The Sports Curmudgeon®

Yesterday, I got an e-mail message from a young man who has been reading these rants ever since they went on the Internet in 2001. He is a big sports fan and a devoted follower of Major League Soccer. Let me summarize his lengthy note to me:

1. MLS is on the rise. Notwithstanding the failure of the old NASL, MLS is poised to be profitable for the first time in its existence this year.

2. When MLS played in cavernous football venues, the 50,000 empty seats looked awful on TV. Now, more than half the MLS teams play in “soccer-specific venues” that are smaller; and at the moment, many MLS teams average higher attendance than the NBA or NHL teams in the same cities.

3. MLS talent is improving across the board. The signing of “still-in-his-prime” David Beckham opens up many business opportunities for the league.

4. With Americans gaining ownership of Premiere League teams in England, the expansion of soccer into North America will be enhanced.

5. Toronto is an expansion MLS team and is sold out for the entire season.

Other than his point about David Beckham, I tend to agree with him here; MLS is healthier now than it has been in the past. The rise of new “soccer-specific venues” is important for the league not only because it allows them to televise games and not have the viewer distracted by all the empty seats. These “soccer-specific venues” lets MLS clubs develop revenue streams from parking and concessions and memorabilia sales and the like sharing only with the local officials from whom they lease the stadium. And it can allow them to engage in community activities and soccer development activities much more readily because they control the schedule of usage for the facility.

Another significant positive move for MLS is that they now have a much more diverse ownership base. There was a time when six of the teams – half the league at the time – were owned by the same person. The fact that one never heard any cries of collusion or game-fixing or assertions of any other kinds of shenanigans can be attributed simply to the level of disinterest in MLS at the time. Imagine if one person owned half the franchises in the NBA; now imagine the uproar that would happen if three of the teams owned by the same person engaged in one of those multi-player/multi-team swaps. The conspiracy cries would be heard from border to border. MLS avoided that in the past and needs to move to assure that each team has independent ownership in the near future.

MLS is on the rise and needs to maintain an image of integrity while it continues to grow. And the David Beckham signing demonstrates the point here. First of all, there is some doubt about whether or not Beckham is still in his prime. Surely, he can still play at a level where he should be a stand-out in MLS, but that was also true of Pele when he came to the Cosmos in the old NASL. Pele was still better than just about any other player in the NASL but he was a shadow of what Pele used to be. MLS must be careful to market David Beckham for what he is on the field and not what he used to be in 2002.

And that whole $250M contract for David Beckham was handled with a bit of “Enron accounting”. It took a while until it became clear that MLS was not paying him $250M to play soccer although one surely got that kind of impression when the news was rolled out.

One other thing about David Beckham’s arrival in MLS is spotty. Teams have played 45 games as of this morning and Beckham hasn’t played in any of them yet. I don’t recall in the euphoria of the announcement of his arrival in MLS or the rush to sell tickets that anyone said that he’d be showing up late for the season by a lot. MLS has some history of sidling up right next the line of “bait and switch” in the past and needs to avoid any repeat of that in the present. For those who don’t recall, the arrival of Freddy Adu to DC United was a much heralded event and the DC United club put on a full court press to sell tickets to see Freddy (then 14 years old) play against the pros. The only problem was that he sat on the bench for most of every game for whatever reason. Adu is no longer in DC – I believe he was sent to the team in Salt Lake City – and is a non-factor in terms of league marketing strategy now that he is all of 18 years old.

The joining of MLS and ESPN is a major plus for the league. Unlike the NHL whose TV fortunes are tied to a cable network that is as easily found as a leprechaun, MLS will get a ratings push and probably an attendance boost from the promotional efforts of ESPN. You can carp about ESPN practices and pick apart many of their programs, but no one can doubt their doggedness in promoting the stuff on their networks. This is going to help MLS in the short run and presumably in the long run.

Even though I react less than fully positively to the ESPN campaign on behalf of MLS, it is probably effective with a younger demographic toward which it seems to be aimed. The theme is that “You are a fan (of soccer and MLS); you just don’t know it yet.” Well, excuse me, Sparky. I’ve been a sports fan for more than 50 years now and I’m perfectly capable of knowing what I am a fan of and what I am not a fan of. To some extent, that campaign might – I said might – turn off some sports fans whose reaction is that they have not been a fan of soccer for the last umpty-doodle years and resent being told that they don’t know what they like and don’t like. Whatever.

It seems to me that MLS has grown up to a large degree. The marketing of soccer in the US in the past has simply not worked. NASL spent itself into oblivion on big name foreign players who could no longer play all that well. The women’s pro soccer league was founded on the notion that because millions of parents took their little girls to play soccer on weekends, those parents would spend money to take their little girls to watch other parents’ children kick a ball around a field. That was the essence of the business model for that league and – surprise, SURPRISE!! – that league collapsed under its own weight even with Women’s World Cup Champion players on the field. MLS started out promoting soccer on the basis that US men were about to burst onto the international soccer scene and soccer would then necessarily become as big here as it is everywhere else. Nice thought, but not based in reality. Now, MLS seems to be marketing the game and a few of the recognizable players on a major sports outlet and that could just make the league a player in terms of sporting attention in the US.

I doubt I’ll ever see soccer in the US with a following equivalent to that of European nations or fans with similar passions. But my longtime reader is correct; soccer is healthier now in the US than it has ever been.

Finally, here’s a note from Bernie Lincicome in the Rocky Mountain News that seems perfectly appropriate in light of the commentary above:

“Reports that French World Cup star Zinedine Zidane will follow English heartthrob David Beckham to the United States and Major League Soccer are being discounted by soccer authorities.

“ ‘Everyone knows that Zidane does not follow anybody’ an insider said. ‘He goes head first.’ “

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…