Ugh. FCB Miami Wants You To Name The Club, Begs You To Declare Your Fanship

The city of Miami must be all sorts of desperate to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to its shores. Yesterday the team’s financial backers–local businessman Marcelo Claure and FCB Barcelona—launched a new website designed to drum up local interest in the potential franchise.
Given the lack of success of MLS soccer Miami has already seen, you’d think the new guys would put together a stronger effort. The site is threadbare, offers little in the way of multimedia content, allows users to buy season tickets that may never exist and promotes the biggest hack bit in all of sports.

“We know Miami is a great soccer town, and now with a potential Major League Soccer team coming to town, we think it is a great opportunity to show the world that we deserve a team,” said Marcelo Claure, CEO of Brightstar Corp., and the lead partner alongside Futbol Club Barcelona. “Our goal is to get over 15,000 fans signed up and over 5,000 season ticket deposits in the next 10 days. It is a tall order but we believe the community is fully behind this initiative and will come out to support it.”

The website, which is available in both English and Spanish, is the beginning of a progressive community outreach program by the ownership group. Major League Soccer owners and executives will be meeting in Los Angeles November 21st - 23rd for MLS Cup Weekend, and while no official statement has been issued, there is some expectation that a decision on expansion may be made in the coming weeks.

These guys are convinced that MLS soccer will be huge in Miami if it’s only given the chance, an argument that requires one to look only at the demographics of the Miami area while ignoring entirely the spectacular failure of the Miami Fusion, the city’s earlier entry into the MLS. Claure wants 15,000 fans to sign up, but the Fusion couldn’t draw flies to shit during their brief existence, so it’s hard to tell if enough Miamians will care about the return of the MLS to even lend their name to the petition.
But if anything rubs us the wrong way here it’s the whole “you name the team!” fiasco that so many pro franchises use as a way to drum up support for teams that no one cares about. And that picture above is the actual graphic from the FCB Miami website. That’s about as bush league as it gets, beyond actually asking the fans to name the team in the first place.
When you take the website quality, and combine it with the lame contest, we’d say a good name for the MLS Miami squad might be “The Pipe Dreams.”
FCB Barcelona and Marcelo Claure Launch Website Asking Miami and U.S. Fans to Support Miami’s Bid for Major League Soccer [PR Newswire]