The off season is hardly an extended vacation in professional soccer. That is when the important work is done to prepare for the following season.

It surprises me how many people think that working for a professional sports team is like being a teacher and allows for a months-long vacation in the off season.  While the season is certainly hectic and requires many hours each week, ideally the season is merely the execution of all the planning, selling and promoting that went into the off season.  It’s that off season work that will actually determine success or failure of the following year.

The close of the Milwaukee Wave’s 2009-10 professional indoor soccer season last week means we’ve now transitioned into the advance work for 2010-11.  That work actually started a couple months ago with the creation of the organization’s business plan.  Last month, while the season was winding down, we made important decisions on pricing of individual, season and group tickets for next year and put season tickets on sale - the earliest in team history.

Last week we put together the following outline of our off season activities over the next eight months – and in some cases, 12 months – to prepare the Milwaukee Wave for an improved 2010-11:

I.  General

A.  Business plan review – April

B.  Budget finalization – April/May

C.  Staff Retreat – May

i.   Business plan review

ii.  Marketing Plan

iii. Sales plan

a. Tickets

b.  Sponsorship

c.  Camps

iv. Promotions

v. In Game Entertainment

vi. Other topics listed below

a.  Media

b.  Merchandise

c.  Schedule

d.  World Cup

e.  Special Events

f.  Team

II.  Staff

A.  Organizational structure review – April

B.  Employee reviews – April

C.  Personnel Changes – April/May

III.  Ticket sales

A.  Season tickets – April through December

i.  Renewal of Season Tickets

a.  Through April 30 early bird: Kory

b.  May 1st to October 31st:  Divide with players and ticket sales staff

c.  November 1st to December 1st:  Jim and peter

ii.  New Season Tickets

a.  Individual seasons to data base

b.  Bulk to sponsors and youth soccer clubs

c.  Referrals from existing season ticket holders

B.  Group tickets – April through March

i.  Youth soccer

ii.  District meetings – April/May

iii.  Club meetings – April through August all clubs

iv.  Bars and Restaurants – August through March

v.  Scouts, Indian Guides, YMCAs, Chambers, Service Clubs and other organizations – June – March

C.  Promotions – Discuss at retreat and implement afterwards.

i.  Giveaways

ii.  Concerts

iii.  Charitable tie-ins

iv. Creative/fun: Beach Nights, retro celebrities etc.

IV.  Sponsorship sales plan

A.  Renewal

i.  Proof of performance – April

ii.  Negotiate renewal terms – April through June

B.  New  – April through March

i.  Team Marketing Report Sponsor Report fact Book

ii.  Other local sports teams

iii.  Other local events

iv.  Leverage relationships

a.  Keith, Jim, Peter, staff and players

b.  Season ticket holders, existing sponsors and partners

V.  Game Schedule

A.  Secure Dates From WCD – May/June

B.  Secure local sports team schedules – May/June

C.  Cross reference holidays and other major events – May/June

D.  Plug in key dates firmly (Home opener, Scout Day, Parade of Champions) – May/June

E.  Plug in rest of dates tentatively – June/July

F.  Finalize schedule with MISL – June/July

VI.  Camps

A.  Follow through on existing plan – April through August

B.  Finalize Dance Camps – April

VII.  Merchandise – May through November

A.  Renew with current vendor and suppliers

B.  In arena selection

C.  Soccer retailers

D.  Mass retailers

E.  Online shop

VIII.  Marketing Plan

A.  Agency review – May

B.  Social media – May through March

i.  Increased player, coach and staff blogs

ii. Improved Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube usage

iii. Review/renewal of MKE Live and Shoutlet partnerships

iv. Website review and upgrades

v.  Database and contact management system improvements

C.  Advertising plan – August through October

D.  Design & printing of collateral (ticket brochure, program, posters, schedules, promotional materials etc.) – April through November

IX.  Media

A.  Webcasts – August

i.  Company selection

ii. Determine fee schedule

B.  Television – July/August

C.  News release schedule – April through March

D.  Soccer Saturday Presented by the Milwaukee Wave – April through March

X.  In Game Entertainment – Discuss at retreat and implement afterwards

A.  Lobby

B.  Concourse

C.  VIP Room

D.  Lower Concourse (Interactive area)

E.  On field

i.   Pre-game

ii.  During game

iii. Halftime

iv. Breaks

v.  Post-game

XI.  Player/Mascot Appearances

A.  Summerfest – June/July

B.  State Fair – August

C.  Soccer tournaments – May through March

D.  Youth club picnics/events – May through March

E.  Parades – May through August

F.  Schools – April/May and September through March

G.  Charity events – April through March

H.  Ethnic festivals – June through August

I.  Street festivals – June through August

J.  Other – April through March

XII.  World Cup

A.  Viewing Parties – April through July

B.  Expert analysis for local media – May/July

C.  Web site blogs – June/July

D.  Fan Contest/Pool

XIII.  Special Events

A.  School Day Games – April through March

B.  Beach Games (2) – April through July

C.  Summer Games (2) – April through July

D.  Madison exhibition – June

XIV.  Team

A.  Roster decisions

B.   Re-sign out of contract players – April through September

C.   Sign new players – August through November

D.   Tryouts – November

The outline above leaves out the detail behind it as much of the information is proprietary, but it should give you an idea of the scope and importance of the work that’s required in the off season to prepare a team for the season itself.  In the MISL, the off season is twice as long (eight months) as the season (four months).  This past year the Wave was challenged by a transition of Leagues, ownership and leadership.  The Wave’s previous League, the XSL, folded following the 2008-09 season, the Wave’s owner announced he was not returning regardless of League after the season, the staff was released in the off season and turmoil and doubt followed the organization for almost half of the off season.

New owners Jim and Nancy Lindenberg took over in mid-summer as the team joined the MISL, then I was hired in mid-October, just six weeks prior to opening day.  The shortened and difficult off season made preparation challenging, but thanks in large part to a successful Save the Wave season ticket campaign and relationship sponsor sales, the Wave managed to increase ticket revenue 30% and sponsor revenue 35% this season over the previous year.

We expect that the relative stability of this off season, along with the game plan above will allow us to have another year of significant revenue growth.  Though it will require eight months of diligent work and not an eight month vacation.

I’m sad for our fans.  5,000+ showed up on Easter Sunday, cheered loudly throughout the game and supported us in increased numbers throughout the season.

I’m sad for our owners Jim and Nancy Lindenberg.  They saved the Wave last summer from extinction and actively supported and promoted the team like no other owners I’ve ever worked with.

I’m sad for our Head Coach Keith Tozer.  He earned his 8th Coach of the Year honor by leading an injury and illness depleted team to the Wave’s 8th regular season title.  Keith hoped to celebrate his birthday on Sunday with another championship, but his positive attitude serves as a lesson to me and the team.

I’m sad for the Wave players.  They worked their butts off all year both on and off the field often without the recognition and public admiration that they richly deserve.  Their good works and community service is unparalleled among teams I have worked with and equal to the success they achieved on the field this year.

I’m sad for the Wave staff.  They worked long hours to create a professional atmosphere for the organization and entertaining and inspiring environment at home games that helped the team succeed.

And I’m sad for myself.  Idealistically, I shouldn’t feel sad for myself. I’ve been rewarded many times over for any efforts I’ve made, but instinctively I always want more and it’s frustrating and emotionally difficult to know that it will be another year until we have a chance to win another title.  I’m extremely competitive and I really don’t like to lose. It was the 12th time my team has been in a championship game.  My teams only lost four times previously – three times at the hands of Tony Meola, twice on the road and twice on neutral sites, but never before at home.  Seeing a team hoist the trophy in front of our own fans was painful.

THE PROMOTION OF THE GAME:  We were a little afraid that due to the holiday conflict, we may have been hosting a somewhat private event.  There were many people who understandably thought that playing on Easter Sunday was a big mistake.  While selling tickets on a holiday is challenging we thought it was our best choice considering the options.

The game began at 5 pm CT, which gave families time for church and Easter brunch prior to heading to the game late in the afternoon. There were no perfect options. The League insisted on April 2nd, 3rd or 4th.  Delaying another week would result in added payroll for both teams and three weeks without a game for the Wave.

