Update on Our Future: We’re Going Independent. We’re Betting on Ourselves and YOU Rapids Community

Mar 30, 2023 - 2:00 PM

Hello Rapids Community. As of April 1, Vox and SB Nation will be cease having Burgundy Wave under their operation. We will be going independent. Burgundy Wave ain’t dead yet. We’re betting on ourselves, independent coverage of the club, and you, member of the Rapids Community.

Vox will be passing onto us the rights to the website URL and IP. Our website will remain https://www.burgundywave.com. Our social media accounts will remain the same existing accounts (pretty sure Elon won’t take away our blue check?). The Burgundy Wave logo will remain mostly the same (he says while still needing to remove the text at the top of it in the Twitter profile pic). If you’re subscribed to us on Apple News, Vox has told us nothing will change. We’re hoping the same for Google News, but TBD.

We will have the ability to transfer over the archives of what’s published from the site’s time at SB Nation. The header images, comments, and a few other things from those articles won’t be transferred over. There’s copyright and privacy concerns there on Vox’s end.

Populating the new version of Burgundy Wave with the full archives going back to 2010 will not be our top priority. But it’s something we will complete in time. We’ll do our best to make links similar and easy to find.

We’re experienced and good at covering soccer. Website development and IT, not so much. The website won’t look great at launch. It will get better with time. There will be issues. We’ll work on those in time. We’re aware many of you would like the comment system to be different and easier than it was on SB Nation. Another long term goal of ours is to make that happen. Thank you for your patience in advance regarding all of these things.

Lastly, we can’t do this alone. At SB Nation, we had a lot of behind the scenes stuff taken care of. Whether we had a lot of traffic on the site or a little, we got paid the same amount each month.

Now that we’re independent, there’s no guarantee compensation wise. John Babiak and Joseph Samelson work their butts off covering this team. John’s cameras and wardrobe to adjust to pitch level weather taking photos cost money. I’d like to be able to compensate my staff (present and future) for their efforts.

With no built-in support system, we have to figure a lot of stuff (like website design) out on our own. Or we have to find people who are skilled in certain areas and pay them to do stuff for us. Time and money.

We’ve set up our own Patreon page. We’re starting off with one tier of $5/month, with plans to add more tiers. There’s an option to give more or less than the $5 if that suits you. We’re open to ideas for perks you’d want us to give Patrons.

Burgundy Wave is an institution in the Rapids Community. We take great responsibility in not letting it die simply cause Vox doesn’t want it anymore. If you care about it, if it has meant something to you over your time as a Rapids fan, if you want to become the best version of itself, please consider becoming a Patron.

Though the seas are dark and stormy, tomorrow dawn will break bright. Keep Fighting.