A message from NYC Footy. Reflecting on a challenging year.

Hi Footy Friend,

This is our year in review email. It's a once-a-year narrative and it's quite long.

You don't have to read this (and if you don't, at least scroll to the second to last image).

But, if you're curious what it's like to run a soccer league, then grab a comfort drink and settle in.

It's consistent with my random emails over the years that explain, in detail, what the hell is going on at Footy. Last year was the most intense year in our history and I don't think it's a stretch to say that, at moments, the entire operation was at risk.

Here's what went down.

TLDR: 2022 asked a lot from us, to a point where I was genuinely concerned about our future (and my health). But monumental efforts from a growing team helped right the wrongs, re-wire some circuits, launch new, helpful initiatives and set NYC Footy up for lots of new in 2023.

For years NYC Footy was such a small, manageable operation that we knew damn near every player in the league. It was pretty easy to get the "vibe" we were pushing because we played in basically all of the leagues and tournaments we offered. 

Our original vision for Footy was one league in Williamsburg where we could set the standard and play weekly. Turns out quite a few folks liked the type of league we created for ourselves and it started to grow.

Things changed first in 2013 when we got our first permit at BBP. But a larger inflection point was probably 2018 when we finally landed a permit in Manhattan (it took 7 years). 

The biggest change, however, may have been the ripples of COVID in NYC. Creating migration patterns that welcomed many new New Yorkers, but also an acute need for activity and, more importantly, connection.

Footy B.C. (Before Covid) was a strong, steady, wonderful, and not necessarily small community of players in NYC. Since then, the community has nearly tripled.
 

Suddenly, things get far more complicated.

I am pretty focused on ensuring everyone in this league understands how important this operation is to us. Many of you don't fancy my long-winded emails explaining every decision we make. But others really appreciate it. I tend to fall in the latter category myself, which is why I over-index a bit on TMI.

2022 was far and away the most challenging professional year of my life. The year began without anyone working exclusively full time at NYC Footy. For me, it had been a full-time job already, but I was (and still am) running my other company (Uncubed). Gerardo and Joe also had other serious obligations. G managing a band that went gangbusters and Joe operating the most iconic hardware store in NYC.

At the start of last year, it became very clear that we could no longer run NYC Footy as we had for the previous decade. Everyone in the community deserved better.
 

Help is on the way.

I began seeing the demand was outweighing our abilities, no matter how many hours I worked. Fortunately, a few faces began to show up to help, starting with Grace, Gianluca and Kristin, all of whom came on board in part time capacities to support the overwhelming workload.

Last year there were, quite literally, thousands of brand new players. Far more than any previous year. For a league that is desperate to maintain the culture we've created, this is a massive opportunity to expand that, but also a real challenge to ensure so many new faces catch the drift of our operation and understood that Footy is a league built upon community more than anything.

The customer experience is at risk

With my declining success in responding to these new faces, we started to feel the bolts loosen on the operation. By now, I was downright failing on the attentive, quick-to-respond customer service standard we had set.  

We also began seeing more league disruption. It wasn't a lot, but for our small team, it was the largest contributor to our stress. Perhaps a referee didn't show up on time (or at all). Or maybe goals were destroyed or we couldn't get into our storage box. Embarrassing stuff and we couldn't catch up because we didn't have enough resources.

The hight of this stress was the summer of this past year. I was living in Portugal for 3 months, working from 8am to 3am with no end in sight. To top it off, we suddenly lost one of our keystone contributors for 3 weeks that summer. That's about when I had to see a cardiologist because my heart started doing very unusual things (all checked out, thankfully).

There's light at the end of the tunnel

Fortunately, Grace came on board full time to support Kristin, who joined us full time a couple months earlier. Then, our first full time customer service hire started, Zimanta. "Zee' for short. This changed the game, as she began taking over the customer service tasks that helped all of us focus on ensuring we solved any potential league disruptions while continuing to meet the demands of players living all over this great city.

We started to see light at the end of the tunnel when G, my co-founder, reworked his schedule to commit a near full-time effort to Field Operations and ensuring we right sized the issues we were having with jerseys being delayed, goals being broken, and refs being unprepared.

Soon after, Gianluca committed a meaningful PT effort to his FT role at BetterPlayer to support field operations and our referee manager, Markus. His top priority: recruitment and training of new refs.

Finally, as we entered Q4, the referee shortage we'd been experiencing all year, causing the majority of our league disruptions and staff stress, was beginning to wane. We're not fully there (just this morning, we had a ref emergency at 3 fields), but we are a long way from 6 months ago. And I'm not going to bed at 3am anymore.

In October, just after the Footy Fest, the event that truly culminated an extraordinary year, Federico joined full time to direct our customer efforts and focus on player retention and happiness (this will be a never-ending job). 

We rounded off the year by making a full-time offer to James, who started this year as our manager of marketing and communications. He's the fella that now preps these emails for me (and why you're starting to see some more consistency).

This also does not highlight the part-time help we continue to get from the likes of Ashley, Amanda, Thais, Markus and many more that keep our social media flowing, our designs original and our refs scheduled at the right field!

