MLS on PTI - Monday

Published by: smith 2009-01-07

Beckham In America: MLS TV Partners Stoked For Arrival::
ESPN Has Option To IncreaseNumber Of MLS Broadcasts After David Beckham ESPN ’s “PTI” led with Beckham and ESPNews aired reports throughout the day.
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/108614HOME

Wilbon and guest host Norman Chad (Tony will be back Tuesday) talked about the MLS All Star game today.

They took the oligatory shot at the league for shortening the game to make room for the half-time show.

Then Wilbon closed with some mysterious comments. Something about "The real story here is where are all those people after the World Cup who said that soccer has arrived. Soccer is never going to be as big as those people say it will be."

My first question for Wilbon is "who are you talking about?" I heard cautious optimism from soccer people after the WC. No one said the game was going to take over the world of American sports. MLS people and US Soccer people have consistently said that the WC was an important single step on a very long road.

My second question is what does that have to do with the All Star game? The game drew a good crowd by MLS standards, and most of them stayed through a long delay. It looked to me like fan support is sticking with the league. What about the All Star game would make you ask "where are those people now?"

Originally posted by jbeall
PTI undoubtedly IS a soundbite show, and one guy normally takes one side and the other will take the contrary position just to do it. Whatever. I'm just glad they're still mentioning soccer at all...

The CellScan technology for in vitro studies on novel platinum ::
tivity on tumour and normal cell lines. We chose the MLS human. Fig. 1 ORTEP representations of the molecular structure of trans-[PtI
http://www.rsc.org/ej/DT/2008/b802364f.pdfHOME

Trinidad Tobago Sport::
This page was originally published on Monday 29 December, 2008. Cup winner and three-time MLS All-Star Dwayne De Rosario from the Houston Dynamo in.
http://archive.wn.com/2008/12/29/1400/trinidadtobagosport/HOME

Exactly. The show itself is basicly an over-hyped, crowd-pleasing show. Plus you rarely get stand-in hosts supporting soccer (e.g. Dan La Bastard, Max "bone-head" Kellerman and some female sportwriter who bashed MLS but hypocritically supported women's soccer). That's why I really care less about the show.

Originally posted by FootyMundo
PTI is the ultimate sound bite show. And the ultimate sound bite these days is that soccer will never make it. Whatever the hell making it means. Anyway, any publicity for MLS is pretty much good publicity.

Exactly! The very fact that people talk about whether soccer will "make it" or not means soccer has "made it" already!

You don't ever hear people saying, "Will lacrosse make it as a big-time sport in the US?", etc. (no offense to lacrosse, just using it as a pertinent example).

I, for one, would love to know exactly what it means when someone says that a sport has "made it".

Does it mean that the sport is viable? That it is profitable? THat it is stable? That is has more than 15,000 fans per game? 20,000 fans/game? 30,000? That it is on national tv? That it gets money from its tv contract?

You see, there is no set definition for what it means, so people can use it to manipulate public opinion.

And for someone to say that soccer will never be huge is living in a cave. I can relate anything in life to the Simpsons, and last night they had an episode where Homer fakes his own death, his mom comes back after having been gone for 27 years to see him, and they have a flashback to Homer as a child. Homer's father was watching the Superbowl and said something like, "I'm watching the Superbowl. If we don't support this thing, it might not make it!" I know this is only a cartoon, but that was the state of the NFL (and the NBA, and NHL) for many years, before it exploded in popularity.

And, there is a whole class of people out there: recent immigrants from Mexico (mostly) who, unlike in the past, do not have to cast aside their love of their sport to "meld" in with this society. I recently saw a poll that listed, by race and ethnicity, the "most loved sports". For Whites, it was the NFL, for blacks, it was the NBA, for Latinos, it was "soccer" in general. The Latino community gets stronger every day. Despite the insulated world that Wilbon and his ilk live in, there is a whole facet of American society out there that is soccer-mad. The chore is to get them to be MLS-mad.

Orlando Sentinel - ESPN's Tommy Smyth, Injuries, and Miss World Cup by::
Jun 7, 2006 MLS Coverage . I caught the PTI piece while channel surfing. for more such minutes in the upcoming days on PTI and SportsCenter.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_soccerblog/2006/06/espns_tommy_smy.htmlHOME

Ah, screw all this rationalizing, what the heck is Wilbon's e-mail address?

