Yankees Outdo Red Sox in Soccer

Liverpool FC will be playing AS Roma at Fenway Park on July 25th. The Sox owners also own Liverpool so it makes sense. However, the Yankees recently announced that they'll be hosting a pair of soccer games, and both of them blow Fenway's out of the water.

On July 22 in Yankee Stadium, Chelsea FC (recently crowned European Champions) will play Paris St. Germain (PSG). PSG finished second in the French league, and will be playing in next season's Champions League. So will Chelsea, who finished 6th in England, but are still one of the most popular teams in the world, loaded with star talent.

On August 8th, Yankee Stadium hosts an even bigger game. Real Madrid are playing AC Milan. Real Madrid won the Spanish league (for the 32nd time), and have won the Champions League 9 times. AC Milan finished 2nd in the Italian league, have won that league 18 times, and have won the Champions League 7 times.

All four teams the Yankees host will be in the 2012-13 Champions' League.

Meanwhile, Fenway Park will host the 8th place English team, and the 7th place Italian team. Neither team will be in the Champions League or any other European competition. The two teams combined to win 30 games, lose 28, and draw 18.

Why care so much about soccer teams and exhibition games? Because it's another example of how big a world the Fenway Sports Group entered into when they bought Liverpool. They're out of their element.

Real Madrid is worth over three times as much as Liverpool, $1.877 billion compared to $619 million (Source: Forbes). Real Madrid and AC Milan combined are worth $2.866 billion, while Liverpool and AS Roma are together worth $973 million.

The Red Sox and Liverpool will both make some money when Liverpool comes to town, but the on field product isn't nearly as exciting or as enticing or as profitable as the giants that will be playing down at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees aren't attached to a mediocre English team. They can invite the best teams from Europe to play. And that will attract fans who will pay lots of money to see them play.

Liverpool is a 2nd rate team in danger of becoming 3rd rate. Fenway Sports Group was a big fish in a small pond when they bought Liverpool. But now they're in a much larger ocean. And the sharks are much bigger.

-The Captain

Liverpool FC Fires Manager, Hires Bobby Valentine

Only one part of that post title is accurate. Although maybe Bobby V will manage Liverpool when they come to Fenway. After all, Bobby V invented bangers and mash.

Liverpool fired manager Kenny Dalglish after finishing 8th (out of 20 teams) in England's Premier League. We're still waiting to see if there have been reports of drug abuse leaked to British newspapers.

Liverpool are struggling. On the field and off it. Liverpool lost about $80 million in 2011. That's net. Most of that was due to costs associated with an abandoned plan to build a new stadium. Not to mention the severance package given to former manager Roy Hodgson, who was hired then fired after 6 months.

When Fenway Sports Group bought the Red Sox in 2002, they only had one New York Yankees to compete with. Liverpool has to compete against several giants in their league. There's Manchester United, the most valuable sports franchise in the world. There's also a team owned by a Russian oil baron (Chelsea FC), the current champions are owned by an Arab sheikh (Manchester City). The spending of these eccentric billionaires make George Steinbrenner look like Jeremy Jacobs. Imagine Mark Cuban with a royal title and billions in oil money.

And there's also Arsenal, Everton, Tottenham, and Newcastle United to compete with. Teams with more "traditional" owners, but are also well funded, well run, and well managed.

To compete with these teams, Liverpool will need to spend money. They need cash to buy better talent (in soccer, players' contracts are bought and sold, they call it transferring. It can be expensive). In Europe, even developing and acquiring young players requires hefty contracts and transfer fees. It's a completely different animal over there and I don't think John Henry or the Fenway Sports Group knew what they were getting into.

Unfortunately for Liverpool, winning is how teams make money. For instance, the top 4 teams in England are invited to play in the Champions League, a tournament among the top teams from across Europe. Participants receive a share of the huge TV revenues, and also receive cash rewards for winning and advancing through the competition.

Liverpool will have to make due with just their basic revenues. Furthermore, the top players in Europe want to compete in the Champions League. Liverpool can't offer them that.

And with the recent success of Manchester City, there's less domestic money and attention for Liverpool to capitalize on. And across the world, sales of Manchester City merchandise is skyrocketing. Finishing 8th place and being an historically powerful team doesn't do much to help your revenue stream abroad.

So far, John Henry's investment in Liverpool hasn't worked out. The team hasn't improved. The balance sheet is still as red as Liverpool's jerseys. Firing the manager is a step, but Daglish wasn't the problem. Liverpool simply didn't have the talent to compete with the stars on Manchester City or Manchester United. Nor were they solid or deep enough to compete with the well-rounded Arsenal or Tottenham.

Liverpool must spend or die.

The Fenway Sports Group would never directly take profits from the Red Sox and use the money to improve Liverpool. Conglomerates don't do that.

