suckyball

Fans of the Knicks lost their collective minds this week when Jeremy Lin started a five game win streak and then scored more points than Kobe Bryant (38 pts for Mr. Lincredible) in a victory over the Lakers.  Sports apparel sellers in New York city can’t keep up with the demand for his jerseys and when I go to work on Monday my office will speak more about him than Carmelo and Stoudemire combined.  As proud as New Yorkers are with his new success, our civic pride pales in consideration to the overt adulation and divine joy he’s bringing the NBA marketing department.  Jeremy Lin is yet another chance for David Stern and his staff to bring in more viewers from China (and Taiwan).  Because of that David Stern will haul in GOBS OF CASH FOR THE NBA.

Which brings me to the question ………. could a story like Jeremy’s ever happen for the MLS?

If you aren’t familiar with his story (or are too lazy to Google it) here’s a rundown of his rise to success in the NBA:  His parents are both from Taiwan and gave birth to him after moving to Los Angeles where he lead his high school basketball team to an almost undefeated season (32-1).  No major colleges gave him a scholarship chance and the sole reason he decided to attend Harvard was because it was the only school that would give him playing time.  After graduating with a degree in Economics Jeremy Lin decided to continue basketball even though almost all of the NBA teams didn’t give him the time of day.  He had to play through a NBA summer league and faced massive bench time with the Golden State Warriors where he was later waived and picked up by the Knicks.  New York thought about cutting him after awhile but had to give him a shot because most of their star players such as Carmelo or Stoudemire had their own injuries to handle.  When Lin was given extended minutes he pretty much lit up Madison Square Garden and is the talk of the town.   

If we look down the line for a year or two we see a gold mine taking shape again for the NBA.  Not only is Lin a terrific player and great person, he’s the perfect vehicle for the NBA to promote itself across the world.  Lin grew up in California and is pretty much an All American kid that can appeal to almost any young fan stateside.  Not only that, but if you fly him out to Taiwan for a press conference his command of Mandarin isn’t too bad either.  Promote him here, promote him there, it’s your choice.  Nike had also signed him a couple years back so do you think they’ll mess up their investment down the line?

Which brings us to ………. American soccer?

 To start with, a lot of the league is foreign to begin with (about 40% and growing) yet there aren’t a lot of Chinese out there in MLS (there’s about two).  Brian Ching is a decent player but he’s not full Chinese and the league shipped him off to Montreal.  Another, I mean the other, Chinese is Long Tan who in a mysterious coincidence is also playing in Canada.  So not only are these two not being publicized by MLS that much, they’re not even being playing on American teams.

Here’s my reasoning on why this situation won’t improve until ten or fifteen years down the line:

To be blunt, the billions of people in China don’t care about MLS, therefore, if there was a top Chinese player playing at an elite level here nobody in China would notice.  With Jeremy Lin, he has the benefit of a China already invested in the NBA.  When Yao Ming broke the barrier for a Chinese player into the league he was followed by over a hundred million young Chinese.  And even after Yao had a busted ankle in recent years he was still voted into the All-Star game because of the sheer numbers of Chinese voting.  Now Jeremy Lin is not only appealing to the Chinese mainland but he’s making inroads into Taiwan (a crowded, populated separate island of its own) for further reach.

Also, keep in mind that the people in China (or Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc) that do follow soccer with a passion only follow the European Leagues.  The NBA is regarded as the top league for basketball talent, but the MLS is a 2nd or 3rd tier league depending on who you ask.  So if a great Asian is marketed by MLS and succeeds, he won’t have the backing of anyone that even lives in Asia.  As it stands a lot of American soccer fans even won’t make a big deal of him unless he scores in the World Cup.

So, to end this, we can speculate that until MLS is the ‘NBA of soccer’ nobody in China will be buying jerseys any time soon.  I’m crossing my fingers that AMERICANS I run into will buy more MLS jerseys in four or five years.

Let’s get this over with.  On this upcoming Sunday afternoon millions of Americans (well over half the country) will gather in front of their televisions for a four hour advertising assault to their senses.  The advertising industry loves to throw out the line that ‘this is the one event that people look forward to watching our commercials!’  and they are right.  It might be a waste of time to compare the Super Bowl’s advertising power to MLS, but let’s go there.  Let’s see what we’re dealing with.  As a quasi-fan of the MLS I see cracks in the NFL’s armor and need to see the full scope of that league’s biggest day. 

To begin with, let’s look at basic advertising rates for the SB:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/11/sportsline/main6082591.shtml

$3 Million dollars per commercial.

