| Making Headway (July 2006) |
By Jim Sheldon
It’s World Cup time.
Okay, by the time you read this, the World Cup probably is over, but think back to the pre-World Cup hype. It was hard to miss, even for non-soccer fans.
Articles and cover stories in national magazines. Extensive coverage in leading newspapers. Announcement of the roster and inside looks at the U.S. men’s national team on ESPN’s SportsCenter. Cory Gibbs’ injury scrolling by on the ticker May 25. Soccer-themed advertising.
A visit to the store this week revealed one of those life-sized, pop-up posters of a soccer player hovering over cases of beer. Nobody recognizable. Not even a recognizable uniform. That’s because the beer in question wasn’t the official World Cup sponsor, which was exactly why it was kind of neat – a competitor of Anheuser-Busch’s trying to cash in on World Cup fever through guerrilla marketing.
Now, think back 16 years. How much media exposure was there before the 1990 World Cup, the United States’ first in 40 years?
I have vague memories of a week or two of promotion of TNT’s (or was it TBS’s?) television coverage. There may have been a few stories in print. Nothing else comes to mind.
Obviously, things ramped up for the U.S.-hosted 1994 Cup. What is interesting is that it’s carried through – and even increased – during the subsequent three World Cups.
For all the battles waged and frustrations poured out by us soccer folks about media treatment in this country, one thing now clearly is evident: American media finally have embraced the World Cup.
Except for a few uninformed, the media now recognize that the World Cup is the biggest global sporting event. World-wide TV ratings dwarf the Olympics, let alone the Super Bowl. American-based international corporations recognize the value of Cup-associated sponsorship and advertising.
Even when it comes to our own often-insular American point of view, it was hard to ignore the number of people in this country who were watching the 2002 World Cup in the middle of the night. American networks now pay significant rights fees to televise the World Cup. Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, USA Today and others have all jumped on board since 1990. Even frequent soccer critics – Tony Kornheiser comes to mind – get into the World Cup.
In fact, coverage of the 2002 World Cup might be the perfect example. After the so-called last-place finish by the U.S. in France ’98, it might have been easy for the media to once again ignore soccer. Instead, we saw pre-tournament magazine covers featuring national team players as well as extensive television coverage. As the U.S. built momentum during its run to the quarterfinals, we saw coverage of those thousands attending 3 a.m. watch parties in bars and stadiums.
By the way, the last-place tag on the ’98 team always has bothered me. Did we have a bad tournament? Undeniably. Were we the worst team in the 32-team field? That was an arbitrary designation. Eleven others teams failed to win a game in that World Cup. One – Japan – lost all three as did the U.S. The 32nd-place label got hung on us because Japan gave up one fewer goal, a meaningless statistic when we weren’t playing the same teams. And, of course, there’s the minor fact that there were about 160 nations that didn’t even qualify for the finals.
So the World Cup has arrived on these shores. Every four years, the media now get behind the event, the casual fan gets excited and even the non-soccer fan can no longer ignore the sport.
But then the three-year lull sets in.
For those of us dedicated to the sport, there is still plenty to look forward to – MLS, European leagues and tournaments, continental championships, the Women’s World Cup, youth championships, college soccer, World Cup qualifiers – until the next Cup finals. For the rest of America, it’s far too easy to ignore all that.
The media, by and large, have struck the right current balance. It recognizes that the level of interest in the World Cup exceeds normal soccer interest. For three years, its soccer coverage will be a reasonable approximation of local/national interest. In Year 4, coverage will reflect the greater interest in the sport generated by the World Cup. Really no different from what many Olympic sports (gymnastics, swimming, track, skiing. etc.) experience.
Our challenge is to wake up those who take a three-year soccer hibernation. When was the last time you invited a casual fan to a game or over to watch soccer on TV?
The media will respond to numbers, be that attendance or ratings. Our job is to produce those numbers.
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