Jim Smith, Exec. VP of Marketing and Revenue, Atlanta Falcons
It is an exciting time to be a sports fan in Atlanta. The National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons recently broke ground on a new stadium, which is set to open in 2017, and announced they will be home to a Major League Soccer expansion franchise.
The Falcons have a “soccer guy” within their front office in Executive Vice President of Marketing and Revenue Jim Smith. He worked for the Columbus Crew as their president and general manager until 2004 and brought his experience to the table when putting together a bid for a new club.
Venues Today had a chance to talk with Smith about the new MLS team and where soccer is headed in America.
Venues Today: So, ground was broken on the new stadium in May, what does the timeline look like going forward?
Smith: We are scheduled to open in March 2017. The project is in full swing. It is amazing to see the concrete pillars coming up as quickly as they are. This is a massive project but it is moving very quickly, and even though two-and-a-half years seems far away, it really isn’t. Things are right on track.
VT: It is an exciting time for the city of Atlanta for sports with your new stadium, an MLS team on its way and a new baseball stadium, isn’t it?
Smith: You could say it is a renaissance time for Atlanta where it is moving into the 21st century in a big way with two brand new, state-of-the-art stadiums that have really interesting value propositions. Ours is in the heart of downtown where it can be truly connected to the city and make it a destination for not just football, not just soccer, but all of those national and international marquee events that we really think we’re going to attract because of its proximity. In Major League Baseball, the Braves’ stadium is terrific. It is going to have a neat development to go with it in the suburbs. I think they will be a perfect complement to each other.
VT: With all of these things happening at once, how busy have things been in the front office? Is everyone stretched pretty thin?
Smith: I think we’ve all been incredibly busy, but no one in the organization would trade it for anything. We are busy with all incredibly exciting things that are putting Atlanta on people’s top of mind because of all the things going on and really making the Falcons top of mind going into the season.
VT: On bringing in an MLS team in 2017, what is the soccer scene like in Atlanta?
Smith: When we launched on April 16, we announced we had received an expansion team. The response was overwhelmingly positive. We all believe that Atlanta is a great sports town regardless of what people around the country think. We also knew it was going to be a great soccer market. It has exceeded our expectations. We are just around 16,000 deposits for season tickets and we still have two-and-a-half years to go before we play our first game. The TV ratings for the MLS All-Star game were third highest in the country, the World Cup ratings for the market in Atlanta were top 10 for all the USA games. I feel like we were an untapped market for soccer because we have a lot of young people who live in Atlanta. It is the hub of the Southeast. People move here for their first job. And MLS has done an outstanding job of cultivating and positioning their product toward young people who want to own something that’s truly unique. That’s what soccer offers for young people in this country. It’s a sport for them in which they can have a lot of input in how it evolves. It has been fun to watch the growth of MLS since I left the league and coming back into it in such a good position.
VT: Why do you think young people have been so attracted to soccer?
Smith: Three reasons: They grew up with the game. If you are in that age group, there is a good chance you played it recreationally or competitively. Two, they have all grown up with Major League Soccer, for the first time in our country’s history. There is a generation growing up with an American professional soccer league that’s on every week. And third, there are games on TV every week. If there are games on TV and more exposure, there are going to be more fans of the sport. I think when you combine those three things, it’s a formula grown for professional soccer in this country.
VT: How about the role that social media has played in the growth of soccer? How will you use it as you ramp up interest for the Atlanta MLS team?
Smith: When I said they kind of “own” the sport, that’s why. They don’t need mainstream media to tell them what they like and don’t like anymore. They have that avenue through social media. If you look at the success of our season ticket campaign, we haven’t run any traditional media yet. Everything is through the social and digital platforms.
VT: What is (Falcons owner) Arthur Blank’s ultimate vision for the Atlanta soccer team? Could you see it being similar to the success that the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders have had sharing their NFL stadium in a downtown setting?
Smith: We want to take the Seattle experience and make it appropriate for the Atlanta market. I think we can replicate the success Seattle has had. There are a lot of similarities. We have a young demographic which lives downtown. Our stadium is downtown. We are surrounded by two huge colleges in Georgia Tech and Georgia State, with about 50,000 students between the two. So we are perfectly located to reach the same demographic that Seattle reaches, just in a different form. I think there are a lot of similarities. When you come to our stadium, there won’t be a disconnect between the stadium, the NFL and the MLS team. The brands will all work together. I think that’s one of the brilliant things that Seattle did. The brands work together. They never made one team over the other. They felt like they both belonged and I feel like we have done that right from the very beginning. All those things have added up to success. We can replicate that success, we will just do it a little bit differently.
VT: Has it been decided yet how the front office will be structured? Do you know who will take what positions and who will wear multiple hats?
Smith: It will be a work in progress and then it will evolve over time. The first thing we needed to do was announce a president. We announced that a few weeks ago and he’ll start here in November and we will start mapping out a plan for staffing. Right now, starting with a blank canvas with a new stadium, a lot of the sales efforts from a sponsorship perspective can be absorbed from the stadium sales effort. When as we get closer to launching the team, we will start designating people who are soccer specific, football specific and stadium specific. But we are not going to build our staff based on efficiencies, we are going to build our staff based on effectiveness. If that means someone has multiple responsibilities, that’s great. If that means they are dedicated to soccer only, that’s the way we’ll go.
VT: Speaking of that, you were once a “soccer only” person. How much did your experience play a role or help in ownership’s decision to go forward with bringing an MLS team to Atlanta?
Smith: The great thing about working for our owner Arthur Blank is that he is very collaborative and inclusive, so there were a number of people who were involved in the process, and clearly I was one of them. I had a little bit of institutional knowledge of how the league works and the people with the league. As we worked toward finalizing our interest, I was a lead person in that effort.
VT: Having had experience in both MLS and the NFL, what should soccer learn from how the NFL has grown over the last decade to become so immensely popular?
Smith: The one thing MLS has done really well is stuck to slow and steady growth. It needs to continue on that path, continuing to improve on the field and off the field. It will eventually grow to being one of the top two or three leagues. I think there is genuine interest from a younger demographic that will stay with it for a long time. That’s basically what the NFL did. They had a slow and steady formula and they are reaping the benefits now.
VT: How different is MLS now since you were there?
Smith: Recently, I went to my first MLS league meeting in 11 years and it was fun to be a part of discussions about where the league is going to be in the future rather than whether the league was going to be around. The discussion is about how high this sport can go and how we can take it there. The exciting part of coming back into the league is seeing all the hard work that’s been done in the last 11 years to get the league on such solid footing that we are talking about continued growth rather than just existence.
Interviewed for this story: Jim Smith, (770) 965-3115