USL PRO Feature
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
It’s a job that Andrew Opatkiewicz has been working toward for most of his professional life.
Now as the General Manager of S2, the Seattle Sounders’ new entry into USL PRO in 2015, Opatkiewicz is eager to put everything he’s learned into practice.
“It’s a bit of a dream for me,” Opatkiewicz said by phone recently. “It’s something I’ve been working on, getting back to Seattle, for the last six or seven years, so I’m personally pretty excited about it and I think what we’re putting together, goals on and off the field, is pretty unprecedented and equally exciting.”
While at graduate school at the University of Washington, Opatkiewicz’s first foray into the soccer business came when he helped form the Seattle Wolves. A former college player who also spent a year playing in the Danish second division, Opatkiewicz helped build the club, as it eventually became a member of the PDL.
The side offered development opportunities for young players, while players from the USL-era Sounders also came to train with the organization. The experience made a big impression on Opatkiewicz, and also allowed him to develop a strong relationship with Sounders GM Adrian Hanauer.
“I worked pretty closely with Adrian on that project, in the sense that he was like a mentor and very involved in how we ran the organization,” Opatkiewicz said. “I built a good relationship with him at that point, and as I’m finishing up grad school I realized I wanted a career in soccer, I wanted a career in sports, so I knew that I eventually wanted to be in general management of a club, sort of mapped a path to gain the business and off-the-field experience I felt I needed in order to accomplish that goal.”
After selling his stake when the Wolves merged with the Washington Crossfire, Opatkiewicz’s path sent him to Chicago to work for sports performance analysis company ProZone. After leading the company’s North, Central and South America business, he moved into digital media, most recently with sports and entertainment marketing agency Intersport, where he continued to accumulate off-the-field knowledge.
“Those decisions were very calculated, in the sense that I wanted to gain experience in the specific area that I thought would help me round out my resume, and make me an effective GM of an MLS club one day,” said Opatkiewicz.
His experience with the Wolves is one that Opatkiewicz still draws on. While the visibility of the Sounders brand is far greater than the Wolves, the principles Opatkiewicz brought to that club will certainly apply in the Sounders’ new venture.
“[The Wolves] didn’t have the commercial viability that a Seattle Sounders Football Club has, but we were actually able through sponsorship and private investors able to maintain a quite large annual budget, but being very calculated and strategic of how we spent that money, and how that spend aligns with our goals,” Opatkiewicz said. “I learned a lot from that experience, and I think I’ll take some of that financial strategy into S2.”
While Opatkiewicz is looking forward to building the club on and off the field alongside head coach Ezra Hendrickson, the thing he’s looking forward to most is strengthening the relationship with the club’s fans through the Sounders Community Trust. A concept of fan ownership that has been discussed within the Sounders organization for a number of years – and one that is viewed as an important issue by Hanauer and Sounders minority owner Drew Carey – will come to pass this year.
According to Opatkiewicz, more than any other issue raised by the club’s Alliance Council, fan ownership has been at the top of the list, and the club is very pleased to be able to provide a deeper level of connection and influence for its fans.
“Although it hasn’t been possible to provide that ownership opportunity within the MLS first team, S2 through USL PRO did offer us that opportunity,” Opatkiewicz said. “Shortly after I became involved about four months ago within the organization, that deal was brought back to the table by our Alliance Council President, Paul Cox, who is also the acting chairman now of the Trust and has played a really important role in building the vision for the Trust and getting this organized on that end. He brought this idea back up, Adrian jumped on it and said it was a great idea, and we worked for a couple of months really diligently to put the plans in place so that we could announce that on October 14.
“It’s really important for both sides, for the fans and supporters as well as the club, and what’s really unique about it is the Trust will not only own a 20 percent liquidation in the S2 team, but also have a series of ways that membership group will impact directly the operations of S2 on an annual basis.”
Another thing that’s important for both the club and the supporters? Putting a quality product on the field. While S2 will have its fair share of graduates from the Sounders Academy, and provide a path to the club’s First Team, Opatkiewicz says that goal is not incompatible with the pursuit of silverware in USL PRO.
“Creating a competitive environment whereby we’re fighting to make the USL PRO Playoffs – and we want to compete for a championship year-in and year-out – is an important part of creating the environment that’s going to help us develop players,” Opatkiewicz said. “We believe that S2 is an important bridge between the Academy and the First Team, because it provides 20+ matches on a yearly basis that mean something within a competitive environment where you’ve got 1,000s of fans cheering and booing and creating that atmosphere, but the expectation to win is equally important to creating both the mental and physical side of each player that’s competing in meaningful matches.”
With the experience he needed to land the job he wanted, Opatkiwicz is ready to help S2 become a success on and off the field in USL PRO.
“It’s been a pretty incredible experience so far,” he said. “I’m really focused on doing the small things right today and tomorrow. We have a pretty concrete plan in place that pertains to our business off the field, ticket sales, sponsorship, the stadium experience, as well as now that we have Ezra formally announced, building a roster. We know what we want the team to look like come the middle of March when we begin to play, but the focus is really on doing all the small things that we need to do right to get to that end goal in the middle of March.”