Marketing MLS To Adults ..

This is a good point.

This isn't as good a point. The Drew Careys of the world benefit from the "poor" marketing that went on before. Remember, when MLS started in 1996, it's was pretty much a scorched earth marketing terrain. The World Cup buzz had faded and aside from the USA's 1995 Copa America run, there wasn't much out there.

But without those early efforts, there's no Fox Soccer Channel, there are no sold out tours of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man United (those didn't takep place in the late 80s and early 90s), there's no 2002 World Cup run, etc. etc.

It's very easy to say, "The first batch did something wrong" because it looks that way from someone who doesn't think about it. But, in reality, Toronto, Philly and Seattle face a very different market than the original teams did. After all, they came into a legitimate league that had already put down roots.

As I'm sure you've learned in marketing, it's always better to be the second guy in, not the first.

Carey's not a marketing genius. That guy in Dallas who built a strong fanbase out of nothing was a marketing genius, at least until HSG canned him/he left (I forget his name and how he left. El Jefe will be along to fill in the details).

 

And if they offer special ticket deals to hardcore supports and to families, the one offered to the families is an insult to the game.

 

I'm not sure that Carey has no regard for getting a return on his investment. But he has a whole different perspective of what you have to do to be a success. I think Carey understood a gut level, more than anyone else in MLS, that soccer is all about passion. Without it, there can be no success.

So the question is, how to develop passion. By running a few TV commercials? Not a chance.

Like the author of the article said, those fans aren't being talked at... they're being, as the marketing people like to say these days, "engaged."

The genius of it all is that fans feel that they have a stake in the team. So if it falls a little short in some areas, at least the fans and Drew Carey and the other owners are all in it together.

It seems that you don't follow the Sounders, you join the Sounders. And Carey makes sure that joining the team is a really cool thing.

 

Drew Carey isn't the "Deep Pocket" in the Sounders Investor Group. It's Paul Allen.

 

Don't forget about Eric Brunner.

I see your "British Columbia" and raise you New England, New York, and New Hampshire. Tho they do have Elton John on their money, so you might have a point.

No, I think the reason these new teams are finding such success is partly due to the fact that the environment has changed quite a bit, and I think that's largely attributable to the modest successes of the existing teams. I too doubt that FSC would even exist without MLS, and that the new teams would have this level of success if they were charter members in a new league, rather than joining an established league. New clubs are able to hit the ground running, and can learn from what other teams have tried in terms of marketing, and most importantly don't have to sell the sport - just themselves. That's a big, big difference from the mid-90s.

 

That may be true, but that's not at all what I said. I said the original group did some good things, and they unfortunately came in at a time when marketing was very difficult.

That's arguable. The venture capital world is not itching to find niches that are already dominated. They're looking for new markets, new niches. It's good to be the second one in only true if the first guys aren't doing such a great job and aren't learning from their mistakes -- plus, the second guys must be willing to do things differently.

In many cases, the first guy may have a huge advantage. See: NFL v AFL, WFL and XFL; see NBA v ABA.

 

That would be one Mr. Andy Swift if we are thinking of the same man that was trilingual and worked hard in the office and out in the community to pull in numbers for FC Dallas Burn.
Yet in the exact same breath, as I mentioned before about the original markets, it is in these markets specifically that MLS can track with some form of honest number tracking the 15 year span from USA '94 and to today and what kids were able to "grow up" with our new league???
When MLS first started and the league unfortunately missed out on the '95 season and all the buzz from the Mundial, in '96 our MLS leaders went X-Games jerseys and funky clock. This was geared toward Americanization of pro men's soccer and on top of that the youth player angle. In markets like the Metroplex where they have had a massive youth soccer culture there since the NASL Tornado days, it would be interesting to see what ROI those early years marketing to the youth players have had in places like Colorado, LA, NE, Dallas and so on. I understand the need to market to that demographic so I would like to know why 14 seasons on where are those now grown up men and women that used to go to MLS games as kids in the 90's???
It's cool to hear from a few of you on this thread. Good stuff.
It appears MLS head honchos thought (prayed) there would be millions more like y'all.

