“If you’re going to build a show, what a place to build it”: Ian Ayre talks up Nashville’s MLS debut – SportsPro Media
“Everyone’s running around with their hair on fire,” jokes Ian Ayre, who probably didn’t need SportsPro to remind him that only 15 days stood between Nashville SC and their first-ever Major League Soccer (MLS) game when he answered the phone in mid-February. A hint of apprehension would be understandable at this stage, but a growing sense of anticipation seems to be outweighing that for now.
“Now that we’ve got into this period it feels like we all wish it was tomorrow,” says Ayre, who was appointed chief executive of Nashville SC in May 2018. “Although there’s still a lot to do, you get to a point where you’ve been working so hard and so long for this that it’s a bit like Christmas, you almost can’t wait for it to come.”
A little over two years have passed since MLS commissioner Don Garber handed the keys to the league’s 24th franchise slot to a Nashville expansion bid led by John Ingram, a well-known local businessman whose interests also span philanthropy and politics. That announcement might now seem a distant memory, but there have been no shortage of things to do in the meantime.
Chief among those has been a battle to proceed with the construction of the biggest soccer-specific stadium in the US, a project that was the centrepiece of the city’s attempts to bring MLS to Tennessee. In the meantime a brand identity was revealed in February 2019, while there have also been fan engagement, matchday and ticketing strategies to devise. Then there has been the small matter of appointing a coach and assembling a playing squad from scratch.
“I was talking to our coach and our GM the other day, it’s really hard for them,” Ayre declares. “They’re trying to work out what we’ve got, who we’ve bought, how they’re shaping up in pre-season, but you can’t really know. You can play pre-season games, but until you get three, four, maybe five months into the season, it’s hard to know how good you are and how good everyone else is.
“It’s the same for the business side. For the team I have working on ticket sales and fan engagement, we’re starting from zero. It’s not like we’re selling something that people have been going to for 25 years, so you have to believe that results will have an impact on that in these early periods. We feel like we’ve done everything that we could have possibly done at this point in time, and we feel confident that we’ll do the best that we can do, but what that looks like is hard to define at this point.”
You get to a point where you’ve been working so hard and so long for this that it’s a bit like Christmas, you almost can’t wait for it to come.
At the time of writing, those efforts have seen more than 40,000 tickets sold for Nashville SC’s inaugural match against Georgia neighbours Atlanta United, who themselves joined North American soccer’s top flight just three years ago. Saturday’s game at the Tennessee Titans’ Nissan Stadium, where the expansion team will play their first two seasons, will crown a rapid rise for professional soccer in Nashville, a city which was only awarded a second-tier United Soccer League (USL) franchise as recently as 2016.
It is also quite the change of course for Ayre, who is perhaps better known as the man who appointed Jurgen Klopp as manager of current Premier League leaders Liverpool during a decade-long stint at his boyhood club. Having shared boardrooms with some of the most powerful dealmakers in the game and spent millions to sign the likes of Philippe Coutinho and Sadio Mané, one might wonder what it was that drew the 56-year-old to a franchise yet to play a competitive fixture. But Ayre reveals it was that very opportunity – to map something out on a blank sheet of paper – that lured him to Nashville.
Ian Ayre (left) is perhaps better known for appointing Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool manager
“It’s completely different,” says the Englishman, who had a brief spell at German side 1860 Munich before heading to the US. “There are some similarities, but you can try and experiment with things here. The way people consume sports here is completely different, it’s as much about the whole show as it is the game on the field. People want to be more entertained here overall, whether that’s music, atmosphere, food, you have to get all of those things right to capture the audience.
“Whereas when you’re running Liverpool, for example, it’s like a super tanker. [If] you want to change course it takes forever, and you’ve got to really fight to change course because it’s the 100 years of history and tradition and all those great things that are ripe for that market and are part of what it is.
“But here, the league changed up and they bring things in and teams do things, so for that reason there’s more to experiment with. It’s more like putting on a show than it is putting on just a football match. That’s been really exciting, to have the ability to be creative about what you build and bring in people who bring skills across the entertainment sector as well as the sports sector.”
As Ayre acknowledges, the similarities between Nashville and Liverpool might not be immediately obvious, but he has taken note of a big one. Just as the city Ayre grew up in is renowned for producing bands like The Beatles, his adopted home – nicknamed ‘Music City’ – has deep ties to the country scene. To that end, Nashville SC have partnered with local group Judah & the Lion to release a club anthem, something the franchise hope can become their very own version of Liverpool’s famous ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Ayre also confirms that “all of the razzmatazz” around gamedays will have music at its core.
“We’re in Music City,” he begins, “so if you’re going to build a show, what a place to build it. It better be a good one, because there’s an awful lot of choice.
“One of the great things about Liverpool as a city is that cultural heritage it has. The city builds on that vibrancy and eclecticness of the audience. I used to meet people when I lived in Asia who were Liverpool supporters for many reasons, not just for football. And here, I think if you look at the local [ice] hockey team, the Nashville Predators, I would say they’re probably the most successful team in the NHL – not necessarily from winning Stanley Cups, but in terms of the quality of the product they put together.
“We want the whole thing to be a talking point. We’ve talked about creating this festival of soccer, where the game itself is the headliner, but all of the things that go on around it – whether it’s live music, food or other things – are all part of the rich mix you experience as you go. And you can only do that in America.”
There are some similarities, but you can try and experiment with things here. Whereas when you’re running Liverpool, for example, it’s like a super tanker.
