Steve (00:01.926)
just get this.

Steve (00:06.416)
Set up.

Steve (00:11.366)
Okay.

Steve (00:28.358)
Just bear with me one last second.

Steve (00:48.774)
Okay.

Steve (00:53.562)
you

Steve (00:58.278)
You know, when you think about our business, the business of sport, and you think about how we ultimately make the industry run on all its cylinders, well, you've got to have something, something that attracts the fan, right? There's got to be some magnet that says, there's a target market out there that is keenly motivated and has a passion.

for some form of a sports entity, sports property, an athlete, a team, a league, an association, a stadium, a venue, or an event. And today we have the vice chairman and chief brand officer, a gentleman who has been on the marketing side of the world of non-sports when he was in Washington, DC, but someone who

took that leap of faith, and it's a big one when you really think about it. You had to be an athlete and have your passion, very often since you're a kid, and dreaming of getting under the big lights and getting that opportunity to be paid to play. Well, in this case, you gotta have the visionaries and those with the economic fortitude and discipline and lastability.

and stick-to-it-ness and vision to bring it all to life. And that stakeholder is a team owner. And today, Doug Irwin, it's a great pleasure to have you again as a vice chairman of a team that's now six years old out of Greenville, South Carolina in the USL, the soccer league that is a growing one, rapidly growing one. And we thank you today for joining the Transaction Report.

Doug Erwin (02:51.544)
Yeah, excited to be on. Appreciate you having me.

Steve (02:55.962)
Yeah, so you you did something that was to me very wise. You launched a team, you and your father were very motivated based on a groundswell of support that preceded your interest in bringing a team to Greenville, an expansion team in the USL, which if you want to think about it would really be, I don't want to call it the G League of the NBA, but if you think of Major League Soccer,

And ultimately, if there ever is a relegation, and of course a promotion, you could see one day a relationship between MLS and USL, one day perhaps. But you made a business decision, and in doing so you spoke about ultimately going to a lot of other teams, both in soccer and non-soccer, and really learning the lay of the land.

So first and foremost, I want to learn about that. think our viewers and a lot of folk who are interested in investing wisely into some form of sports asset and getting a return from that investment, it would help us to understand, first of all, what you learned. And then I'd like to, after that, really drill down.

as you laid out your business model before you actually put the money up to the USL for that franchise to understand what you saw in a business model that would help you one day be a profitable enterprise and not just make money one day from a sale of asset flipping the team.

Doug Erwin (04:37.025)
Yeah, I think, you know, what it started with, as you said, was talking to other teams in soccer, not in soccer. I've had a little bit of experience around sports and sports marketing, as my dad had as well, but neither of us knew the first thing about running a sports team day to day and what that takes. So we did quickly hire a team president who had a background.

of about 25 years or so working in sports, mainly in hockey, but at all levels, both on the league side, the team side. I think, you know, seeing both sides of the coin there from the league and team side was important. And then Chris Lewis, our team president, and I kind of set out to figure out what can we learn and how quickly can we learn it on, you know, the soccer landscape and how some of these teams are working. And I think

more importantly than anything, not what are the things you do that make you successful, but what are the pitfalls. So we were able to visit, I think, four teams and have phone conversations with, you know, probably a dozen more in the space about how they got set up and all the very basic level stuff of how do you build out the infrastructure of a team. You know, we had about 13 months, 12 and a half months to go from

two people sitting at a desk, twirling a pencil around to let's kick a soccer ball off and have 4,000 people in the stands. So to do that all on a compressed timeline, I think was a big challenge. So one of the things that's great about sports is being able to lean on other teams. You're competitors on the field, but you're not competitors off the field. If I want to start a Burger King franchise, I'm not going to go to McDonald's franchisee and say, show me how it's done. They're not going to open their doors.

But these teams did, these people did, and that was great. But I think, Steve, to the second part of your question, what was it about this business model that we thought was attractive outside of a potential sale? The answer, the most attractive thing is that potential sale. But outside of that, the way we kind of approach it is, hey, we don't need to make a ton of money here. We just need to be sustainable.

