(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- No baseball, no basketball, no hockey.
No soccer.
And for the new-look Chicago Fire FC, it’s a facelift fans have barely gotten a chance to see.
“There was definitely disappointment,” C.O.O John Urban tells WBBM Newsradio’s George Ofman. “As we were headed toward the home opener on March 21 at Soldier Field, we had 50,000 tickets sold. We were tracking toward a sellout.”
This is rather astounding when you consider in the 22-year history of the franchise its largest stand-alone crowd was a little over 30,000.
The team had played two games, a loss and a tie, and had another road game to play before the home opener.
Then the season was put on hold. The Fire had gone through an off season metamorphosis — getting a new owner (Joe Mansueto), changing its name and logo, getting a new coach, overhauling its roster and moving its office facilities downtown.
“We were headed in a great direction,” Urban said.
“We’ll have our day and many more days at Soldier Field,” Urban said. “It may just take a little bit longer to get there and it may look and feel a little different initially than what we thought.”
MLS commissioner Don Garber offered what he called “studio games” for television in stadiums with limited or no fans. The league is exploring alternative-formats tournaments and neutral-site locations.
Says Urban: “We see this as an opportunity, under the circumstances, to get out ahead and lead and create new ways for the Fire and its fans.”
Still, he adds, the immediate future remains murky: “Looking across the country and Canada, you think how diverse, different markets are in terms of where they are with the virus that don’t line up.”