To be blunt, I feel like MLS and the Rapids really stopped all pretense of caring about long-term loyal fans this offseason. Some of this was intentional, or at least, intentionally deciding not to worry about how that demographic would react. Some of it is typical missing the mark. We've known for a long time that the Rapids have regularly fumbled that market but it was one thing to see them try, even badly, and fail, its another to see them apparently just not care.
The big thing from the league is of course the schedule switch. I went over this in detail when it was announced so I'm not going to rehash the argument here. I will mention though that this week is two months since that announcement, 2 of the 15 months between the announcement and the start of the 'sprint season' that will lead into the new schedule, and there's been no further information released by anyone about how this is going to work. Still no announcement that the players are on board, no announcement about how the Rapids and other cold weather-teams will be handled, and no updates about things like the Open Cup nd Leagues Cup in this new schedule. But hey, that's only 15% of the time gone.
When I finished up my last post in December I mentioned that the moving of the Messi game was frustrating for me, but I needed a couple of weeks to disconnect. That coincided with my trip home to Seattle for Christmas. I was on the train leaving Sea-Tac when I get a ping from the Rapids app announcing a 'fan activation' about rebranding the Rapids. Everything from the badge to the colors to the name changing is on the table. Excuse me, what? 30 years with our current name, one of the 5 remaining names from 1996, and 20 years with our badge and colors, and you're just going to throw out the possibility of changing them all?
Now before you think I'm going full "old man yells at crowd" I understand that even classic badges have been updated over the years. I'm open to the idea of tweaking the badge. And for other teams trying new colors could be a thing but for a team that's kind of known in MLS for an early history of switching colors (green, white, gold, black, and blue were all used as team colors in the first eight season, then moved to burgundy and blue in the twelfth season) having another rotation of colors is unnecessary, unless you're going to go back to the original green.
But changing the name? What, we want to be Arsenal Colorado again? FC Colorado? Denver United? Everything we've ever done in our history has been under one name, 'One Club' you might say. There's likely some belief that this team needs to be "relaunched" to appeal to Colorado soccer fans alongside the start of the Summit but the problem with this team has never been the name or the colors, its been the lack of investment and caring from ownership.
As part of this "fan activation" they invited fans to fill out survey about the Rapids branding, Fans were asked to rank each of the 4 logos (the classic wave, the classic round soccer ball, the current shield, and the Colorado C badge currently on the Headwaters kits) on a five-point scale between two contracting ideas. Those ideas?
- Traditional vs. Modern
- Quiet vs. Loud
- Local vs. Global
- Gloomy vs. Cheery
- Fits In vs. Stands Out
- Party vs. Battle
Party vs. Battle? Gloomy vs. Cheery? How does a logo battle? They also asked which of the four *shapes* of the crests best represents the club (ironically in a page that wasn't optimized for mobile so the four crests were all squashed out of shape). I'm sorry, but this creams "trendy marketing survey" and not a real attempt to engage fans in this discussion. Of course the fact that it 3as launched on December 22nd, the first day of one of the busiest travel weeks of the year and as we entered the two week dead news zone around the holidays suggests that they were hoping it would fly under the radar anyway.
They did follow up with an offer to sign up for small focus sessions to give more feedback, which I took. This week I got an email inviting me to a session. The session will be lead by Name & Number, the consulting agency the Rapids are using as part of this rebranding research, and the available times are 3 90 minute sessions on a Wednesday and one on a Thursday, all during the normal workday. So I would need to take time off work, drive out to the Dick, and for all of that I don't actually get to give my feedback to the Rapids about the idea, just to the creative agency they hired to find out if they should rebrand. This is not a serious attempt by the Rapids to reach out to their fans.
I can't help but notice that this is all happening six months after the Rapids hired Haley Durmer as CBO after the departure of long-time CBO Wayne Brant. I'm all for new ideas, god knows this team needs them, but this feels like going from 0 to 100 without stopping to see if 50 would work. I'd also point out that the one leak we have of the new jersey, from Footy Headlines which has been a reliable leaker of MLS kits in the past, is that the Rapids will be in a Black and Light Sky Blue kit for their new home kit this year. Needless to say, that's not home burgundy. MLS also posted a behind-the-scenes of media day reel that showed Aaronson wearing black socks with burgundy trim. I'm going to be real suspicious if the findings of this fan activation finds that there' support for changing the colors, say to black and light sky blue.
Add to that the moving of the Messi game. The Rapids have claimed that they were always planning to move a game to Empower Field this season to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Right. A team that can barely sell out the sub-18K Dick for fireworks was going to take on the costs of playing in front of maybe 20K at Empower to see the Rapids take on the Galaxy or something. In fact they were so prepared to play at Empower that they waited 4 weeks to announce the game was going to be played there. At best they knew they were likely to get Miami this season and reached out to Empower to reserve some dates. Of course in those four weeks they didn't bother to get anything sorted out as far as tifo, instruments, tailgating, etc., just assuming the fans would handle it themselves. There was even an issue over C38 tickets for that game, but that's been worked out this week.
All in all the attitude from MLS and the Rapids this offseason has been "we're going to do whatever we want and the fans will come with us or not, we don't care". MLS talked about getting feedback from the fans before their schedule decision but I wonder how much feedback they really got from the Rapids fanbase if apparently nobody in C38 was ever asked. The rapids talk about wanting to build the fanbase but again, they make decisions and then reach out to the fans, not the other way around. Its quite possible that in 18 months the MLS team in this city is playing in the winter, under new colors and a new name, after their biggest game in years not being in their home stadium. As somebody who's been following the Rapids (almost) from the beginning, is that even something I want to be involved in?
The worst part? I'm still going to be back later this week talking about our very questionable offseason, including holding the biggest announcement of the time off (our new coach) until two days before Christmas. There's a whole other discussion about what we've done to prepare on the field (not enough) but this rant is long enough. Rapids, why can't I quit you?
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