Banking on Beckham
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Go into a sports bar in any city in America and very few of the patrons, if any, can name a professional soccer player in the United States. A few may have heard that David Beckham is going to play for some American team. And perhaps a few of the bar patrons will know who Freddy Adu is. There is no doubt whatsoever that these same patrons could tell you who is the point guard for the Suns, who plays third base for the Yankees and who is the middle linebacker for the Patriots. It will be a hard sell to convince that bar demographic that football/soccer is a dynamic, exciting, global sport. Perhaps soccer is associated with Brandi Chastain in a sports bra or that person (Zinedine Zidane) who did that head butt last year. Clips of sex and violence from the daily sports shows are remembered.
The Los Angeles Galaxy is paying David Beckham two hundred and fifty million dollars for five years. Beckham will realize far more with built-in contact incentives, advertising and sale of things like branded clothing and sports gear. The Los Angeles Galaxy and Major League Soccer are betting on Beckham to put people in the arenas and drive soccer to be a major professional sport in the United States. It is no small task.
The target audience, though, has been in development for years. The ’soccer moms and dads in the car pools’ know this demographic. These are the kids who know that Akers is Michelle Akers - Donovan is Landon Donovan - Lilly is Kristine Lilly - Hamm is Mia Hamm… These kids (now young adults) were car pooled to soccer fields and played the game. They are a knowledgeable audience. They know what they are watching. The trick will be to bring them in line with the rest of the planet and fill the seats in the arenas throughout the league.
If Beckham can generate interest and sell tickets, the payoff will be in terms of financial billions. There would be television revenue, clothing, product promotions… the possibilities are endless. The task for Beckham is not only to score goals and win games for the Galaxy. He has shown that he could do that with Manchester United and Real Madrid. The real job that Beckman has to do is to convince the young adults who were the first ‘car-pool-to-soccer generation’ that professional soccer is a sport to watch and to follow. Billions of dollars ride on the belief that he can do that.
Catherine Forsythe
[tags]david beckham, soccer, football, car pool generation, promotion[/tags]
12 Comments
marc klink
July 16th, 2007
at 5:23pm
While it would be nice ‘to bring us inline with the rest of the planet’ I don’t hold out much hope. There is too much resistance to anything new by many, and for some, it may be like a variation of what the king of Austria said to Salieri in the movie Amadeus…too many sports.
forsythe
July 16th, 2007
at 5:34pm
Marc, I think you are right - but it will be interesting to watch. There was a point this spring when there was hockey, baseball and basketball happening at the same time. Plus there was even more sports on the weekends…
I think that there is a huge lesson for football / soccer via the WNBA…
Catherine
University Update - David Beckham - Banking on Beckham
July 16th, 2007
at 8:04pm
[...] Zac Efron Link to Article david beckham Banking on Beckham » Posted at DogReader on Monday, July 16, 2007 [ Author Avatar] Go into a sports bar in any city in America and very few of the patrons, if any, … shows are remembered. The Los Angeles Galaxy is paying David Beckham two hundred and fifty million … can name a professional soccer player in the United States. A few may have heard that David View Entire Article » [...]
Raw Cool
July 17th, 2007
at 1:54pm
The radio started making me really angry today when ESPN was out right bashing soccer, and David Beckham. It seems that the jock head radio hosts on ESPN really have it out for Beckham, and soccer. They basically had a call fest where people could call in to talk about how lame soccer is and how Beckham is only coming here for the money.
Ben Oddo
July 18th, 2007
at 12:07pm
If Pele couldn’t do it 30 years ago, Beckham won’t either. American Television is not keen on the idea of not bombarding its audience with commercials every eight minutes. Can you imagine Fox not showing a car or beer commercial for 90 minutes during a sports program??
I guess once every 4 years for the World Cup is enough homage that the American TV networks will pay to the world’s most popular sport.
Barry
July 18th, 2007
at 3:26pm
Ben is right. To make money a sport has to have television coverage in a big way. Our football and its frequent time outs lends itself perfectly to television, boxing is even better, 3 minutes of action, 2 thirty second commercials and back to the action again. Soccer has no organized breaks, no way to schedule the required amount of commercials (and its revenue). Without this advertisers are loath to pay top dollar for exposure which is crucial for their sales. Maybe if some form of time delay filming can be set up that allows commercial breaks without interupting the flow of the game may work but until then it is a very hard sell.
peteo
July 19th, 2007
at 7:34am
“The Los Angeles Galaxy is paying David Beckham two hundred and fifty million dollars for five years. Beckham will realize far more with built-in contact incentives, advertising and sale of things like branded clothing and sports gear.”
Actually, the LAG is paying DB “only” $32.5m for the 5 years. The $250m figure was forecasted from the incentives, endorsements, profit-sharing, etc.
Also, MLS is trying to reach the soccer fans who are not into its league. There are enough of them to make MLS big. Joe six-pack, non-US sports fans and xenophobic bashers are lower priority. :)
Chris Watkinson
July 19th, 2007
at 5:29pm
Just trying watching these REAL athletes perform on a soccer field….they run at full speed for 90 minutes with only one short break at the half and perform complex plays with their teammates without input from the sidelines. I call them ‘real’ athletes because they actually sweat through physical exertion and not through carrying countless layers of protective clothing. The teams may have up to 3 spare players each…and not numerous specialty teams to do just one part of the offence or defence…who would figure one player just kicks the ball off a support towards a huge goal…and he does not need to even get out of his best suit to do it.
North American football (where the ball hardly ever is kicked), is a farce as is the re-creation of girls rounders into baseball. Can you imagine any other pastime where the coaches and staff wear the same uniforms as the players.Why is this weird habit only viewed in baseball?
All in all the sports fans get the quality of sport they understand best…it must be violent (hockey and football) and have very simple rules as the attention span and interest peak of the people watching demands instant results in yardage or goals.
David Beckham Increases Television Ratings at Catherine’s Flying Hamster Blog
August 11th, 2007
at 7:16pm
[...] One American sports fan sent an email, after the last time I discussed David Beckham. His analogy was to imagine if there was a professional baseball league in the United Kingdom. The owners of this league would want to win over the United Kingdom and European audience. To that end, they lure Alex Rodriguez away from North America to join one of the teams. The English and European audience would be mildly interested in the huge, huge, huge sum of money that it would take to sign Mr Rodriguez and then those people would go back and watch their usual sports. - That seemed like an excellent comparison. David Beckham will need some Harry-Potter-like magic with American sports fans. [...]
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September 27th, 2007
at 8:31am
[...] Banking on Beckham ~ DogReaderAdidas has come up with its own way to hype global soccer icon David Beckham's … left, and David Beckham match skills in Adidas' "Futbol meets Football" … [...]
| davidbeckham.scorefootball.info
September 28th, 2007
at 12:56pm
[...] Banking on Beckham ~ DogReaderDavid Beckham selling MOTO RAZR2 in Korea : Celebrity News Corner says: … handset maker shooting for the ladies, football/soccer fans, or just wants to ? … [...]
flinlad
February 24th, 2008
at 7:46pm
Very good point there.
Once the rest of the USA becomes interested in the global sport that is football there will be some very big changes in the USA.