Crew sees bright future with front-office expansion
Tim Bezbatchenko wants atmosphere and energy like Saturday night’s game at Mapfre Stadium against FC Cincinnati to be the norm, not the exception, for the Crew.
The team’s president and general manager thinks the oldest and newest clubs in Major League Soccer could develop the best rivalry in the league as they try to build contending teams and construct stadiums.
For the Crew, though, Bezbatchenko and the Crew’s investors/ operators — Dr. Pete Edwards and Dee and Jimmy Haslam — first had to fill out a frontoffice staff that had about 40 full-time employees and lacked resources in vital areas.
With over 70 fulltime staff members now — including a recently hired chief business officer, a director of strategic partnerships, a scouting director and an open job for director of player personnel — Bezbatchenko thinks investments in the team will start to be seen by the fanbase and community this fall and grow from there.
“I think it’s taken until now for us to really bring everything together and get our staffing and our organizational structure in a place where we can start to behave like a top club in MLS,” Bezbatchenko said.
Chief among those investments will be what the team is calling an “experience center,” likely located in the Short North. The store was developed through the team’s partnership with IBM ix to help visitors get a taste of what the new stadium will look and feel like.
“It’s not just a place where you’re going to kind of come in and out,” Bezbatchenko said. “It’s going to be a part of the community down there. It’s going to be a place to visualize what we will become and get people excited about the future of the club.”
The club is looking for it to open in late fall.
The Crew put 2020 season tickets on sale Friday. Fans not only get the benefit of priority on season tickets but seating and discounted prices for the new stadium, which is expected to open by July 2021.
Before Saturday’s sold-out crowd, the Crew ranked secondto-last in attendance in MLS with an average of less than 14,000 fans. But that is up 10% from 2018, when fallout from the team’s potential move to Austin, Texas, and eventual sale affected attendance.
Bezbatchenko said this season the club topped 9,000 season-ticket members, including over 3,000 new, the highest number in years. Getting over 10,000 season-ticket members is the next goal, with hopes of reaching 13,000-14,000 over the next couple of years.
“It’s not something that we’re going to say, hey, that has to happen for next year, but that’s our objective,” Bezbatchenko said. “It’s going to take the entire city and the community to support this team. But we have the staff in place. We have the ambition and I think we have the vision to achieve all these goals.”
The stadium site, on land in the Arena District owned by Nationwide Realty Investors, is nearing an official sale to Haslam Sports Group. The club has invested in Legends, a sports and entertainment company that has helped develop soccer venues such as those used by Atlanta United and Los Angeles FC in MLS and Tottenham Hotspur in England.
Legends also will help with corporate sales and partnerships. The Crew hired Steve Lyons as its executive vice president and chief business officer to oversee revenue growth. He was an executive for nearly a decade at the Columbus Partnership and has ties to the local business community that the team wants to use.
“There’s a lot of excitement out there (about the Crew),” Lyons said Saturday. “We just need to get out there and tell our story, tell it loudly and tell it proudly.”
After years of budget restrictions and an exodus of people from the front office, it has taken four to five months for the Crew to get the people and plans in place, Bezbatchenko said. Along with the experience center, the next steps are engaging with the community and local youth soccer organizations, and investing further in the roster.
“For us, the experience that we’re going to provide to fans is going to be impossible to ignore,” he said. “Everything that we do and how we’re going to act is going to be something that’s impossible to ignore. The people are going to see that we are a different Crew and a new Crew.”
jmyers@dispatch.com @Jacob_myers_25