When Drew Carey agreed to become one of the owners of what would eventually become the Seattle Sounders, he had one main demand: That fans would be able to vote on the team’s soccer leadership. As a long suffering fan of Cleveland sports, Carey knew far too well how it felt to have someone keep their job in the face of repeated failure. The idea was that this would be a check on that type of incompetence.
What started off as a neat idea was eventually cast into legal language and is now permanently enshrined in the Alliance Council Constitution. Here’s the most relevant portion:
10.3.6 No-Confidence Vote. In the event that the GM Vote results in a vote of no-confidence in the GM, the then-current GM shall be removed in accordance with the definition of GM above.
As you hopefully know, that vote is currently ongoing and can be cast in person through Saturday's game. In fact, fans can digitally cast ballots all the way up to 11:59 PM that day.
Here’s what you need to know:
Is this vote really binding?
YES! If the vote reaches the legally binding threshold, Sounders GM Craig Waibel will be out of a job.
What’s the "legally binding" threshold?
Admittedly, it’s a high bar. Not only do 40% of all Alliance Members (a.k.a. season-ticket holders) have to cast a ballot, but 67% of those votes must be for "no confidence." If we assume there are 25,000 Alliance Members, that means about 16,750 votes must be for "no confidence."
Who’s eligible to vote?
Each season-ticket account holder is an Alliance Member and they can designate one additional person per ticket in the account. In other words, if you have five tickets, you can designate four additional people to cast a vote.
Can I vote if I’ve canceled my tickets for next year?
You can! Voting eligibility is based on your current Alliance membership, not any decision you made about next season or beyond.
How have previous votes gone?
All three votes ended with the GM sailing to victory, with Adrian Hanauer's vote in 2012 being both the most decisive (96.3%) and the only one that was technically binding (shortly after, they clarified the threshold to reach quorum). Garth Lagerwey then got about 87% approval in 2018 and 90% in 2022, but both of those votes fell short of the 40% threshold that would have made them binding.
Did you vote?
I am a season-ticket holder, and I did. I wrote a rather long explanation of my "retain" vote a few weeks ago when the Sounders’ season was going considerably better than it is now.
Would that have changed if you voted now?
I think I would have needed to give it more consideration, but I still feel comfortable with my vote. The reality is that, on the whole, the Sounders have performed quite well during Waibel's tenure. In that time, they’ve been among the top teams in the league in three of his four seasons and his overall record compares favorably to his predecessors’. It strikes me as a bit unfair to hold him solely responsible for this year's failures.
Care to give a counter-opinion to the one you previously offered?
Yeah. If I were to construct an argument to vote "no confidence" in Waibel, I think I’d focus on the desire to send a message to the entire organization that the way they’ve been doing business over the past few years just isn’t good enough. I think the biggest frustration with Waibel is not so much that he’s bad at his job, it’s that we don’t have enough of a sense of how good he is, either, because he’s never been given a real budget with which to work. Dating back to at least the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sounders have been the least active MLS team on the transfer market. Until Dejan Joveljić was signed a couple of months ago, the Sounders hadn’t made a single summer signing from outside the organization since 2020.
But the frustrations go well beyond the budget or even the soccer side of the organization. Over the last few years – basically during Hugh Weber's entire tenure – the Sounders seemed to have been putting profits over fan experience. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen the fan base shrink as attention to detail – something that used to be a hallmark of this organization – began to wane. It was not particularly surprising when I found out that more than 30 people in director positions or above had left the organization since Weber's hiring in 2023.
Is it fair to hold Waibel accountable for all that?
I don’t think so, but he’s the one person fans get to vote on and I can’t honestly blame them if they do.
Do you have a sense of how the vote is going?
I don’t have any inside info, but based on what I’m hearing and seeing from fans, I think the best-case scenario for Waibel is that the vote doesn't quite reach to quorum threshold. There’s a lot of anger and frustration out there and it would be surprising to me if Waibel won the 'popular vote.'
What happens if Waibel is voted out?
The Sounders will be searching for a new Chief Soccer Officer. I really don’t know what that search would look like, as Waibel was a virtual rubber-stamp hire after serving as Lagerwey's assistant and having previously done the job at Real Salt Lake. There’s no one in the organization who has previous experience as an MLS GM – aside from Hanauer, who I really don’t think wants the job – and I don’t have a good sense of how aggressive their search will be.
What was the process when Lagerwey was hired?
That process played out entirely behind closed doors as we didn’t even know Hanauer was planning to step down following the Supporters’ Shield-winning season of 2014. But Lagerwey was coming out of contract after a very successful stint at RSL and it seems like he may have been the only person on the Sounders’ interview list. More relevantly, the Sounders were a very different organization in 2014; they had amibitions to be not just one of the biggest clubs in MLS but in the entire Western Hemisphere. While the rhetoric is vaguely similar, their actions and budget no longer suggest those are their aims.
Will this make it harder to recruit a new GM?
I don’t think this vote makes it any easier to recruit, but I think the Sounders’ job is still attractive enough that they should be able to find plenty of qualified candidates.
Does any of this change how you feel about 'Democracy in sports’?
I don’t think so. I truly believe that this is a big part of what makes the Sounders different from not just other MLS teams, but all North American pro sports teams. Yes, it will be messy at times and I think it’s unfortunate that it could cost a good person his job. But democracy is messy sometimes and it doesn't always give everyone what they want. I would take that over allowing incompetence to go unchecked.