Leaning on Nashville’s musical heritage will certainly help differentiate the MLS team from other clubs, a task which might prove more challenging this year when considering the company they are in. Indeed, there is almost a temptation to label Nashville SC ‘the other expansion franchise’ for 2020 given that David Beckham’s Inter Miami are also making their long-awaited MLS debut. The former England captain’s journey from player to owner has been something of a storyline for the league ever since he arrived at the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007, and it would be fair to say that Beckham’s franchise has courted more of the limelight in the build-up to the new campaign.
Ayre, though, doesn’t necessarily consider that a bad thing.
“I think everyone approaches expansion slightly differently,” he says. “Look, if we had David Beckham as one of our owners I’m sure we’d follow a similar path to some degree, but we’re not trying to be them, they’re not trying to be us. I think you just have to find your own place and your own thing that works for your market. It’s about being who you are rather than trying to compete or be David Beckham, if you like.
“That’s not for any moment that we don’t think they’re doing a great job – I think they really are, but they’re working with a different set of tools for a different market.”
To illustrate that, Ayre points to each franchise’s approach to this season’s SuperDraft, the annual event which sees MLS teams select college graduates. Beckham surprised Inter Miami’s first pick with a phone call. For Jack Maher, Nashville SC sent a bus load of their supporters to his home in Caseyville, Illinois.
“We thought, what’s Nashville, who are we?,” Ayre continues. “We blew everyone away on social media because it was just different.”
Ayre is clearly in a buoyant mood, which is perhaps aided by the fact that the day prior to this interview saw Nashville SC secure a crucial agreement to overcome an awkward hurdle.
Initially approved in 2018, the club’s aforementioned 30,000-seater stadium project hit the buffers in September last year when John Cooper was made mayor of Nashville. Among other things, the 63-year-old would not allow the project to move forward until he had secured a better financial deal for the city. He was also concerned about the impact the construction would have on his own plans to redevelop the racetrack at the same Fairgrounds site as part of a longer-term goal to bring Nascar to Nashville.
We’ve talked about creating this festival of soccer, where the game itself is the headliner, but all of the things that go on around it are all part of the rich mix you experience as you go.
Given what could have been at stake, the stand-off quickly spilled out into the public domain. MLS, which said its decision to award Nashville an expansion slot had been largely contingent on the stadium deal, and the club issued a statement in January criticising the mayor’s ‘continued refusal to proceed’ despite proposing ‘a number of new solutions to satisfy his concerns’. They also urged fans to sign a petition calling for Cooper to allow construction on the venue to begin.
A compromise was eventually reached on 13th February, one which will see Nashville SC privately fund 100 per cent of the stadium construction by agreeing to pay a further US$54 million in potential expenses. The construction project – the cost of which has reportedly risen from US$275 million to US$335 million – is now set to begin immediately with the demolition of the old facilities at the Fairgrounds.
While Ayre is relieved to finally have the deal done, he admits that the delay has been a major setback.
“It’s definitely been a distraction,” he says. “It’s been very disruptive, not really on the football side, but from a business perspective. After we start this season we go into somewhat of a steady state, but the real thing on the horizon is the new stadium and your own home and you really go to another level at that point.
Nashville SC’s new stadium is finally back on track after settling a dispute with the city mayor
“A big carrot for people buying season tickets to buy them now, even though this [Nissan Stadium] is a massive stadium we’ll play in, is because that’s going to get you to the front of the line when we go to the new stadium, which is less than half that size. But when you remove that carrot, you remove some of the energy towards that. We’ve done OK on season tickets, but I absolutely believe we would have done better by now without that disruption.”
Ayre adds that news of the stadium deal saw ticket sales pick up again – “we’ve just had our best two days since we started,” he says – and confirms that the venue is still on track to open in 2022. Perhaps the most important thing for Nashville SC’s chief executive, though, is that the club can now look forward to playing in a stadium built specifically for soccer, something Ayre believes has been key to “transitioning MLS to be one of the most recognised leagues in the world”.
“Whether you’re viewing on TV or watching in the stands, we all know that it’s a very different experience in something that isn’t really designed for soccer,” Ayre adds. “When you’re trying to bring what is a relatively new sport to a new market and a new audience, you want to give them all the best parts of that experience. Being close to the action, hearing the players shouting at each other, feeling like you’re on top of it, that’s all part of it, and if you remove that part you don’t really offer the whole true experience.
“At the end of the day we’re a tenant for two years, we’re renting somebody’s house. You want your own home that you can do your own stuff in and make a fortress for your team. So it was absolutely crucial that we get that done.”
Nashville SC play their first MLS game against Atlanta United on Saturday
And with the pieces of a complex expansion jigsaw finally falling into place, Ayre is giving his full attention to Nashville SC’s opening fixture and the year ahead. He refrains from banging the drum too loud, but remains quietly optimistic that the franchise will hit the right tune in their first season.
“The league allows you the opportunity to do really well in your first year because the margins of difference are small,” he says. “There are plenty of examples of expansion teams winning it, or doing really well, or making the playoffs, so everything’s possible from that perspective, which would probably be unrealistic in any other league – you wouldn’t get promoted from the Championship and think you were going to win the Premier League.
“I think the best way can measure is as long as at the end of this season we can all look each other in the eye and feel proud that we did the best we can do, I think we’ll all feel really good about it. So that’s my measure; if we come away from this feeling like we did ourselves proud – that could be the high of winning the thing or doing the best we could do for our expectation in the first year – and that we didn’t let ourselves, our city or our fans down, then it will be good.”
