A Sporting Chance: Promote It Like Beckham
Football's David Beckham is coming to Hollywood. But does the aging English sporting star still have what it takes to bring a touch of stardom to the L.A. Galaxy, and some much-needed publicity to Major League Soccer? By Rick Moran, PJM Columnist
Within a matter of days, the galaxy of stars in Los Angeles are all going to get just a little bit dimmer, making way for an international mega monster of a celebrity – a one man promotional wrecking crew who will take America by storm, elevate soccer to a major sport, and earn the everlasting gratitude of supermarket tabloid publishers.
That is, if you believe the hype. And believe me, when talking about the tow headed 32-year-old Midfielder David Beckham – late of Real Madrid and Manchester United legend – hype is a large part of the total package.
David Robert Joseph Beckham will be introduced on July 13th as a member of the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer club before a game at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The venue is indicative of the challenges facing Beckham. The 27,000-seat stadium is a far cry from Old Trafford, “The Theater of Dreams” in Manchester where 76,000 screaming fanatics would chant his name during the 11 years he spent building not only his career, but also the Beckham “brand.” Nor do many stadiums in the MLS approach the 80,000 seat Estadio Santiago Bernab√©u where Beckham spent 4 sometimes difficult years with La Liga powerhouse Real Madrid.
Despite participation in soccer at the youth level surpassing any other sport including Little League baseball, no professional soccer league in the United States has ever been successful in breaking through the marketing jumble to emerge as a major sport. Part of the reason has to be the quality of the competition. Those who are used to watching European or South American club football played at the highest level find the American game wanting. The marking is not up to international standards and despite the presence of some genuine international talent, and the flow of the game suffers from lack of skill players.
The reason? Most of the best American players try to get international experience playing for teams in one of the better European leagues. This may be bad for the MLS, but could potentially be a boon to the American national team, whose performance in the international tournaments has been a disappointment. Honing their skills on the pitch of English, Scottish, Spanish, and German teams will be a key to the national team competing seriously for the top prize in all of soccer – The World Cup.
Can Beckham alter the gravitational constant of the universe and make soccer into a mega sport in America? Former US player and current Los Angeles Galaxy President Alexi Lalas is betting $250 million over the next 5 years that he can. Lalas said recently that Beckham’s impact in America will surpass that of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan – two other marketing supermen whose legendary status as pitchmen for everything from perfume to high end automobiles has made them famous far beyond the confines of their sport.
Beckham already has that fame – and then some. Unlike Woods and Jordan who are modest in their own way about their celebrity, Beckham has made ostentation an art form. Houses, cars, jewelry, and a wife who formerly “sang” for the Spice Girls usually going him one better in the shop till you drop department, all done in the presence of dozens of flashing cameras, plastering his and her face over every tabloid in the business. “King David and Queen Victoria” have redefined the power couple. The Beckham brand is pure gold and it’s expected that once his ads for shoes, clothes, accessories, and cars start hitting the airwaves, the same kind of frenzy that accompany Jordan and Woods will make the Englishman into a household name.
But will it sell tickets to soccer matches? Professional soccer in America has tried several times to import saviors whose star power would ignite interest in the game and make soccer as popular in America as it is elsewhere. In 1975, the New York Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League (NASL) imported the aging Brazilian superstar Pelé to play in Giants Stadium, filling it to capacity for every home game. On the road, the Cosmos would routinely sell out the venues they played with Pelé on the pitch. But once the Cosmos left town, attendance would drop to its former dismal levels in those stadiums. Most NASL teams averaged less than 15,000 per game with some teams drawing under 5,000 per contest.
In 1977, the Cosmos imported another European superstar in Franz Beckenbauer – one of the best sweepers in the history of the game. And the San Antonio Thunder paid a bundle to bring the legendary Englishman Bobby Moore to town. Both players performed more than adequately, but since few Americans followed the international game, only true-blue soccer fans appreciated the significance of these two all-time greats playing in America.
And now the MSL will try again to goose interest in a game that Americans love to play as kids but fail to follow when they reach adulthood by bringing in a bona fide superstar. At age 32, Beckham’s best years may be behind him. But he should have plenty left in the tank to wow American spectators with his spectacular free kicks and pinpoint crosses. He will no doubt play before sold out stadiums all over the country once his career begins, tentatively set for July 21 in an exhibition at home against one of the English Premiere League’s best teams, Chelsea.
Many sports analysts are doubtful Beckham can do anything more than generate a little excitement for the Galaxy when they come to town. No one man can change the field on which soccer must compete for entertainment dollars with baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and the ever-expanding entertainment choices Americans are presented with.
But if you love soccer, Beckham is a godsend to a league desperate for legitimacy and respect. That can only have a positive impact both here and in Europe, where many are watching this experiment to see if other, equally gifted players will have the opportunity to play in a country where soccer has always been poised to take off into the stratosphere but ends up stuck on the ground, a victim of apathy and the glut of sports competing for the attention of the American people.
Rick Moran blogs at Right Wing Nut House.