 

I do agree that the original clubs had a huge hill to climb in terms of marketing to the masses. In some regards, they did very well (after all, the league still exists) - but they also did things very poorly as well. I do agree that the newer teams stand on their shoulders, however. They get the two-fold benefit of having good evidence of what works and what doesn't work; and entering a market more accepting of soccer in general.

I have heard rumors of MLS 2.0 - and MLS would be wise, in my opinion, to try to convince others that MLS is now a lot different than back in 1996. I think there is a residual resistance of fans from the earliest days of MLS when a lot of people tried it, and never came back, to today (where Seattle and TFC does not have that baggage). If MLS could somehow reinvigorate the original marketplaces - almost like they are "starting over," I think they will be very successful getting the old clubs more like the new clubs in terms of attendances, and excitement in the respective markets.

 

The problem with doing this is selection bias (same with the anecdotes on this thread). Of course you're going to have a lot of people at an MLS game or on BigSoccer who went to MLS games as a kid. The question is how many people went to MLS games as a kid and then abandoned MLS as an adult.

I think you're onto something, but a few things first (some directed toward this quote, some not).

1. Even with the marketing environment they had in the mid-1990s, it's pretty obvious in retrospect that MLS almost completely missed the target. They did market to families and "soccer moms" back then, and it's pretty obvious why they did that: it did look like a ready-made customer base with money to burn. And that's OK. There was nothing wrong with that decision. The problem was that in making things family friendly, they actually made things childish. See Payne's comments about how things like "skateboarding culture" influenced MLS's early branding. But not even children want to be associated with childish things, which is why toys aimed at 10 year olds show 12 year olds in their advertisements. The result was that even if you got a family to go to a game, I don't think there was any staying power. Maybe it's OK to go to a Mutiny or a Clash game when you're 11. But at 16, or 18, or 25?

2. There was also a trade-off in marketing to youth and families: you didn't go out of your way to attract any older hard-core fans. Maybe they thought soccer fans would come to the games no matter what - a starving man doesn't complain about a lack of seasoning sort of thing. But that turned out not to be true. A lot of sophisticated soccer fans wanted a sophisticated experience and for many MLS did not measure up.

3. That not measuring up was not related merely to the product on the field. The quality of MLS, which has never been as bad as its critics insisted (nor as good as its proponents suggested), was only part of the problem. The other problem was atmosphere. The deficient product on the field is vastly made up for by a strong product in the stands. But in most places the product in the stands was woeful: silence, no songs, no nothing -- except maybe some obnoxious child tooting some god-awful horn. Kids love horns! Like I said, there were trade-offs ...

4. So should MLS have marketed more towards adults and specifically tried to cultivate strong supporters and strong supporter groups? It'd be nice to say yes. After all, it seems to me that explains much of the success in Toronto and Seattle. But the real test case for me is Philly: if Philly does as well as we all expect, then I think much of the credit will have to go to the supporters groups who became an organized force even before the team was established.

5. Thing is, without the internet Sons of Ben do not exist, which brings me back to Bajoro's post. I think MLS needed the internet to facilitate the sort of modern, bottom up, adult-oriented marketing and organization that seems to have given Seattle and Toronto a leg up and which, I suspect, will make Philly a great success. But on the internet of the mid-1990s that simply wasn't going to happen. The million dollar question to me is how do you replicate the bottom up success of some of the newer markets in the more established markets.

6. Cultivating strong supporter groups and encouraging them to develop a high quality stadium experience regardless of the product on the field is, I think, a good way to assure long term stable growth. (It's also cheap, even free.) You want the kid who came to the game with his parents to look across the stadium at the supporters groups and think "When I grow up, I want to sit with them."

 

I really don't think these things had as much of an effect as people say they had.

 

The marketing department in MLS have won the DUMB FUCCKS of the year awards on the last 10 years and until Don Garber get his head our of his azz there no hope...

 

The mind reels ....

Pretty much every soccer fan I know in person is interested in other sports. Enjoying soccer does not preclude people from enjoying other sports.

