NOTES FROM MEETING WITH CHARLESTON BATTERY
RE: NC VS SC ALL-STAR MATCHES
HELD 2/19/07
Present were Andrew Bell, director of marketing
Amy Plebanek, director of sales
Wayne Quinlan, past president
Matches to be held 7 July
Girls match 3:00
Boys match 5:00
This allows the required one hour of field-time prior to The Battery’s match vs. Puerto Rico (7:30)
The Battery would offer the following at no cost:
1. Use of the pitch
2. Trainers
3. Ambulance
4. Gate and concession staff
5. PA and press box staff
6. Parking attendants. They do charge to park.
The Battery would allow the following:
1. Program sales with agreement that they get a full page ad. (I offered them the front cover.)
2. T-shirt sales
The Battery will seek cut-rate accommodations at either the Sheraton N Charleston (near the North Charleston Convention Center) or The Suites(near Northwoods Mall.) The Hampton Inn is booked. I estimated the number of rooms based on the following: 4 teams of 16 + 8 coaches + 8 staff. Players are 4/room. Staff are 2/room = 24 rooms.
The Battery has offered The Three Lions Pub at no charge for a Friday night banquet. There would be a charge to cater. They are getting a price/person. The pub seats 270. It is not available on game day.
The Battery has offered a corporate tent to feed players pizza following each match. (Unclear on who will pay for the pizza)
The Battery is offering to let us sell tickets to the matches. These tickets would include their match. They would give us $4 on each $8 ticket we sell.
The Battery would announce our match MVP’s at half time of their match.
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS:
The Battery has an exclusive contract with Pepsi and Saturn (cars). We may not use sponsors in competition with those. In fact, that night is Saturn Night.
That night is jersey give-away that night. So, it is likely to be a very good crowd.
We need to provide our insurance.
Breakfast & lunch Sat?
Training/kick around Fri?
Sponsorships we should go after:
US Soccer, Snickers, Fox Soccer Channel
We need referees
Final words:
The Battery is extremely interested in hosting this event, even if it is done on a rotating basis with NC. Their facilities are top class. Their staff would take care of most of the grunt work, leaving us to supervise players and enjoy. The determining factor appears to be what deal they can get us on the rooms and catering. My feeling is that we will get the rooms for under $1500 if the hotels realize the extra rooms they will pick up from families, etc. At this point we should be aggressively pursuing sponsors. Should we agree to go on with this, we should organize a press conference, at The Battery, and begin advertisement of some sort. I believe it is reasonable to expect each player’s family to purchase a minimum of 5 tickets. That is only $40. We should also aggressively sell tickets through our respective associations.
