Tim Hinchey, President, Colorado Rapids, Interview- The last piece of the puzzle

 

How important is that the ‘fan experience’ to your success? Any plans to expand it?

The ‘driveway to driveway experience’ is critical to the success of our club. That fan experience journey – when they’re putting on their kits at home and when their getting excited about it – that’s something unique about our sport. It’s a good day out at the park; our key supporters’ base come early, parking is free, they tailgate, they barbecue, they have their flags out.

We have to be authentic to the sport so people come in, enjoy the beautiful game, watch the flow and not turn it into a NBA game, where every timeout there’s something happening. We have to manage that goal to increase the fan experience, do some of the things that are probably likened to the American venue experiences and at the same time, ensure that we’re delivering the world’s game the way it should be viewed and consumed.

The key for us this last year was we increased our point of sale for both retail and the food and beverage component. We drove another double digit increase because we added more than a hundred new point of sale locations within the stadium where people can have smaller lines to get their soft drinks, beers, hot dogs, etc. it was making sure that those were regularly available, easier to get and I think that really helped us out a bit.

You had your first international friendly in years versus Swansea City. Do you have any more plans to bring in any more events to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park?

We’re going to look at that every year. We purposely wanted to illustrate to our fan base that we were prepared to invest and bring quality clubs back into Dick Sporting Goods Park. We wanted to bring Swansea in because their style of play is very similar to the style of play we’re now working towards in terms of our brand and club identity. It was a fantastic day out and we got fantastic feedback, but when it came down to the matchday, 8000 people came versus our average crowd now is about 15,000. We get a lot of request for this, but the turnout was a bit disappointing. We also bought in the US women’s national team after the Olympics for one of their gold medal tour matches. It sold out in three days. It was Pia’s (Sundhage) last game as manager so it was a very special sport event and moment, covered by national media- that was a fantastic. We’re definitely looking to bring in more events like both of those.

What would it take for Mr Kroenke to allow you to sign a marquee name?

First and foremost, I am never going to recommend that we bring over a marquee player over 30. I’m not interested in retiring a player in our league and paying that kind of potential salary on someone who may have one or two good years – that’s just not what our philosophy is going to be. If we can illustrate to our fan base that we’re authentically investing in a quality product, that’s going to mean more to me than bringing in a name that we think might marginally increase our commercial output.

As an example, resigning someone like Hendry Thomas from Wigan, 27 years old, been a captain for Honduras in the World Cup and Olympics, that’s the kind of player we want because not only does he come in right away and do a fantastic job, he wants to be on this side of hemisphere to get back in the national team. At the same time, he still may have value that we can move on and then increase our opportunity to build our foothold and funds for our soccer operation group because one of the things we’re not doing yet- we’re not in the game of moving on and selling players.

Paul Bravo and his group have done a fantastic job building a very solid academy foundation and with our facility here, it makes perfect sense to get into the game of developing home-grown players. The next step is investing in players that not only do a job today, but become assets that allow us to move them on at some point. It’s OK to be a development league, that’s where we are in the world. If we can develop fantastic players and move them to Europe, we can benefit from that and continue to identify more players and make the Colorado Rapids better. We need to get into that business.

By Edward Rangsi

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Tim Hinchey is the President of the Colorado Rapids.

Before coming to Colorado, Hinchey served as the Vice President of Commercial for English Football League Championship side Derby County for three years, where he oversaw a radical change in the club’s commercial approach, introducing a number of innovative ideas and policies that have brought great success and results off the field.

Before joining DCFC, Hinchey had spells with the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats as their Executive Vice President of Business Operations and with the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets as Senior Vice President of corporate development and Chief Marketing Officer.

Prior to joining the Hornets, he worked for Runyon, Saltzman & Einhorn as alliance Marketing Director, creating a new division where he developed new business relationships and served the firm’s sports and entertainment clients. Hinchey also served as vice president of brand development for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Northern California.

His start in professional sports came began with the Los Angeles Kings in 1991 and continued as Vice President of marketing and corporate sales for the Utah Grizzlies and the E Center, senior vice president of business development for the Long Beach Ice Dogs and director of strategic alliances for Maloof Sports Entertainment.

A native of northern California, Hinchey and his wife Mia are the proud parents of six children.

Tim Hinchey’s

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