Soccer Is Kicking Into L.A.’s Future
Good things doubtless will come to Los Angeles now that construction is underway on a big soccer complex in Carson. But some bad could also come of it--like a powerful monopoly controlling how much international soccer local fans can see, or, God forbid, even the return of the National Football League.
Ground was broken last week on a $120-million sports facility on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills, to be built by Anschutz Entertainment Group, which also owns Staples Center, the successful downtown L.A. arena. Billionaire Philip Anschutz, who controls the company, has other holdings that include a hockey team that plays at Staples Center and five Major League Soccer teams, including the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The Galaxy is the centerpiece of Anschutz’s plans for his new soccer facility. The team will move from the Rose Bowl to a 27,000-seat stadium in Carson to be built by 2003. The Galaxy’s new home is modeled on soccer stadiums in Europe; AEG bills it as the first “world-class” soccer stadium in the U.S.
Hyperbole aside, there is no denying the benefits of AEG’s new complex. It will be a training site for both the men’s and women’s U.S. national soccer teams and will house a tennis stadium and a Olympic velodrome for cycling. All in all, an ideal project for Southern California, where year-round good weather makes the sports that people play as popular as the sports that people sit and watch.
Which brings me to the NFL. Local folks just shrugged when our two former NFL teams left town in 1995. There has never been a hue and cry to bring the NFL back. The NFL needs L.A. more than we need the NFL, and everybody knows it. So pro football has been reduced to trying to sneak in our backdoor. Or, more precisely, into using AEG’s new soccer facility to reestablish a beachhead in L.A.
AEG spokesmen say that “a few” NFL teams have expressed an interest in using the Carson site as a summer training camp. The most likely candidate is the San Diego Chargers, whose owners will use the implied threat of moving back to L.A. as leverage to prod San Diego to build the team a new stadium at public expense. We Angelenos must urge our good neighbors to the south to have none of this cynical game.
But it will be difficult to keep the Chargers away. Like any landlord, Anschutz can rent to whatever tenant he wants. He is also rumored to be interested in buying a minority interest in an NFL franchise, moving it to L.A. and building it a football stadium near Staples Center--at his own expense.
If Anschutz can pull off that trifecta, more power to him. But let’s make sure he does it on his dime and not ours--just as city officials did (under pressure from local taxpayers) when Anschutz built Staples Center.
There is leverage that L.A. officials can use to keep Anschutz’s latest megaproject from having negative side effects. It takes a form the NFL still must ruefully recall--a lawsuit by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission.
Last November, the commission filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles accusing Major League Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Federation, which oversees soccer in this country, of restraint of trade. The commission alleges that the two U.S. soccer organizations have interfered with its efforts to stage soccer matches in the Coliseum featuring international teams.
Under international soccer protocol--and it is just protocol, not law--the U.S. Soccer Federation can veto the appearance of foreign teams on U.S. soil. For the Coliseum Commission, the last straw came when it was forced to cancel a match between Mexico’s national team and a Spanish team because U.S. Soccer exercised its veto power, claiming the international match might keep soccer fans from attending a Galaxy game a few days later.
What a lame excuse. And don’t be surprised if a federal jury reaches the same conclusion when the lawsuit comes to trial. Don’t forget that the Coliseum Commission won a big antitrust suit against the NFL on similar grounds in 1982.
But the NFL is history. The Coliseum’s future is soccer. Not the so-so brand of soccer Anschutz is selling through Major League Soccer. But international matches like the one held at the Coliseum two years ago between Mexico and Argentina, which drew 90,000 fans. Or maybe even putting a Mexican League soccer team in the Coliseum.
Before that can happen, the Coliseum Commission must see its latest lawsuit through to the bitter end. Anschutz and the powers that be in U.S. soccer may not like having their cozy empire challenged. But what makes the free enterprise system work is competition--both on and off the field.
