlier and taking action immediately.
“For every single match, we now under-
stand what the profitability is, and make
sure we achieve the goals in accordance with
our business plan,” says Garcia. “If we have
a storm, for example, that hurts our atten-
dance numbers, we proactively look at ways
to offset the impact to make sure at the end
of the day when we deliver overall figures to
ownership, that we have the numbers that
we’ve promised.”
Garcia and senior management also
restructured the organization’s ticket pricing
throughout the stadium to make it more
competitive with the offerings of the other
soccer teams, and also more logical. This
included revamping the benefits given to
season-ticket holders to ensure that they
receive one of the best packages avail-
able in the country at that price, while
competing with other professional
sports teams in the area.
These changes have made an
impact. The Red Bulls have been on
target with their budgets and busi-
ness plans over the past three years,
and the organization’s base of season-
ticket holders has steadily grown,
with a 16 percent increase in 2013 and
further expected growth for 2014. With
this being a World Cup year, and the team’s
stadium still relatively new at just four years
old, Garcia expects interest to continue
to grow. The New York Red Bulls’ regular
season matches are all televised — nationally
televised games are aired on ESPN, ESPN 2
and NBCSN, while a number of matches are
also broadcast nationally in Spanish through
UniMas (a Univision network) and locally
televised games are aired on MSG.
“We are certainly seeing growth and an
increasing interest in soccer,” says Garcia.
Sporting Experience
Garcia also sees his work with the Red Bulls
in the context of its place as a piece of the 19-
teamMajor League Soccer (MLS) alliance. As
the MLS enters its 20th year in 2014, Garcia
says that it “has come a long way fromwhere
it was, but there are still a lot of opportunities
and challenges that the league will have to
overcome to continue to grow.”
“FOR EVERY SINGLE
MATCH, WE NOW
UNDERSTAND WHAT THE
PROFITABILITY IS.”
WORLD
OF
SPORTS
