It’s a shot fired clear across 200-plus miles of Texas, and confirmation that soccer is no exception to the bitter sports relationship between Houston and Dallas.
The Houston Dynamo are betting that a new billboard they carefully placed in the Dallas area will ruffle a few feathers and turn a few heads towards the club’s budding MLS rivalry with FC Dallas, and the plan seems to be working.
The billboard in question — which officially went up Monday and depicts Houston’s two MLS Cup trophies next to the words, “Houston, two times better than Dallas” — is located on a stretch of tollway between downtown Dallas and Frisco, near the Trinity Mills Mall.
“We consider them our rivals because the in-state portion and I think Houston in general has a hatred for everything Dallas,” Dynamo senior vice president Rocky Harris told MLSsoccer.com. “This year, we wanted to get the passion out on both sides. On Facebook we saw fans were talking up the rivalry. We thought we should tap into what the fans were saying.”
The message was received. Harris tweeted out a picture of the billboard on April 29, and FC Dallas retaliated against the Dynamo by flying a banner over the Dynamo-D.C. United match at Robertson Stadium later that night. The response is just what Harris and the Dynamo are looking for while they build the rivalry between the franchises.
After relocating from San Jose in 2005, the sense when the team first arrived was that the LA Galaxy or a potential new San Jose club would serve as the main rivals on the field and off. But as the in-state animosity started to grow, and FC Dallas gained success of their own (they reached their first-ever MLS Cup last season), they seemed like the natural focal point for the ire of both the players and the fans in Houston.
Nurturing and building this type of rivalry is key to building the league’s interest and brand, according to Harris.
“Our job is to tap into whatever the fans are feeling and thinking, and accentuate it,” Harris said. “I think across the league you see that, especially in the Cascadia area. That is the model for the future. The fans have to have those rivalries to make the sport grow. You need rivalries to build the MLS brand.
“In my opinion,” he added, “I think fans have to be passionately opposed to other teams as much as love their club.”
Monday’s raising of the billboard is certainly a step in this direction for the Dynamo and FC Dallas. Harris’ tweeted picture of the billboard was popular enough to bump the recent royal wedding from the top trending spot on the social media format in Houston, evidence of the rivalry’s draw.
“We’re not going to let them one up us with the plane,” Harris said. “We’re planning a few other tactics and [FC Dallas] is too. We’ll be respectful of them and [the Hunt family], but it’s about us beating Dallas in every way.”
The clubs meet for the first time this season in Houston on May 28.
Darrell Lovell covers the Houston Dynamo for MLSsoccer.com. Follow him on twitter at @Dynamoexaminer.
