Alive and Kicking
In seasons past, the main question surrounding Major League Soccer has been: Will the league survive? That question no longer is being asked.
Now, on the eve of its eighth season, the question has become: When will MLS prosper?
According to Commissioner Don Garber, this could be the year the sea of red ink parts, if only slightly, and the way to the future becomes clear.
One reason for the optimism emanating from MLS headquarters in New York is new stadiums. They are, quite literally, a concrete sign that the league is here for the long haul. Another reason is expansion, with the announcement of two additional teams only months away. A third reason is increased television exposure.
Add the fact that attendance has risen for two seasons in a row to a league-wide average of 15,821 a game in 2002, that new sponsors have been signed and that losses, while still substantial, have declined, and it’s easy to see why Garber sports a lighter step and a jauntier air these days.
MLS is not out of the woods, but the trees are thinning.
First and foremost, though, there is the Galaxy’s new home in Carson. When it opens June 7, the Home Depot Center is supposed to be a beacon that will show potential MLS investors the light.
Yes, soccer can be a money-making venture, is the message MLS wants Phil Anschutz’s $120-million investment to broadcast.
Garber gets weak-kneed just talking about it.
“It will be a facility that will make our country proud,” he said earlier this week. “It will make our league proud and it will make all those people who care and love the game proud and give them a little bit of a flutter in their heart as they walk through what we’re convinced will be a cathedral for the sport.”
Emotional words, but then Garber has enjoyed a good week. With the Galaxy’s stadium only two months from completion, work will soon begin on another.
Last Friday, Collin County (Texas) commissioners voted unanimously in favor of helping build a 93-acre, $65-million soccer complex in the Dallas suburb of Frisco that would include a 20,000-seat stadium and 17 surrounding fields for youth and amateur play.
On Tuesday night, the Frisco City Council gave its endorsement to the project, and on Wednesday night the Frisco Independent School District also bestowed its blessing.
As a result, the Dallas Burn, like the Galaxy and the Columbus Crew before it, soon will have its own new home.
Garber calls the complex “a great model for us as we continue to develop soccer-specific stadiums throughout the country.”
Significantly, the project has come about not as the result of private investment but through public funding. The Hunt Sports Group is kicking in $10 million of the $65 million, but the rest comes from the city, county and school district.
“It will really be a historic moment for our sport,” Garber said before the votes were taken, “where for the first time the public, as opposed to investors, are seeing the value of putting their money and support behind a soccer complex. That’s something that really has us very excited [because of] what that could provide us with in terms of a case study in cities across the country.”
Other stadium projects are making headway in Harrison, N.J., for the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, who could put a shovel in the dirt as early as 2004, and, to a lesser degree, in Washington for D.C. United and in Kansas/Missouri for the Kansas City Wizards.
The Colorado Rapids and New England Revolution last year moved into new NFL stadiums, Invesco Field and CMGI Field, respectively, and the Chicago Fire later this season will move back into renovated Soldier Field, leaving only the San Jose Earthquakes in an older, but nonetheless perfectly suitable facility.
As for expansion, cities once gun-shy are lining up to explore the possibility of acquiring MLS teams. The current list includes Cleveland, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Rochester, N.Y.; Seattle, Tulsa, and, intriguingly, Toronto.
The league will add two teams in 2005 and Houston and Philadelphia are seen as the likely front-runners. The ultimate goal is for MLS to double in size.
“We need to have popular, financially viable teams and at some point we need to be a 20-team league,” Garber said.
“It’s a major priority not just to get new investors to come into expansion markets, but it’s a high priority to get new investors to come in and either partner with or purchase some of the teams that our current investors have.”
The key pillars of MLS are the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which runs six of the teams; the Hunt Sports Group, which runs Columbus, Kansas City and Dallas, and the Kraft family, which operates the New England Revolution.
Expansion means a “larger national footprint,” to use MLS-speak, and would boost network television interest considerably, even if some of the teams were in smaller markets.
But TV interest already is edging upward. On Tuesday, MLS signed a four-year agreement that adds weekly game coverage and other programming on Fox Sports World and Fox Sports en Espanol to existing coverage on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.
On Thursday, MLS announced that 28 of its games also will be carried on HDNet, the national high-definition television network founded by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Former U.S. World Cup star Marcelo Balboa will be the color analyst for the broadcasts, just as former World Cup star Eric Wynalda will be the on-field analyst for ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.
“This will allow MLS to have more than 90 games on national television, which is triple the amount of nationally televised games we had even a year ago,” Garber said.
There was even a hint Thursday that Cuban might eventually become an MLS investor.
“I’m real supportive of the Dallas Burn and know everything that’s going on with the team,” Cuban said. “But right now one team [the NBA’s Mavericks] is enough. I’ll do my part by helping both HDNet and the sport with some high definition broadcasts and then we’ll see what happens from there.”
As soccer’s popularity rises in the U.S. -- witness the buzz caused by American success in last year’s World Cup -- MLS is positioning itself to take advantage of the growing market not only through its own teams but through ancillary ventures and partnerships.
There is, for example, Soccer United Marketing (SUM), an MLS venture that has given the league the rights to U.S. television coverage of the Women’s World Cup in China this year and the 2006 World Cup in Germany, among other international events.
Others, of course, recognize the sport’s growing money-spinning potential, with ChampionsWorld, a New Jersey-based company, having sold out Manchester United’s four-game tour of the U.S. this summer. Garber said MLS will not be left watching from the sideline while rivals reap the benefits.
But he put a good face on the competition.
“Anything that’s good for soccer is ultimately going to be good for MLS,” he said of the ChampionsWorld initiative. “Our view of business is long-term. It’s not short-term. It’s hoping that the water level for the sport rises overall and that each of the boats on the water continues to ride with the rising tide.”
For MLS, the tide has finally turned in its favor.
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2002 in Review
* MLS Cup: Galaxy 1, New England 0 (OT) at Foxboro, Mass.
* MVP: Carlos Ruiz, Galaxy
* Coach of the year: Steve Nicol, New England
* Rookie of the year: Kyle Martino, Columbus
* Goalkeeper of the year: Joe Cannon, San Jose
* Defender of the year: Carlos Bocanegra, Chicago
* Scoring leader: Taylor Twellman, New England, 52 points
* Goal leader: Ruiz, 24
* Goal of the year: Ruiz, July 27 vs. Columbus at the Rose Bowl
* Assist leader: Steve Ralston, New England, 19
* Goals-against leaders: Kevin Hartman, Galaxy, and Jon Busch, Columbus, 1.09
Goalkeeper victory leader: Cannon, 13
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Full Plate
In addition to its league schedule, the Galaxy will be involved in three other competitions during the MLS season:
* CONCACAF Champions Cup: After disposing of CD Motagua of Honduras last month, the Galaxy will play a home-and-home quarterfinal series against Necaxa of Mexico, beginning with a game Wednesday at Cal State Fullerton.
* World Peace King Cup: The Galaxy was chosen to represent North America in this eight-team invitational in Seoul from July 15-22. Other participants include Bayer Leverkusen of Germany, AS Roma of Italy, and PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands.
* U.S. Open Cup: The nation’s oldest soccer competition, dating back to 1914, features teams from all levels in the United States Soccer Federation. Eight of the 10 MLS teams, including the Galaxy, have byes until the round of 16, on Aug. 16.