Friday would be Good Friday and go against a Brewers home exhibition game at Miller Park (and an Admirals game at the Bradley Center). It’s also a work day for many people.  Saturday had four major conflicts (Brewers exhibition at 1 pm, NCAA Final Four Semi-Finals at 5:10 pm and 7:40 pm and Bucks vs. Suns at the Bradley Center at 7:30 pm….plus there was youth soccer on Saturday afternoon).

We embraced the holiday date and made the game a family event with Easter eggs and a visit from the Easter Bunny for kids who donated books to the Milwaukee Wave of Hope charitable foundation. There were no other professional sporting events in Milwaukee that day, so we had the day and the local media to ourselves.  Easter obviously wasn’t ideal, but there was historic precedence for great sports moments in Milwaukee.  On Easter Sunday, 1987 more than 29,000 fans turned out at Milwaukee County Stadium for an afternoon game and watched Milwaukee Brewers infielder Dale Sveum famously hit a walk off home run to give the Brew Crew its 12th straight victory – and free hamburgers for all of Milwaukee - to start the season.  We even brought Sveum in to the Wave game Sunday to try to bring the Wave some of his Easter charm.  It seemed to work for awhile as the Wave scored two goals to build its lead to 6-0 just minutes after Sveum addressed the crowd at halftime.

The Wave staff overcame the substantial challenge of an Easter Sunday date, however, to attract 5,402 fans, one of our largest crowds of the season.  The sales didn’t come easily.  We didn’t include the playoffs in our season ticket package, so the normal base of about 1,000 was reduced to zero when we began selling the game three weeks prior.   Group sales, the other major mover of the indoor soccer ticket dial, proved hopeless when youth soccer club after youth soccer club tried and failed to assemble groups due to the holiday.  Even the old reliable pre-games and halftime games went unclaimed.

Instead we developed a plan to sell individual tickets by offering an attractive food and ticket package and promoting the game virally via social media and emails.  We also called in favors by asking for email blasts from all the organizations we donated tickets to or made appearances for over the course of the season.   Our ad budget was small, but we leveraged some of it and a presenting sponsorship of the game with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for six full color 1/4 page ads, two full color ads on the front page of sports and significant online promotion in the week leading up to the match.

The ad campaign, “What’s Your Championship Moment” found its way to many most Milwaukeeans via the newspaper ads, electronic billboards, hundreds of thousands of emails, posters, flyers, 60 second spots on five radio stations, on-air ticket giveaways, a series of blog posts on the popular OnMilwaukee.com website and even on Craigslist.

The following outline of some of our promotional efforts may be of interest to those who don’t often think about the behind the scenes efforts needed to promote and sell a sporting event.  A more detailed, though incomplete outline was posted here to explain to fans who were concerned about our decision to play the game on Easter Sunday exactly how we planned to sell the game.

A) Contact all Wisconsin Soccer Clubs for email blasts and group, individual and family four pack sales.

B) Posters and Flyers at Indoor Centers

C) Posters and Flyers at Soccer Retailers

D) Email Blasts

E) Promotions, Poster and Flyer Distribution

F) Social Media

G) Public Marketing

H) Media Appearances

I) Advertising

J) Other Sales Efforts

The League allows the home team to retain all the gate receipts and the visiting team is responsible for its own travel and accommodations.  We were also able to sell title sponsorship for the game, which we did to Associated Bank, and we did well with broadcast rights as well.

We worked with Fox Sports Wisconsin to televise the game live.  The Wave webcasts all games home and away live and broadcasts regular season home games on delay on Time Warner Cable’s sports channel, but this was the first game in at least the last couple years we televised live.  While that decision may have cost us a couple hundred fans who decided to stay home to watch on television, it allowed us to showcase our team and sport to a wide audience that otherwise wouldn’t see the game.  Unlike the late owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, Bill Wirtz, I’ve always believed that home games should be televised, because it serves as an advertisement for your team in the best possible context – your own fans, your own game day atmosphere and you’re more likely to be showing a win at home than on the road!

We actually made a little money on the broadcast by selling a few advertising packages, including one to the game’s title sponsor, Associated Bank, and by selling the broadcast rights to two different television networks in Mexico.  So, when factoring in gate receipts, game sponsorship, merchandise sales, broadcast rights and advertising fees, from a business standpoint, we did very well on this game…who says we lost?

THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: The Milwaukee Wave won the trophy that was earned through 20 games over four months.  The trophy that really counted however, the MISL Championship, and the Champagne that went with it was taken by Monterrey La Raza in a one game, winner take all on Easter Sunday on our home field.  We led 6-0 in the third quarter on three two-point goals before La RaZa’s Chile Farias took over.  His hat trick quickly evaporated the Wave’s lead and  Monterrey went on to a 12-6 victory and the 2010 MISL Championship.

Putting together a pro soccer league schedule in America is as difficult as solving a Rubik's Cube.

There are plenty of analogies to making a schedule for a professional soccer league in America…it’s like making sausage, it’s like solving a Rubik’s Cube, it’s like solving a complicated code or a cylindrical geometry push-button combination lock.  There are countless combinations and dozens of variables and restrictions.

American soccer schedules are significantly more difficult to complete than those in most leagues around the world for a few important reasons:

• Several teams are second or even third tenants at their stadia
• Travel distance is significantly greater than almost all other pro soccer leagues
• The number of teams (and sometimes divisions) changes from year to year
• There is often an unbalanced schedule

I’ve always loved the scheduling process and viewed it as a competition of my team battling the League and all the other teams to secure as many prime dates (and times) as possible.

There are many moving parts with two basic goals, which at times can be at odds.  You want the schedule to give you the best chance to maximize revenue and to win a championship.

Some of the business decisions are subjective:

• Are Sundays better than Fridays?
• Are Sunday evenings better than Sunday afternoons?
• Are Thursday nights better than Wednesday nights?
• Is 7:30 pm better kickoff time than 7:00 pm for weekday games?
• Is a weeknight in the summer better than a Saturday in April?
• Is a home game in September better than a home game in June?
• Do these questions have different answers for outdoor soccer vs. indoor soccer? For women’s vs. men’s soccer?

(BTW, i believe the answers to all the questions above is “Yes”)

Then there are the ways to improve your competitive edge:

• Minimize travel by scheduling multiple game trips
• Schedule home games against teams that are tired from another game and/or difficult travel
• Play weak teams more in an unbalanced schedule
• Play teams with a lot of national team players during international game windows (though this can hurt attendance)
• Schedule more home games in the final month

Other variables include:

• Television needs
• Rivalries
• World Cup conflicts
• Opportunities for double headers (WPS/MLS)
• Local youth tournaments that can be leveraged for ticket sales
• Desire to evenly balance and spread home dates over the schedule
• Desire to minimize home dates during cold weather months
• Team rankings of their preferred dates

And there are certain tricks that newcomers to the process (or those that are less competitive) will miss such as:

• Submitting minimum number of date avails to the League
• Doing the League’s work to try to find date flips that will improve your dates (mainly by resulting in an additional weekend date)

Like making sausage, making a schedule isn't pretty.

For my money, the master scheduler in professional soccer is Brad Pursel, MLS Vice-President of Team Services.  In this terrific Goal.com article Kyle McCarthy, shows how Pursel has helped with the MLS schedule process since 1997 and led it since 2002.  Pursel describes the challenges in assembling the MLS schedule this way.  “It’s one of those twisted puzzle things you enjoy putting together,” Pursel said. “You take a lot of lumps along the way, but it’s part of the process.”

MLS uses both computer outputs and manual adjustments to make an initial schedule that will make up the foundation of the schedule.

“We’re getting to the point where we have enough input from the teams and our TV partners that when we assemble those early drafts, they’re in pretty good shape,” Pursel told Goal.com. “When we go through the back and forth with the teams, it’s about fine tuning and making some of those harder final decisions.”

As an example of the process, the following  shows how this year’s Women’s Professional Soccer schedule was put together.  The outline shows the tight timeline WPS COO Mary Harvey and WPS Head of New Media Karyn Lush had while working with GMs to phenomenally put together the schedule in the face of tight deadlines, conflicts from college and professional venues alike as well as the sundry issues described above:

2010 WPS Schedule Process:

1. Tuesday, Jan. 26: Created master calendar of teams’ stadium availabilities

2. Thursday, Jan. 28: Working with GMs, listed priorities for scheduling algorithm including:

• 24 games total per team – 12 home and 12 away. Each team will play every other team three times and

three opponents a fourth time. The first consideration went to FC Gold Pride to alleviate their travel costs.