I couldn’t find any numbers for the MLS Final, but I did check the NBA Finals advertising rates just to see what the going rate is for another successful sports league: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2010/05/20100531/This-Weeks-News/Advertising-Sales-Strong-Going-Into-NBA-Finals.aspx

The NBA wasn’t too shabby but is still literally and figuratively out of the NFL’s league.  To advertise on the NBA Finals (in 2010 for the above link) it will cost you on average $400,000 for a 30-second spot. 

UPDATE AFTER ORIGINAL POST!!: Someone pointed out to me that the NBA might have 7 games total played in a series, therefore bringing up an advertisers rate to a possible 2.8 million over the course of the games.  I doubt the NBA Finals commercials are as relevant as the Super Bowl’s, but the point was made that the NBA is getting as wealthy as the NFL over time.  Soccer in America could still never charge that much though ….

Let’s look at a different angle, the fact that major advertisers will spend additional money just to produce those commercials for Super Bowl Sunday.  It’s one thing to break the bank to get your commercial in the line-up, but how much are you willing to spend on the actual advertising clip?  Celebrities like Matthew Broderick can demand serious money to act like Ferris Beuller again after a twenty year hiatus, maybe that costs even more than a 30-second NBA spot.  Oh? And what other celebrities can we expect this year?  Oh yeah, David Beckham is confirmed to make an appearance that might draw in more total viewers than the entire years worth of games with his MLS team. 

Now I digress on that issue and point to a few differences in how athletes approach the game.  For one thing, Tom Brady and Eli Manning aren’t going to spend three months a year playing in a different league.  Landon Donovan feels no shame in playing a few months in England every year and American soccer fans even now consider him a better soccer player because of it.  Donovan’s not alone either, one of the MLS’s best players, Thierry Henry, decided to show up with his old English team just for the fun of it.  This is telling because it shows non-exclusiveness with MLS’s players. 

If you watch the NBA Finals you are telling yourself you are watching the world’s best basketball teams field the best players (Lebron James, D. Wayde, Jason Kidd and Dirk showed up in 2011).  If you watch the Super Bowl you are telling yourself you are watching the toughest, scariest most athletic football players that America breeds and trains; any attempt to duplicate such a game outside of America would not give you such a game.  However, with MLS and even the U.S. Men’s team you can not admit to yourself these are the best players.  As such, in an MLS Final you would be watching some players that would be desperate to play in foreign lands and treat this game as an afterthought. 

Let’s keep going.  To buy a ticket to BE at the Super Bowl this year in the stadium on gameday you’ll be asked to pay at least $2,252.00 for horrific seats where you couldn’t identify anyone not named Tom or Eli.  If you wanted to spend $250 for tickets to the MLS Final you will have had field view very close to the game per the L.A. Galaxy’s website.  If you wanted to spend $2,252.00 for any 2011 MLS Final tickets you might have been sat front and center on a team’s bench and given free beer and an authentic soccer jersey, or deemed insane.  Also if you wanted to get into the NFL’s media day to gawk at players who aren’t even playing yet, you would have shelled out between $100-350$.

I’m going to stop beating the dead horse and focus on a few positives for soccer fans who hope for change.  First is that for all of the over-hype of the current Super Bowl this years ad prices are stagnant this year.  They’re not rising in price like they once did and a lot of the better commercials are already on the internet for viewers to watch now (days before game day).  It doesn’t make much sense to me to spend so much on ads that aren’t kept secret anymore.  Remember that before the internet you could only watch Superbowl Ads on that one sunday and people would talk about it for days afterwards.  Now even Pepsi decided to screw the whole thing and will spend 30 million on something else. 

I also think a younger generation with a fast cell phone and zero short term memory is more adapted to soccer in the long run than the NFL only because soccer is played pretty much all the time, in most of the world, with their own over-hyped ridiculous important games.  If the NFL can’t convince people to keep watching on television the Super Bowl could be a waste of time (the television as we know it might be obsolete in twenty years anyway).  Already most people have over 350 channels, the internet, friends and actual lives in 2012.  They can’t be convinced to sit down and care about a game that doesn’t interest them anymore (ask MLB executives about this issue).

To end this Super introspection I’ll end this post with a Super Bowl commercial that some say changed the advertising industry in 1994:

Almost twenty years later Budweiser was bought out by a group named InBev, a European beer company operated by a group of forward thinking and audacious Brazilians.  In 1994 most Americans would’ve thought that Budweiser getting bought out by a once small European company was like seeing bullfrogs fly to outerspace, but it still happened, by a company that some call ‘the Wal-Mart of Beer Companies’. This same European group is now in charge of all major Budweiser advertising for the 2012 Super Bowl even as they try their best to make it as American as possible. But it makes you wonder … could the whole soccer thing EVER catch on stateside for huge soccer games? 

And when will the MLS Final EVER, EVER, EVER, have some major music act for a half-time show?  EVER?