Arsenal visit hints at closer ties between soccer club and NFL’s Rams
The newly minted Los Angeles Rams and London’s Arsenal soccer club have a lot in common.
Both are iconic franchises, both play a sport their fans call football and neither has won a title in a long time. They even share an owner in Stan Kroenke, the reclusive real estate developer whose family also owns teams in the NHL, NBA and Major League Soccer.
So with Arsenal in Southern California to play Mexico’s Chivas of Guadalajara on Sunday at the StubHub Center (FS1, Univision Deportes, 6 p.m.) and the Rams scheduled to play an October game in London, you’d think the two would be finding ways to work together. Or at least sharing kicking tips since the Rams had the lowest field-goal percentage in the NFL last season.
But that’s not happening. At least not yet.
“We are still identifying what the synergies are between Arsenal and the Rams,” said Artis Twyman, the Rams’ senior director of communications.
Arsenal, Twyman points out, is a publicly traded company. But that would appear to be little more than a technical obstacle to a relationship since Kroenke is the soccer team’s largest stakeholder. Plus it’s not exactly a novel approach.
In recent years numerous franchises united by an owner but separated by an ocean have begun forging tighter ties. Since 2012 John Henry, who owns the Red Sox, has played host to a pair of Fenway Park friendlies involving English soccer club Liverpool, which he also owns. Both times the opponent was Italian club AS Roma, which is owned by Boston hedge-fund manager James Pallotta, a minority stakeholder in the NBA’s Boston Celtics.
And New York City FC, managed by the same group that runs EPL power Manchester City, got a coach and a starting midfielder from its English sister club.
Social media and satellite TV have made the world a smaller place in virtually every aspect of life, from banking and business to culture and cuisine. And that too has made cooperation and synergy necessary.
Sports is no different, with top European soccer clubs saying preseason tours of the U.S. or Asia are now mandatory to grow their fan base.
“When you are in the territory you gain more and more fans. It’s a great way to increase the awareness of the club,” said Frédéric Longuépée, deputy general manager of French club Paris Saint-Germain, which played a friendly Saturday at the StubHub Center.
Longuépée said PSG saw its fan base on social media jump from half a million to more than 30 million, 90% of who live outside France, in the last four years.
“You have to travel,” he said. “The NBA does it. The NFL does it now. So we’re not different from others.”
The NBA, NFL and major league baseball have been doing it for years, in fact, combining to play 47 games in five countries outside the U.S. and Canada since 2000.
And if there’s already an existing relationship between leagues or teams, that makes things both easier and potentially more profitable. Does that mean Arsenal, whose current U.S. visit is just its second since 1989, will become a frequent summer visitor when Kroenke and the Rams open their $2.6-billion Inglewood home in three years?
Neither the Rams nor Arsenal would say. But such an arrangement would seem to benefit both sides, giving Arsenal a place to play while allowing the Rams to show off their stadium to the world. Plus all the proceeds would go to Kroenke.
Oh and if Arsenal could leave behind a place-kicker, so much the better.
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