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5 Comments
1. sean birnie:A Farewell from Castilla
You know, I’m going to miss old Goldenballs, but I always new this sleepy little European backwater Madrid (that’s Madrid Spain, not Texas or Alabama or whatever)was too small to contain his splendour for long. Anyway every shopkeeper in the upmarket Serrano bario has been driven to nervous exhaustion by his wife Pija Especia’s insatiable taste for shopping, she just doesn’t seem to understand that Madrilenos need a 7 hour lunch break (siesta) so they can recover from staying out and drinking all night (fiesta), and frankly people are complaining about the severe shortages of needles and ink. In schools across the country children are being forced to write with used matchsticks. But missed he will be and not just by the hordes of adoring sultry senoritas who bless this land (at least now the rest of us might get a chance. Hey, you guys in LA, Do you have any idea…oh, never mind, you’ll soon find out). Apparently the directors of Madrid T-Shirt Co (also known as Real Madrid Football Club} have formed a suicide pact, although rumours that El Presidente Zapatero was to join them seem, sadly, to be false. Me pesonally, I’ll miss the only Englishman in Madrid whose Castellano (Spanish} is even more appalling than mine.
Beck’s short sojourn here in the capital of Spain (It’s a small devoloping country just north of Africa, look on Googlearth), the home of such culinary achievements as the potato omelet (tortilla, never criticise it, that’s cause for a lynching here), the chick pea (honestly, they’re obsessed wth them) and the unbuttered ungarnished sandwich (brilliant don’t ya think? Just a bit of cheese or ham between two hunks of dry bread, Europeans are just sooo sophisticated}….where was I, oh yes….No, David’s time here has not alwways run smooth. His inability to learn to communicate in their language turned the fiercely linguistically chauvinistic Spanish against him. I did try to explain to them that Becks had similar difficulties communicating in English but then there came the Obregon affair.
I sense a little background may be necessary here for those not familiar with the essentials of modern Iberian culture (Yes, I do mean you Americans). All nations have their idiosyncratic obsessions, for Yanks it’s guns and oil, for us Brits; alcohol and spanking, in Spain the obsession is the glamorous granny (Not the ony obsession mind, they do some very weird things with both bulls and pigs, I can tell you!). The aging tarnished Madonna archetype, there are legions of them. They rule the airwaves. When they advertise for TV presenters in Spain they specify three things. 1, Must be dermoesthetically altered. 2, Must be over 60. 3, Must have had an affair with a bullfihter. David’s first instincts were good, he realised that keys to the Kingdom of Castille lay with women like these. Unfortunately he moved too soon, or rather was outmanouevered by a cunning upstart; La Donna Ana Obregon. Ana, a stunning replica of a bottle-blonde geriatric Barbie (eat your heart out Peamela Anderson), managed to get our boy in a somewhat compromising position in the trendy gym they both frequented. What Davey didn’t realise was he’d been set up for a fall. Ana got wall to wall airtime, in and out of her bikini…and in and out and in and out and did they or didn’t they?…ad infinitum. The poblem for our hero, Twinkletoes, was he’d just lost the respect of every hotblooded latino machista schoolboy in the country, and probably half of Latin America too. You see, Ana was a second divsion supergran, she was “hortera” (tacky) and “coutre” (common) not a worthy concubine for a prince. Now if only he’d gone for Isabel La Pantoja, the raven haired siren of Andalucia, a flamenco singer whose voice you could grate manchego cheese with and whose husband the ex-mayor of Marbella is now, conveniently, doing hard time for corruption. Or, even better, Rocio Jurado, another of Spain’s iconic flamenco artistes. A stalwart of Generalissssssimo Franco’s Fascistas Flamencas movement and whose recent death threw the whole nation into mourning. I’m reliably informed that it absolutely ruined the Maricas Orgullas (Gay Pride) parade, they were understandably inconsolable. So there it is, the real story of boy wonder’s undoing. Remember you heard it here first.
Hasta luego ******** [ed.] . Padrisimo!
Jul 11, 2007 - 6:26 am 2. sceptic:He’ll be back in England within a year. (Joining Sven at the Thaksin-financed Manchester City.) Sorry septics!
Jul 11, 2007 - 2:54 pm 3. Drew-RocNY:In the NASL there was no infrastructure to hold up the star status of players like Pele or Beckenbauer. There were only 4-5 successful American players and there were even fewer professional soccer outlets in the country. We had not participated in the World Cup since 1954 and soccer was like the circus coming to town.
I’m very interested to see what the next few years will bring for Major League Soccer and for pro-soccer in this country.
Jul 12, 2007 - 1:52 pm 4. richard:Right now, you, in the USA, have got soccer just right.
It is a great game to play, especially when you are young. It is by nature a participation sport.
Don’t throw it all away by making it into a version of the thing that passes for a spectator sport in the rest of the world. Don’t watch it. Play it!
Jul 13, 2007 - 3:26 am 5. Jez:Thanks for covering this, Rick. American women and avid fans abroad will be watching, and that means money and good publicity for American teams. Beckham peaked well before Madrid took him on, but he’s no old codger and could well surprise us.
Kudos to Sean Birnie. What a fantastic post.
Jul 14, 2007 - 9:29 pm