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Merritt Paulson talks to The Athletic about the unveiling of the 'new' Providence Park as a statement that the Timbers are prepared to keep up

“For me it was looking out into the future, where I felt the league was going and what I felt our club needed to remain viable.

“We never had an unsold seat in the prior configuration of the stadium, but we also made the determination—it doesn’t get talked about a lot—to allocate 6,000 seats to supporters and general admission seats at an artificially deflated price, which really hurt our revenue. And I didn’t want to take that away. … Just trying to ratchet up pricing on existing seats didn’t seem to me to be a real credible and good way about going and trying to make our team more financially viable and (to propel us) into a future that involves more and more spending on talent, which we need to do as a league.