However, Liverpool will receive direct investment from Fenway Sports Group. The Sox won't. The Sox will have to make do with what they can make on their own, minus what John Henry withdraws and places in his crocodile skin wallet. Fenway Sports Group doesn't care about improving the Sox anymore. They're all set with the Sox. They want to improve Liverpool. They want to play Barcelona in the Champions League Final one day.

Fine. Whatever.

Maybe the Sox needed to go on a leaner spending diet. Look what Felix Doubront is doing compared to John Lackey. Or Cody Ross compared to Carl Crawford.

It's not the overall money spent that irritates me, it's what the lack of spending signifies. It demonstrates a lack of interest in winning. The Sox didn't even try to keep Papelbon. They didn't go after a frontline starting pitcher. This was a 3rd place team for back-to-back seasons that hasn't won a playoff game since George W. Bush was President. But the Sox did next to nothing to improve themselves. They fired their manager, lost a closer, put John Lackey under the knife, and had a 100th anniversary celebration.

And despite whatever fake sellout streak the Sox try to convince us they have going, there are less people at the ballpark, and there's less money being spent by fans on this team. As a business, the Sox are currently in great shape. Today. But the future is uncertain. If they finish 3rd this year, what happens to the Sox' valuation? What happens if it stops becoming trendy to go to Fenway?

That's the thing about building the coolest bar in town. If people go there because it's cool, it has to remain cool.

If Liverpool continues to struggle, I'll hate the Sox owners for investing in failure. If Liverpool does well, I'll hate the Sox owners for siphoning success from Boston to Liverpool.

But if the Sox do well, I can't hate the owners for anything, regardless of what Liverpool does. And by "do well" I mean compete for divisional titles, make the playoffs, make the LCS. That's doing well.

-The Captain

The Sellout Streak Ended Yesterday

According to the Red Sox, 37,292 fans attended yesterday's 5-0 victory over the Seattle Mariners. It just isn't true. There were noticeable empty patches of seats in the bleachers, grandstands, and boxes. And these patches remained empty all game long, so they weren't seats owned by people going to get a beer or take a leak. These seats went unoccupied for the duration of the game.

Even the parking lots around Fenway failed to fill up. Which is surreal actually.

And there's no shame in it. It was a work day, a school day, a rainy day, and an uninteresting opponent was in town. There's no disgrace in announcing an accurate 32,500 fans in attendance. There is, however, shame in lying.

The Sox want to continue their sellout streak. Their definition of a sellout is that all tickets have been distributed. In other words, the ticket for every seat has been sent/sold/allocated/given-to-charity/given-to-friends-and-family. If the Sox sell a few hundred tickets to StubHub or AceTicket and those companies can't sell them, the Sox technically did sell them. So they call it a sellout.

Fine.

And of course, actual ticketholders are occasionally prevented from attending. Family emergencies, unexpected projects at work, MBTA mishaps, the recently divorced neighbor finally inviting you, with a wink, to The 99 for drinks and popcorn.

But the spirit of the streak is that the ballpark is filled to capacity (or near it). And it wasn't yesterday. Not even close.

And the Sox don't even distribute all their tickets, at least not according to this Globe exposé. They have plenty of tickets, in their possession, undistributed, and going to waste. How is that selling out?

Tuesday marked the 9th anniversary of the sellout streak's beginning: May 15th, 2003.

I remember almost a month before that, I went to a game that the Sox failed to sell out. I was in Row 50 of the bleachers on a blustery mid-April night. The temperature was 41 degrees at the first pitch, and it steadily decreased from there thanks to a harsh wind blowing off the ocean. Jeff Tam couldn't throw strikes in the 7th (the fans around us started a variety of Tam-pon based chants), and the Sox beat the Blue Jays 7-3.

31,440 fans were there. Not a sellout. But everyone there was a fan. Or a psycho. Or a problem drinker. An entertaining collection of people.

It's funny. As the attendance in Fenway has increased, the number of true fans in attendance has decreased. The other night, I actually heard a girl ask her friend, with bewilderment, "you mean you actually stay the whole game?" It was as if her friend had said she stays in movie theaters until all the credits are done.

Fenway Park has become a trendy bar, with a high cover charge, and mediocre entertainment. It's the place to be, the place to meet, the place to be seen.

Yesterday, about 33,000 real fans showed up to honor Tim Wakefield, and see the Sox play. I know the Red Sox Front Office wants to beat the Portland Trail Blazers' sellout streak of 814 games. But how empty is the achievement if it's based on technicalities and semantics?

And I'll take the 31,440 real fans who saw the Sox beat the Jays in 2003. They're better than the 37,292 fake fans that go to Fenway now. And by fake fans, I mean people who aren't actually in attendance (fake numbers generated by the Front Office), and the fake fans who are actually in attendance, but aren't paying attention to the game.

There's very little reality in Fenway Park these days.