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Erin: Welcome to T2A webchat for January 16th for our discussion about football, or futbol, which is one of the most popular professional sports all around the world. In the United States, the sport known as soccer hasn’t gained the same level of popularity as professional American football, baseball, or basketball. Soccer’s popularity in the U.S. is growing through the efforts of Major League Soccer (MLS). We’re learning more about that today from Don Garber, Commissioner of Major League Soccer (MLS). MLS is the top-flight professional league in the United States. Mr. Garber was named Commissioner in 1999 after spending 16 years with the National Football League. MLS is entering its 13th season. The League aims to have 18 teams by 2010. Also joining our chat is VOA Sports Editor, Parke Brewer. Let’s start with some questions for Mr. Garber from T2A friends.
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Windwossen, Ethiopia and Marcien, Cameroon (email): Talk about the impact of having some of Europe’s best players such as Beckham join MLS teams in the U.S.
Don: Certainly Beckham has been a tremendous ambassador for MLS and for soccer in America. Without doubt more people know about our league and galaxy today than even a year ago before David joined our league the important story for us is that we didn't have just one designated player we had a number of terrific players from Latin America that joined the league last, Blanco from Mexico to Chicago and that team is far more popular today as a result...Angel from Colombia joined New York and they too have experienced great success while David has been the biggest star and name he is one of many and hopefully there will be more.
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Parke: When MLS teams were allowed to hire one superstar player, regardless of the salary cap, the so-called David Beckham rule, how surprised were you by the amount of money the Los Angeles Galaxy offered David Beckham and do you think it will pay off?
Don: Well I do believe that it will pay off for sure. Bloomberg Business News wrote an article last year, talking about how they believe just the incremental revenue last year was a good economic decision for the Galaxy. I wasn’t necessarily surprised, because we knew what it would take. I’m always surprised that athletes generate the kinds of salaries that they do, but there’s really no end to the appetite that consumers have for star players, and it seems in this case that everybody wins.
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Mark: Hi there Don, I'm a big fan of MLS from England. I think MLS is just such a refreshing league compared to the over-hyped Premier League and is sorely under-rated by many people over here. I was just wondering what the situation with Worldwide TV rights for MLS games is. Are the matches broadcast in many nations?
Don: Thank you. We are always pleased to see interest in MLS from outside the U.S. As such, this past year our games were aired in England and throughout Europe on local sports cable channels, on ESPN international network with more than 260 countries, we aired in Mexico and parts of Africa so the designated player rule has helped greatly with this.
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Parke: San Jose previously had an MLS franchise and will have a new team this coming season. Why do you think the sport will be successful in that city this time?
Don: Well that’s a good question and it really was very specific, our move was very specific to a challenge we had with a stadium, an appropriate stadium for the team in the early days of the league. What we realized today versus what was part of the original plan when the league was launched in ’96 was that we couldn’t succeed as tenants in large football stadiums. We needed to build soccer stadiums and in order to do that some work to the other pro-sports we needed a partnership with the public sector to finance these facilities and we’ve been successful in six different markets for seven of our teams and now San Jose, which will join the league in 2009 is rapidly finalizing a deal to build a soccer stadium. We’re convinced that that was the last piece of the puzzle that we were not able to put in place prior to the team’s move in 2005.
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Tayyab Ajmal: The German legend Lothar Matthaus revealed his dream to coach at South Africa. Do you have similar aspirations to hire a legendary coach for the Major League Soccer team as mentor counts a lot?
Don: in the early days of the MLS our approach was about signing famous legendary coaches from abroad. We had coaches from Brazil, Italy, etc and we found the formula for success for our coaches today is a combination of experience and understanding of the U.S. market and history of MLS. Our most successful coach is Kinnear who played in our league and has won two championships in Houston. We love that American and foreign players in our league can continue on the coaching side.
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Parke: As major league soccer begins its 13th season, what is the financial shape of the league?
Don: The league’s financial position continues to improve, like all leagues, your financial performance is really based, not just on what you generate in revenue, but what you spend primarily on players salaries. Of late we’ve certainly been spending more money on players as we had in the past. Blanco and Onhill and Beckham all make many many millions of dollars a year, so the goal really is to try to balance our expense with what incremental revenues we hope we can generate with some of the signings that we’ve had over the last year or so, but, we are certainly in an improving position than we had been in the early years.
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Parke: The structure of MLS is so different that the other professional sports leagues in the United States and probably not many people understand how it works as far as were the income goes, jointly as a league or exactly how it works. Is there any way to explain that simply?