Then we considered geographic rivalries.

• There must be a minimum of one game on each Sunday for Fox Soccer Channel (FSC) to broadcast.

• McDermott Rule: No team should host more than two games / weekends in a row unless the team specifically requests this or agrees to this.

• As we’re playing 24 games in 22 weeks, each team must play a minimum of two mid-week games.

• Avoid MLS and NASL/USL conflicts as much as possible.

3. Friday, Jan. 29: Sent master calendar of teams’ stadium availabilities and guidelines to the scheduler.

4. Wednesday, Feb. 3 – Thursday, Feb. 4: Draft 1: Determined actual home dates for teams.  Due to high # of issues, sent back to scheduler before showing the draft to teams.

5. Wednesday, Feb. 10 – Thursday, Feb. 11: Draft 2: Sent to teams for feedback. Due to a handful of new stadium availability issues, sent back to scheduler.

6. Friday, Feb. 12 – Sunday, Feb. 14: Draft 3: Sent to teams for final approval and kick off times. Seven of eight teams approve of schedule.

7. Monday, 15: Draft Re-sent to teams as Feb. 3: Re “tentatively final” pending FSC feedback. Sent to PR / Web managers to prep schedule announcement. One team raised an issue. Went back to the scheduler to solve outstanding issue.

8. Tuesday, Feb. 16: Drafts 4-7: Reviewed at league office and quickly rejected due to either (a) not solving high priority issues or (b) creating new issues which would be labeled high priority.

9. Wednesday, Feb. 17: First pass of TV schedule sent to FSC. Talks ensue. Draft 8 is sent to teams for final approval and kick off times. All 8 teams approve schedule. Schedule sent to PR / Web Managers to prep schedule announcement.

10. Thursday, Feb. 18: FSC approves TV schedule, final schedules noting final TV games sent to teams.  Schedule announced at 12 pm PT.

Finally, I have a real-life scheduling challenge for you to weigh in on.  Here is the difficult decision my professional indoor soccer team, the Milwaukee Wave, may very well face in the coming weeks.  If the Wave finish the MISL season in first place, we will host the championship game the weekend of April 2-4.  Each of the dates has serious drawbacks for selling tickets:

• Friday, April 2nd is Good Friday and the Milwaukee Brewers have their first game of the year in town, an evening exhibition game vs. the Detroit Tigers at the domed Miller Park.
• Saturday, April 3rd has another Brewers/Tigers exhibition game at 1:00 pm, youth soccer during the day, the NCAA basketball Final Four semi-final games tip off on national television at 4:10 pm and 7:00 pm and Milwaukee Bucks are home vs. Phoenix Suns at night.
• Sunday, April 4th is Easter Sunday

Let me know in the comment section below what day and time you would choose to play.  After a couple days, I will give you my opinion on this difficult no-win decision.

Soccer Supporters and bloggers, the "Match Pricks" get a legitimate forum for their commentary.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin has no professional outdoor soccer team.  The last pro outdoor team in Wisconsin, Milwaukee Wave United, faded away in 2005 following two seasons in the second division A-League and one as an independent team.  Milwaukee has NEVER had a first division pro soccer team – even in the old NASL, which placed teams in 38 markets over 17 years.

So Milwaukee is an unlikely market to find an hourlong, weekly soccer show on a traditional over the air radio station. And not just any radio station, but 540 ESPN, a station branded with the most iconic American sports media name, the Disney-owned brand ESPN.  There are not very many English language soccer shows on American radio.  There is the Division 2 focused “Kick This” on Rochester, New York’s WHTK 1280 AM, Glenn Davis’ Houston Dynamo dominated Soccer Hour All Access on Houston’s SportsTalk KBME 790 and Sounders FC Weekly on 710 AM ESPN which, as the name implies, is limited to Sounders FC news and commentary.  Online there is the general soccer talk show, World Football Daily, but over the air, soccer talk is very hard to find.

Starting this Saturday at 8 am Central Time, however, there will be at least one over the air radio show in the United States that will discuss world, American, local and indoor soccer.  540 ESPN in Milwaukee will host the weekly “Soccer Saturday Presented by the Milwaukee Wave”.   As President and CEO of the Milwaukee Wave indoor soccer team, I recently negotiated a  partnership between the Wave, the oldest professional soccer franchise in the United States, and the Craig Karmazin owned 540 ESPN.

The weekly show is a major undertaking and commitment by the Milwaukee Wave and includes the skills and time of many people to make it work.  Wave VP of Communications Matt Schroeder serves as the show’s producer and director and coordinates the various moving parts of guests and hosts.  540 ESPN’s Matt Salmon is the show’s studio host and acts as the playmaker on the show’s team.  Wave Hall of Famer and television color analyst Art Kramer will serve as a regular co-host on the show as well.

It will of course have a segment on indoor soccer and the Milwaukee Wave featuring interviews and commentary with legendary Wave Head Coach Keith Tozer.  In addition to being the winningest indoor soccer coach in history, Tozer has also been the United States Futsal Coach since 1996.

Of great interest to me is the format and planned content for the show’s other four segments. Each week, approximately eight minutes each will be dedicated to local, American and world soccer plus an open segment for fan phone calls or discussion on hot soccer topics of the week.  Three of those four segments will be heavily influenced or even provided by local soccer fans and participants themselves.

540 ESPN's studios face out onto Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee.

The local segment will include interviews with youth club leaders and feature accomplishments by local clubs, high schools and colleges. The world soccer segment is the most intriguing to me as it will have commentary from local supporters of clubs around the world.  Two of the featured commentators will be Arsenal supporter Colin Deval and Liverpool supporter Jim Kogutkiewicz who pen the entertaining Match Pricks blog. In the show’s test run last weekend, the Match Pricks provided intelligent and humorous comments on BridgeTerryGate, Portsmouth’s economic troubles and Manchester City’s upset of Chelsea which was playing out live on the studio’s television monitor.

World soccer segment guest hosts will include supporters of other European clubs and hopefully of Latin American clubs as well, which I hope will inspire honest and entertaining, if not always fully informed, discussion on a variety of world soccer topics.   Certainly Barclay’s Premier League, Champion’s League and this summer’s FIFA World Cup will dominate discussion in this segment, but other world soccer topics will be discussed as well.

I will likely host many of the American soccer segments.  The “Red, White and Blue” segment will only be as good as the guests we line up and my interviewing skills.  I am hopeful that Keith and my contact lists will take care of the former and my journalistic education and training, soccer management experience and intellectual curiosity will take care of the latter.

The show’s signal will be available over the air in Southeastern Wisconsin and will even reach to Madison, Green Bay and most of Chicagoland.  It will also be made available globally live via internet streams on both MilwaukeeWave.com and ESPNMilwaukee.com and will live on via segment podcasts, which will be stored on both websites. The 540 ESPN studios, which are in downtown Milwaukee and look out onto Wisconsin Avenue, have a pair of in studio cameras and we have opportunities for taped video segments as well.  So there is a chance that in the future, we may be able to produce a television version of “Soccer Saturday”, perhaps condensed to 30 minutes for broadcast, on the local sports channel and online.

If you’re interested in keeping updated on scheduled guests in the show, follow ”Soccer Saturday” on Twitter @soccersat540 or visit the show’s website.  If you want to participate, during the show you can Tweet questions to @soccersat540,  email them to soccersaturday@espnmilwaukee.com or call the studio line during the show at 800-990-3776.

Peter Wilt used tricks that would impress the Harlem Globetrotters to help pull American soccer out of the Dark Ages.

Last week Benjamin Kumming wrote a salient column for this site detailing the “Dark Ages of Soccer” in the United States.  He correctly used the 1984 death of the North American Soccer League and the 1996 birth of Major League Soccer to bookend the era.  It marked a dozen year period without Division 1 soccer in this country.  The only 12 years out of the last 42 without it, in fact.

I was fortunate to be a witness to the Dark Ages from a front row seat.  I guess you could even say I had a seat on the bench…and even got in the game and maybe scored a couple goals that helped return the sport to the mainstream in American soccer’s mid-1990s renaissance.