Meet the team.

I would love for you to meet this team and, as of yesterday, we have a number of faces up on our about page here.

This is a work in progress, because there are far more faces than these that help make NYC Footy what it is. For starters, the dozens of referees that have such a critical role in your experience (soon their faces will be up on our site as well).

So that's the story in a nutshell, but if you're interested in getting a more specific idea of the good, the bad and the go-forward, then read on.

A Lens Into The Good & The Bad

Lots of good. Here's a sample of what we're proud of this year.

As you might have noticed, Footy grew multiplicatively in 2022, welcoming more new faces in 2022 then in the first 9 years combined. This meant we had to expand current offerings and, where we couldn't expand, get creative.

Tournaments: Governors Cup became the largest soccer tournament in the city, spanning two days in June. The Footy Fest welcomed 500 players, turning it into one of the largest single-day gatherings of city slickers in upstate New York. 

Sunset Leagues: We launched leagues that required players to kick off at 5pm on a weeknight. An experiment that was so successful, it will open way more doors for us this year. 

New Locations: Thanks to an effort led by Kristin, we added dozens of new locations last year to accommodate the many New Yorkers that can't be bothered commuting anywhere!

Vampire Leagues: Nearly all of our vampire leagues (10pm to midnight) were full. Another exciting opportunity moving forward.

We Won a Small Business Award: We won the Mastercard City Assist Award for our contributions to the NYC community as a small business.

Sponsors & Partners: We welcomed NYCFC, Umbro, Pumpkin Pie and NY Orthopedics as league sponsors and partners, culminating in a Footy Day out at Yankee Stadium where 1,000 Footy players attended.

Return of In-Person Events: We came back with a bang with our 1st-timers happy hour, Champion's League Final (over 500 of you attended) and World Cup Viewing Parties.

Growing Online Community: We launched a new online community to help teams and players connect, fill rosters, avoid forfeits, play pickup and more. To date, more than 1K of you have joined.

There's more where that came from, but this email is already far too long!
 

Things we need(ed) to do better on

None of the above was possible without lots of opportunities to learn.

We had more moments than any of us are comfortable sharing where we...well I'll just use the metaphor...dropped the ball. The frequency was enough that we created a "league disruption form" to track these issues and ensure we took care of our players appropriately.

Field Changes: We had a field closed due to poor field conditions, a natural grass field destroyed after hosting a concert and a new field that came online a full month later than promised. In all scenarios, teams were re-located to different locations and different times.

No Ref: There were times when players showed up to a field and there was no ref.

No Equipment: Players showed up and our refs couldn't get into our storage box. Playing games with cones as goals.

Customer Service Delays: Before Zimanta joined, my biggest nightmare began to manifest. Customers not getting a response, or getting it so delayed that it no longer mattered.

That doesn't scratch the surface with internal challenges that made decision making and transfer of information seamless and efficient.

When we fail players, it's stomach churning. It creates more work for us, a growing number of "nastigrams" (some justifiable) and the need to dig ourselves out of a hole that should not have been there in the first place.

What I can say is this: league disruptions declined meaningfully between summer and fall, and have become almost non-existent this winter. That is very much credit to our laser focus on these issues and a committed team determined to solve them.

And The Footy (Changes)

In order to continue being the place where you can come hang, play and form the kinds of relationships that made us start this league in the first place, we're making changes that are frankly long overdue.

The first thing will be the least popular.

Generally speaking, prices are going up (with shades of grey).

Starting this spring, we are going to do something we've only every done once before. Raise prices. In fact, the average price for a team captain or free agent is less today than it was at any point in our history.

We've delayed this as long as possible, but it's clear with our nearly universal increase in costs, coupled with building a team that can maintain (if not improve) our standard, we have to. More to come on that in a separate email (cause we'll also have more opportunities to save).

We've increased our number of referees.

Over the last few months, we've increased the number of refs we have to over 50, and have implemented a new ref training program so that every ref who steps onto the field is fully prepared to best represent Footy.

Reducing waste.

We're looking to reduce our jersey waste by implementing return programs and making custom jerseys easier to make.

Get more out of our partners & sponsors for our community.

We've continued to grow our relationships with existing sponsors, and have made connections to new sponsors.

This means that things like getting tickets to NYCFC games and joining us for World Cup Viewing parties will not only continue, but will continue to grow as we add more programming in the year to come. 

Doing more for team captains.

We some of the plans we have in store, we're hoping that by the end of this year, everyone will want to be a captain.

Here's to 2023.

We have a feeling you're going to love what's coming your way in 2023. 

And if you don't. Tell us.

We have always thought of ourselves as a league for players, by players (every full timer here at Footy was a community member first), so your feedback on what we can do better is extremely useful to us.

Critical feedback, big ideas, funky requests, etc. All are welcome. Just be nice.

We apologize for the abnormally bulky, dry, text ridden email. We wanted to make sure that as we go into 2023, we did so with our intentions clear so that you can continue to get the soccer and community experience you deserve, and which is so vital and needed in the world we live in today.

With love, always,

Tarek and the Footy Fam

P.S. Enjoy the best email from 2022 👇