A Gabby Garber States His Case
With Doug Logan having packed his mementos and his memories on Thursday, Don Garber began moving into his new quarters on New York’s East 42nd Street on Friday.
Garber does not officially take over from Logan as Major League Soccer’s commissioner until Sept. 1, but he already is getting a pretty good idea of the task ahead of him.
In a wide-ranging, almost two-hour conference call with soccer reporters a few days ago, the 41-year-old former NFL executive touched on virtually all the issues that are troubling the league.
Here is where Garber sees MLS today, and where he wants to take it.
* On the stability and viability of the league:
“I haven’t had a sense of instability in my conversations with the owners. The sense that I did have was [that] they are concerned about the long-term plan that was in place and ultimately whether or not Doug was in a position to move away from what was a trend of declining attendance and declining television ratings.
“I don’t feel instability here in the office. Having been around owners my whole career, I didn’t get a sense that these were guys who were panicked about where the league is now.”
* On restoring fan confidence:
“I think at the end of the day, a lot of what will ensure a sense of stability and confidence are the first key decisions that I make. Many of those decisions are facing me in the next couple of months.”
* On the lack of Latinos in leadership positions:
“Having a Spanish speaker at a high level at Major League Soccer is a major priority and it’s something that we’re going to figure out a way to do. If it’s not the first hire, it’s a major hire that needs to be acted on very quickly. If we can have a person who is respected by the soccer community, respected by the Latino soccer community, I think we’ll be able to address the challenges that I have in not being able to speak Spanish.”
* On the future of the shootout tiebreaker:
“It’s one of the main issues that I need to address. . . . There is clearly a fairly even split among the fans who have been researched. In my first five minutes at [a] D.C. United [game] last weekend, I had about 10 people beg me to ban the shootout. But at the same time, when the game ended in a tie, lots of people were sitting on the edge of their seats and there was lots of cheering for the shootout that took place.
“So it’s clearly a major issue. It’s one that we’ve got to take a bold stand on. I obviously can’t take that position yet until I’ve spent more time with the competition committee.”
* On expansion:
“Right now, our plans are still to go forward with expansion in 2001. I’ve yet to meet with the specific investor groups that are interested. . . . We need to have a broader landscape in terms of what cities are in our league.”
* On the faltering New York/New Jersey MetroStars:
“We obviously are very concerned about not being successful in New York. It’s a major concern and a priority for us to figure out what can be done. . . . Nothing would be more important to us on a club level at this point than having a New York franchise that is winning some games and has a better level of appeal. . . .
“The problems are more than just short-term. People have lost confidence in the team. . . . The MetroStars have not inculcated the sports landscape in New York to the extent that they need to do before the team has a broader level of acceptance. . . .
“I tried to sell [NFL] football in London, and there is no city that is more difficult, more crowded and more complicated to market an entertainment product in than London. New York City is probably no easier.”
* On the single-entity approach, with the league owning all player contracts and controlling trades:
“The single-entity structure is the core to the success and the future success of this league. It’s something that we will continue to build upon. . . . It is the future of where we in the sports industry think sports leagues are going.”
* On finding owners for the Dallas and Tampa teams, currently league operated:
“We have our plates full with broad national strategic challenges that we need to focus in on to build for the long term. Focusing in on managing teams is not something that we were originally structured to do. So getting local people in place who understand the local nuances and the local market is an important thing for us. . . . It’s on the list of the top five things that we need to do.”
* On marketing initiatives:
“MLS has as good a blue-chip lineup of sponsors as exists in any sport. It would be one that any of the leagues would be proud of. I think it’s amazing that we’ve been able to achieve these sponsorships at this early stage in our life span, with [television] ratings that are difficult to guarantee and with attendance that hovers between 10,000 and 20,000.
“We will have a marketing plan that we’ll share with the media and the world in the near future. But clearly, to me, players have not been exposed to the level they need to be in order for fans to connect with them.
“The average kid out there, outside of the core soccer fan, isn’t as familiar with the faces, the people, the personalities that exist in this league. I think that there’s a very, very marketable group of players across all ethnic groups that we need to spend time focusing in on.
“It’s a model that has worked in other sports. It’s a model that the NFL never was able to capitalize on because it is an enormously team-focused sport. Here we have the benefit of [individual] personalities . . . that we could spend some time getting broader exposure for.”
* On the media:
“I come from a league that is based on an interdependence with the media. The success of the NFL is entirely related to the support that that league gets daily in the newspapers and daily on the evening news. My goal is to figure out ways to try to get more coverage for soccer in the United States. We have a role to play in that [but] I don’t have any quick answers.”
* On television news coverage:
“The first step is sitting down with [ESPN, the league’s main broadcast partner] and getting a sense of why--outside of this Chinese Wall, so to speak, that goes up between the business folks and the editorial folks--as to why the coverage isn’t as appropriate as it needs to be.
“We’ve had discussions on what kind of things we can do to support ESPN and make it easier for them to promote and cover the day-to-day happenings in the league more regularly than they do. . . . Unless we can improve the kind of coverage we get from our broadcast carrier, we’ve got some real challenges ahead. So we’ve got to figure out a solution to that.”
* On television game coverage:
“Destination viewing, I think, is a key to sports broadcast success. ‘Monday Night Football’ is what it is because it’s a place that people plan their days and even weeks around. The challenge that we have is that those windows are not available to us at times where we can sell the greatest number of tickets. . . . It’s a careful balancing act. You’ve got to make decisions that will help the broadcaster promote the game to the viewer but at the same time are not impacting ticket sales negatively.”
* On his priorities:
“They might change three weeks from now or maybe three months from now, but among those top priorities--and not necessarily in this order--are:
* “The sale of [the two league-operated] franchises and expansion.
* “Getting a better handle on what our broadcast future is and where we’re going with ESPN, ABC and Univision, and ultimately what kinds of things we need to do to get them to step up to the plate and promote our sport [beyond] the actual [game] broadcasts more than they are now.
* “ To spend as much time, as difficult as it might be for me, with the media and get a sense of what the things are that have been troubling you and what kind of things we as a league need to do to have a symbiotic relationship with the media, which I think exists among most of the other major sports. We need to have that same symbiotic connection in order to be successful.
* “Fourth is to sit down with our other strategic partners, our sponsors, our merchandising partners, the people who have been behind this league from the beginning, and to ultimately find out whether or not we’re delivering to them and what kinds of things we need to do to get them to commit to us.
* “Fifth--and you guys might laugh at this--is to spend as much time as I can getting as broad an understanding as I can of the soccer world so that at some point I can deliver on my vow and be a good leader for this sport.”
