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Message: [QUOTE="Towney007, post: 3185888, member: 5832"] Not to be a debbie downer, but that read like a lot of developmental/soccer-related stuff. That's not paying the bills. Like I said above - anytime you've got an enormous travel budget, lack Major League subsidies and have to pay player salaries, you're basically almost done before you've gotten going. Franchise fees being low is nice, but after you've plunked that cash, you can just line item it up and start to get queasy. -Front office salaries - if you're doing it right - are like $400-$700k depending on staff size. -Wage bill at the end of the year is like $250k-$300k. My bet is it increases by double if you're looking at the next tier up. -Coaching salaries are $100k at least for anyone who's decent. -Insurance is... literally 30-40% of your operating budget -Team travel is about $100k plus -Hotel depends on trade deals and rates, but that's that. -Game day operations + game day staff runs you around $80k per year -Marketing can vary wildly, but you should be spending anywhere north of $85k in year-1, but you also can take some edge off with trade, etc. -You're paying an accountant $30k to cheat like crazy on your taxes if you can. -Refs will cost you - low end - $12-$15k. -You have your US Soccer Fed fee i'm sure, and a USL participation fee as well. That's north of $75k alone. -BS/Misc crap expenses/uh-oh spaghetti-o expenses can be as high as $100k and you shouldn't plan any less than $80k. -There's administrative travel (your SID dorks), rent/lease (if you have one), broadcasting expenses (gotta pay some dorks to broadcast for you too)... -Then apartment rentals - you usually have to put players up somewhere if you're not going the host family route. Anticipate $40-$50k there. -Then for startups you have two, additional one-time startup costs of your franchise acquisition fee and then 5 years of $250k for your performance security AND ALL THOSE NUMBERS are based off of a USL D3 team. Not at our level. I mean operating budget is easily $1.5-$2 million on the very conservative low end for one of those things. I'm sure it's a slam dunk $2.5-$3 million in this league. They have 6-7 cash sponsors and again - unless they're getting $20-$25k a pop, then that's not very good. And none of this pays for your $7 million expansion fee. Now in terms of income you're looking at: -High end - $75k in revenue per game, so you're looking at $1.275 million IF you do 5,000 fans per game at $15/ticket - which at this level - is probably asking a lot. -Retail will park right in around $150k. -Ballpark/Concessions revenue depends entirely on what your deal is. It could be as much as $500k, but as low as $100. SO - assuming you're selling out every night, your retail revenue is at $150k (remember, you're probably buying it all and having it made for $30-$40k, so revenue isn't your profit) and you've got a good concessions deal, you MIGHT be lucky - to break even ASSUMING you have strong sponsorship revenue. You're GOING TO 100% take a loss in year-1 and likely will take losses in your first 3 years. Just depends on the stomach these guys have. Owners could also be using it essentially is a tax write off, so who knows. Like that's great that they want to use VAR in an interesting way, increase development, do secret handshakes in the good game line and all, but there's a financial reality to this. And while it's nice they keep adding expansion franchises, they've also lost TWENTY TEAMS in the last 9 years. That just scares me. There's an old saying with sports execs that your league is only as good as your worst franchise - and to me it just seems like they keep filling in the floor. They just seem too big. Like I said - LOVE this product, i've been to every home game, I'm a season ticket holder, etc - but this is a brutal model to make good money doing and at the end of the day even if the team is profiting a few $100,000 - investors are looking for more. Some of these teams owners don't care if they're breaking even or not - so there'll always be an appetite for this stuff, but yeah to me... I get nervous when I see six-seven potential cash sponsors. Also the travel realities here in the states is another reason why you probably won't ever see promotion/relegation here. Imagine being East Dingleberry United in North Carolina and Goof Park Rangers in Long Beach gets relegated and now you get punished in the pocketbook for them sucking. This isn't like driving from Crystal Palace to Brighton in England. Or Dortmund to Leverkussen or something. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach