Could MLS Profit from International TV?

Must . . . resist . . . urge . . . to . . . respond . . .

 

Can't we just talk about promotion and relegation again?

 

Great idea! Why didn't anybody else think of that?

 

Wouldn't it be much easier to keep cloning Freddy Adu until we have 20 teams with 18 Freddies each?

 

Despite the prior posts, you bring up a very good point and in the end, it may be only foreign TV markets that can save the league, and it's not just my opinion.
The league will not grow or survive if it doesn't develop a domestic TV market and domestic media attention.
It will go the same way as the NASL despite wishes to the contrary.
We'll have some nice SS stadiums in a few years that are used for pointy ball and concerts.
A domestic contract that actually is profitable for the league may be 15 years away or more, if the league survives.
However, if the league can improve itself year by year, as it is doing, and gain more respect overseas, it could be that foreign TV contracts, while not huge deals, will be the difference that keeps the league afloat and brings in more investors and even more fans.
The only way the league will succeed here otherwise, IMO, is for the media to want it to happen and actually work for it (forgetting the chicken or the egg biz) or forget it.
I'm losing my confidence in the leagues ability to promote the sport on the level it needs and that's not their fault except that they can't get the aliance and help needed from the media that would be needed for the league to succeed.
But then it's not the media's job to promote what they feel is not popular here unless they see it in their interest to do so.
With most in the sports media here not being fans themselves and not having the knowledge of the sport that the fans of the sport here do, they feel more threatened by the sport than a feeling of wanting to help it.

 

dude what are you smoking?????????

we cant even get decent coverage of the top euro leagues in europ which is sad


and you have this crazy idea of mls getting international coverage!!!!!!!!!

lmao i dont think the europeans,south americans etc.....really care about a pathetic league with pathetic stadiums(football lines anyone)

horrible jerseys and names--quakes and rapids

dude seiously this tread just made me laugh..............

whats that guy that was supposedly the best in mls last year

CARLOS RUIZ LMAO

carlos "THE ROACH" luiz
he couldnt even play in estonia..........

just had to pop that big baloon you mls people have in your heads about that league...........


max. salary in MLS $240,000
C'mon now this league is a joke((((the stadiums are empty and you want international coverage)

just had to say this
oh its true

 

So.... are you saying that you're NOT an MLS fan?

 

I guess you aren't following things too close because the league already has started that process and is seen overseas. Just a start but it's in England and Korea for example which brings up the point that it's not just Americans who like to follow their players when they go to other lands.
As far as thinking I'm nuts.. Fine.. I'll just say that it is my field and has been for longer than most on these boards have been alive and the subject of how the media covers news and sports is my daily work. Check back on the subject in 5 years.
No league can survive for long with no TV revenue.
The league now is not making money from TV or even close to it.
As I mentioned, IF the league continues to improve and gain some respect overseas as many are like you who have none, things can change and it will help to win the fans here also, who do come out in mass for foreign teams of note on tours.
So is your suggestion that the league give up now?
What are you suggesting? If there is no chance for TV monies it may as well and if it is a "joke league" it may as well shut down now??
All I am talking about is possibilities for it's survival and to prosper someday. It will not if it doesn't improve and get the respect of other parts of the world including the rest of the Americas.

 

But is there a significant market for foreign leagues in general?

Take a look at England. Most fans follow domestic club play, and to a lesser extent, Champion's League. Now, you could argue that England has one of the better leagues in Europe, but a fan in Coventry, if given a choice between La Liga or Serie A and English Division One, he will most likely pick Division One. Local interest wins over talent or prestige more often than not.

Champion's League is huge money, not so much because of the players involved, but mainly because of the magnitude of the clubs involved.
Sure, MLS being availble overseas won't hurt the bottom line. But even if MLS were to sign top players in the world, I just don't see overseas interest being enough to make a difference in the league's fate.

 

As I said, the overseas deals, and I'm talking down the road, will not be big deals but for a league on the scale of MLS they can make a large difference and as I said, not in just the monies from the deals themselves but in other marketing areas and in respect for the game in our HUGE populations that come from elsewhere and many other reasons.

Even the unlikey event of the USA winning the World Cup in 2006 would not be enough to get the league a paying domestic contract. At the same time, several small contracts overseas will help the league.

 

England probably isn't a very good example given that it is one of the "elite" leagues of the world. If local interest won out more often than not, shouldn't the Chinese League have the world's largest following?

 

Hello.... they're Asian.

 

Fair point, I guess. I honestly don't know though, how big the market is for foreign soccer, especially second/third-tier leagues like MLS.

But I precisely mentioned a lower division club, Coventry, since from reading soccer coverage from last week and discussions with other posters, I got the sense that the 1st Division playoffs were a bigger story than Champion's League

Not really. If you go to Japan, there is considerable interest in the top European leagues but for the most part, J-League is the thing and Champion's League, Premiership, etc are secondary.

 

I'm actually a lot more bullish on this prospect in the long run than others here. What's more, I think that the investors (particularly Anschutz and Hunt) share my opinion.

Take a step back from the current existence of MLS which is trying to get stadium deals they can control, some incremental steady fanbase, woefully low salaries and the barest of media coverage. Think very big picture...

There are a handful of things that make pop culture today -- movies, TV, pop music, shopping and consumer goods, fastfood and sports. The US, with its impressive ability to market internationally and distribute goods, services and information, does very well in all of these areas but sports (Hollywood, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, etc.) We suck at int'l sports marketing because the rest of the world cares precious little about American sports.