As Benny points out in his piece, professional soccer was relegated to indoor arenas and minor league outdoor venues for more than a decade, while on a parallel path, the seeds sown by the NASL on suburban parks from Miami to Tacoma were sprouting millions of youth soccer players in places that had never before seen a soccer ball.

Indoor soccer, first with the Milwaukee Wave in 1987, then with the Chicago Power in 1990, was my entry ticket to the game.  In 1994, the Minnesota Thunder allowed me to go outdoors with a Division 2 team in one of the country’s nicest, albeit still minor league, soccer specific venues.

The sport’s descent into the Dark Ages surely allowed me a lifelong career in professional sports.  Without it, I would not have been accepted in soccer and would have had a difficult time advancing beyond the entry level position I maintained with the minor league Milwaukee Admirals hockey team.  The existence of the indoor Milwaukee Wave – not only an indoor soccer team, but a MINOR LEAGUE indoor soccer team - gave me the opportunity to showcase my abilities at a management level.  When I was interviewed for the position of Director of Marketing and Publicity for  the Wave, I confessed to not knowing anything about soccer, but knowing a lot about operations and marketing second tier sports in Milwaukee from my Admirals experience and viewing the Wave as local competition for the entertainment dollar.  The team’s president and co-owner told me that was exactly what he was looking for, because he was tired of “soccer people” who didn’t know anything about sports business telling him what to do.

The staff member I replaced at the Wave was Dan Currier, a veteran sports PR guy who I knew.  When he found out he had been replaced, but before he knew by whom, Dan called to tell me he was being let go and they were bringing in “some marketing whiz”. Awkwardly, I had to admit to him that I was the culprit.  It was a moment that brought me into the sport’s Dark Ages and in a deja vu experience would similarly take me out of the Dark Ages ten years and three months later.

The dearth of sports executives with soccer experience allowed me to climb the ladder rapidly during those years.   Using business strategies and tactics that I learned from Mike Wojciechowski, my boss at the Admirals, we grew our average attendance from 2,300 per game in 1987 to almost 9,000 per game when I left the Wave in December, 1990 to become the Chicago Power’s General Manager.  Despite having sub-.500 teams each season with the Wave, our sponsorship revenue more than tripled, we signed the franchise’s first television and radio agreements and our exposure in the market place led to relevancy for the first time.  The methods are now common place, but were relatively new to professional sports at the time: saturate the community with player appearances, sell field time to youth soccer groups for games before, during and after the pro game, create attention catching promotions, use lights, fog and loud music to enhance the fan experience and ads like the one below.

The success we had in Milwaukee gave me the opportunity to return to my boyhood home in 1990 as GM of Chicago’s NPSL team.  The Power had players leftover from soccer’s earlier glory years like ex-Chicago Sting stars Pato Margetic, Teddy Krafft, Batata and Bret Hall.  Those players coached by Margetic, former Sting star Manny Rojas and current Chicago Fire assistant Mike Matkovich gave me my first, and in some ways, most cherished championship ring.  We went on to win the NPSL’s regular season championship again the next season and achieved tremendous business growth over the next few seasons.

This was a time in American soccer when various professional indoor leagues were pulling dirty tricks à la Donald Segretti, to sabotage each other’s growth in hopes of carving out larger pieces of the limited soccer pie.  It was an alphabet soup of indoor leagues.  The original MISL had great players like Tatu, Preki, Fernando Clavijo and Steve Zungul, but it was dying.  The AISA was transforming into the NPSL and the CISL was emerging as a summer alternative.  I played a small role in growing the NPSL at the expense of the over-salaried MISL via covert propaganda and information dissemination to MISL owners and potential expansion teams in Detroit and Buffalo.  It seems a bit nefarious now, but at the time it was simply promoting a better business model.

My final stop in soccer’s Dark Ages was the Twin Cities as President, GM and part owner of the Minnesota Thunder.  The Thunder had operated as an amateur team for five seasons before bringing me in to launch its professional era after the team’s remarkable 1994 season when it went 18-1 in a schedule made up mainly of professional teams.  The exclusively Minnesota based roster included future MLS players Tony Sanneh, Manny Lagos and Amos Magee. Local stars like Gerard Lagos, Don Gramenz, John Menk, John Coughlin, John Swallen, Tim Foster, Chris Foster, Matt Holmes, Mark Abboud and Tony Peszneker had all played club or high school soccer on the same fields for years.  Coached by Thunder co-Founder and Minnesota soccer legend Buzz Lagos and enhanced by French transplant Pierre Morice, the Thunder was a true family that represented its community as much or more than any soccer team this country has ever had.  The ownership group was a who’s who of Minnesota based business leaders such as Medtronic’s Bill George, Norstan’s Richard Cohen and HB Fuller’s Tony Andersen.

We capitalized on the local ingredients to the team’s successful recipe and marketed the Thunder as “The World’s Game and Minnesota’s Team”.  Attendance and sponsorship revenue led the USISL in 1996 when we were named the League’s organization of the year.  That year we also became the first American professional soccer team to travel to Japan to play J-League teams — a 2-1 loss to Shimizu S-Pulse and a 3-2 win over Gamba Osaka).

The following spring, while i was being considered for the Chicago MLS team’s first general manager position, I received a phone call from John Borozzi, a Columbus Crew sales and marketing executive who I knew from his indoor days with the original MISL.  Not knowing my interest in the same position, John told me that he was up for the Chicago GM job.  He told me that he thought he had all the qualities and experience they were looking for except for knowledge of the Chicago market and he was wondering if he could pick my brain, because he knew I knew Chicago well from my days with the Power.  I told John that I would be happy to answer any of his questions and give him my insights about Chicago as a soccer market, but there was something he needed to know. As I told him about my candidacy, I could feel his heart sink and memories came flooding back from the conversation a decade earlier that ushered me into the Dark Ages of American soccer.

A month later I was introduced to the media as Chicago’s first general manager amidst a sea of television lights and flash cameras at a news conference in Chicago’s five star Drake Hotel.  I knew then that soccer and I had finally emerged into a bright new era for the sport.

There was a Wave of nostalgia in the air at the US Cellular Arena in Milwaukee last Saturday.  The Milwaukee Wave game reminded me of the old days, and not just because it was “Wave Homecoming Day“.  It was by far the best day since my return to indoor soccer last October.  It was the biggest crowd of the season (5,789), the highest ticket revenue in three years and Marco Terminesi scored two goals to lead the Wave to the win, which moved us (temporarily) back into first place in the MISL.  There was a buzz in the air…and not just with the Highbury Pub crowd.

It was a great day and it didn’t happen by accident.

The first place Baltimore Blast were the opponents and Wave legends Pete Knezic, Michael King, Art Kramer, Pat White and Greg Howes were among the two dozen Wave alumni on hand to welcome former Goalkeeper Tony Pierce and First Fan Louise Au into the Wave Hall of Fame.

The Wave staff worked hard organizing many groups and events.

More than 1,500 tickets were sold as part of the Wave's "Parade of Champions" promotion.

There was the Parade of Champions(1500 tickets) that allowed teams that had won….well, we weren’t picky…anything (and bought tickets) to be honored on the field before the game.  They all received medals from Milwaukee Wave Hall of Famer Michael King and other Wave Champions.

And we had the Now Newspapers Senior High-School All-Star Soccer Game (250 tickets) after the game.  The sides were a bit uneven as the west was missing four of its top players due to a high school dance.  The dance helped the east team clobber their western rivals 24-2.

And we had a Wave Camper All-Star group outing (350 tickets).  The Wave hosts more than 50 camps each summer and on average, more than 50 kids per camp sign up for a week of soccer lessons from Milwaukee Wave professional players and coaches.  We invite them to watch their camp coaches a couple times each year for a discounted price.

And we had the Waukesha County Chamber (85 tickets) bring out a group of west suburban business leaders and family members for the Wave game as well as a pregame event in the Wave VIP lounge.

And we had an outing for NEWaukee (80 tickets), a social and business networking group for young people.  They bought both party areason the north end and packed the field-side bar.  Several NEWaukeeans heckled the opposing goalie who became a bit unnerved and ended up losing the game…thank you NEWaukee!