Doug Erwin (07:00.109)
that this is not something year over year that we're trying to you know, break in millions of dollars. I know teams can do it at the minor league level, it's rare, but in any, you know, lower level pro sport, you're always going to have a couple of teams that are profitable year over year. We have teams in our league that are profitable year over year, but a lot of it is tied to your different revenue streams and the control you have over them. you know, we'll get into that probably a little further down the road. But I think for us, the most attractive thing was the growth of soccer.

in America and the ability to bring professional soccer to a community that's never had it. As the sport is growing, it's grown in major league markets, NFL markets with major league soccer, but to be able to bring pro soccer to people's backyard in small and medium sized cities was something we found very attractive.

Steve (07:49.21)
Yeah, let me drill down a few points here and it's very helpful. And I'm glad you mentioned the pitfalls because so many of the positives are very overt often, quite often that you can really get a good sense of what they did well. So help us delineate first and foremost.

What would be the kind of the bigger pitfalls that you learned from these other clubs, whether it was Atlanta United in soccer and Major League Soccer, when you journeyed up there to meet with the team and learn about their successes? And obviously there are some similarities between a USL team and a major, particularly a team like Atlanta United, which is such a successful enterprise.

Doug Erwin (08:37.048)
Sure. Well.

Steve (08:37.828)
what would we look like? What were those pitfalls that you kind of looked at yourself and said, that's, we got to be very careful and we've got to learn how to navigate that so we don't repeat the mistake that those folk might have.

Doug Erwin (08:50.646)
Yeah, I think the first one that's a very tangible pitfall that would be the case in any new organization, sports or otherwise, is how easy it is to spend money in year zero of a company. being very intentional about the process of being a startup and how and where you spend money to get ready to market the team, I think was huge. And Atlanta is obviously on a different scale than us.

I think the one pitfall that we heard across the board, and it's less tangible but equally as important, is authenticity. And being authentic to the region that you're coming in and starting a team. And it's a criticism that I feel like it's levied more at our level of sports than it maybe does at the Major League level.

Steve (09:37.604)
Yeah.

Doug Erwin (09:50.388)
Having the opportunity to start a team in a community that I'm a lifelong resident of or almost lifelong resident of, my dad's the same way, a lot of the people who work for the organization. So we, you know, I'd like to think we get this region. And I think where we've seen, where we've seen a lot of failures in our league and other leagues is disengaged ownership that is out of touch with the community that the team is in.

That was thing that we just kept hearing over and over. And like I said, it's not, it's not tangible. It's not measurable from a metric standpoint, but it's a feel, right? And it's transparency with the fans and the sponsors that is authentic.

Steve (10:32.741)
You know, it's so interesting. You think of, and obviously there were many, many years and it's still ongoing with the Glazer family's ownership of Manchester United. That's probably one of the highest profile cases of a disconnect, a particularly disconnect because you have so many American owners today going into entrepreneurs, big businessmen and women going into Europe and acquiring teams, particularly United Kingdom. And...

For a lot of folk in the UK, and I spent a year in and out of London doing business there many years ago, that alone is a disconnect between owner who is not one of the family. And so authenticity very often on our side of the world when we talk about how do brands, sponsors, companies align their interests

and use in a very positive way, maximize, collaborate with some form of sports asset, whether that's athlete, team, league, et cetera. They need to find a way to reach their consumer and get inside that mindscape of their target market in that authentic way. And very often when we talk about authenticity, it's that brands very often will activate, will market, will try to reach a consumer

in a way that just isn't plausible. It just doesn't feel right. It's interesting when you talk about having authenticity as a team, bringing soccer to Greenville, South Carolina with the triumph, right? And to do so in a way that would lack authenticity. So what I would like to try to understand better,

And what only came to my mind on the first instance of authenticity was the issue of, well, do we have any local players? Local players very often are an incredible fortifier of authenticity, because this is our hometown boy playing on a men's team in professional sport.

Steve (12:45.645)
I get transparency as having a relationship that's real and reliable and there's truth instilled. What I have not thought of before is this concept of you as a team being authentic when you're bringing the passion, the product to the fan. So let's understand that a little better in the fan team relationship. What would be examples?

of a lack of authenticity.

