Music Exec Joe Smith to Kick Off World Cup : Sports: The industry veteran will plan entertainment for the 1994 soccer championship, being held in the United States for the first time. The event’s appeal here remains a question mark.

Music industry veteran Joe Smith, whose life has involved an endless search for hits, is about to get his kicks in soccer.

Smith’s hiring as executive producer of entertainment activities for World Cup USA 1994--the world’s soccer championship to be held in America for the first time next year--is expected to be announced as early as today.

Smith, who retired March 31 as president and chief executive of the Capitol-EMI record label, will be in charge of opening and closing ceremonies, live concerts tied to World Cup matches and various television specials.

The move is further evidence of the blending of sporting events and music. During January’s Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, for example, more people watched singer Michael Jackson’s halftime concert than the game itself. Organizers hope to tap Smith’s industry contacts to create the kind of event-style television entertainment specials that have been part of the days leading up to the Super Bowl in recent years.

The 65-year-old Smith, a former disc jockey from Boston, rose through the ranks of Warner Bros. music in the 1960s and ‘70s, signing and developing the careers of such artists as the Grateful Dead, James Taylor and Jimi Hendrix. At Capitol, he helped revive the career of Bonnie Raitt.

Smith has been involved in sports before. He served as president and chief executive of Warner/AMEX Cable’s Home Sports Entertainment and was exposed to the soccer business when Warner owned the New York Cosmos soccer team.

Smith said he was recruited by Los Angeles lawyer Alan Rothenberg, an old friend who chairs World Cup USA 1994, shortly after he left Capitol.

Held every four years, the World Cup is followed by more than a billion soccer fans around the world. In the United States, however, professional soccer has never come close to the popularity of baseball, basketball or football, despite a growing following among children.

Event organizers hope that holding the World Cup in the United States will help change that and “create a legacy of soccer in America.” Matches start June 17 in Chicago, with games scheduled across the country until the final match July 17 at the Rose Bowl. Smith plans four major televised concerts, starting with a meeting in Las Vegas to determine opponents. He envisions a concert in Chicago to kick off the games, another in New York and one in Los Angeles, possibly at the Hollywood Bowl, the night before the final game.

Stephen Disson, president of D&F; Consulting in Washington, which advises corporations on sponsoring sporting events, said the plan to create entertainment events sounds like a good idea but faces obstacles because of soccer’s historically limited appeal in the United States.

“The big question mark is how is it going to draw in the television ratings, and that is a big question mark,” Disson said.

Smith believes that top musical artists will jump at the chance for global exposure to as many as 2 billion viewers.

“This is an audience they can’t get any other way. Artists are global-thinking these days,” Smith said, citing such artists as Michael Jackson and Rod Stewart as having the kind of international appeal that would draw a big television audience.

Although the job will become a highly visible one, Smith describes it as part-time work. He says he continues to work as an industry consultant, and has a couple of potential business opportunities that he declined to discuss in detail.