theprof00 said:
saying that nobody likes soccer is a bit extreme. Sure there's lots of people who dislike soccer for whatever reason, but in reality, there's just apathy to the sport, and it's because advertising isn't intrinsically linked to the sport. Yes it's growing in popularity. Yes people watch it. Yes, there is demand. But without advertisers in on it, there's no push. Just think of it like a video game without advertising. A good game will still sell well, but if there aren't any advertisers pushing it, it will never reach its potential. When you're invested in a medium, you do what you can to maximize your impact. Like coors, you'll have an ad on monday night football, produce beer coozies, and try to get your name on anything in the game. You invest in making a magazine for each game so that you can control your own advertising at a cheaper price with more impact. You fund the groundskeepers so you can have you brand cut into the grass. You might fund new chairs for a stadium that have your logo on them. Or you might buy jerseys, or sports-cards, or game-advertising rights, and what have you. All of these things improve the quality level of the fan experience. Now, with baseball, you have roughly an hour+ of commercials. Let's say that breaks down to 100-50 commercials. That makes every commercial very cheap, and you can have several. Then look at soccer, where there are like, only 4-5 commercial breaks (they sometimes go to commercial during play). That makes commercials very expensive. More expensive means you have significantly less diverse companies. Less companies means less people involved, less people means fewer ideas. It's a snowball effect. With baseball so heavily branded, you can't find something that doesn't have a hand in it or an ad during its breaks. Calendars, watches, pens, bike helmets, motorcycles. You will see so much variation during a baseball game, it's uncanny. Absolutely, we are going to see more growth in soccer...but I promise you it will come through advertising. They just need to figure out how to do it without interrupting the game. |
One of the reasons I dont like watching American sports (and US TV in general) is the amount of ads during each broadcast. Having ads every few minutes kills any suspense, tension and excitement built up by a game. I dont watch sport to find out what beer ot drink or car to drive, I watch it for the sport. It's refreshing watching socccer for 45 minutes without ad breaks. As for ad revenue, if there is enough interest in the sport it will generate plenty of ad revenue. The growing interest int he MLS will and has increased the ad revenue. The Masters golf tournament restricts the amount of ads during a broadcast and gets by perfectly well. Also, teams all over the world get by perfectly well with no ad breaks during each half of a soccer game and there is more than one way to increase revenue.
Its good to see MLS doing so well and it has a lot of momentum around it also. The games are good quallity and there is great atmosphere at the matches - I have been to a number of timbers matches (go timbers!) and the atmosphere is great, better than some of the premier league matches that I have been to (Everton home games in particular are full of old people! XD ).
This is not an exit.