Doug Erwin (13:19.095)
Boy, that's a great question. I think some of it goes, and we could talk about this for hours, so I won't dwell on it too much, but some of it is the branding and making sure that the team represents the community. We went into a long branding process to come up with the name Triumph, to come up with the colors, and that was all rooted in Greenville in upstate South Carolina.

was something that we thought was gonna connect with fans and we think it has. And I think Steve, the thing too, you talked about the players, there's that desire to bring in local talent and we did early on year one, we brought in a player from just outside of Greenville who had played his college and played his professional career to that point elsewhere. We brought in someone who was from England but had played college soccer at Clemson.

just down the road from us. having both those guys was great. And I think it might've sold a couple tickets here and there, I think it was more than just the two of them having existed in the greater Greenville soccer ecosystem. It was the character of those two guys specifically. And also it was the success they brought on the field. At the end of the day, I think one of the biggest multipliers for us early on in terms of success was

just how well we came out of the gate, you know, starting, we quickly established ourselves on the field as a success story. And I think one of the differentiators for us as a business from say the other minor league teams in town is we're not beholden to, you know, a major league parent organization. You know, we have a Boston Red Sox affiliate, we have an LA Kings affiliate in town and those player moves in and out, know, if,

There's a really good player that comes in town for the baseball team and they knock the cover off the ball. They're gone in 10 days. But we have these players who are coming in, living, you know, living in Greenville. They're under contract to us. We've, we've, we've sought them out. We've signed them and some of them, you know, now here we are just wrapping year seven. You know, some of these guys are, have been with us five, six, seven years and, and they are their own brands in our community now. And the authenticity of having those guys, those guys are invested in Greenville. They're.

Doug Erwin (15:44.27)
You know, they're guys that have retired or from us that have stuck around in Greenville. They've met their spouses in Greenville. So some of that again, I think that's a market advantage we have not to disparage the other two teams because that's out of their control. you know, we're able to connect with our fans, our players are able to connect with their fans because they really are a part of this organization and a part of this city and community. I think...

One of the cool things is a lot of them in the off season on the side, know, do some coaching. And so at each game, you might have 10 or 20 kids that come out that say, you know, Coach Steve's my coach and he plays for the Trident and we want to come support him. That's just a really cool community connection we get to make.

Steve (16:28.464)
So you have a population of about 75,000 in Greenville, South Carolina. obviously, as you mentioned, college, significant population in your neighborhood. When you look at that calculus that you went through, and it's so interesting, as you said, ultimately in this first phase of building your brand, you guys said to yourself, we'd be happy if we can, as you said, sustain.

We're not looking to generate a half a billion dollars in revenue in the first seven years, right? We're not the LA dollar. Right, right, right. Well, of a return on objectives mission you guys have. I like your KPIs, half a billion. So, which is great, which really is great, by the way, when you establish that benchmark.

Doug Erwin (17:04.962)
we tried, for sure, we tried, but yes.

Doug Erwin (17:20.856)
Yes.

Steve (17:27.652)
you know, at a very high level, you the baseline, when you start saying, you know, that really is something we really want to get to. Yeah. Then you fall shy and you're, you're five X of where other teams or other folk might've said is their original objective. So I'm with you all the way on the half a billion per year revenue generation, but let's help our viewers understand that model breakdown because before you invest it. And, and of course, when you look at MLS,

Doug Erwin (17:45.838)
you

Steve (17:55.738)
You know, I said at the time when Beckham acquired Miami, he's going to make an awful lot of money, he and his investors. And when he bought, he bought it between 25 and 30 million for that team in Major League Soccer. And there are today, the last time I checked, I'm going to give it some inflation. Last time I checked, was 1.2 billion. And I'm going to take a shot and say that it's probably another few hundred million on top of that. When you look at, for example,

Doug Erwin (18:06.497)
Right. Right.

Doug Erwin (18:14.678)
I believe it.

Steve (18:20.341)
Unrival, the three on three women's basketball that launched just a year ago. They're now over a quarter billion dollar valuation. My best judgment for what it's worth is that in 12 months, there'll be over a billion dollar in investment valuation, meaning what they're capable of raising money at in the marketplace. Before we get to the model itself, help us understand the superstructure of this USL franchise. So acquiring, and your family acquired it.

Was it, did you have a consortia of investors that came with you? And just kind of a run through of some of the basics for a fee pool. The ownership is a family or the ownership is a consortia of external investors with the family.

Doug Erwin (18:54.765)
Sure.

Doug Erwin (19:01.473)
Well, it's been both, you know, when we came or when the the league came to us, we started those discussions. The league itself was just starting this new division. It's a league within a greater league business ecosystem. They operate multiple leagues and at different levels, but they were just building this out. And we were the second team to announce. And originally it was it was my dad and myself and one other one other person.

long time family business partner, Shannon Wilbanks. So it was a family business and some of the successes we've had is proof of concept enough to bring on additional ownership, additional capital. So we started building that out in year two, three, brought in a couple other, yeah, go ahead, Steve.

