Sports: Old Faces, New Management Style Breathe Life Into S.D. Franchise
After a five-year hiatus, the San Diego Sockers are back with new management and a new league structure.
The team, which was part of the San Diego soccer community from the late 1970s to 1996, is back to a fall season instead of the summer season that some said led to the team’s downfall. According to team officials, the former team made a big mistake changing their playing season.
“When the team went to a summer season, we lost between 3,500 and 4,000 season ticket holders,” said Brian Quinn, the Sockers’ coach and general manager.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason for that decline, but new team ownership said in California and in most of the country, soccer is played in the fall. The 7,000 fans at the Sockers’ first home game seemed to agree.
Quinn, who played for the Sockers from 1983 to 1991, isn’t the only familiar face with the new version of the club. David Altomare, a one-time sponsor of the old club, now finds himself as the team’s chairman of the board and owner.
Altomare, who made his fortune with the Auto Trader magazine, admitted there was some hesitation on his part to jump on board with indoor soccer.
It only took a cold call from a sales agent of the former team to convince him to be a sponsor; ownership was different.
“I spent a long time trying to decide,” Altomare said. “There was no indoor soccer here for five years and the Sockers name was very prominent. I thought that I would like to bring the Sockers back.
“The team did so much for the community here for (more than 15 years), and I didn’t want to see that fade away.”
Buying Into Concept
It wasn’t until early 2000 when he sold the Auto Trader and unofficially retired that Altomare decided to take a serious look at the soccer picture. He purchased rights to the team for $100,000.
Altomare said a couple of things helped convince him to purchase the team. One was having Quinn in the front office to help smooth things out, and the second was the changing face of the indoor soccer league.
The old management style, under the Continental Indoor Soccer League, was structured in a way so that each team operated separately and focused primarily on one team’s interest. Now called the World Indoor Soccer League, it is set up as a single entity, in essence like a team in itself. Each team owner has equal stake in the league.
Major League Soccer did it; so did the Women’s National Basketball Association and the Women’s United Soccer Association.
“This is just a new concept in sports management,” Altomare said. “In the past, it was like a dictatorship and someone else called the shots. Now, all owners work together to run one team.”
Quinn said budget problems as well as poor management led to the demise of the old Sockers. He said the team’s expenses were simply too high.
Grass-Roots Approach
Quinn and Altomare said that’s one mistake they don’t plan to make. The team has a $1 million budget to primarily cover staff and player salaries and travel. Instead of putting a lot of money into marketing and advertising dollars, the team is taking a more grass-roots approach.
“We are using manpower instead of money,” Altomare said.
Team members have converged on the community to take part in camp programs and visit local schools. The team also works with the American Youth Soccer Organization to provide coaching and skills for teams throughout the county.
It also doesn’t hurt that there are a number of ex-Sockers in the community who can help get the word out about the team’s rebirth.
Several players coach in soccer leagues and use their connections to promote the team.
One ex-player has gone a little further than that. Kevin Crow, who played for the Sockers from 1983 to 1992, is the general manager of the San Diego Spirit of the WUSA. Crow goes a long way back with Quinn and Altomare and has pledged to do what he can to help.
“We have a lot of mutual respect for one another and I feel we need to be looking out for what’s best for the San Diego soccer community as a whole,” Crow said.
Crow and some Spirit players took part in a promotional coed game during the Sockers Sept. 29 game to show that the teams are united.
There is the reality that the two teams could find themselves fighting for some advertising dollars, but Crow said the competition should not hurt either of the franchises.
“There is some competition from a definition standpoint,” Crow said. “There’s more than enough room for both of us to operate with the numbers we’re trying to attract.”
The Spirit, being a part of the inaugural WUSA season, shared league-wide financial backing from major communications companies, including Cox Communications, Cox Enterprises, Discovery and Time Warner.
The Sockers, on the other hand, don’t have that kind of backing, but the team has managed to sign up several sponsors, including Nokia, Tecate Beer, Advanced Web Offets, Let’s Play Sports Inc., ScheduleOnline, Fulmen uniform shop, Woodfin Suite Hotels, San Diego Kia, Rocky Mountain Water and San Diego Center for Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Surgery.