And we had youth soccer teams playing pregames (300 tickets) and forming the human tunnel (100 tickets) for the player introductions.  You want to get your kid on the field? No problem, buy a group package.

And it was one of the Wave’s four Family4 Pack Days: 4 tickets, 4 hot dogs and 4 sodas for $59 (300 tickets).  Happily, Levy Restaurants’ concessions staff was prepared and minimized the lines in the 60 year old building.

And we had other ticket sales programs, too: A youth dance team (75 tickets), the national anthem singer (25 tickets, four birthday parties (75 tickets), color guard (50 tickets) and additional miscellaneous groups (750).

And most importantly, to me anyway, we honored Wave alumni with “Wave Homecoming”.  I don’t know how many tickets this sold, but I do know that it warmed my heart and thousands of others to see the old timers take another run out of the tunnel and onto the field at halftime.  We honored the ten year anniversary of the Wave’s 2000 NPSL Championship team and the five year anniversary of the Wave’s MISL Championship team.  Wave Hall of Famers attending the game, Michael King, Art Kramer and Pete Knezic were introduced.

Milwaukee Wave's "First Fan", Louise Au, being inducted into the team's Hall of Fame

We then inducted the class of 2010 into the Hall of Fame: the Wave’s first fan, 26 year season ticket holder and team mom Louise Au.  Louise co-founded the Wave Booster Club, befriended players throughout the league, cooked them dinners and opened her home to them.  After being denied the opportunity to similarly honor two worthy Chicago Fire fans in 2008, it made me feel good to be with an organization that recognizes the importance of fans to the team and is willing to extend this honor.

Also inducted was Tony Pierce who won 71 games for the Wave while also serving as the team’s Director of Community relations for six seasons.  Tony was one of a generation of American soccer players forced to earn their keep indoors when outdoor soccer began its 12 year hiatus in 1985.  The missed opportunity outdoors was a real shame for Tony who went to the NCAA Final Four with the UConn Huskies three times including his freshman year when he won an NCAA Championship.  But on Saturday, he received his rightful recognition in the spotlight where he starred 25 years earlier.

I had a big smile for the crowd size and a bigger smile for the ticket revenue which eclipsed last year’s top games, including two crowds of 7,000+.  The bodies were fewer, but the dollars were higher, because we are being more disciplined with discounts, which maintains a higher average ticket price.

My biggest smile was afterwards while thanking fans for coming on the way out, many were thanking me and telling me they couldn’t wait to return!

We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time, but there’s more to do…like giving fans a chance to race their own car on the WORLD’S LONGEST PINEWOOD DERBY TRACK on February 21st!  Get your tickets now!!!

An important part of any success I’ve had in my career is the underlying competitive nature of my personality.  I

Peter Wilt reacts to receiving Matt Pickens 2006 US Open Cup championship medal.

suppose to a certain extent, that’s a prerequisite for anyone in leadership positions, but for me, it is an undercurrent of everything I do.  It may not be readily apparent, but losing games or having business setbacks pains me to no end.

And my greatest joy is winning on or off the field whether it is a team I work for or simply one I have chosen to support.  That nature inspires me to work harder, longer and smarter to make sure that my team is successful.

Arnold Zack, a Massachusetts attorney and friend of the late US Senator Paul Tsongas once told him:

“No one on his DEATHBED ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’”

I think about that quote often, because if its true, I will likely have some serious regrets in my final days.  My adult life has revolved around my job at the expense of my personal life.  For almost all of the last 19 years, I’ve commuted from my wife and home base in Wisconsin to follow my professional dreams in Chicago, then Los Angeles, Minnesota and Chicago again before my recent return to Milwaukee.  I’m aware of the trade offs I’m making and asking others I care for to make.  As a result, I try to make my work as enjoyable as possible.  Most of my best friends and the people I spend the most time with are those I’ve met through work.

Competitiveness was instilled in me at a young age by my father and my brother Tim and developed by successes and failures throughout the rest of my life.  It is the single characteristic that motivates me every day.

One of my earliest memories was serving as William Tell’s son with a paper cup on my head as my father and brother did their best to remove it with a Frisbee from 15 paces.  It may sound borderline abusive, but I was a willing (as willing as a four year old can be) participant and excited to be able to take part in this competition (my mother wasn’t quite as excited!).

The participant portion of my competitiveness centered around Tim, who was my elder by four years.  He challenged me daily in every conceivable activity indoors and out.  Floor hockey in the garage, paper football in the kitchen, ping pong and darts in the basement, basketball in the driveway and shuffle board and Wiffle ball (fast and slow pitch versions) in the back yard consumed a bulk of the time we should’ve been studying.  Neighborhood baseball, basketball, football and pond hockey games were a daily activity and organized teams in Little League, St. Pat’s and Montini grade schools and later Marian Central High School and the local 16-inch beer belly softball league formalized the competition.

I was a lousy athlete, but I worked harder and certainly longer than most in order to gain an edge.  I would also spend time learning sports trivia and unusual games or activities that others wouldn’t care to master such as table hockey, chess and juggling. And even today, I prefer playing bocce to golf, because i have a better chance of winning.

The spectator side of my competitive nature was fostered by my dad.  He grew up in Chicago’s south side Gresham neighborhood near 83rd and Racine where he attended St. Sabina’s grade school and cheered on the White Sox, Blackhawks and old Chicago Cardinals.  On July 7, 1965, when I was five years old, my dad took my brother and me to my first White Sox game.  It was a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians - we always went to doubleheaders, because it was a better value.  The Indians swept the Sox that day with Gary Bell besting Gary Peters in the first game.  I’ve been hooked on the Sox and sports in general ever since.  In kindergarten, I began reading the Chicago Tribune sports section daily for White Sox (and later Blackhawks) updates.  Reading the Trib every day led to a serious interest in sports journalism, which I studied and worked in (also here for four years) while attending Marquette University.

Like most Americans, my competitive nature eventually manifested itself in wagering.  Mine probably started a little earlier and a little more intense than most, however.  I have gambled in many forms over the years, but the motivation has rarely been about the money.  It’s ALWAYS about needing to win.  As a seven-year-old, I would be glued to WGN-TV to listen to Jack Drees call the races for the Jewel Food Store sponsored “Let’s Go to the Races” and see if our scratch off cards would be winners.

As a ten-year-old fifth grader at Montini Catholic Grade School in McHenry, Illinois, I bought into the mega hype of the self-proclaimed “Fight of the Century” between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier.  I decided to bet my friend Tommy Carey fifty cents that Smokin’ Joe would hold onto his heavyweight crown against the undefeated Ali.  Other classmates got wind of the wager and wanted in.  I ended up serving as Montini’s junior bookie and banker for the bout by placing and tracking at least a couple dozen bets for classmates, none more than a dollar.

I had lottery tickets (thank you Mom!) for the very first Illinois Lottery drawing on August 8, 1974.  The losing tickets are still posted in my childhood bedroom.  I’m now one of those people that will only buy lottery tickets if the prize is over $100 million…..because $50 million isn’t enough?!?!

In college, i was taken for $20 on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin by a three card monte hustler and then I put down ANOTHER $20.  I “knew” I couldn’t win, but that competitive bug made me want to try again.  I have an obsessive personality and have been conscious of the potential for it to lead to problems with gambling.  Fortunately, i believe that participation in fantasy sports leagues and competing through my own team have provided the competitive outlets I needed to avoid a gambling problem.

Soon after college I met the inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball (and by extension, inventor of all fantasy sports games) Daniel Okrent at a book signing at Schwartz’ Book Shop in downtown Milwaukee.  I purchased and had Okrent sign his revolutionary 1984 book and used it to create one of the world’s first fantasy sports leagues in the Spring of 1984.  As an homage to Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson and all the other black baseball players who played prior to MLB’s color barrier being lifted in 1947, we called our league “The Old Negro League”.  The creation of our fantasy baseball league was intended to keep a group of college buddies in contact by holding a draft in a different city every year where we would attend a baseball game, hang out, smoke cigars, drink beer and conduct our draft.