Don: It’s not that complicated. The big difference between the structure of MLS and the other leagues is that the league entity, Major League Soccer, signs all the player contracts and those contracts of all the players are selected by the club. The actual contract is signed by the league and the total player budget, every league has got a player budget, basically sits in one pot called their salary budget and then the teams pay an equal share of that salary charge and then they get a percentage of national revenues and they get a percentage and keep all their local revenues. It really isn’t different than the other leagues. And every league today now looks at the total profitability of their league office combined with their local team operation. Overall, the total enterprise of Major League Soccer is performing better than it had in the past. Some of our teams do very well locally. Some of them do just “okay” locally and some of them particularly those that don’t have their own stadiums really struggle financially to have a good business in a local market. Until we’re in our own controlled facilities in every market most of our teams who are in that situation will really have a difficult time with a long term financial picture.
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Parke: And that of course makes it very difficult for some of the teams that don’t have a lot of money to sign such a star player like a David Beckham.
Don: Well that’s true and that’s why we are encouraging and working hard on a league basis than an ownership basis to move toward this every team has its own stadium plan. When the league was launched in ’96 we had no stadiums as I mentioned before, today we have 6. We open up our 7th in Salt Lake (Utah) this year. We’ll open up our 8th in New York in 2009 and I’m convinced that our fourteen teams will be in their own stadiums certainly within the next five years or so. Then all the expansion teams that we’ll have going forward I’m sure you’ll ask a question about that, ultimately are either in a stadium they control the revenue and business operations thereof or will be in a soccer stadium.
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Parke: Being here in the Nation’s Capital we have heard a lot about getting a specific stadium here in Washington. How close is Washington to getting a soccer stadium for DC United?
Don: We were really close and felt there was agreement in place with Mayor Fenty and spent a lot of time over the last number of years negotiating with the city and the park district that controlled the land that DC United is looking to for their stadium on which is Poplar Point. That took a negative turn over the last number of months and now that team is both looking in the Washington, DC area, but also outside of the district. Again, if DC United, one of our most successful and prestigious teams can’t get into their own stadium and out of RFK, and clearly baseball doesn’t want to be in it and built their own stadium then that team will not be able to succeed long term, without a doubt.
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Ernesto Kirchgassler: Is the MLS willing to resurrect the New York Cosmos and have a (stadium) for them in either Queens or Brooklyn? L.A. Galaxy versus N.Y. Cosmos sounds awesome to me. I believe it would be the critical move needed to make Soccer explode in the US!!
Don: I don't believe the way to ensure your future is to entirely rely on the past. We need to learn from the past...on the Cosmos, that was a different era and time and a new Cosmos would not necessarily be able to replicate the old Cosmos of 30 years ago. More importantly, we need a 2nd team in the New York area...this team would play in queens regardless of the name. We feel pretty confident about that and it won't just be the Galaxy able to play but every other MLS club
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Parke: How is Seattle chosen for expansion in 2009?
Don: We have as all leagues do, regional and geographic objectives, ownership objectives. There are a wide variety of things that go into making an expansion decision. Ownership also plays a strong part of that and we have one of the most successful Hollywood producers in Joe Roth that has been interested in owning a team and wanting that team on the west coast. He teams up with Paul Allen; a successful guy not just in sports, but also obviously in his past with Microsoft and the two of them will work together to launch an MLS team in Seattle in 2009. They’ll play in the Seattle Seahawks stadium and have been really aggressive in building a season ticket base. Right now between 10 and 11 thousand season tickets sold for a team that won’t play for another year and a half. So we’re feeling great about what’s going on up there. Really really good!
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Julio (email): What is the chance for Miami to get an expansion team for 2010/ 2011?
Don: we continue to spend a lot of time working with Miami mayor's office that has a deal to take down the orange bowl and build a baseball and soccer stadium on that site. We would like to make that happen. We’re not there yet.
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Len (email): The Designated Player Rule (a.k.a. The David Beckham Rule) in it's current form seems full of contradictions. There are many issues in the second year of the rule that seem to conflict with the original understanding of the rule. And on season scheduling, why not have a split season that would honor the FIFA schedule and the MLS fans could follow their stars' results with their National teams and the league (MLS) could play it's all star and Super Liga games during that break.
Don: on the second question, MLS plays its games in North America, which has different weather/stadium situations than in Europe and South America, so we have a schedule that does not align with the international calendar. Until we're in a situation where our league develops s more broadly and have more teams in different parts of the country, we're not likely going to see a schedule change but we're mindful of that
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Parke: Give a preview of the January 18th MLS SuperDraft Combine – about what percentage is non-US?
Don: we're very excited about our upcoming draft and think we have a terrific crop of players coming out colleges and youth ranks and hopefully our teams will be aggressively competing for them. I don't know percentage of American and non-am citizens but continue to have more players from around the world that are not American passport holders. Some views that Narko from Ghana and VA tech could be first pick...there are wide variety of players from college and youth programs that we're very excited about. It’s a great mix of internationals and domestics and we're confident it will be another great year for the draft.