Taking aim at Bristol::
Mar 17, 2008 The NFL has complained to ESPN about some “Monday Night Football” guests show and “PTI” the “best daily show on television right now.”
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/58375HOME

I found Wilbon's comments to be kind of strange. He usually gives soccer a fair shake, today he resorted to all the standard media cliches "this sport will never be big in the us" "everyone keeps saying its the next big thing" etc. Excuse me, but there were over 30k there on a bad weather day. These guys just throw out these cliches than never have any data to back it up. It almost seemed like he used the topic to be down on soccer because in the past he was fair towards it. There must be something that drove him to do that.

Definition of "Made It":
50% Soccer Specific Stadia
Average attendance (30,000)
TV is paying MLS to broadcast games
Majority of team revenue comes from TV and merchandising.
MLS can afford national teamers from top countries.

I don't ever see MLS averaging 30,000 in my life time.

Every thing else (outside of the 50 million + transfers), I believe MLS will hit within the next 20 years, should they survive the next 6 years of course.

Andy

PTI undoubtedly IS a soundbite show, and one guy normally takes one side and the other will take the contrary position just to do it. Whatever. I'm just glad they're still mentioning soccer at all...

Originally posted by fidlerre

i was very surprised...

wilbon has always taken the higher road when it comes to soccer. maybe it was b/c tony is coming back tomorrow and he wanted to get on tony's good side by bashing soccer...dont worry, with tony back on the show any talk of soccer will find wilbon on the supporters side while kornheiser will be the basher. How did he bash soccer? Did he say it was a boring sport with a bunch of whiny fans?

I think that Wilbon wasn't taking a shot at soccer, but at Soccerfan.

You know him.

The guy that thinks that when MLB goes on strike, MLS is suddenly going to get 20,000 fans a game.

The guy who can't conceive that people might like other sports more than soccer.

The guy who thinks that the only reason why soccer hasn't taken off is because Americans aren't smart enough/the media's keeping it down/other sports leagues are keeping it down.

He is ubiquitous here at BigSoccer and I salute Wilbon for bashing him because he is worthy to be bashed.

PTI is the ultimate sound bite show. And the ultimate sound bite these days is that soccer will never make it. Whatever the hell making it means. Anyway, any publicity for MLS is pretty much good publicity.

Originally posted by Pyro
Definition of "Made It":
50% Soccer Specific Stadia
Average attendance (30,000)
TV is paying MLS to broadcast games
Majority of team revenue comes from TV and merchandising.
MLS can afford national teamers from top countries.

Simple.

Don, get on it! By these criteria, soccer will make it circa 2072

yes any publicity is good publicity.

and I don't really remember hearing soccer people saying that after the WC MLS will explode. I just remember hearing reporters saying that MLS will not get a big jump. Sportscenter made up the whole thing i'm pretty sure. The soccer haters hate soccer so much they had to make up a story to bash soccer. ha ha ha

Who exactly said soccer will take off after the WC? I'm trying to figure this out. I got to hang out with Wilbon on my birthday, only because both our groups were waiting around for a table, but I didn't say to him, "Hey Wilbon, soccer will take off if we do well in the WC." Did Garber say soccer will take off? Who says this stuff to reporters who report back that this stuff was said?

Now whenever reporters get around to talking about dodgeball, they pretty know who they can turn to. dcaddick. I say dodgeball will make it big in about 2020.

Originally posted by Andy_B
I don't ever see MLS averaging 30,000 in my life time.

And I remember when I said that, I got ripped a new one. You may be substantially older than me, though, Andy, or take not-so-good care of yourself, so your point may be valid. ;)

soccer has been treate very fairly by PTI and Mitch Album. Unforuantely the concer that the excitement from the WC hs no trickled down into MLS, at least to the degree that it caught on for the Cup. That doesn't matter, Gaber and Arena and alike have continually said that it wasn't about catching lightning in a bottle. I heard a figure that MLS attendance is up 20%. We'll take that for now.

Originally posted by falcon6
I found Wilbon's comments to be kind of strange. He usually gives soccer a fair shake, today he resorted to all the standard media cliches "this sport will never be big in the us" "everyone keeps saying its the next big thing" etc. Excuse me, but there were over 30k there on a bad weather day. These guys just throw out these cliches than never have any data to back it up. It almost seemed like he used the topic to be down on soccer because in the past he was fair towards it. There must be something that drove him to do that.

i was very surprised...

wilbon has always taken the higher road when it comes to soccer. maybe it was b/c tony is coming back tomorrow and he wanted to get on tony's good side by bashing soccer...dont worry, with tony back on the show any talk of soccer will find wilbon on the supporters side while kornheiser will be the basher.

You can send them an e-mail at PTI@espn.com but I'd be willing to bet that it won't get read.

Well, at least they mentioned it. Perhaps only because it was in DC.