MLS says signing is strategic
So, is the Galaxy poised to become a version of the old New York Cosmos, leading Major League Soccer down a free-spending path of doom?
A day after the Galaxy’s blockbuster acquisition of David Beckham, league officials took great pains to assert that this would not be a repeat of the Cosmos and North American Soccer League’s wild ride of the late 1970s and early ‘80s, which ultimately ended in failure.
“In the NASL days, because there were no control mechanisms, the spending was not rational,” MLS deputy commissioner Ivan Gazidis said Friday. “It was not strategic. It was not well-considered. That’s not the case now....
“The playing side of his contract is extremely rational and makes business sense. This was a smart, strategic, well-thought-through move. It’s not wild, out-of-control spending. Or owners trying to be the big man on the block.”
The league, which has a salary cap of $2.1 million per team, passed a designated-player rule late last year, allowing teams to slide around the cap issue, and it quickly became known as the “Beckham Rule.” In fact, there could be another big-name deal shortly; reports out of Britain and Dallas have linked Edgar Davids of Tottenham Hotspur to FC Dallas.
Gazidis said that the league was looking at the designated-player rule on a three-year basis.
“It’s opened the door in a limited way,” he said. “What we’re doing is not all about David Beckham. There’s been over a billion dollars invested in MLS soccer over the past couple of years -- three new investors, TV sponsorship contracts and stadiums. David Beckham is a piece of the puzzle, a very large piece....
“We’re also going to support David Beckham by introducing some other designated players. But it’s not going be uncontrolled spending. None are going to be able to rival this one.”
Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, the Galaxy’s parent company, said in an e-mail that the significant differences between the NASL era and the current one make comparisons moot.
“We have soccer facilities that we get 100% of the revenue instead of football stadiums,” he said. “We have 20 million kids playing, not 4 or 5 million.
“We are making $24 million on our TV deal this year and have games on ABC, ESPN, Fox Soccer and Univision. David didn’t come here to save the game, he came to make it better. They used Pele to save it. That is the difference.
“By the way, we will sell 5,000 season tickets by end of business today. That is 4 million in new revenue.”
Many sports marketing experts say they don’t expect a widespread spending binge by other MLS franchises in the wake of Beckham’s $250-million, five-year deal.
Chicago-based Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp Ltd., said the deal for Beckham stands alone.
“This is a one-player shot,” Ganis said.... “This is a unique person, not even a unique soccer player.... This is a guy who is more likely to be on the cover of People magazine than Sport Illustrated.”
Dean Bonham of the Bonham Group in Denver said he doesn’t think the blueprint of the conservative way the league has done business since it started play in 1996 will be tossed aside.
“At the end of the day, economics is going to rule the league as it has in the past,” the former Nuggets executive said. “I do believe it takes MLS into a new era of investments and recognition.... This is an investment that moves MLS by light years as opposed to by decades.”
If the NASL is viewed as a cautionary tale, the Cosmos was the poster child of the league’s rise and fall, a dream team assemblage of Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia. In fact, a documentary about the Cosmos’ fast times and hard fall, “Once in a Lifetime,” was released last year and appeared in movie theaters.
“I think the NASL is a good way to look at what not to do, a look at where the mistakes were made and not make those same mistakes again,” said the film’s co-director, Paul Crowder, in a telephone interview. “A blueprint of how close to being right they were.
“Someone said, ‘Will there either be another Cosmos or another Pele situation?’ I said at the time, ‘The only way is if Beckham comes.’ Quite possibly they could do that. Beckham has the cache to create the same buzz Pele did in this country.”
Crowder did advocate building upon the Beckham momentum and his MLS wish list extended to a certain Brazilian now plying his trade in Spain: Barcelona’s Ronaldinho.
“He’s already won the World Cup ... he’s going to win La Liga, maybe he can be enticed to do the same thing as Pele,” Crowder said. “If Ronaldinho thinks he can better Pele, being a Brazilian, ‘I can do what Pele did but better.’ That would be the next thing.”
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Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this report.