The idea was to keep us close and friendly.  Early on, our competitive instincts ocassionally took over and we had to deal with one team trading pitcher Dwight Goodenfor a Zenith color television set and other rule-evading maneuvers.  The Old Negro League has since morphed into a fantasy football league, but it continues to fuel my competitive spirit.  I’ve also participated and won titles in other fantasy leagues and office pools including soccer, basketball and even a celebrity ghoul pool.  I must admit that a few of the 25 champagne bottles in my “championship collection” are from these fantasy leagues, which may seem to trivialize the collection, but celebrating these fantasy league championships gave me similar emotions as celebrations for championships in MLS, NPSL and the A-League.

There is also a serious downside of being so competitive.  When you live and die with your team’s game results, the losing can really hurt emotionally.  I tend to go up and down emotionally anyway and my 1998 emotional ride was almost constantly upwards.  So I was set up for quite a fall the following year.  As great as 1998 was for me with the winning of the double in the Fire’s 1998 inaugural season,1999 was a depressing year with three epic failures.  In order, we lost in frustrating manner in:

1) The US Open Cup at Rochester, 1-0 on a baseball field in an ugly third round game that culminated with Lubos Kubik coming to blows with the Rhinos Scott Schweitzer.  It was my first real taste of losing with the Fire and I still remember the bitter taste post-game as I literally pouted about the loss.

2) The CONCACAF Champions Cup tournament at the Silver Bowl in Las Vegas.  The Chicago Fire tied for third place in the tournament when we fell to Alajuelense of Costa Rica 5-4 in penalty kicks.  I recall kneeling behind the goal watching Lubos Kubik going for his decisive kick.  As he strode up to the ball, I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes, then opened them to see that our most composed player had blasted the ball over the crossbar and ended our hopes for a regional title.  CONCACAF’s Ted Howard tried giving me a package of 4th place medals as the organizers had decided not to play a 3rd place game (He had given the 3rd place medals to DC United, the other semi-final losers).  I told Ted in no uncertain terms that we would not accept those medals and insisted that he send us 3rd place medals instead.  It took more than four months, but we finally received the medals we earned.

3) The Fire’s 1999 season came crashing down in excrutiating fashion at the Cotton Bowl in game three of the Western Conference Semi-Finals against the Dallas Burn.  Kubik’s two early game assists gave the Fire a 2-0 lead in the fifth minute and I was certain we would be moving one step closer to our second MLS Cup Final in two seasons.  Despite controlling possession for 59% of the game, the Burn doubled our nine shot output and roared back with three second half goals to take our spot in the Conference Finals.  I was stunned for the third time that summer and began to realize how special 1998 really was.

Another sign of my competitiveness is my need to pick sides in any sporting event I watch.  While Fulham is my Barclays Premier league side, I can tell you who I would root for in any match up in the League.  Last year I created a matrix that showed my supporting interest for each of the 190 (if my math is correct) possible match ups.  The reasons for choosing a preference range from detesting a team (Chelsea) to helping Fulham avoid relegation (West Bromwich, Everton) to having friends affiliated with a club (Arsenal).  That rooting interest always makes the match more enjoyable for me even if “my” club ends up on the short side.

While I get enjoyment from fantasy leagues, my supported teams, and “neutral” games (that I make biased in my own mind), my ultimate competitive satisfaction is when the team I work for achieves success either on or off the field.  I believe my competitive nature has helped me fight harder than most to achieve the success my teams have earned over the years.  I remember saying to Bob Bradley and my executive assistant Allison Holmstrom (now Gregory) at the Chicago Fire’s expansion draft atop the John Hancock Tower in 1997, “This is just like my fantasy baseball draft…without the cigars.”

It is my goal to win games and championships on the field and to set attendance and sponsorship records off the field.  I want to appeal to my team’s fans’ competitive instincts and give them the same passion for victory that I have.

Just as I have ways to achieve success beyond the outcome of the game, fans can also “win” - even when their team doesn’t - by allowing fans to compete via an in-stadium promotion.  One idea I had for this was displaying a Tic Tac Toe board on the video boards at the Milwaukee Wave’s indoor soccer games.  A Wave logo goes in the middle square at the beginning of the game and each goal that is scored results in a Wave or visitor logo being placed in a square.  If three straight Wave logos result from the goals, then all fan tickets will be good for a mutually agreed sponsor offer.  Like the Milwaukee Brewers sausage races, the plethora of video races and the free food for scoring 100 points in basketball game promotions, I believe Tic Tac Toe will appeal to fans competitive spirit.  The size of the prize isn’t important, but the competition is.

During my time with the Chicago Fire, I was known to make a few friendly wagers with staff members that offered them a sizable prize ($1,000 cash, doubled commissions for a week, trip to Florida for Fire pre-season, etc.) if they were victorious (which they never were).  On the flip side, if I won, the staff member had to dress up in a pre-determined costume and perform an agreed in advance task.  For all the entertainment they provided, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Fire who:

• Dressed as the Indian from the Village People and washed my car.
• Dressed as the biker from the Village People and washed my car.
• Dressed as Abe Lincoln and went out on sales calls.
• Dressed as old Elvis Presley and sang karaoke at a staff meeting.
• Dressed as comedian Tom Dreesen and performed five minutes of stand up at our staff retreat.

And the lucky fellow who did a dandy Tom Dreesen impression came back for more this year and bet me a wheel of cheese on the regular season placement of Real Salt Lake versus Seattle Sounders FC.  I placed my faith in Seattle and am expecting a wheel of Colby soon.  He received the last laugh on Saturday though as his RSL club became champions of MLS.

MLS Cup marked the end of Steve Pastorino’s 33 week long pick ‘em pool.  Steve selected ten games from around the world each week (mostly MLS) and a group of 15 FOS (friends of Steve) picked win, lose or draw for each.  I ended up leading the League for most of the year and held off Steve and Kebzach by a few games to earn the $84 winner’s share, which i will be donating to the Chicago Red Stars Charitable Foundation.

My competitive nature has gotten the best of me several times and unfortunately, I’ve reacted emotionally at times when things haven’t gone my way.

Former MLS Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis explains to me that life isn't always fair.

One time was at the 2003 MLS SuperDraft in Kansas City.  During the draft I completed a conditional trade of Kelly Gray to Columbus,  but the condition was that we include a particular 2004 SuperDraft pick to the Crew that potentially could be owed to Kansas City as well if Josh Wolff reinjured his knee during the 2003 season.  Due to the potential double jeopardy, we needed Kansas City to approve our deal.  I offered Wizards GM Curt Johnson a free 3rd round draft pick to approve the trade and a 1st round draft pick for each of the next three seasons IF Chicago didn’t deliver a pick as good or better than required if Wolff reinjured his knee (I knew we could find a qualifying pick if needed, so the three 1st round picks would never have to be delivered).  Johnson inexplicably turned the offer down and during the two timeouts allotted Chicago and Columbus, I very publicly and impetuously implored Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis to intercede and find a way to approve the trade.  My emotional rant went for naught, but was captured on film and used on the cover of Andy Mead’s Emerald City Gazette’s March, 2003 issue.

For better and worse, it’s all competition and it’s what flows through my veins and gets me up in the morning and keeps me going throughout the day.

Denis Hamlett and Peter Wilt in better times.

Denis Hamlett, my first hire with the Chicago Fire in July of 1997 finally saw his tenure with MLS’ first expansion team come to an end yesterday as the team announced they will not renew his contract to serve as head coach.  Denis’ team was 45 minutes away from last year’s MLS Cup and only penalty kicks seperated his squad from this year’s SuperLiga and MLS Eastern Conference Championships.

The announcement brought back memories of the first time I spoke to Denis.  Sunil Gulati, then the MLS Deputy Commissioner called me in June of 1997 to ask if I would take Denis on in any role as he was under contract through the end of the year and his career had been ended earlier that year due to a stroke.  I didn’t know Denis, but knew I needed more arms and legs.  We spoke on the phone and he agreed to come on board for the rest of the year as a jack of all trades for the yet unnamed Chicago MLS team.

He spoke to youth soccer groups, answered phones, sold tickets, attended community functions and scouted MLS and A-League games for a coach that neither of us knew yet.  When I hired Bob Bradley, I told him that I was pleased with Denis’ work and would recommend him, but it was up to him.  Bob put Denis on trial, gave him some scouting assignments and worked with him for a period before deciding to hire him as part of his staff.  Denis went on to win four US Open Cup Championships, a Supporters Shield and of course the 1998 MLS Cup during his tenure.

