Leagues Must Get Acts Together
Is there room for two professional soccer leagues in the U.S.?
Major League Soccer and the Women’s United Soccer Assn. think so, but the proof will come only if MLS and WUSA cooperate.
So far, tangible signs of such cooperation have been few and far between, but Saturday the picture changes.
That’s when three-time MLS champion D.C. United plays host to the San Jose Earthquakes at RFK Stadium in Washington, preceded by the Washington Freedom against the Boston Breakers.
For the first time, MLS and WUSA will stage a doubleheader. Marco Etcheverry and Ronald Cerritos will share the field with Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, although not at the same time, obviously.
A gimmick?
Not at all. The two leagues each believe firmly in their own future but also realize that only if the sport as a whole flourishes will they succeed.
“We really don’t see them [WUSA] as competition,” said Ivan Gazidis, deputy commissioner of MLS. “What we see is growing the soccer pie so that we can all share in it.
“I think we have slightly different target audiences, and for the most part we’re in different locations. In those places where we are in the same location [Boston, New York, San Jose, Washington], we’re both promoting soccer and I think we’re going to see advantages come out of that rather than disadvantages.”
MLS did as much as it could to help the eight-team WUSA get off the ground last month--everything from allowing the women’s league to model its player contracts and operational manuals on MLS blueprints to agreeing to doubleheaders such as Saturday’s.
“I think we’ve helped in many different areas,” Gazidis said. “Our chief operating officer [Mark Abbott] actually was given a leave of absence to develop the WUSA business plan. So there could not have been a closer collaboration on our part.
“The agreement itself has many different aspects from joint marketing--WUSA billboards at MLS games and those types of things--through to the situation in San Jose [where WUSA’s CyberRays share Spartan Stadium with the Earthquakes even though MLS holds a lease on the stadium].”
Originally, there was talk of WUSA investors owning teams in MLS down the road and vice versa, but that has subsided while WUSA finds its feet.
The doubleheader at RFK is designed to give the fledgling women’s league another boost, and is one of several planned this season in MLS cities.
The fan base of the two leagues might be viewed as radically different, but Kevin Payne, president of D.C. United, disputes that.
“We don’t have totally different [fan] demographics,” Payne said. “It’s true that we have two components that they do not have, which is hard-core young adult fans and Latino fans.
“But the majority of our fans are still suburban families, as are theirs, so there’s not that much difference.”
The Freedom drew 34,148 fans to RFK for the WUSA inaugural game on April 14, but it is likely that Saturday’s attendance will be mostly MLS fans rather than WUSA supporters.
“This [D.C. United-Earthquakes] game had commitments for upward of 20,000 tickets before we decided to do it as a doubleheader [with WUSA],” Payne said. “And it’s one of the reasons why we decided to do it as a doubleheader--to help the Freedom and assist them in their second home game [by exposing WUSA to United fans].
“We’re very happy with the way it’s worked out.”
Logistics aside--D.C. United season ticket holders get priority in terms of seating--it will be interesting to see how Saturday’s doubleheader pans out.
Will WUSA fans stay for the MLS game?
Will MLS fans arrive early for the WUSA game?
How many D.C.-area supporters are rabid enough to arrive for a 4:30 p.m. game and stay at RFK until 9:30 or thereabouts?
How will D.C. United’s “Barra Brava,” the hard-core knot of mostly Latino supporters, react to the women’s game, assuming they show up in time to see it?
By Thursday, about 30,000 tickets had been sold and Payne said he expected the crowd to be several thousand higher.
What is in it for D.C. United?
“I don’t know, necessarily,” Payne admitted. “We may have some idea after the game. But there’s a very strong commitment in our league, and certainly an enormously strong commitment here, to do everything we can to help this sport succeed at every level.
“We believe that anything that moves the sport forward helps us.”
