From: MLINDROOS@finabo.abo.fi (Marcus Lindroos INF)
Subject: Re: Japan (& soccer in the US)
Organization: Abo Akademi University, Finland
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:01:32 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.23

In <1992Nov17.142843.60926@cc.usu.edu> fajack@cc.usu.edu writes:

> In article <1992Nov17.144329.11795@abo.fi>, MLINDROOS@finabo.abo.fi (Marcus Lindroos INF) writes:
> 
> > Soccer can do everything it does in Europe and Japan in the States as well, if
> > given the chance. Unfortunately, the "important" people all seem to be against
> > soccer. As the Japanese have shown, no pro league can exist without money 
> > and long-term investments. Right now, it looks like the 1994 World Cup will be
> > played in front of average crowds of 70,000 people - yet Sports Illustrated,
> > CBS, ABC etc. won't give a damn. I hope I am wrong, but...    
> > 
> >  
> > MARCU$
> 
> 	Thanks for the wonderful article about the Japan new league.  It is
> very interesting.  Let me add my $.02 worth of comments here.
> I don't think you can used Japan as a model for the
> development soccer in US.  Yes, I agree there are US players in Europe, and
> US does held some important tournaments etc.  But those are not the 
> ingredients for successful development of soccer.
> 	First of all, American is already saturated with sports.  There are
> basketball, football, baseball etc.  I think in Japan, baseball is really the
> only most popular sports.   

Well...I agree there is more to watch in America/Canada than in Japan. The
crowded sports scene (AL, NL, NBA, NFL, NHL, tennis, golf, pro wrestling, horse
racing, NCAA football, NCAA basketball...) does mean soccer will have to work
really hard to get even modest coverage from the press and television. This is
a huge problem, but I don't think a pro league would find it difficult to
attract fans to the stadiums. The only team sport that's around during the
soccer season is baseball - all other pro & college sports are suspended during
the summer months. A soccer league probably would need to persuade
only 3-4% of the 100million+ people that currently attend baseball, pro 
football, basketball and hockey regular season games to watch soccer. Add to
this the fact that there are many cities that don't have major league
baseball or professional sports teams - I don't think finding fans is a major
issue. 
---
Historically, every time there's been a soccer event at least remotely 
resembling a major league operation (NASL, MISL, national team exhibitions...)
, there has been good to decent fan support. What's killing the sport is 
indifference on behalf of the sponsors, the TV companies and the press. For 
example, the Major (Indoor) Soccer League actually enjoyed decent fan support
for most of the thirteen years it existed. At best, some teams averaged 15,000
over a 50-game season. Yet only THREE games were on national television (in
1983, 84, 85) in that 13 year span!! The league lost millions of dollars
because of this, attendances were actually slightly higher in their last year
of operation, yet they were forced out of business. Sports magazines, sponsors,
television, sportswear manufacturers...all by and large ignored the MSL.

> In addtion, the public in Japan I believe 
> are more 'educated' about soccer than the Americans.  I mean if you show 
> the picture of Maradona to Americans, how many of them can name him?

True to some extent, although Maradona might be a bad example. He seems to be
the only player that US newspapers bother to write about. Which highlights
another problem, what little coverage there is tends to be negative. Crowd
riots in Europe, devastating injuries, negative tactics... 

> 	Even if the sport does catch on, there is really no good soccer 
> stadium for the sports to grow.  The odds are really against the sports.

Not necessarily. I did a survey a few weeks ago and found that there are 
decent facilities in most of the important cities. If we look at the nine
USA'94 cities, only Detroit and New York have indoor and/or AstroTurf stadiums
and even then there are natural-grass baseball parks available. Most of the
problems are in Canada and the northern cities (Minneapolis, Seattle) where
domed stadiums are common.
  
> 	I am not optimistic about soccer in US.  After WC94, things will
> be back to where it is before.  I have given up hope about the development of
> soccer in the US anyway.  My plan is to have access to satellite
> dish that enables me to watch European football everyweek :).  

If we stop whining about how lousy things are for a moment, is there anything
to be learned from the Japanese experiment? I have to admit that (USA'94 main
man) Alan Rothenberg's plan for a league owned and/or sponsored by huge
corporations makes more sense now than it did before. The
local USA'94 communities and companies such as American Airlines, Budweiser,
Coca Cola etc. have supported the World Cup admirably. Even the TV companies
will show the WC, albeit somewhat reluctantly. The Japanese corporations invest
money in the J-League both because they are planning to use the marquee 
players for promoting their products both abroad and back home, partly as a 
goodwill gesture towards Japanese soccer fans. Perhaps American corporations
currently supporting the World Cup would invest money in a pro league team if 
they were allowed to put the logo of the company on the jerseys of that team? 
This is common practice in Europe (an unappealing trend though)
but unheard of in North America, where even manufacturers of baseball bats and
hockey sticks have to leave out all but the tiniest of logos on the equipment 
supplied to the pro teams. I know that launching a pro league would cost
millions of dollars, but the biggest companies operate on far bigger budgets 
and if there are enough sponsors sharing the financial responsibilities, no one
will lose that much. Do Chicago Tribune and Anheuser-Busch gain anything by
owning the Chicago Cubs and St.Louis Cardinals baseball teams anyway? There is
always the prestige factor, but to a foreigner it doesn't seem like a good deal
at all. Costs in baseball are very high and the teams cannot be used directly
for products endorsement by the sponsors the way Europeans do.
---
Perhaps the fact that buying advertisement space in a soccer league is far 
less expensive than baseball & co. will become an asset? Same goes for
television, ESPN will drop baseball unless their contract is renegotiated and
everyone seems to be losing truckloads of money on their current deals with
baseball and pro football. Bill Sage (the APSL commissioner) said there has
been some interest from the corporate sector, but that no one will spend any
money unless there is a detailed business plan. Both Alan Rothenberg and the
American Professional Soccer League are currently working on this and expect to
have them ready sometime next summer. My guess is that lobbying by the American
soccer community could be very effective indeed.    

 
> Jack Teh  
>      
> 

MARCU$