 

Actually, it is Joe Roth, Hollywood Mogul, who is ponying up the biggest part of the cash. Like Drew, he is very much a soccer fan. Some of the ideas that have worked are Drew's, such as involving fans in decision-making and the March to the Match (the band is controversial, but not the March itself).

 

Did I sleep through Joe Roth building Seahawk stadium? Because without that, SSFC in it's current form doesn't exist. Roth "might" have the credit to build a modest stadium, but it certainly wouldn't be in downtown Seattle and without the zero cost stadium, SSFC ain't making money hand over fist.

 

So someone who likes soccer can like basketball, but someone who likes basketball won't like soccer?

 

That's true. Paul Allen paid $130 million for the stadium, and taxpayers are paying $300 million plus interest on the bonds.

 

I agree, both in that they missed the mark, and that making a mistake isn't the problem -- it's a problem when you don't learn from your mistakes.

That was the mistake in a nutshell.

It's hard for people to sing and shout when they don't care, which is why marketing to hard-core soccer fans would have been good. (And by marketing I don't mean shooting a few commercials -- I mean designing the entire experience, including team names and uniforms, and other benefits of "joining" a team.)

Two things: One, I agree that the success of Seattle and Toronto has something to do with standing on the shoulders of the other teams and the lessons they learned. And two, the league is slowly learning what the hard-core fans have known all along -- the supporters groups are absolutely key. As any good brand manager will tell you, it's way better to have supporters than mere customers.

That's exactly what I meant when I said marketing today is 180º different today than it was just a few years ago. WE -- THE SOCCER COMMUNITY -- WHETHER IT'S MLS, YOUR LOCAL CLUB TEAM OR YOUTH ORGANIZATION, FSC OR USSOCCER -- CANNOT COMPETE HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST THE MAJOR US SPORTS USING THEIR RULES. We are NEVER going to get the free publicity that the NFL gets from the mainstream media. We cannot afford to buy the exposure. We HAVE to be organized around the Internet. Bottom up. Uh... just like Big Soccer?

What supporters groups bring inside the stadium and out is invaluable.

 

You have to look no further than what happened here in Houston between December 16th 2005 and oh by May 6th 2006 when Houston first played Dallas in MLS.
Houston, and its die hards, made AEG's relocation project work.
AEG had zero clue as to what kind of footballing culture they were getting into.
If we had not gotten them to conform to our way of supporting a pro men's soccer team then Houston and Robertson woulda ended up after the first two months like L.A.G or worse a FO idiot fest in Colorado's stiffled home atmosphere. I expect damn near perfection from Philly in year 1. Philly has had years to ramp up to their first season where as we had literally 3 1/2 months.

The main point that I never have understood from Logan and Co. in year 1 was why they thought they had to reinvent the wheel with MLS. Every market needed to be sold to, youth, adults, new immigrants, the "converts" from USA '94, but I just thought there were enough "lessons learned" from the original MLS owners's friends overseas, their MFL amigos, the indoor lessons and of course why the NASL left us.

 

Now we need Huss to chime in on how many BigSoccer posters are "Premium members".

 

When I see comments like this (and I'm not picking on Bajoro here; we all see comments like this constantly on bigsoccer) I always want to ask, how is that different from hockey? Football? Curling?

 

Hyperbole is much easier than actual suggestions.

 

Maybe that doesn't make it different from hockey, but the recognition of that makes Drew Carey different from Stan Kroenke.

I'm a bit long in the tooth for marches to the match, but I like attending a game where I am not tempted to check the pulse of the indifferent parents and their inattentive children sitting next to me, parents and kiddies who will be part of the drop in attendance for playoffs because they likely won't even be aware of the playoffs. Of course, the care and feeding of diehards is recognized by other clubs, not just Seattle. The flowering of Nordecke culture in Columbus may not produce Seattle or TFC numbers, but it solidifies the core.

And yes, Joe Roth will have to spend a lot to catch up with what Allen and the taxpayers spent to capitalize the Seahawks and, tangentially, the Sounders, but he is the one on the hook for the majority of the operating budget, which includes the marketing efforts being discussed here.