I’m probably too close to Denis and not close enough to the team anymore to give an opinion of great value on his departure.  I’ll simply say that Denis has done more for the Fire organization in its history than just about anyone else, has been an important part of the organization’s many successes and he will be missed.  It is safe to say that the Fire will have a fresh start next season with massive turnover of players and coaching staff.  Here is a perspective from longtime follower Chris Costello.

Signed Andy Williams jersey

Denis’ former boss Dave Sarachan, Associate Head Coach of the Los Angeles Galaxy, also came a penalty kick short of glory as Real Salt Lake used PKs for the second straight game to become the first sub .500 MLS Cup Champion.   Having a sub .500 champion can be looked at as a testament to the playoff structure or as a criticism.  For what it’s worth, the WPS champion this year was also sub .500 using a radically different playoff structure.

Like WPS’ Sky Blue FC, Real Salt Lake came on strong at the end of the year and was the best team when it counted most.  The championship should not be lessened by RSL’s regular season record.

It’s not all doom and gloom in my circle this week, however.  I certainly have friends at Real Salt Lake, including  Andy Williams, whose autographed jersey I won in a Chicago Fire Foundation auction a couple weeks ago and arrived in my office yesterday.  Andy’s story, along with that of his wife Marcia, whose leukemia is in remission, is a well told story that makes the victory sweet for them and all fans of Andy and Marcia.

The Milwaukee Wave mascot is due for a makeover this year, but his favorite team started out the MISL season this week with their 1st road shutout in the team's 26-year history!

Meanwhile, my Milwaukee Wave indoor team started its new season as good as possible by shutting out Monterrey LaRaZa in Mexico 15-0.  Goalkeeper Nick Vorberg and a smothering team defense provided the first away shutout in the Wave’s 26 year history.  That is going to be a difficult standard to live up to when we travel to Rockford Friday with a couple busloads of fans and staff and December 6th when the Wave’s home season kicks off at the US Cellular Arena.

And finally, Philadelphia’s uncertain future begins to crystallize today with its expansion draft.  Head Coach Peter Nowak will make important decisions today that will influence the direction of the team for awhile.  While today is the most visible player acquisition day for the Union, history shows that its import pales in comparison to the international acquisitions the team will make over the next few months.

I hope your week had more highs than lows and you all have plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

After serving three years as President and CEO of WPS’ Chicago Red Stars, one of the country’s newest pro soccer franchises, today I accepted the same position with the oldest professional soccer team in the United States, the National Indoor Soccer League’s Milwaukee Wave.

I’d like to share my thought process that went into the decision to take the new position and offer a look at the behind the scenes issues and dynamics that led to this decision, one made in the context of considering where to go next in American soccer.

Pretty much all the jobs I’ve held in my life are listed on my LinkedIn site, with the notable exceptions of the three years I spent as a sports writer for the wire service United Press International’s Milwaukee bureau while in college, and two single day jobs where I was a bit “actor”:  one as an extra in the Brian DePalma thriller “Fury” and another as Santa Claus at Milwaukee’s downtown Woolworth’s store!

This job change decision is really two decisions — one to leave my day-to-day role with the Chicago Red Stars and the other to take on a similar role with the team that gave me my start in the soccer business 22 years ago, the Milwaukee Wave.

DECISION #1 – DEPART THE RED STARS DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS: The decision to leave the Red Stars (though I will remain as an investor and continue to serve on the boards of the team, league and team charitable foundation) actually began to be made when I accepted the position in the first place three and a half years ago. I always try to think in broad terms about future career opportunities prior to beginning a new position.  Similarly, I’m thinking now about where I may go next once certain goals with the Wave are fulfilled.  In the Red Stars case, the plan from the beginning was to spend a year or two leading the team through the launch phase and then overseeing the first operational year or two, while developing and guiding a general manager to take my place.  My contract was structured to accommodate the flexibility for a future move once we all felt comfortable that everything was in place operationally for the new team.

The decision to make the move at this point came down to three areas:

1. Successor: As a manager, I always have a mental succession file for the key people on my staff.  I call it my “hit by a bus” file: meaning a list of candidates to replace key people on the staff if they were to suddenly depart the organization for any reason. . .including getting hit by a bus.  I succeeded in identifying the right person to serve as the Red Stars General Manager and my backup two years ago when Joe Cummings recommended Marcia McDermott to me.  Prior to meeting Marcia, the original plan was to have myself serve as general manager and a second person start as assistant general manager until he or she was ready for the GM position.  The first time I spoke to Marcia, I realized she was ready for the GM position and the process of grooming my successor would eventually be fast tracked.  Marcia has learned plenty over the last two years and is more than ready to lead the Red Stars.
2. My role and compensation: My main role with the team was to assemble an ownership group, build a front office staff, create the team’s brand and guide the organization through its first season.  That role has generally been completed.  As this year has gone on, my day to day responsibilities have diminished along with the justification for much of my salary.  The Red Stars and WPS’ sustainability is based on a cost containment model that I helped develop and implement.  It would be disingenuous if I were to continue on in a diminished role and continue to take a relatively high salary when I can continue to provide the Red Stars much of my value as an investor and representative on the team, league and foundation
3. My job satisfaction: With the major exception of the Fire position, most of my jobs have held my interest for three years.  The first year is always new, challenging and provides a great variety of daily challenges.  The second year usually involves corrective measures based on first year experience and improvements in all business areas.  I have often found the third year to be one where the major challenges have been addressed and the job tends to become a bit routine: it’s time for a new challenge.

DECISION #2 – ACCEPT THE MILWAUKEE WAVE OFFER: As the WPS season played out, I began to talk to a few people in soccer about potential employment. Several opportunities arose over the last few months, but the following factors loomed large in my decision to accept the Wave’s offer:

1. A New Challenge: While the Red Stars position is far from routine at this point, I find the opportunity to relaunch the Milwaukee Wave under new, aggressive ownership, while moving into a new league, challenging. The fact that it’s the oldest professional soccer team in the United States, the team that gave me my start in soccer and is in the city I have lived for the past 31 years is also personally attractive.  The Wave has progressed in many ways since I left 19 years ago and I also get to work with two indoor soccer legends:  the Wave’s trainer and my old friend Larry Sayles.  Larry was hired as the Wave’s first employee hired in 1984.  He also served as the Harlem Globetrotters trainer during the Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon era.  And Keith Tozer, the winningest coach in indoor soccer history, Head Coach of the US National Futsal Team and master soccer camp director. There simply aren’t many chances in one’s career to…

2. 

   The Wave's logo when Wilt joined the team the first time in March, 1987.

   Return to the Former Team: Those who know me know than I can be sentimental to a fault and I have a soft spot for the Wave.  I had been working in a support function in sales, marketing and PR for almost four years with ice hockey’s minor league Milwaukee Admirals when the Wave gave me the opportunity to lead their efforts in the same areas. With a small yet dedicated staff, we grew the Wave’s attendance from about 2,300 fans a game in 1986-87 season to more than 8,000 fans a game when I left the team in the middle of the 1990-91 season to become GM of the rival Chicago Power. That departure, while beneficial careerwise, prevented me from…

