🛟 How Columbus Saved Its Soccer Team from Texas

This is the last edition of Bottom of the Ninth in 2023!

I have some fun stats to share with you at the end, but until then let’s get into the holiday spirit with one the biggest feel-good stories in sports ever:

🗞 The Big Story: How Columbus Saved Its Soccer Team

📉 Biggest Loser: The Panthers Lost $1.5M Hosting a Game

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Easiest Way to Make $500K/mo?

🗞 The Big Story

This is the best story in sports that no one has ever heard of.

Background: In 2018, there were rumors that an MLS team, the Columbus Crew, would be relocated to Austin, Texas.

The team had just been purchased by a wealthy San Fransisco businessman named Anthony Precourt, who attended less than 10 games during the first five years he owned the team.

• The Crew also ranked third to last in average attendance

• And reports began to circulate that the club was losing too much money to stay in Columbus

Leaving Precourt and MLS with just one option: Relocate the team.

There was just one problem…

Precourt wasn’t telling the truth.

In fact, he was purposely lying for years as a part of his grand plan to move the team to Austin.

Precourt’s Lies: Fans and local businesses had been skeptical for years of Precourt’s true intentions for the Crew.

Many community members said that they actually offered the Crew millions in local sponsorships to help keep the team in Columbus, but they were all turned down.

Which we now know was part of Precourt’s plan to get the team relocated.

But that’s not all, because public records revealed that Precourt and MLS actually exaggerated the club’s losses to claim that the team couldn’t continue to exist in Columbus.

A revelation that clearly upset fans.

However, for most teams, the story usually ends there. A rich owner gets his way and loyal fans are left without a team.

But not in Columbus.

‘Save the Crew’ Forms: An organization called Save The Crew quickly emerged and discovered an obscure state law that was put in place after the original Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996.

It states that “teams which use public resources in the state of Ohio must give six months’ notice of their intention to relocate and give local owners a chance to buy the team.”

And even though it seemed like Precourt had started the relocation process years ago, Save The Crew started organizing 350 local businesses to purchase the team back.

They even sold 12,000 multi-game ticket packages ahead of the next season as a show of support to a potential new ownership group.

To the Rescue: Then, on October 12, 2018, less than two weeks after the public learned of Precourt’s intention to relocate the team, Save The Crew announced that the Haslam’s (the current owners of the Clevland Browns) as well as the Crew’s team doctor, Pete Edwards, had agreed to purchase the team.

Keeping the Crew in Columbus for good.

And the best part? For the second time since the city took the team back, the Crew won an MLS Cup this year in front of a sold-out home crowd of over 20,000 people.

How can you not be romantic about sports?

📉 Biggest Loser

The Panthers just lost over $1.5M from their last home game, and they might have set a record because of it.

Empty Seats, Bad Data: The Panthers reported that they sold 70,301 tickets for the team’s most recent home game against the Falcons (shown above), but these pictures clearly tell a much different story.

For reference, Bank of America Stadium can hold almost 75,000 people but it was reported by a stadium worker that the true attendance of the game was just around 5,200.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough there were tickets for this game being listed for as cheaply as $0.45.

Which led me to figure out just how much money the team lost by hosting this game.

Cost to Host an NFL Game: To do this, I used a report from 2018 that said the operating cost of Seattle’s CenturyLink Field was $17M per year, which would mean across the Panther’s 8 home games this year they’re essentially paying $2.12M per Sunday to host a game.

Now, most of those expenses don’t change, regardless of how many people come to the game, since it includes:

• Staffing for concession stands

• Field maintenance

• Security

• Stadium lease

But usually, teams can recoup all of that cost just through ticket sales.

Typical Gameday Revenue: In the case of Carolina, if you took a sold-out game of 75,000 people and multiplied it by the team’s average ticket price last year of $105 you’d have a single game revenue of $7.9M - which doesn’t even include things like parking and concessions.

However, we know that the Panthers didn’t even come close to selling out their last game, but how much money did they make exactly?

• 5,200 people buying tickets * $105 per ticket = $546,000

But since it still cost the Panthers $2.12M to host the game, that means they could have lost upwards of $1,574,000.

Record Lows: If it’s true that only 5,200 people were there, then Carolina would have also broken the record for lowest attendance in NFL history.

Beating out the 1992 Houston Oilers who were being boycotted by the fans because the team was relocating to Tennessee.

And even that game had 15,131 people in attendance.

But hey, at least the Panthers doubled their win total…

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💰 Pick of the Week

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

Sleeper just announced that they’re now matching your first deposit on the app up to $500.

That means if you sign up, use my code TYLERWEBB, and deposit $500, they’ll give you $500 more so you have $1,000 to play with.

Plus, Kurt Benkhurt and I just dropped a lock of an entry on this week’s episode of Pocket Presence (which you should get on before the lines move!)

🏆 Winner’s Circle

Ben Zaver has made over $1 million in the last two months selling protein powder on TikTok Shop.

And that’s not even the craziest part.

Because he told me how much money TikTok is paying him just for selling his product on the TikTok shop, and it was way more than I was expecting.

Origin Story: When Ben started Seeq out of his parent's garage, he set out to make a protein powder that tasted more like a juice instead of the thick and chalky options that were on the market.

And with the help of a few early, viral TikTok videos Ben sold out of his first pallet of protein which he bought with an $80,000 loan.

Fast-forward two years later and Ben has a warehouse and a full team but then in October, everything changed.

Holy Shop: That’s because TikTok Shop started getting pushed to everyone’s For You Page, and TikTok was giving out massive discounts to customers but still paying businesses the full price of the item.

And with TikTok offering up to 70% off of a $45 bottle of protein, people were getting Seeq for just $13.50, and TikTok was paying Seeq the rest of the $31.50.

But it gets even crazier.

Selling Seeq: Creators started getting incentivized to promote the product for a 15% commission, meaning for each bottle they sell they’re collecting $6.07.

And Ben said he’s had a creator make almost $35,000 in commissions off of just two videos with less than half a million views each.

For reference, last month on TikTok I made:

• $1,400 on 2.2M views

• Or $0.64 per 1,000 views.

Meanwhile, through TikTok Shop this creator made:

• $34,993 on 730,189 views

• Or $48 per 1,000 views

Business Breakdown: Ben said that for Seeq, those creators only represent about 15% of their business on TikTok, with the other 85% coming from organic posts and ads.

And of the $1M they’ve made in the last 2 months, upwards of $400,000 of that has come directly from TikTok subsidizing them because of discounts.

It’s a wild new world we live in.

⏱ In Other News

• SBJ announced its Year-End Awards!

• Did Minnesota pay the last QB on their roster $30K to not transfer?

• ANOTHER Super League? Give me a break.

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Here is Bottom of the Ninth’s year in review:

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👋 Have a great holiday, I’ll see you in 2024!