Steve (19:43.204)
Yeah.

Steve (19:49.99)
I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna take one quiz so we get some understanding. That first tier investment, if I'm gonna start a team in a city in the United States in the similar structure that you had, what would be that initial investment back going at the pre-COVID 2018-19 timeline?

Doug Erwin (20:12.735)
Sure. Well, I don't want to give away facts and figures per se, it was the initial investment, I don't mind saying it six figures, which is, new league. So not a ton.

Steve (20:24.805)
So you're saying newly with USL as a league or USL as a subdivision within the USL? Okay.

Doug Erwin (20:29.959)
USL League One. So USL ecosystem that's been around in some form or fashion for 30 years, but they had operated the second division of US Soccer and then a couple of semi-pro divisions. They wanted to fill us a new spot in the tier, the third division. So as I call it, double A soccer, you know, they had been operating at the triple A level. So they wanted to tap into communities that were a little smaller than some of the markets they'd been in. So a brand new league that launched and

Greenville, Richmond, Chattanooga, to name a couple that came on early. But that was a six-figure investment at the start. And not to preview it too much, but needless to say, that franchise fee in the seven years we've been around has gone up a multiplier of, I don't actually know what the current thing fee is now, but I would imagine it's 10X of what it was roughly in six, seven years.

The big investment for us, candidly, wasn't just the league fee. was, again, all that building out the infrastructure, finding places to play, building a training facility, stadium situation. That's where the real money was spent early on. And then, again, as we find additional stability, we're able to bring on additional capital partners to help us ease the cash flow burden.

Steve (21:59.238)
So I wanna run through those really interesting. you, because again, it's, the numbers are not so critical. It's important that our, because when you're talking about brands who are watching this, it's nice to know because then it helps them understand and guides them as to opportunities for sponsorship, by the way. So with that said, what's interesting is though, is that this is more of a model that in many parts holds true for many other sports as well when you're launching a new team. So you mentioned infrastructure.

Doug Erwin (22:15.597)
for it.

Steve (22:28.611)
So I imagine in the early stages you're going and paying rent to find a location that you're not gonna hopefully, and I think based on what I've learned to know from my chief marketing officer, Dave Wharton, you guys are smart business folk and you're not gonna make that sophomoric mistake that so many make. And we've seen it in some big leagues as well, growing leagues that have come about in the last five, six years where they take on too big of a bite.

and they go into a stadium with 70,000, 60,000 seats and they can fill it with a very respectable 15,000. But in a stadium where you've got five X needs to fill, it looks almost empty on a broadcast level. So let's take it through. you're going just because we're because this is all going to relate back to your mission, which to me was the compelling, really compelling interest, which was you made an investment. And for you, of course, as a business

Doug Erwin (23:09.335)
Correct.

Doug Erwin (23:13.035)
Sure.

Steve (23:24.163)
men and your father. The idea was not to just throw six figures out to the wind and see where it landed. You wanted to ensure you had a proper model that had a

perhaps an overperforming achievement, a mid-level and a low-level. And here you are, so you gotta pay rent. You have how many home games a year where tickets and rent are gonna be? You're gonna generate revenue from tickets and you're gonna have an outgoing expense on operational expenses related to running a professional event and also renting the venue. But what would be the seating capacity first and foremost when you first started?

Doug Erwin (24:01.228)
Yeah, well, Steve, it's kind of an interesting question because we're renting the venue, you know, in the first couple of years, but we're also renting the seats. So long story short, we ended up going to a location that did not have a stadium. It was a field, not a stadium. So it was it was a.

Steve (24:16.997)
Wait, was it an amphitheater? Can you help me out for a sec? You rented the stadium, but then you had to rent, that's quite an entrepreneur, whoever that owner is. let me tell you, did you have to rent the concession stands and the restrooms? Can you explain what it means to rent? Oh, please. Okay.

Doug Erwin (24:35.31)
The answer is yes to all of these. And this is a great story for another day at greater length, but to boil it down, the challenge with finding a soccer field is width. We can find a football field anywhere and play soccer on it, but we need proper width for our league. So not having a ton of options in the area, year one, we ended up going to a charter high school that had a great field.

Steve (24:49.967)
Yeah.

