opinion

Bangert: A reality check for Indy Eleven

The desperate tone Morgan Burke sounded last week as Purdue University's athletic director announced price cuts for football ticket packages for the 2015 season might be fair warning in a Statehouse debate over a different sort of football.

In Indianapolis, the General Assembly has been asked to back a plan that would allow construction of an $82 million stadium for the Indy Eleven, a soccer team playing in the North American Soccer League.

The Indy Eleven, coming off its first season in the country's second-tier professional soccer league, envisions an 18,500-seat downtown stadium. By all the renderings so far, it would be a gleaming marvel and the kind of smaller venue that has worked in other burgeoning U.S. soccer towns. (It would definitely be a step up from playing at IUPUI, no doubt.)

The rub: The stadium would be financed in part through taxes on tickets sold for Indy Eleven matches, other sporting events and concerts, all totaling 66 a year. KSM Consulting of Indianapolis, in a report offered to the legislature, pinned the projected average attendance of Indy Eleven matches at 16,500, paying an average of $29.50 a ticket.

Those are some high hopes to pay off a stadium for a niche market team that has yet to kick off a second season — not to mention one that could leave taxpayers on the hook.

But, hey, soccer appeals to a new generation, Rep. Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week. ("The most successful millennial in our city, Andrew Luck, might be our biggest soccer fan," Huston said, according to an Indianapolis Star account.)

If Andrew Luck is a fan, what could possibly go wrong?

Enter Purdue football, as a case study.

Remember back to the days of Drew Brees, the Rose Bowl after the 2000 season and the promise of more great things to come. At that point, Purdue was pondering notions of another deck on Ross-Ade Stadium to accommodate the crush.

These days, after a lean decade? Burke is talking price cuts.

"We want our fans back," Burke said last week, before rattling off the things that have peeled back fans to reveal more and more layers of empty Ross-Ade bleachers on a football Saturday.

That includes changing fan attitudes about attending games to get decades' worth of alumni to return and younger fans to give Purdue football a shot. (Ironic, isn't it, that Burke pinned some of the blame on access to games on TV. That must be the price to pay for getting to roll around in the cash flowing from the latest Big Ten Network deal.)

And it includes putting wins on the board and setting prices fans will pay to get into the game — things Burke said were up to Purdue to fix.

Are the two scenarios — Purdue's price chopping and Indy Eleven's neophyte dreams — exactly the same? Not really.

But it's proof of how quickly the luster can fade — and how revenues fade, too.

Just ask Purdue.

Good luck to the Indy Eleven. A thriving soccer team right down the road would be the best.

But Indy Eleven and its fans in the Statehouse might consider the scrambling Burke is doing these days before they sign off this week on House Bill 1273 and a stadium for a team a bit too fresh to be considered thriving.

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of events that would be held at this stadium. The total number is 66 a year. This story has been updated.