An Analysis of the Sports Sections in NYC (Or why few people know the Red Bulls exist in NYC)

The Post website usually has decent coverage written by Brian Lewis.

I think there's more to it than the media coverage, though. Teams in New Jersey just don't get great attendance -- the Nets and Devils (but especially the Nets) don't draw well for their league standards. It's just tough to get people into stadiums in this area. Even the Yankees-Mets game today at Yankee Stadium, a sell-out of 48,000, had a hell of a lot of empty seats.

 

Is it possible that ticket re-sellers got hold of a large number of seats and they couldn't get the price they demanded?

 

The NY Times does cover the Red Bulls and MLS with Jack Bell. But they consider themselves an "international" paper so they sometimes have foreign soccer or sports stories that most ignore. The local sports stations, WFAN and ESPN1050, had the Red Bulls score during their sports updates. WCBS880 also gave you the score during their sports update.

Soccer coverage for NY is about what you would expect. You have to turn on the Spanish language networks to get any real coverage.

Of course the NY Cosmos would be back page news every day. But we take what we can get.

 

Ya know what would get media coverage in NYC? Cosmos! Someone should try and bring a team to NY and become the Cosmos.

 

And both basically do it pro bono.

They're underappreciated IMHO.

 

What a fresh idea, Sandon. I hope someone out there reads this and runs with it.







EDIT: Please read with the same amount of seriousness as the quoted post.

 

That's sad.

 

It's not just the Don Garber party line Red Bull actually wants a second team in the market and agrees that it can increase the profile of the league here in the press as well as the general public. They're mum on the possibility of it being F.cosmos but I'd be more wary of that outcome of I were them.

Just this week after more than a year of being on the fence Shep Messing finally declared for F.cosmos and Red Bull apparently is comfortable with him continuing as color commentator on the MSG broadcasts. I'm Bo Schembechler on this one as much as I like Shep we need a Red Bull man doing Red Bull broadcasts.

The press and broader media has changed dramatically here over the years as I guess it has just about everywhere. Long gone are the days when newspapers saw their charge as simply reporting on local sports. Now everything is geared towards not just leading but adequately covering only the stuff they think their readers are most interested in.

Hockey gets short shrift here with games played the night before by any of the three area teams including the Rangers typically buried deep in the section. This time of year it's baseball almost wall to wall. If F.cosmos/NY2 gets off the ground after a period of novelty coverage they too will learn this unfortunate reality.

 

I do not know why the Red bulls want to have another team near them. Historically, sports with a team in NJ or LI (Nets, Islanders, Devils) draw significantly less than the NYC teams (Rangers and Knicks). Though part of the allure may be MSG as a stadium. The media does not really give a non-NYC team as much hype as the city teams. NY does not do well like La in the NBA in terms of attendance with two teams. I dont know if its a lack of true fans or lots of fairweather fans.

 

How cynical this sounds..
The OP could have saved a lot of time by simply saying no one cares about soccer/NYRB in NY market.

 

They all get it from news wire service called Associated Press.

 

Is it possible that this media coverage (or lack thereof) is a trailing and not a leading indicator? I'm guessing that the lack of coverage has more to do with lack of real demand for it than some conspiracy to ignore the league.

 

Agreed. If only there were some type of alternative media outlet available where we could follow and promote things #MLS related...

 

Well to be fair, the Yankees/Mets games were always going to dominate coverage! But I suspect it has to do with lack of interest, like most said. And I'm not from NY but I also think it has to do with location; having teams play in NJ is one thing, having a team in a league without a solid foothold in American culture play in NJ is another.

 

New York Cosmos...the real Cosmos.

 

A one-day snapshot of sports page website coverage really doesn't tell us that much useful or significant. "The mainstream NYC papers don't pay much attention to MLS" is about as no-s***-Sherlock an insight as you can get. A longer, broader, well-designed content analysis would probably reveal some interesting trends, but that's for someone else to bother with.

I happen to know a sports editor on the online side of one of the main NYC dailies; a worldly guy with some European heritage, a fan of soccer along with other sports. I know he's been to more RB matches than I have (not saying much there.) It isn't just an issue of crusty old ink-stained coots who need to die off so MLS can ascend to its rightful place in the back pages, or any such conspiracy. MLS, much less the experiment in Harrison, gets about as much attention from the mainstream press as either deserves given its ratings, crowds and place in the culture now. With all the other options out there for the MLS fan, I can't see why people are bothered what the tabloids or WFAN (to name another perennial bugaboo) do anyway.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Cosmos

Their best attendance was in New Jersey.

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6FUR_nhGX8"]YouTube - ‪trololololo (full version with lyrics as seen on the Colbert Report)‬‏[/ame]

 

NY TIimes has soccer coverage but it is only once a week. NY Times doe s small column every tuesday euro+mls.

 

Why would he say something that isn't true? I'm puzzled.

 

Crap, another thread that's going to descend into a Cosmos bitch-fest? Really?

 

NYC has a weak domestic soccer fan base. Otoh, there is huge international soccer fan base in NYC, which will turn out for summer friendlies, watch euro/sa/mex matches on tv and watch the World Cup. But that's where the interest for those fans stops.

During the late spring, summer, early fall, NYC is the foremost baseball city in the country. They built two baseball palaces here at tremendous cost, and the pro teams here are among the top spenders for baseball talent. So in addition to weak domestic soccer fanbase, the competition for sports media attention is enormous.

What happened with the Cosmos many years ago, was a unique situation. Special players, a dominating team, a weak league, players that were allowed to party at famous nightclubs, and no connection to USA development. A second NYC team, named Cosmos or not, would not resemble that scenario. NYC2 could be a boom or a bust, and could either help or hurt RBNY. No guarantees of what the outcome will be.

 

The Daily News site architecture is curious because they have a couple of knowledgeable soccer guys in Filip and Stefan Bondy, plus other people they can call on (like Michael Lewis for many years).

The NYT's Goal blog is terrific, though it's certainly Jack Bell's labor of love. They have contributions from Tim Ream and Yael Averbuch, and they're able to call in content from Jere Longman or Rob Hughes. But yes, it's a mix of priorities between international, national and local. (Of course, so is Soccer Insider at the Post.)

What you really have in the NY market is decent soccer content for people to find if they're looking for it, but not much that would make casual fans more aware of the Red Bulls.