http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020812/122559_1.html These baseball fans have a website and ask baseball fans to promise to abstain from MLB for a year if they strike. Is there a way to apply this to getting fans to MLS games?
maybe we could use it to ask MLS fans to boycott Sportscenter, until they show MLS highlights. I don't really know, I was just asking for ideas...
Baseball fans have tried this during/before every work stoppage for at lesat the last 15 years and it's never worked. In that regard, I think soccer fans are ahead of baseball fans in that regard. Each MLS team has their own supporters club which is organized and they do stuff together.
Baseball fans tried to organize something like this last month (?) I think. It didn't work. Boycotts don't work. Sports boycotts work even less frequently. Baseball fans are the ultimate two-faces----make note of all the people who say they'll never go back to another game if there's a strike (first off, I don't think there's going to be a strike) and then make note of how many of them actually do. People always go back to baseball. Always have, always will. And no, you're not going to get those people to suddenly think that going to an MLS game is a good idea if they haven't, to this point, judged it worthy of their sportainment dollar.
I find it odd that they would support scabs. This is a work issue where both sides are completely in the wrong, so a fan's group that chooses the sides seems short sighted. Either refuse to go no matter what or just crawl back the way these loser fans (and I use the word loser because they support the game no matter how much baseball screws them) always do. Baseball fans are much like Revolution fans and girls with bad fathers in the long run. Treat 'em like crap and they will just come back for more. As for me, I can promise to uphold clause #1 Baseball lost me after 94 and won't get me back.
I don't think most baseball fans support scabs. Nearly all the baseball fans I know would tell them both the players and owners to f* off.
Worse than that, it has been shown that some of these "Fan Groups" are actually schemes to bilk people out of their money, by asking for "donations" to the cause or selling merchandise or whatever. If you're a fan and baseball's labor problems have pissed you off enough to where you refuse to go to games or watch on TV, fine it is your right to do so and I wouldn't blame you in the slightest. If people ask you your opinion, by all means express your dissatisfaction in whatever terms you feel appropriate. If enough people feel the same way, then the dissatisfaction will no doubt be felt. But if enough don't feel the same way, then there's no real reason to be desperate to go about changing that. Pure and simple, they have decided that baseball provides at least moderate entertainment value for their dollar and they so choose.
Why not? Why? Is there are reverse mechanism: i.e. praise the provider of coverage and advertisers MLS versus shunning, for example, Sportscenter advertisers? And on a bit of a tangent: I've heard that NASCAR faced the same hostile/negative press as does soccer now. Can anyone recommend a book on NASCAR that chronicles their ascent in the sports landscape?
I've always thought a "Fans Union" would work. You'd just need the media to get behind it (not that it's their job to, but I've always thought they actively discouraged it whenever it's brought up, at least when I'm listening) but the media aren't, 'cause it might mean their jobs too. You obviously wouldn't get 100% compliance, but even 30-40% would 'cause a huge ripple, and I think you could get up to 60-70% if done right. Of course, I've been known to be delusional on occasion too. I used to go to about 10-12 baseball games a year. Now I go to one, just to convince myself not to go to 9-11 more. How many $5 hot dogs and $7 beers can one stomach, so to speak? ps. You could always put in the fine print of your Fans Union Contract that for every 5 baseball games you DON'T go to, you have to attend 1 MLS or A-League game. Well, maybe not, but it's a thought.
I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage. I've found that just surviving was a noble plight. I once believed in causes, too I had my pointless point of view and life went on no matter who was wrong or right... ----------------Billy Joel, Angry Young Man Basically they don't work because people are lazy, because people are sheep, and because there are certain things that too many people like too much to do anything more than pay lip service to their displeasure towards. Try to call for a chocolate boycott, see how well that works. 1994 was supposedly the worst thing that could have been done to baseball. Now only about 70 million people go to baseball games in a season. Sure seems as though people have short memories.
Americans don't stay angry. It's a peculiar characteristic. Maybe 9-11 changed that a little. We'll find out about that in a few months (in case anyone forgot, we're close to a really, really big war, one that might go unconventional) The 1994 strike decimated baseball in Canada. Toronto was one of the top baseball cities in the world and Montreal was doing quite well. Now Toronto can barely keep their team while Montreal is a lost cause. I'm not convinced that a 2002 strike will work out like the 1994 one. I think this one will be far more destructive.
It still faces hositility in some quarters, but there is one big difference. NASCAR has been a major sport in portions of the country for decades. Soccer doesn't have that type of base.
Instead of boycotting Sports Center we should email them or write to them just to let them know that baseball highlights are boring and Soccer highlights would be much better. SOmething like this: Dear Sportscenter, I am a long time viewer first time writer. I watch your show every morning. And I have been noticing is that all you play are boring baseball highlights and know soccer highlights. This is very wrong. Which do you think is more exciting watching the same type of home runs every day or seeing an exciting goal dribbling through defenders and a blistering shot? I have never liked baseball and never will so please start showing some MLS highlights in your show. I think a lot more people feel the same way as me. Sincerly Soccer Lover Brendan
Just sent the email to ESPN. go to ESPN.com and go to the bottom and click contact us. then tell them to direct it to sportscenter.
Bashing other sports Unfortunately, this mentality doesn't help soccer break into the media mainstream. Because fans of other sports (mainly football) think it's "cool" to bash soccer, soccer fans feel the only way they can respond is to bash other sports. I don't think you're going to make any progress bashing baseball as a sport to ESPN. It's their natural inclination to write us soccer fans off as loud-mouth whiners; when they read a letter like this, it will confirm their biases. Instead, I think you'd make more progress not by saying baseball's boring, but by asking for a little more balance. Say, instead of spending 20 minutes talking about pre-season football and 20 minutes of baseball highlights, you could still spend a generous 17 minutes of each of those and it would allow you to talk about soccer for 6 minutes. That way, you're calling for an increase in soccer coverage without insulting baseball or football (which, whether you like it or not, are still more popular spectator sports in this country than soccer and thus are going to be covered more for now).
And, even though it now appears likely that they may reach a settlement, I'm of a mind that a strike this year will not kill the game, but instead, will save it. The short-term free-fall would be considerable, and the hand-wringing would be substantial, but out of it would have to come a better way of doing business for baseball. If that means 2, 4, or even 6 teams go away (unlikely when you think about it), it's just thinning of the herd. Americans always come back to baseball, and they will come back after a 2002 strike, if there is one. The game will come back, too. It's simply too big a part of the fabric of our culture not to come back, though there would obviously have to be some very real issues addressed.
A Fan's Union won't have any effect because the bread and butter of MLB and the other 3 "major" sports is corporate money. The only purpose the every day fan serves is to watch the games on TV (this attracting advertisers) and sustain enough overall interest in the product so that a company will spend money on Luxury Boxes, Club Seats, etc. This is where the revenue gets generated, not from Joe Fan saving up a couple of hundred bucks so he can bring his wife and two kids out to the ballpark one night a year to see a game. The real way to get the attention of owners and players is for Congress to pass a law limiting the ability of companies to deduct the cost of tickets, luxury boxes etc. from their taxes. Such a move would send the 4 "majors" crashing to earth in a hurry, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. I think the best move for fans who are fed up would be to forget about boycotts,and instead mount a lobbying campaign to Congress based upon how these sports have turned their backs on the working guy and his family. You would have to mount some serious pressure though because most of these owners and the leagues themselves have plenty of political connections. Bottom line, nothing's going to change anytime soon.
Weren't they supposed to do that several years ago? Or didn't they try to do that several years ago? I remember the concept, I thought someone had tried it. You bet, that would get their attention, in a hurry.