West Ham will take on Crystal Palace this Saturday at midnight in Tampa, Florida in the Stateside Cup already one loss down after the 3-1 defeat against Wolves in a rain-soaked encounter.
July is hurricane season in Florida with storms, torrential rain and flash floods common in the humid month.
It seems a strange place to stage a Premier League tournament with the retirement and tourist American state so it is no surprise that tickets for the games have suffered poor sales.
Last weekend’s game was delayed by two hours and five minutes due to storms meaning that UK West Ham fans who paid £4.99 to watch the game online had to wait until 2.05 am to watch the kick-off with the final whistle not blown until almost 4 am!
The Everbank stadium home of the Jacksonville Jaguars holds 67,814 people but organisers sold just 12,275 tickets with the real attendance much lower as fans abandoned the game due to weather conditions.
Crystal Palace and Wolves play the second game of the tournament tonight at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis,
West Ham and the organisers will again be looking for fans to fork out £4.99 to watch the midnight game on Saturday.
The tournament has not been a financial success for the organisers or the clubs involved with the clubs probably just about covering their expenses for the trip.
Successful and profitable tournaments in the states need to be played in New York or Los Angeles and preferably need to include at least one traditionally top-four Premier League club as the draw for American ‘soccer’ fans.
Palace fan here.
Waddaloadacrap this tournament is. I know of a few Palace fans Stateside who have gone.
Pictures of the fans ( the few that were there ) showed a bloke in a Brighton shirt in the Palace end.
This nonsense has to stop.
See you at Selhurst on the 24th
Wrong
Jacksonville was really a head scratching choice for a venue. Despite the city’s size, Jacksonville is a distant afterthought to most Americans. It certainly isn’t known for football traditions. I can think of a dozen cities, beyond LA and New York, that would have been better hosts than Jacksonville and Tampa.
West Ham, Wolves and Palace not the greatest line up if I’m totally honest, we may be massive but can you say the same about the other two??
It’d be amusing then, wouldn’t it, if your lot lost both matches and finished rock bottom?
I said massive, not good 😎🤣
I am going to the game on Saturday. Ticket behind the goal $111 and $56 to park the car, Major rip off
You don’t know anything about Florida “mate”. And stupid of the club to choose Jacksonville and Tampa to do an American tour. Orlando and Miami obviously the better choices. And we don’t control the weather…
‘with the clubs probably just about covering their expenses for the trip’. Good point if it’s true, but do you know that is correct? The use of the word ‘probably’ does have a hint of ‘I’ll just make this up to make my point stronger’. Got a source on that?
“Successful and profitable tournaments in the states need to be played in New York or Los Angeles ” Utter nonsense, doesn’t matter where the games are in the USA, if they are interesting games they create interest. West Ham v Wolves and the Nigel’s isn’t interesting. Chelsea are playing in Columbus, Charlotte & Atlanta, Villa in Chicago, Arsenal play Liverpool in Philadelphia then Liverpool take on Man Utd in South Caroline, Man Utd also play in San Diego and Wolves play in Miami.
“Successful and profitable tournaments in the states need to be played in New York or Los Angeles and preferably need to include at least one traditionally top-four Premier League club as the draw for American ‘soccer’ fans.”
I was fully with you until that final paragraph….
I’ve said it time and time again! Miami is the soccer capital of Florida and would have drawn a crowd if they played Inter Miami.