But I think that the founders of MLS look at this and say "If we can get an American league to survive, the growth is tremendous." MLS may not even have the financial viability of, say, Central American leagues right now, but they have the potential of being HUGE (yes, as big as Europe) and vastly bigger than any other league in the Western Hemisphere save the Boca-River old firm.

We all know that the big European teams have been working at growing their marketshare outside their countries -- Real in Latin America, ManU in Asia, etc. That's the way sports are moving -- to be international products. That's likely why the Yankees teamed up with ManU -- in order to figure out how to market abroad as well as ManU has.

I think MLS founders are thinking to themselves, that if MLS can survive and take off in the US, it has the potential of being an international product -- think of getting in on the groundfloor of Coke or Levis. So in the short term I doubt MLS can do this. But in the long term, that's the aim of the league -- international market penetration. In other words, they want every kid in, say, Bolivia to be as interested in MLS teams as Hollywood movies or US music (yes, yes, there's still Bolivian music, but go abroad and you'll see the pervasiveness of US pop culture).

 

Have Budweiser (or whoever owns it) buy MLS and market it overseas. If they can get people around the world to drink Budweiser, they can get people to watch MLS over better soccer from other leagues.

 

Wow. The two stupidest bigsoccer posts ever on a single thread.

I'll ignore the fact that most people in America don't want to see that happen but let's pretend they do.

It would still cost way too much to get 10 teams of Champion's League quality.
We're talking spending over 400 Million dollars per team only in transfers. You simply can't make that much TV money and you can't sell that many tickets. And the players wouldn't join the league, and I don't think people would really want to watch it that much. There is only so much soccer you can watch and it is not as though people are just going to give up their local teams to watch a bunch of mercenaries playing for the money in America. I probably wouldn't watch it as much as I do MLS and if I did it would be like when I watch the Champs League, no emotional attachment.

 

I personally have not been talking about a spending spree for players as the Cosmos did, but rather the continued slow, for now, growth for the league coupled with attempts at further sales of overseas rights down the road a bit for some additional cash.
The league can't increase player salaries to any extent that would attract much better players on just gate receipts and no league can.
You call it nuts but forget that apparently some fans in Korea want to follow Hong and now do on TV, for example, and they are showing late night replays of MLS games in Britain now, so to imply there is zero market down the road a few years for MLS overseas is a presumption. I never implied anything on a large scale and as pointed out on this thread, don't underestimate American media in marketing attempts when they put their minds to it.
Also don't underestimate the talent that is coming up here and the possibilities 10-15 years down the road.

 

This really isn't true other than football. Baseball and basketball both have pretty large international followings. Obviously Baseball is huge in Japan and Taiwan and parts of Central America. It is on the way to becoming huge in Korea and Venezuela. Mismanagement has stalled the game a bit in Australia and Canada.

The problem baseball has isn't that other countries haven't cared about baseball, it's that baseball hasn't much cared about other countries. Baseball's been very slow to get involved with the International game (for whatever reasons) but slowly that's changing. Last I heard Selig was targeting 2005 as the year for the first "real" World Cup, but that's being optimistic, I think. MLB has been contemplating a few regular season games in Italy next year which might help. Baseball has a tentative foothold in Europe in Italy and Holland but has a lot of work to do there, that until now they haven't put a lot of effort into. The lack of a World Cup has been damaging here. MLB International is in its infancy but seems to have gotten a few things right. The problem is that unlike Soccer, there's no strong International governing body for the sport. MLB wields infinitely more power in the baseball world than does the IBAF (baseball's de facto version of FIFA), but obviously down the road there could be concerns about whether MLB's interests lie with the health of the sport internationally or whether it lies solely with MLB.

Things look even better internationally for basketball, as the NBA has successfully drawn players from various countries that have for the most part been "soccer"-only, like Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain. Argentina beat the USA in the World Championships last summer and though it wasn't the best USA team, it was all starting NBA players with some all-stars.

Football is really the only major sport here that's USA-only.

 

Don Garber (MLS Commissioner) has made comments on the subject so at least they don't think the idea is totally nuts as some here do.
The idea of working towards an overseas presence in TV markets. It's real importance is down the road but it is being worked on.

“Our overseas' revenue, while small, continues to grow. We have secured a relationship with KBS, Korean Broadcasting this year which will be a new deal for us. We have just finalized a new relationship with ESPN International that will take our games on the ESPN International network and will also work with us on syndication. So there continues to be more interest in our games overseas. It's something we're encouraged about. But it still is a small business in relation to our other revenues.”

 

Not just the UK and Asia, but Australia, too.

We get a game a week here on ESPN International's Pacific Rim affiliate, usally on tape delay, on Sunday or Monday overnights.

The exception, however, will be on June 1, where we will get a LIVE game being played on May 31... San Jose v Chicago will be the game, from Spartan Stadium, and from my hometown and on my birthday, no less!!

It'll be worth it for my wife and I to get up at 6 a.m. (Melbourne time) on 6/1 to see the game.

 

Great! My Mom is from Melbourne (Go Knights)..
I guess you'll get to see the Galaxy's new stadium on TV down there soon.

 

My in-laws are near Geelong... small world, I know.

Off-topic, I know, but the Knights will be honoring their Team of the Century sometime in the next month or so.

We certainly will. And from the HDC to Spartan, I wish we had some stadia like that here.

Not sure if the HDC opener will be live, but I can't wait to see it, regardless if it's live or on tape-delay.

 

just a quick question, since channel 5 in england shows an MLS game a week, does MLS actually get paid for this or how does this work? I can't really see channel 5 paying to much money to show MLS at 4am Thursday morning, on a taped delay. Any one have any info?