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Parke: For our listeners, can you explain briefly how the draft will work?
Don: It operates very similar to the other drafts in pro sports. The highest picks go to the teams that had the worst records during the year. We sit down at the National Soccer Coaches Convention this weekend in Baltimore and hope that a lot of fans will come out representing their various clubs, the players there with their families, it’s live on ESPN 2 starting at 4 o’clock (P.M.) Eastern (Standard Time). (2100 hours UTC) It’s going to be a great, fun, exciting event where kids will hopefully achieve the dream of playing professional soccer here in the United States.
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N.Sundar Rajan, India (email): Can you explain how your winning experiences in the National Football League are contributing to the growing popularity of MLS?
Don: I started in NFL marketing working on fan development and grass roots and TV and event programming trying to bring the game closer to U.S. Fans and did same thing for NFL overseas. Both had the same challenge, connecting consumers to the league and players. Overseas was more challenging due to soccer/futbol fans and converting to interest in American style. We do have a great understanding of soccer here in U.S. (from those) who follow MLS and other clubs throughout the world. We have much more competition in MLS than in the NFL. And we're going through the growing pains and the great things of building a pro sport that hopefully will last many more years.
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Parke: We have a question from our engineer, who wants to know whether there are any chances now that the Chicago Fire has minority head coach for more minorities to become head coaches in MLS?
Don: It’s really cool by the way to talk with a global network that knows enough about our league that they would have that level of detail (detailed knowledge) that really shows how far this has come from the early days, just a general comment. We’re very excited that Denis Hamlett, who is our first African-American coach, is joining the MLS coaching community. We do have a diversity program, not just for coaches but also for all teams and league front office staff that provides diverse candidates, which are both people of color and different ethnic groups and women who have an opportunity to work in our league. We view Major League Soccer as the league for a new America. Our opportunity really is growing most importantly in an environment that’s very different than the environment that the other sports launched in a generation ago. Far more people are coming into this country from places abroad and soccer is their true passion. As a result we believe our league and our clubs need to represent that same level of diversity. I don’t think Dennis will be the last. Our continued challenge is providing the right candidates and developing those candidates. We have a program here in the league office where we bring ex-players in, hopefully diverse candidates. We’re working with an African-American guy named Ali Curtis. He played five years in the league for D.C. United and Tampa Bay Mutiny at that time and went to college at Duke and was working in banking and then decided he wanted to get back into the soccer business and we have him working here in a training program, so it’s a big priority for us now and for the future.
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Parke: For those who don’t know Denis Hamlett’s background, can you just give a brief synopsis of that?
Don: Dennis was a player in the league, he was a goalkeeper and he’s been an assistant in MLS for five-plus years now, primarily at the Chicago Fire and has interviewed for a number of different positions over the last couple of years and ultimately was hired. It’s really a great statement for Dennis and all that he’s done for the sport, the league, and it’s also a real credit to Andell Holdings, the owner, to give him this opportunity.
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Anil, India (email): What are prospects for the well known Indian club Mohan Bagun to achieve top level international competition status and what in your opinion is needed in order for that to happen?
Don: not that familiar with this club but as a developing nation for the sport, building access to soccer in a very competitive global environment is difficult and requires ownership and players very committed to that growth as well as media support and fan support. It’s a great sport and ultimately the world's most beautiful game.
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Parke: I just wanted to know how the attendance for 2007 season compared with the previous season 2006 and how satisfied have you been with the level of attendance?
Don: Very satisfied. You’d always like to have more but we are pleased with out growth. We had double digit growth last year and certainly having David Beckham in the league and Blanco in the league and the stadium coming online in Toronto. We want to push our clubs and even ourselves to try to grow every year. We have a very long-term view. You have your ups and downs in the sport. We don’t look at attendance the way the media does but we look at the overall influence and popularity of the league and it’s part of that, our commercial business is part of that, our television ratings are part of that, our media coverage is part of that. Not all of it is always as measurable as attendance is. That’s why the media primarily uses that as their focal point.
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Mustafa Cankurt, Turkey: Why is SOCCER not very popular sport in the US? Like Basketball, baseball and we haven’t heard US National Team in the tournament in Europe?
Don: the birthplace of soccer is Europe and it has seen the greatest success with all levels of support. We love competition but there's not as much as multi-sport competition outside the U.S. Our goal is very much focused on building our business and national team in the U.S. and less about getting people outside the U.S. focused on U.S., that's a subjective look
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Erin: That wraps today’s T2A webchat, our thanks to MLS Commissioner Don Garber, VOA Sports Editor Parke Brewer, and to you for joining us. We hope you can join our next T2A chat on Wednesday, January 23rd.
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