Doug Erwin (25:03.552)
and some room around the field. And they had bleacher seating for about hundred people, Steve. So that doesn't really fit the business model. So we worked with a company out of a couple of different places. Florida, South Carolina actually, that does a lot of golf tournament, tennis tournament, F1 race, temporary seating. Yep. So we built a stadium of 4,000 seats, temporary restrooms, et cetera.

Steve (25:21.253)
So mobile bleacher, 800 mobile bleachers, yeah.

Doug Erwin (25:32.11)
So we were renting it all. were renting the turf we were playing on from the school. We're renting seats from the seating company. We built a stadium. And to your point, you know, and your original question, we it at 4,000 seats because we thought we could sell 4,000 out. And if there was a night where we didn't sell 4,000 out, well, 2,500, 3,000 still going to be a good look as opposed to going and playing in, you know, a stadium situation that was too big for us. So creating that demand or even

the illusion of demand, know, that sounds negative, but I don't mean in a negative way. It is important because as you said, some of the pitfall, like it is a TV product. We don't have the audience of some of these other leagues, but it's still, you know, your highlights that you're showing to potential fans on your social media are coming from your stadium. So you want to sell a good atmosphere and right sizing that is very important. You know.

Steve (26:25.317)
How did you do, by the way, just to give us a little sense of your achievement, that 4,000 is not a small number. So for a new fledgling team, that's, as you said, a tier, a second tier within the USL itself, which is a tier differential from MSL. So then the question becomes, so how did you do in filling those 4,000 seats?

Doug Erwin (26:50.989)
Yeah, I think over the course of the season we averaged over 3000 a game. So I think we did really well. you have some weeknight games, have some tournament games that are tougher sells. You know, have some... We had, I'm going to forget the exact number that first year, but on average we're about 15 home games a season. It's changed every year.

Steve (26:55.343)
Fantastic.

Steve (27:01.465)
How many home games?

Steve (27:09.773)
Okay, and ticket, if you don't mind me asking on the ticket sale side, the revenue, what percent were sponsor driven tickets that were part of their sponsorship package versus those that were bought at gate or season tickets? I know you had a thousand signatories by the way, that motivated you when you came to buy the team, that you saw that a ground swell of support among a thousand in Greenville to pitch the USL to bring that.

Doug Erwin (27:26.167)
Sure.

Steve (27:36.952)
Expansion Club to Greenville and that obviously for you was a an endorsement that was very important to have that validation But just if you could just give us that breakdown and understanding what type of what are they? What is that revenue generation for your model because what we're interested is understanding How does your model get filled with the revenues that are so important to you? So that this is sustainable in seven years is certainly a sustainable accomplishment thus far and I know that you have much longer-term objectives so

When you break down those tickets, have sponsored giveaways, have obviously your media, you have your season tickets, you have your gate sales. Can you give us kind of a breakdown of what that ticket face value might cost?

Doug Erwin (28:19.021)
Yeah, you know, we crowd a 4,000. I think year one, we had around a thousand season ticket holders. So there's 25 % of your pie off the bat. See, I'm going to forget, but, you know, on average, think the price was probably for a season ticket holder about 15 bucks a game per ticket, you know, at season ticket holder value, depending on where you sat, maybe a little cheaper in some areas.

Steve (28:27.301)
What did that cost them to buy season?

Steve (28:36.451)
Just a ballpark.

Steve (28:43.021)
Okay, great.

Steve (28:48.111)
So just to just fill that out, if we're at 15, at 15, right? So we're 225, at 225 and a thousand season ticket holders, that's a six figure number that right off in year one, just at the thousand, you'd be generating approximately $225,000.

Doug Erwin (29:10.605)
Yeah, and I think, you know, I'm trying to think of what the really good nights were for us from a dollar figure standpoint on tickets. I think it was anywhere between 30 and $40,000 a game overall, you know, just on tickets. Now the challenge, you know, is those other revenue streams that make teams so successful. Outside of tickets and sponsorships, it's concessions revenue and parking revenue.

Steve (29:26.245)
Tremendous.

Steve (29:40.038)
Well, it's also, just to put the biggie, which we're gonna get to, and I don't wanna miss it, is your broadcast revenue. So let's go back to your other ones, your concessions, our significant parking. Let's talk those through. Sponsorship, we didn't get to sponsorship, but overall, had a lot of local sponsors.

Doug Erwin (29:40.321)
Those are the two. Yeah.

