After Crew SC’s announcement of a jersey sponsorship deal with Acura in February, team president of business operations Andy Loughnane painted a picture of a club whose business growth is happening in steps.

He made sure to mention a television deal that ensures a greater number of people in central Ohio are able to watch Crew games on Spectrum Sports or one of several broadcast stations. He recalled the March 2015 deal that gave Mapfre Insurance stadium naming rights, and he lauded the Crew’s ability to establish a long-term relationship with a premium brand like Acura.

But Loughnane also made it clear the club has a ways to go in meeting its business goals, particularly when it comes to keeping pace with other MLS clubs in attendance. In an interview with The Dispatch last week, Loughnane said maximizing attendance is a multi-faceted formula across several departments and requires a broad scope.

The Crew has a goal to sell out all 17 regular-season home games. It’s one the club won’t achieve in 2017, as 15,023 was the announced attendance for a chilly home opener against Chicago and 11,067 attended last Saturday’s game against Portland. (The official capacity of Mapfre Stadium is 19,968.) Still, Loughnane said, the club hopes to set attendance and home sellout records for a fourth straight season. Last year, the team's average attendance was 17,125 and it sold out six games.

These early-season turnouts didn’t surprise the Crew. Loughnane said before the Portland game that it had yielded “some of the highest numbers of exchanges” for season-ticket holders to later matches. Analyzing early-season attendance, he said, also comes with the understanding that this season marked only the second time Crew SC has had two March home games.

“Other midsize MLS markets fight through similar adverse weather conditions and Crew SC will continue to measure itself against other comparable MLS markets,” Loughnane said. “It’s our intention as quickly as we possibly can to work hard to catch up to other midsize markets (such as Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Orlando) who are selling out all home matches regardless of weather conditions.”

Coach Gregg Berhalter said this week he would like to play early-season games in climates that “make sense” given the time of year, but he understands scheduling is a complicated issue.

“I know from the league’s standpoint, making the schedule, man, that’s a nightmare. You have all the different stadium requirements,” Berhalter said. “Some of them share with NFL teams, some of them share with college teams, some with baseball teams, some of them have Quarter Horse Congresses. That’s the last job I actually want to do is be a scheduler, because it’s a tough one.”

Midfielder Ethan Finlay, the team’s players' union rep who is well-versed in finance, said of MLS attendance: “Everyone is still trying to figure out that magic formula.”

Berhalter called attendance a “bundle” of factors, and Loughnane described a “successful equation” that includes both a winning product on the field and a valuable match-day experience off it. Improving stadium experience often requires attention to detail. To name a few points of emphasis, Crew SC is using stanchions to snake concessions lines, adding merchandise shops to alleviate lines and focusing on getting vehicles into and out of parking lots more efficiently.

The club has also developed a “thoughtful and strategic” approach to long-term planning, Loughnane said. A survey sent late last year intending to measure community appetite and economic impact of a new stadium has respondent numbers “in the tens of thousands,” Loughnane said. The data is expected to be shared with community leaders at a later date.

Fox soccer analyst Alexi Lalas said he remembers watching the first Crew Stadium home game from a bar in Tampa, Florida, in 1999 and recalled thinking he was watching a soccer game from another country. With that memory, Lalas said, comes an inherent respect for Columbus as the first market in MLS to produce a functional soccer-specific stadium. It also comes with the realization that today’s midsize MLS market is in an arms race both on and off the field, he said, one that has over time created expectations for an updated stadium.

“In a certain sense that’s good. It means that we’ve grown and evolved (as a league),” Lalas said. “I think everybody recognizes that the stadium situation, at some point, if Columbus is going to be or continue to be an MLS market, needs to change.”

Some supporters, such as Dave Foust, administrator for the Greater Columbus Golden Boys and Girls supporter group, feel that talk of needing a new stadium in Columbus is overblown and largely tied to results.

“If the team is doing well and playing well in an old stadium, are we even asking the question, ‘Is this stadium sufficient?’ ” Foust asked. “If you’re talking attendance, I think people will still come out if the Crew is doing well. But there will obviously be some point where they’re going to have to make some serious improvements to that stadium or put a stadium somewhere else to get with the times.”

aerickson@dispatch.com

@AEricksonCD