Word: soccers
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...Angeles is home to three professional soccer teams. There are the L.A. Galaxy and Chivas USA, which are developing a spirited Anglo-Hispanic rivalry that is played out passionately when the two meet in the Home Depot Center, a soccer-only stadium that holds 27,000 fans within its cozy confines. The third is the national team--Mexico's national team. It's not unusual for Los Tricolores, the hated rival of the U.S. national team, to draw crowds of 80,000 for its games, played in the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum. In fact, the U.S. avoids playing Mexico...
What is unusual is that all those teams are managed by Major League Soccer (MLS). The pro league born of the highly successful 1994 World Cup staged in the U.S., MLS has struggled for a decade to find its place in the sports-entertainment complex. But by thinking like an entrepreneur and managing like a global business, the league is facing the prospect that many concluded was unreachable in the U.S.: success. "What we have today is far more stability, far more credibility and far more optimism about our business and far more popularity than we've had," says...
...past 18 months, a league that has been kept whole by dipping into the deep pockets of two soccer-nutty billionaire owners has attracted close to $1 billion in outside investment from new franchises, new team owners, public stadium funding and sponsorship money. Adidas kicked in $150 million to become the league's sole uniform supplier, in part to hold off Nike. MLS is close to a new television-rights deal with ABC/ESPN, one in which it will actually get money for its games, instead of having to buy the time from the networks and hope to sell...
...second big piece of MLS's strategy has been to become the North American leader in promoting and managing the sport. "We want to be the portal for soccer in the U.S.," says Ivan Gazidis, deputy commissioner of MLS. An MLS division called Soccer United Marketing (SUM) won the rights to promote Mexico's team as well as the U.S. national team. So MLS brings Los Tri to Los Angeles, Miami and other Hispanic hot spots, while the U.S. team works the entire country. Both teams conduct doubleheaders with MLS squads. "We're doing a great job for them," says...
...soccer's profile continues to rise. Perhaps more than the bigger sports leagues, MLS has also been helped by the digital age. Today an American who is a fan of the Columbus Crew as well as England's champion, Chelsea, can watch both teams on any of three soccer-only channels plus ESPN/ABC or catch highlights on any of a dozen websites. The global exposure has whetted the U.S. appetite. Demographically, migration from Mexico and other Hispanic countries gives soccer (and baseball) a boost...