Seems like there is usually a discussion thread for this every year, but since I don't see it anywhere, here goes. the 2009 results are in (compliments of Inside Minnesota Soccer) Highlights: Not bad. For your reference: 2008 results/discussion 2007 results/discussion
It can be used by the league as something to point to when trying to attract sponsors. I'm sure it's much easier to win over sponsors when you have good ratings in terms of gender and racial diversity, whether or not these ratings could be somewhat arbitrary.
It helps a lot that MLS has Freddy Montero now so that they can capture the coveted transgendered demographic
I think the main idea is that as MLS improves its gender diversity, ESPN will feel more comfortable firing Julie Foudy. Work with me on this. It has to be relevant. She's awful.
"You want to support us because we're a good company. We do good things. We're very multicultural!" Run that through a marketing translator to make it a selling point to sponsors.
Sounds good to me. Why would sponsors care who MLS hires (to a certain extent)? Wouldn't the sponsors be more concerned who the demographic of the fans are, since those are the people that will potentially be buying their product? Perhaps I'm not getting the point of why there needs to be a study about who MLS hires. And frankly I don't really care. I just hope they are hiring competent people who will continue to grow this league.
Why did advertisers run from Glenn Beck this summer when he was claiming the President is racist (or whatever his shtick was)? Why were they more concerned about the product than the demographic of Glenn Beck listeners -- which was (and still is, I guess) unreasonably large?
That is why I said to a certain extent. Obviously sponsors don't want to be doing business with companies who only employee racists or pedophiles. But without this study, we would not know the demographic make up of the employees of MLS. If we don't know it (and since we are the consumer), why would sponsors care? Wouldn't the sponsors be more interested in who the consumers are? Again, I'm still waiting for a good link between sponsors and racial diversity in the MLS workplace.