Doug Erwin (29:53.803)
Yes, sponsorship obviously.

Yep, lot of local, some regional, and that's a big portion of model. But the revenues that we didn't, and to this date, still haven't gotten to take full advantage of, but we will as we move into a new stadium that is ours this upcoming year, is the concessions revenue and the parking revenue. We had partners that came and they paid a flat amount to have their food truck. We're going to charge them a thousand bucks or whatever.

But then everything on top they keep. So concessions revenue was more minimal for us. Parking revenue was very minimal. We had some parking revenue, but those are the things that make a team successful in the long run. And then you talked about the broadcast revenue. Merchandise, of course. Yeah, sorry. left that one out. And that rides the wave of how many people did you have in the building that night, I think.

That is a good revenue stream if you're selling tickets well. It's not a great revenue stream if you have a tough night and only have 1200 people in the building. But the next phase of growth to kind of preview where you were headed, broadcast revenue. We've not really realized broadcast revenue yet. All our games are broadcast. We're on ESPN Plus and now we also have some games on CBS Sports Galazzo platform.

It is not a revenue source yet. Currently, it's still an expense for us in the league in terms of what we invest in broadcasting to get all our games on camera crews, announcers, etc. Having said that, there are teams that make money on it from a sponsor perspective because we do get, even though it's a league broadcast, we get sponsorable assets within the broadcast that we can sell. And we can get to the point where we're about breaking even. But the next...

Doug Erwin (31:52.716)
The next chapter of the league is having promotion relegation and what does that do to our overall TV deal? That could be a huge escalator, not just for the teams, but for the league too in terms of broadcast value.

Steve (32:05.893)
By the way, when you mentioned you have sponsorable assets, could you just make that very tangible, very real for us?

Doug Erwin (32:11.214)
Sure. Yeah, you know, it's the transaction report play of the game, right? It's clock wraps. Here's your injury report presented by Doug's doctor's care or what have you. All those different in broadcast assets that are putting logos on screen that are save of the game, goal of the game.

And you don't have within those assets. I wouldn't say that you have like a halo asset yet. So a lot of that is cobbling, you know, some nickels and dimes together in different assets there. So I think that they're and commercials too, there are in broadcast commercials. We're limited because soccer has 45 minutes of uninterrupted action, of course. But pregame, halftime and postgame commercial spots, there are some of those and where you...

can really start to realize some value is if you have a local broadcast deal, which we've had at times that uses that same feed, but you're expanding that audience to some local linear.

Steve (33:19.589)
Would that local broadcast be your 100 % revenue stream?

Doug Erwin (33:26.154)
It depends. A lot of times you'll go... For us in the past, we've gone in with the network on a rev share because they'll let us have some inventory and the local broadcast, but then the network will also have some inventory to sell. Yeah.

Steve (33:41.67)
Well, I apologize. meant, separate from the revenue that obviously the share for the network, there's no split of this with any other entity within USL. This is your property, with your deal, the way you structured the relationship with the broadcast network. Brilliant.

Doug Erwin (33:48.684)
Yes.

Doug Erwin (33:54.072)
Correct, correct. It is our property.

Yep, we retain all our local linear rights and the ability to sell those.

Steve (34:03.397)
Brilliant. So when you look at sponsorship today compared to where we were, I'm not, the number is not the relevance, the escalation in sponsorship. If you look back seven years ago, and again, as part of a model where, I mean, sponsorship can be such a significant contributor to a team, obviously,

when you look at the success of teams and their ability to garner significant monies from big players that are interested in aligning with that passion of what that team represents and the players behind it, the ownership behind it, which is so important to be an ownership, as you said, that the local community.

feels in many ways has their interest, it's family, and you don't have that antagonism in that sense of they're doing us wrong or they were cheap. That's what we get in New York a lot is, God, why didn't they spend? And you hear that a lot in sports. You didn't make good trades or we would have done it. And obviously, armchair quarterback comes from the sports metaphor for a very good reason, because every fan thinks they know better than every owner. So when we look at first that level,

of have we had the ability to show the local community and in seven years is a significant time to build a brand identity. Do we have a sense that the local or regional sponsors are willing to put forth more significant investments in their marketing dollars, advertising dollars to your team?

