On a rainy June 3rd afternoon, DC United supporters attended a meeting in the basement of Washington DC’s Northeast Branch Library. The idea behind this meeting, the @DCUsupporters Twitter account said, was to discuss present and future issues relating to the supporters. Anyone who is interested in seeing (or hearing) the full discussion should check out the link to the videos on the District Ultras’ (DU) Facebook site here. Below are a few key takeaways. Some of these were previously discussed but perhaps not broadcast publicly. Other issues were new or resonated a little more than in the past.

1. One of the key problems between the supporters' groups (SGs) and the team has been the lack of transparency. Almost every supporter who showed up had some unique information to share because any given story can be retold 10 different ways. Carrick Baugh, who was there representing DU, acknowledged that too many people were speaking to each other in their social media bubbles and that the discussions that are actually had (either with the team, within the supporters’ groups, or between the supporters groups) are being misrepresented.

2. The core issue is money! Specifically, the Screaming Eagles' (SE) ticket agreement with the club. SE President, James Lambert, stated his belief that the team may have chosen to work with SE because they are a registered non-profit. Baugh contradicted that statement, noting that DU is also a registered non-profit. DU, he stated, relies on merchandise sales and ticket revenue to raise funds to be able to invest in gameday experience (tifo, drums, drum heads, mallets, etc.). Therefore, the team’s selection of a single SG with which to do business provides that group a lifeline that no other group has.

A secondary direct casualty of the agreement will be ticket affordability at some of the season’s top matches. This year the team will employ dynamic pricing, which means that ticket prices will vary depending on scarcity and time of the event. Already, the secondary market is selling tickets for the home opener at over $100 per seat. As opening day draws near, those prices will increase and the price the team sells at will increase similarly. SE will be able to set their own price, however, and have stated that theirs will be the least expensive seats in the stadium. Even so, a 200% markup is easily conceivable. In contrast, DU intentionally used to keep their ticket prices low so that all their members who wanted to attend, could do so. United’s push to sell season tickets has made this impossible.

3. SE does not have a contract with the team. Lambert was asked by an audience member to explain what the agreement was between SE and DC United, and what the "contract" said. James stated that the partnership is an agreement between the two so that SE could speak directly with separate sections of the team (the people who work with charities for instance or the operations staff) without having to go through the front office. In addition, SE was able to purchase a block of 200 season tickets. SE claimed to have received no special pricing or concessions beyond the ST pricing, however, and there is no written contract of any sort.

It should be noted, however, that any ticket purchase is itself a contractual agreement. The idea Lambert probably intended to communicate was that neither SE nor the team was under any obligation to the other. Importantly though, the allowance for SE to purchase tickets at cost and be allowed to resell them was an enormous concession that the team has refused to the other SG.

4. SE has not advocated for the team to offer either Barra Brava (BB) or DU the same deal that SE was given for home tickets. At the meeting in early April, they stated that the team had started selling away tickets to the other groups only after SE had asked them to. But there has been no such movement to make the same request for Buzzard Point. This seemed like an extremely important issue; one that if SE were to follow up on, to advocate for the others, might begin to smooth things over.

5. Professionalism may be an issue between the SGs and United. Several attendees mentioned meetings between the supporters and the team that got quite heated, including a meeting in September 2017 has been mentioned many times in some social media circles. After this, the team chose not to meet again with Barra Brava or DU leaders. At one point Lambert, perhaps exasperated with the meeting’s progress, asked: "has it occurred to you that there might be a reason why the team didn’t want to deal with you?" SE’s ticket mistress, Nicole Gara, stated that until fall 2017, team officials used to meet regularly with the SGs. During those meetings, the SGs would fight and argue among themselves, without ever resolving anything. The points of contention she pointed out sounded quite pedestrian: tifo, SG section management, and logistics, to name a few. Two meeting attendees of the meeting acknowledged this to be true. Paul Sotoudeh however, a former SE president who is not currently a part of the organization, stated that the differences between SGs and the team used to be over minor issues. But because the current differences are over more elemental issues and are much less contentious, he thought the team might be willing to work on it.

6. SE and DU have both been supportive of the formation of an independent supporters council, but it is not clear what that means. Lambert said that the formation of a supporters’ council would allow for the supporters to speak to the team with a single voice. But SE was not willing to advocate for the other groups. DU showed it has the conviction to push past the current issues for survival, but their inability to get tickets probably limits what they can do. BB, recognized by most attendees (and fans in general) as the heart of United’s supporters culture, did not attend. This begs the questions whether there is a willingness to work with other supporters to find a way ahead.

This brings us back to the first key point above. Many of the current problems stem from lack of trust and transparency. If nothing else, these supporters’ meetings allow for SGs and individuals to put their cards on the table. One might not like that the team chose to deal with only with SE at the expense of the other SGs, but if the team provided a rationale for it, such as "because SE was business-like" or "because they came up with hard cash to buy 200 STs," it would be easier to accept. Instead, we have many people reading between the lines, drawing inferences, or developing rationales from their twitter feeds. There are simply way too many different versions existing in a vacuum.

At one point during the meeting on Sunday, Gara was asked whether there were any public statements made about the regular meetings that the team used to have. She stated that there was not because there was nothing resolved. However, it is possible that a public record showing ongoing attempts by all four sides (the team and three SGs), would have been helpful to publicly demonstrate where each sides priorities lay.

The views in this article the author's and do not reflect those of any of the SGs or any other organization.