The Super Bowl of Soccer Is Next
With the Super Bowl--and super hype--finally gone from town, it might seem as if the local sports marketing scene would now get super quiet. Guess again.
There’s a sporting event coming to the Rose Bowl in the summer of 1994 that some sponsors say will make the Super Bowl seem like a pick-up game--but which critics contend could be a bust of mythic proportions.
A return engagement of the Olympics? No. Some sort of All-Star game? Nope. The first-ever national collegiate football championship? No way. Actually, the big event is a soccer tournament.
Soccer? Not just any soccer tournament, mind you, but the soccer tournament: the World Cup final. Never heard of it? Don’t tell that to Federation Internationale de Football Assn., the international group with eyes on launching a pro soccer league in the United States.
A dozen sponsors, from Coca-Cola to McDonald’s, are shelling out fat sponsorship fees of up to $20 million, hoping that these games will put soccer on the map in America--and make their products more familiar worldwide. Olympic sponsorships cost twice as much, but the games are a proven draw in the United States.
Sports marketers say this will be soccer’s ultimate public relations tour. Fifty-two matches will be played in nine major American cities--including the final game at the Rose Bowl.
The far-reaching goal is to somehow sell skeptical American sports fans on soccer. While the sport enthralls millions worldwide, in this country it consistently fails at the pro level and is mostly relegated to something suburban kids do on Saturday afternoons. Sponsors are hoping for a “Miracle on Grass”--the remote possibility that the U.S. team will make the finals.
But most marketing experts seriously doubt that the World Cup will emerge as a marketing bonanza.
“I don’t see Americans sitting down and planning big parties around the World Cup finals,” said Alan Friedman, publisher of Team Marketing Report, a Chicago-based sports business publication. “But if this doesn’t sell soccer in the United States, nothing will.”
Some sponsors, such as Mastercard, were essentially “shut out” of the last Olympic Games, said Andrew Woolf, co-owner of World Class Sports, a Los Angeles sports marketing firm. “For them, the World Cup is the next best thing.”
World Cup enthusiasts contend that soccer is the sport of the ‘90s--something they also claimed in the ‘80s and ‘70s, said Steve Disson, president of Washington, D.C.-based D&F; Group, a sports marketing firm. “But I tell my clients that they can get involved in figure skating for a lot less money,” Disson says. “For most sponsors, the World Cup is a real gamble.”
But the chairman of World Cup Soccer ‘94, Alan Rothenberg, doesn’t see it that way at all. In fact, he says he had to turn away a number of big sponsors that wanted to link up with the event. “If we can build the image of the World Cup big enough, people will flock to it.”
How to sell the 3.5 million game tickets--most of which are to games that will not even involve the U.S. team? For starters, the U.S. Soccer Federation is mass-mailing brochures with instructions on how to purchase tickets to nearly 1.5 million of its members. Consumers must buy tickets in blocks so that seats to the less popular matches will also be sold.
Soccer is king just about everywhere except the United States. The World Cup Final in 1990 drew nearly 1.5 billion TV viewers worldwide--more than 10 times the estimated 120 million who watched Sunday’s Super Bowl. And there are projections that up to 2 billion people--nearly a third of the world’s population--will see some part of the ’94 World Cup game.
Sponsors with eyes on global marketing say that alone is a vital marketing tool. But they know that most Americans are unfamiliar with the sport--and even less familiar with its stars.
So Mastercard turned to the most recognizable soccer star: Pele. The 52-year-old retired Brazilian soccer legend is the focus of Mastercard’s World Cup campaign. And he has begun to make appearances for the company--including a recent visit to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.
“There are no well-known American soccer players--and that was clearly a handicap for us,” said Alexander McKeveny, vice president of global promotions for Mastercard. “But Pele is synonymous with World Cup soccer. It’s like how Muhammad Ali is regarded by boxing fans.”
McDonald’s will mix grass-roots promotions, “McKicks” soccer clinics and “McSoccer Fests,” with a global campaign. “Americans love big events,” said Jackie Woodward, sports marketing manager at McDonald’s. “And kids will bug their parents to go to the games.”
Coca-Cola, which has linked itself with World Cup events since 1978 (it didn’t advertise on Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast) says the decision was simple. “From a global perspective,” said Gary P. Hite, manager of international sports marketing at Coca-Cola, “the Super Bowl is minuscule compared to the World Cup.”
How many Americans will watch the World Cup? When TNT aired the 1990 World Cup domestically, games were seen by an average of just 571,000 households. In 1994, ABC will air 11 key games and ESPN will air the other 41. ABC expects more than 1 million households per game--about a third the number that watch a typical National Basketball Assn. game.
If the U.S. team advances beyond the first round or two, “the country will be turned on its ear,” said David Downs, vice president of programming for ABC Sports.
But soccer presents an unusual problem for ABC because the sport has continuous action for two 45-minute halves.
ABC will not leave the action for commercial breaks but will instead air batches of spots before the game, at half-time and immediately after the game.
ABC will also display a clock at the bottom of the screen. The clock serves two purposes--perhaps the least important of which is to show how much time is left in the game. The clock will continuously flash the names of tournament sponsors who--with such limited commercial time--have few other ways to get their names in front of viewers.
Briefly . . .
After an extensive review, General Motors Corp. said its $140-million Oldsmobile ad business will remain at the Chicago agency Leo Burnett, which has handled the account for 25 years. . . . DDB Needham Los Angeles has been selected by Los Angeles-based Gramercy Pictures, a new motion picture distribution company, to handle its $20-million media buying account. . . . The Santa Monica agency Suissa Miller has picked up the $2-million account for Kreiss Collection, a Los Angeles-based upscale furniture chain. . . . Los Angeles-based Speer, Young & Hollander has won the $2-million ad business for IBM’s desktop software company, CADAM. . . . The Los Angeles agency Schroffel & Associates has won the $500,000 ad account for Riverside’s Mission Inn. . . . The troubled Clio Awards are again changing hands--this time to be purchased for an undisclosed sum by James Smyth, partner of the Chicago-based production company Genesis Creative Group, from Ruth Ratney, publisher of Screen magazine. . . . Major League Baseball has held talks with Beverly Hills-based Creative Artists Agency about how the league can improve its image. . . . Although NBC’s Super Bowl viewership declined in the second half of Sunday’s blowout, a senior executive at the network says it has no plans to compensate advertisers whose spots were seen by far fewer than the estimated 120 million who watched the kickoff.