Doug Erwin (35:43.144)
Yeah, I think that it's certainly it's been a growing process. But yes, I think we're getting to that point. And you specifically called out the regional as well. That's that's the next step for us. know, we we've done well in the Greenville community. And I think a lot of that ties back to the authenticity we talked about earlier is, you know, our our sponsors believe that we're a good representation of the community and have a good, you know, a good pulse on.

people that they are also trying to reach the community. Now, it's taking that to some of these regional or even national companies and saying, hey, we think that, yes, we do well in Greenville, but we also represent this. We represent Greenville to the rest of the US. And if ProRail comes, represent it to the world. So let's get your brand involved. the dollar amounts are starting to...

they're definitely increasing and as we get ready for the stadium move, we're not that far as it stands today from announcing a stadium entitlement partner for our new stadium and that will be by far the biggest deal we've ever announced.

Steve (36:56.623)
How many seats will that stadium have by the

Doug Erwin (36:59.337)
It's going to start with an initial capacity of about 4,500 seats and another 1,500 standing room. And it's scalable. So that's phase one, and we would love to see it grow up closer to 10,000. And it's not just soccer games. Right now, we're going into a situation where we're going to get to control some non-soccer events, which is big too.

Steve (37:06.533)
Smart, very smart.

Steve (37:24.469)
So clear, Bringing this full circle as we come to our waiting moments. In a perfect world for you, you wrote the script, Doug. You and your dad sat down like you did seven, eight years ago, 2018, and you said, we're gonna buy a team. We're gonna be team owners of a professional sports team that we're passionate about. In a perfect world seven years later, if you were to put on a whiteboard,

that business model again, that you thought of seven, eight years ago. And now you put up your ideal division of revenue generation of what percent would we see, take us through that kind of that hub and the spokes around it. And if we could just talk through in your mind, what percent of the overall business model would come from which revenue area, please.

Doug Erwin (38:17.313)
Yeah, think for us, again, think sponsorship is a reflection on how well you're operating as an organization and what you mean to the community. So I'm going even put sponsorship ahead of ticketing because I think that hopefully that shows if we're doing well in sponsorship, that shows that we have the pulse of our market, pulse of our fans. So let's say it's

50 % sponsorship, 30 % tickets, and I'd love for 10 to 15 % merch and everything else to be concessions, parking, et cetera, ancillaries, know, stadium merch, tickets, you you want it, you want to get it to where we're, we don't maintain that we're going to sell out every game, but where you got good crowds every game and you're using that to demonstrate value to your sponsors.

and their valuing that you can pack the stadium. But again, tickets and sponsorships are gonna be the two because like I said, those reflect how well you're viewed within the community. And I think that's at the end of the day, what's most important.

Steve (39:25.103)
You know, thank you for sharing that. And a perfect way to close out would be asking you that if I met you in an elevator and I represented a significant brand, which you knew of and you really wanted to be a part of your family, your team, the Triumph in Greenville, South Carolina, and we had 30 seconds on the ride, what would you tell me as what's going to be my value proposition that I, and I could be any type of brand you want. Let's call it fast moving consumer goods.

What would be the salient business reason that when I got out that elevator 30 seconds later, I'd be walking away and saying, above all the rest, I want to be working with the triumph. I want to be my brand aligned with their target market, with this ownership team, with this family, this consortia, and grow with them. What would that be, that 30 second message?

Doug Erwin (40:16.063)
tell you that our mission, it's what we put up on a whiteboard day one, which is we want to unite people and create joy through soccer. This is about joy. This is about having fun. This is about making memories. And wouldn't you want your brand to be associated with an organization that their mission is to create joy, put smiles on people's faces? We like to think people view us in a positive light. And if you're associated with us, you're going to where they're going to view your brand in a positive light. We know that soccer

soccer fans are more loyal to Brent, the team sponsors than other sports. think 50, 54 % is last stat I heard more loyal than other leagues. So we have a passionate fan base that, you know, feels, scrappy and wants to support their, you know, their team and support their team sponsors. And there's just, again, there's, there's revenue, but there's also, there's fun and there's joy and there's memories and all those things are tied in. Don't you want to be a part of that?

Steve (41:16.089)
Doug, phenomenal. I mean, really, it's remarkable having read about your pre-launch and the decisions that were made to try to get into this team to know how long you guys have been moving the needle forward. And again, as Vice Chairman and Chief Brand Officer of the Triumph out of Greenville, South Carolina, it was a real pleasure having you the Transaction Report today.

Doug Erwin (41:40.535)
Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

Steve (41:43.184)
Great. And before you go.