Focus groups to gauge Indy Major League Soccer interest

INDIANAPOLIS - Mayor Joe Hogsett, and presumably Pacers Sports & Entertainment, have a vision of bringing Major League Soccer to Indianapolis, but do the people who are expected to fill the stands and buy club merchandise at a yet-to-be-built downtown stadium share that dream?




The Capital Improvement Board will hold focus group sessions this week to gauge public interest in Indy's bid to land an MLS franchise.




"These focus groups are part of the design process in which the designers engage a marketing firm to do a market study really to see what type of fan experiences the Indianapolis market is looking for in an MLS soccer stadium," said CIB Executive Director Andy Mallon. "Maybe just sports fans or event fans that would be interested in different types of premium seats, purchasing suites, what kind of cuisine are they looking for, where in the price points, it's really just a way to understand and quantify what the Indianapolis market would bear for an MLS product."




MLS Commissioner Don Garber, during a trip to Indianapolis last winter, said the league would look kindly on a bid that would include a downtown stadium.




PS&E, which has bought parcels of land near the Downtown Heliport where Hogsett wants to build a proposed $225 million soccer stadium, has expressed interest in operating such a franchise.




Start-up costs, including franchise fee and stadium financial support, could total upwards of $750 million.




Clubs are owned by the league with franchisees granted the right to operate.




The CIB has already engaged a Kansas City firm to design a stadium and will soon hire a construction manager to oversee its possible construction someday.




Mallon said the CIB and Populous Design have already toured the Midwest, looking at other stadiums.




"I've been to Cincinnati and St. Louis with the designers and Kansas City looking at those stadiums and seeing what we like, what we don't like," he said. "It's a very different fan experience. It makes sense that football fans and basketball fans would also be soccer fans because its just a differentiated sports experience."




If Indianapolis were granted an MLS franchise, its matches would enter an already crowded summer sports schedule that includes Indianapolis Indians and Indiana Fever games plus racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.




"It could fill that void between the end of the Pacers season and the start of the Colts season, it might be good," said potential Indy soccer fan Richard Moss who would be looking for affordable family friendly sports entertainment. "I have a 16- and an 18-year-old daughter. If they're interested in going, that's gonna make me wanna go too. If they can focus on that age group, parents gotta bring 'em."




Jeanne Phipps lives downtown and attends Indy 11 games with her son at Carroll Stadium on the IU Indy campus.




"I think it would be more fun and draw more people if it was made a bigger deal," she said. "They have to have all of the amenities that a regular stadium would have, great concessions, things like that, shows, halftime shows, mascot, but I think soccer has its own appeal of that. Soccer brings its own entertainment; soccer fans do, it's a lot of fun. Their horns and they dress up in the endzones. I'm not a huge soccer afficionado but they are there cheering and waving and they have songs and its just kind of a spectacle all in itself."




The focus group invitations were sent out by Downtown Indy Inc. on behalf of the CIB.




Session participants will need to surrender their cell phones before joining the focus group and sign non-disclosure agreements.




"The information is proprietary and it's really just for the design of the stadium and we would make it available to the potential ownership group," said Mallon. "It's a market study to understand and do the research behind the marketability of an MLS team, which would be for the benefit of the design and the potential owners and it really would be coming up with proprietary trade secrets and market information that would guide sort of how that stadium's actually gonna make money someday."




The State Budget Committee has yet to address Hogsett's proposal to create a Professional Sports Development Area downtown to capture anticipated tax revenues from yet-to-be developed properties to pay for construction of the stadium.




Governor Braun has said he supports the location of an MLS franchise in Indianapolis but has not addressed the state's financial involvement in the project.



via: https://fox59.com/indiana-news/focus-groups-to-gauge-indy-major-league-soccer-interest/