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Message: [QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 1477926, member: 405"] The biggest problem with the Chiefs is that nobody cares about the parent club. When it was Toronto, nobody cared about the Blue Jays in this town, and now that it's Washington, nobody cares about them, either. It's hard to believe that the Chiefs had an opportunity to partner with either the Yankees or Mets when the relationship with Toronto was ending, but they failed to reach out to either club - the Yankees because of hard feelings among the Simone family, but again, your fans don't care because these are not the teams that any remaining baseball fans out there truly care about. Talk about not caring at all about your customers, that's number 1 right there. As for the football team, I think it's a few things. (1) The team has to begin winning again at a level of about 8 games a season, and go to a bowl game pretty much every year. That is the expectation of fans here. We did it before for extended periods of time. We have to get back to that level again for fans to return in significant numbers. Obvious, but true. (2) Improve access to and from the Dome. Jake has told us this is already true, but we need Centro to get as many people to and from the Dome as they do for the State Fair, with lines of buses leaving every 20 minutes or so before and after games. We need the City to make Colvin St. double lanes in each direction, if they want to have us park out by South Campus and take a shuttle bus. You have to be able to get to the game on time. While we're at it, eliminate the police directing traffic - it makes the traffic worse, not better, because they funnel everyone on to the same few streets after the game. There need to be some parking options on the Colvin/Euclid side of the Dome, so people don't have to slog up the hill in bad weather. (3) Improve seating within the Dome. We would be better off giving up 4,000 seats of capacity in exchange for actual seats with chair backs on them. Expand the concourses, better bathrooms, better concessions should all be part of the overhaul of the Dome, along with a Hall of Fame area for both revenue sports. (4) Ticket giveaways to local children's sports teams, local elementary schools, etc. We've already talked about doing it for the military, but the greater impact on attendance long-term is to get kids hooked again. Parents do have a tough time with how structured sports and after-school activities have become. When we were kids, life was a lot looser, and not so tightly scheduled. There seemed to be more free time. We can't do much about the way life has changed, but we have to find a way to get kids back into the Dome. [/QUOTE]

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