Wow. I am not assuming anything until after Tuesday night, but this would be a juicy situation if the Stars manage to advance.

To summarize, there seem to be four potential scenarios for the quarterfinal hosting situation.

Stars lose to San Jose Earthquakes

Scenario 1: Stars do not advance
San Jose hosts the winner of Seattle vs Cal FC. Bummer.

Stars beat San Jose Earthquakes

Stars have 3 weeks and 2 home games to promote a quarterfinal US Open Cup home match, if they choose to host. There is no travel scheduled for 16 days before the match.

Scenario 2: Stars host Seattle
Stars pay US Soccer $25,000 (minimum fee) to host.

The Stars have 3 weeks to promote a match against an MLS team that is not only the defending US Open Cup champions, but a good example of how an ownership group associated with an NFL team can succeed in MLS. MLS is back in full swing, starters should be back with the team, but may not travel due to busy league schedule.

If the gate is more than $100,000.00, stars must also pay US Soccer 15% of proceeds over $100,000.00 (for example, $1500.00 for every $10,000.00 of revenue over $100.000.00).

NOTE: The trigger for extra payment to US Soccer pretty much requires a sellout of the NSC and perhaps higher ticket prices (8500 tickets x $12.00 average price = $102,000.00). This seems possible and would be great, but is perhaps not probable that the trigger will kick in. Whether the extra cost kicks in or not, I would hope the Stars front office could at least break even on a sellout, but perhaps there are extra costs involved that I'm not accounting for, such as additional staff or travel costs for the visiting team?

Scenario 3: Stars host Cal FC
Stars pay US Soccer $25,000 (minimum fee) to host.

The Stars have 3 weeks to promote an incredible story, soccer blogs and podcasts go crazy, Eric Wynalda hype machine drives everyone into a frenzy. Fox Soccer may even broadcast the game (as they are doing with the Seattle vs Cal FC match) due to Wynalda's involvement.

Attendance will probably not even be close to a sellout. This one has good potential to lose money.

Scenario 4: Stars sell game to Seattle
This would presumably be an even bigger payday for the Stars than the Real Salt Lake match due to it being a later round and Seattle having 3 weeks to promote. Could Seattle pull 20,000 - 30,000 fans for this game? Last year they drew 35,615 for the final. A motivating factor for Seattle to pay big bucks might be that they will be away to Portland 2 days before (June 26) and New England 4 days after (June 30).

@Future Unwritten
I would edit a few things on the possibilities. First, I doubt that tix for a Seattle game would be $12. I imagine the team would drop the price and use this as a huge PR event and hope to break even (Thanks to Real Salt Lake for subsidizing it!).
Second, I don't think the Stars would sell the game to Seattle for a few reasons. Seattle is not RSL. No one outside of MLS fans knows who RSL are, but people have heard of Seattle (a bit more; they're no Galaxy, but they're on Sportcenter). Plus there's 19 days. I think the Stars can do 19 days; they couldn't do 1 week. Even if they were hosting San Jose in 19 days, they could get people out to make it worthwhile.
I also think the Djorn and co are fully aware of the same things being said here: this is a chance to see it not as a money maker (sell tix), it's a chance to get big PR (which can't be bought in this town). People chastised them for selling the RSL game because they lost the PR chance, but 7 days v. 19 days is a HUGE difference.
That said, I am waiting until we get definitive word from Djorn that they will not sell the rights before I start pushing the game.

Putting the cart solidly in front of the horse, it would be unreal to have Seattle at home. Come on you Stars!

@MNNiceFC

Thanks for the notes. I agree with what you're saying, there is a huge difference between having 3 weeks and 1 week to promote the match. I'm not sure what could be done by the Stars organization in that time period, but I agree that the longer timeline would make the situation much different.

By the way, I'm not sure where I came up with 19 days, but I was wrong about that number and the travel schedule. I've updated the previous post to reflect more accurate timelines.

In regards to the average ticket price, I have no prediction. I think we've seen pricing adjusted both ways. I just used an example average ticket price ($12.00) that worked out pretty nicely with the 8,500 number that has been discussed with NSC capacity. At that example average ticket price, the revenues work out to almost exactly $100,000.00. My point was more that the incremental payment to US Soccer on revenues over $100,000.00 may not be that big of a deal. Even if the match was a sellout at $12.00 average ticket price, revenue would only just barely pass the threshold and the incremental payment would be fairly insignificant.

The bottom line for me would be that if you somehow manage to bring in over $100,000.00 in revenue, don't worry about the incremental payment to US Soccer.

Now, we have to get past San Jose before any of these scenarios become anything more than idle speculation.

Speaking of getting past San Jose, does anyone know if Amani is fit to play after the injury at RSL?

Dealing with the Sounders and making them completely high-ball the offer (easily could be $150-200,000) will be a wonderful problem to have...but first we need to go and take care of business in San Jose!!!

Say Stars take down San Jose and Cal FC takes down Sounders, are we forced to host knowing its going to lose the organization money? What happens when neither team can afford to/refuse to pay hosting rights? Is there a neutral site clause? While yes, the whole story of Cal FC is a great underdog story, it's not going to fill the Nessie. I for one don't want to lose another home game, and an opportunity for the Stars to play in front of a home crowd in the USOC, I also don't want to see the organization lose $15k on a game that's not going to draw a crowd. ($15k is strictly a fictional number i made up in my head to semi prove a point)

REGARDLESS of all these hypothetical situations which are fun to debate and pick apart, I'm beyond excited to see the Stars take on San Jose and I wish I could join you guys at the watch party. Won't be back to a game until the 16th so I will see you all then! GO STARS!!

I honestly can't believe that the Sounders won't take Cal FC seriously. They saw the anger that portland fans vented after their embarrassing loss and I think Seattle will win that game comfortably.

I think we need to focus on San Jose - it makes me really nervous when people start talking the next round before this round has been played.

Agreed. First things first.