What does soccer plus Finley Stadium plus late May equal?
Nobody knows, but Stadium Corp. board members are eager to find out.
On May 29, Finley Stadium will house a soccer matchup between the Chattanooga Football Club and the Under-23 squad from the professional team Futbol Club Atlas, of Guadalajara, Mexico. Finley’s executive director, Merrill Eckstein, admitted Tuesday he would be disappointed with a crowd of less than 5,000 and is hopeful for 10,000.
Whatever the number, it is expected to be the largest Finley audience for a local team in a sport other than college or high school football.
“It’s a wild card,” board member Gordon Davenport said Tuesday. “Instinctively to me, it seems like it could blow through the door. From a Stadium Board perspective, I think it’s exciting.”
Said chairman Bryan Patten: “It’s a new use of the facility and one that’s sort of New Millennial in terms of its relevance. I think it’s great for the stadium and the community.”
The game is being promoted from Cleveland to Dalton and has been on radio spots as far away as Atlanta, and a healthy crowd could result in CFC officials luring more teams from around the world. The CFC made its debut last season and averaged more than 2,000 fans a game, topped by a July 4 crowd of 3,014.
CFC director of communications Sheldon Grizzle is hopeful of at least 5,000 attending the Atlas game but also doesn’t know what to expect.
“It’s all positive,” Grizzle said. “We just don’t know how positive yet.”
Eckstein’s plan is to open the home side of the stadium, which seats 9,500. Because the $10 advance tickets and $15 day-of-game tickets are general admission, he said fans tend to spread out a little more.
So if the crowd passes 8,000, the visiting side will be opened as well.
“We will have the other side ready to go and will probably have to make a decision 24 to 48 hours in advance of the game,” Eckstein said. “The one thing you never know, and Chattanooga is a community known for this, is how many last-minute ticket buyers are we going to encounter? The Mocs were overwhelmed the first game of last season when we had 14,000 people in there.”
Stadium Corp. members expressed the importance of being ready for a large walk-up crowd, as last year’s CFC game that surpassed 3,000 didn’t have any advance sales.
“It’s the first like this,” Davenport said. “We need to work with the Chattanooga Football Club, because they are the ones facilitating and enabling this. We’re just trying to help them out.”
Mocs up next
A crowd as high as 20,000 is the objective for Sept. 4, when UTC opens its second football season under coach Russ Huesman against Appalachian State.
“That’s our goal, and that’s what our focus is,” UTC athletic director Rick Hart said. “We’ve got all summer to work on it. I think it’s a realistic goal to try and get 20,000 in here.”
The Mocs have sold 1,319 season tickets after selling 1,008 at this point last year — a 31 percent increase.
Odds and ends
The Finley Stadium scoreboard actually belongs to Finley Stadium now after a second $45,000 payment was made this month to Chattanooga Lookouts owner Frank Burke, who purchased it when he served as the facility’s operator. … Eckstein is projecting a loss between $17,000 and $20,000 for the 2009-10 fiscal year and provided a first look at the 2010-11 budget, which calls for a $22,700 surplus.