3. Working and Living in the Same Place: For most of the last 19 years, I have commuted. . .commuted a great distance.  Except for 2006, when I worked unsuccessfully to bring an MLS team to Milwaukee, I’ve been commuting from Milwaukee to Chicago (14 years), Los Angeles (one year) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (three years).  My wife has patiently allowed me to pursue my career around the country, while she held down the homefront and worked full time.  I expect that working in the city I actually live in will be of great benefit both personally and professionally.  It will help me sleep well as will the. . .
4. Strong New Ownership: The Wave was on the brink of collapse earlier this summer when a “Save the Wave” campaign resulted in more than 1,000 season ticket pledges (triple last year’s number) and a new owner.  Jim Lindenberg is young, committed, strong in sales and marketing, well connected locally and provides the team with the capital needed to succeed.   The other potential job opportunities all had. . .
5. Uncertainty and Imperfection: The Red Bulls said I was on their short list, but did not want to discuss the role with me until the end of the season.  There were a couple of other opportunities that fitted in the same category of uncertainty.  The Wave on the other hand offered security, a firm offer and all the other benefits listed above.  Though the Red Bulls and other opportunities may have been higher profile or more in the mainstream of American soccer, no position is without drawbacks, including New York’s.  The Wave and indoor soccer’s relevance is relatively low on the national stage, but in Wisconsin, it’s the highest level of soccer they’ve ever had (with an arguable exception to the A-League Rampage in the late 1990s).  After the Wave’s glory years in the 90′s and early ’00s, attendance has lagged in the 4,000 range since moving from the Bradley Center to the US Cellular Arena.  And of course, I see that as another positive as it shows the Wave has. . .
6. Room to Grow: I’ve always avoided taking jobs that can only go down.  One of the things that interested me with the prospect of working with the New York Red Bulls was my confidence that I could lead them to significant improvement on and off the field.  I believe strongly that the Wave can grow its fan and corporate bases and become much more relevant in Milwaukee again and I like the idea of leading those efforts.  The move, importantly, will also allow me to. . .
7. Have More Fun: As many of you know, I worship at the altar of baseball maverick Bill Veeck.  When I worked in minor league hockey and indoor soccer early in my career, we were able to brainstorm some creative and fun promotions that added positively to the entertainment and the sport.  I always believed that trying similar promotions with outdoor soccer, however, would have distracted from the game and taken away from the organic atmosphere created by a diverse crowd, passionate fans and attractive and dramatic soccer.  Now that I’m back indoors  though, maybe we’ll have a return of The Night of a Thousand Eddies!

As a followup to this space’s previous column on my soccer management philosophy and as a tie-in to this column on career decisions, I’d recommend this blog post by the perceptive Magda Walczak that promotes the importance of hiring for office culture fit over skills.

The seven hard working former Chicago Fire executives pictured above averaged about seven years each with the organization. The institutional knowledge and relationships they took with them when they left was significant.

A key for successful chief executives is to surround themselves with talented, hard working people with good character. Any success I’ve had is attributed to hiring experts at the department head level who can do their jobs better than I can. Early in my career, I performed just about every position in an organization, which helped me understand the challenges, opportunities and necessary resources for most positions in a sports team’s front office.

Due to a shallow pool of experienced soccer executives in the U.S. in the 20th century, it used to be difficult finding qualified front office candidates with a soccer background.  To supplement talented soccer experienced executives, I would hire those with impressive sports sales background from second tier or minor league sports where creativity and proactive salesmanship were critical to success.

When the Chicago Fire was originally staffed, we hired from minor league baseball, indoor soccer, MLS, USL, soccer retail, CFA (a Latin soccer and music promotion company), the Auditorium Theater and the White Sox (no minor league jokes please!).  We also emphasized knowledge of the local market to minimize the learning curve of the market.  Almost all of the department heads were previously known to me or recommended to me by people I trust.

As soccer has grown in participation and support, the pool of talented executives with soccer backgrounds has grown.  I now prefer hiring from this pool rather than non-soccer execs as those with a connection to soccer are more likely to stay in the sport and not use it as a stepping stone back into a sport in their comfort zone.  When we assembled the Chicago Red Stars staff last year, we drew almost exclusively from a pool of soccer experienced executives while keeping true to our goal of hiring talented, hard working people with good character.  That being said, I had no soccer background, short of supporting the early ’80s Chicago Sting, when I was hired by the indoor Milwaukee Wave from the minor league hockey Milwaukee Admirals in 1987 and I have stayed in soccer ever since.

I tend to hire people I have worked with personally or are recommended by people I know and respect. For those seeking positions in professional sports, this validates the axiom that “who you know” is important, but “what you know” and how you go about your job is also important or you won’t get the recommendation or the job.

Retaining a good staff is just as important as assembling the staff in the first place

Just like any job, there is a learning curve in sports administration and sales.  The first three years of any job generally have increasing awareness, knowledge and relationship building, whether it’s an entry level position in ticket sales or the President of the team.  The learning curve plateau’s a bit after the second year, but you never stop learning or building a network of contacts.  That experience and the relationships become more valuable and more difficult to replace over time, adding to the importance of retaining talented staff.

There are several ways to ensure retention of good staff:

• Fair compensation. Few executives in sports make as much money as they would make performing comparable roles in the “real world” due to supply and demand for jobs in sports, so you are able to underpay relative to the real world, but good employees who are responsible for revenue can justify increased pay. Teams who reward those employees will earn their loyalty and keep them on board if the other parts are done right.
• Annual reviews with career goal consultation. Plan career growth with staff members by discussing honestly their opportunities for growth both inside and outside the organization.  In my eight years with the Fire, I never fired an employee.  There were several who left the organization with mutual agreement when we agreed after open communication that they had gone as far as they could in the organization and would be best off working elsewhere.
• Promotion from within (start with promotion of qualified interns and volunteers). You already know first hand their abilities, style and adaptability to the organizational culture.  At the time I left the Fire in 2005, I had ten direct reports.  The ten averaged more than six years apiece at the eight year old team.  Five of the ten were original members of the Fire’s inaugural season staff in 1998.  Six of the department heads had received at least one promotion within the organization and four of those six actually had two promotions.  Not only does internal promotion help build a team culture in the front office, it also sends a good message to the rest of the organization that good work will be rewarded.
• Establish regular communication. Regular communication methods includes an open door policy in my office – not only to welcome staff in to talk things over, but also to prevent staff from feeling that there are secrets being discussed (I must admit that due to the close quarters in the Red Stars “world headquarters” doublewide trailer, I’m forced to close the door to the office I share with our GM during certain meetings out of courtesy to the rest of the staff, so they aren’t distracted by my meetings).  I manage by “walking around” (if you’ve gotten this far in the column, I encourage you to click on the previous link and read it).  As the Fire President and GM, when I had ten direct reports I relied greatly on email (100-200 incoming and outgoing/day) as well as phone communication (I believe in the efficiency of more calls of shorter length), weekly reports from department heads (not too detailed, include past and future week tasks and questions), weekly staff meetings (department reports and questions) and weekly department head meetings (issue discussions) to keep on top of all organizational issues.  While often difficult to maintain that level of communication, it was imperative to fostering loyalty and effective operations.
• Respect all staff. For example, at staff meetings don’t just ask department heads for reports and ideas (ask account executives, interns and the receptionist for their feedback, too).  At the Fire we encouraged Maria Gabino, our receptionist, who was one of half a dozen bi-lingual staff members and lives in the Hispanic community, to sell tickets to her friends, neighbors and businesses around her.  She was successful and eventually built her clientele to a base of selling $100,000 in sales per year.  This earned her additional commission that afforded her the ability to stay on as the “face” of the Fire for people walking through the door for the next decade.  Stability in that position may not seem important, but in addition to the ticket sales she promotes, her network of relationships and positive demeanor reflects well on the Fire to this day.
• Create a culture of transparency, trust, empowerment and sense of ownership with honest and open communication.  Let staff members know how their role fits into the bigger picture, praise them in public and when necessary, critique them in private.  Give staff responsibility for their departments and provide the necessary resources to succeed.  Allow department heads to create their own department budget and hold them accountable to it.
• 

  Current Fire Head Coach Denis Hamlett and Peter Wilt getting away from it all on Lake Michigan

  Have fun. On a daily basis we tried not to take ourselves too seriously.  Professional sports requires many hours of work in what can become a high pressure environment, so it’s important to keep things loose.  Chicago Fire staff meetings usually included staff trivia contests, stories about brushes with greatness and once even an Elvis karaoke performance to settle a wager.  Once a month the Fire staff would have a fun activity.  They included an annual sport fishing trip on Lake Michigan for half a dozen staff members, a mini-golf tournament in the empty office space across the hall from our offices in the One Mag Mile Building, a bus tour of Chicago’s gangland past, retreat to a suburban park district for a day of athletic events, outings to other Chicago sports teams, road trips to all of the Fire’s away championship games and many, many postwork happy hours.  After all home games we tried to keep the staff together to unwind and share stories of the day either at the stadium or a nearby pub.

All of the above points are examples of creating a culture that promotes mutual respect and encourages support for common goals that lead to success.  They certainly aren’t the only ways and my management style isn’t for everyone, but over the years it has worked well for me.

Next week, I’ll take a look at the unique challenge of assembling and retaining a good team on the field in MLS.

Peter Wilt writes weekly for Pitch Invasion