David Beckham - Mission Possible?
A Note from the States
Anna has asked me to send occasional observations, from my stateside vantage point, of David Beckham’s American “soccer” mission.
At first I had mixed feelings about Beckham’s decision to come to the U.S. so soon. In some ways he was playing the best football of his career last season and it would have been nice to watch that continue in an equally challenging environment. But, for unfortunate reasons commented upon at length, that wasn’t to be either in Madrid or for England. He made a choice that certainly includes goals he has spoken of for some time, and the football may be more fulfilling for all of us than critics predict. Either way, I wish him and his family the happiness he has given others, and hope he is successful in his new challenge.
Now I’ve moved on to developing my own personal plan for the popularization of soccer in the States—just in case I’m asked! To begin with, I wonder if the MLS is over-selling the impact David Beckham alone will have on the sport here when, in fact, it will be up to MLS and every business invested in the success of U.S. soccer to move swiftly and aggressively to make this moment in the spotlight pay off. I worry that Beckham will again be made a scapegoat if they fail to do so.
Sports in America are sold to us, 24 hours a day. Huge profits are not made at the gate, but through broadcasting, and with hundreds of TV/cable channels competing for attention, the financial investment and effort to make us watch anything in particular is tremendous. David Beckham’s compensation package is a drop in the bucket compared to what sponsors pay for significantly less visibility than David Beckham delivers. More important to its success than what happens on the pitch will be MLS’s ability to compete on the field of media marketing.
Our most popular sports—baseball, football and basketball—each have numerous networks solely devoted to round the clock, expensive, well produced programming during and between games, and even between seasons. Additional networks provide similarly sparkling coverage of sports in general. When you tune into the Superbowlshow for David Beckham’s interview (a brilliant sign that I am not the only one planning) you will witness the world’s biggest, most extravagant annual advertising event, and it sells American football.
Why can’t Americans be made to watch soccer? Single digit numbers on the scoreboard, lack of appreciation for the beauty of play itself, ignorance of the game…I don’t believe any of it. In all sports, if you are not born a fan, you have to learn to be one. You fall in love with baseball once you’ve been to a game and experienced the infectious joy of a ballpark full of fans, summer sunshine, and someone next to you explaining the critical minutiae. Basketball, in many ways the team sport closest to soccer, is beautiful to watch even for the uninitiated—but you can still only hang on for so long without a tutorial. I’m not the person to ask how one falls in love with American football as I have tried, just to be sociable, and failed too often. But even then the excitement during championship season can be infectious if you’re surrounded.
The joy of being a soccer fan hasn’t been taught in this country yet, and it’s going to be a trick to do it now, especially if the lesson used is a fledging league still on shaky legs. Those of us who have already learned to love the game, did so watching the top matches that are made available on U.S. television. We have chosen our clubs and found media with which to follow their leagues and between-match doings. We are used to the excitement of stadiums full of singing supporters, elite players, and challenging rivalries. Add us to those who arrived here from around the football loving world. It is going to be tough to get any of us to watch MLS matches until they get better and the grounds are more fun. And it is going to be tougher to attract newcomers who don’t yet know what they have to look forward to.
This is where the magic of marketing must come in. I don’t know much about MLS players except that most are young and could make more money waiting tables, so I can guarantee that the one thing they will have in common with David Beckham is a love of the game and a lot of fun playing it. I don’t doubt the matches will get more exciting, and once smaller dedicated stadiums are built that they can be filled with enthusiastic fans. However, ESPN is to begin broadcasting MLS games this season, drawing an unexpectedly large audience through the spotlight on David Beckham’s arrival. While the league is still developing, investors have to make sure production of its broadcasts are inspiring, announcers smart, pre-game shows thrilling. Americans are going to have to be sold on staying tuned.
We were all nervous when Beckham chose Simon Fuller and 19 Entertainment after leaving SFX Management. Over the last several months I even wondered if some kind of non-sports type of negotiating tactics were keeping him on the bench with an unsigned contract. None of that turned out to be true, and Simon Fuller, the genius of pop-culture marketing, could be just what the MLS needs to help make soccer be taken seriously in the U.S. -- Diane