Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Washington Post, 1985: Pro Soccer in US Has Gone Bust

From Full House to Empty Hand: Pro Soccer in U.S. Has Gone Bust

Expansion, Several Other Factors Lead to Game's Demise.

Sunday, July 7, 1985

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By Robyn Norwood
Washington Post Staff Writer
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The Diplomats. The Cosmos.

Cruyff. Chinaglia

The first day of June 1980. More than 53,000 fans crowd into RFK Stadium. This is it: Soccer, world-class soccer, has arrived in Washington. Near the end of the game, it's Diplomats 1, Cosmos 1, and one Diplomats goal already has been disallowed. Washington's Alan Green dribbles to the right, slips past a defender and shoots. Goalie Hubert Birkenmeier leaps out, gets his left hand on the ball. But the ball glances off his fingers and settles into the net. Diplomats 2, Cosmos 1! No? No! This goal, too, is disallowed. The Diplomats charge the official. A fan throws a blunt object that catches the official on the head. In the melee, Johan Cruyff, the Diplomats' star midfielder, is ejected.

In the end, the Diplomats lose, 2-1, in a shootout.

That was then. This is now. This is 1985, and professional outdoor soccer, the sport of the 1980s, is dead in this country. The North American Soccer League, which had shrunk from 24 teams in 1980 to two, suspended operations in March. The Cosmos, once the paragon of U.S. soccer, abandoned a 15-game schedule against international competition and disconnected the office phone June 21. On June 25, the four-team United Soccer League gave up the fight.


The U.S. soccer boom began in 1975, when Clive Toye of the New York Cosmos lured Edson Arantes do Nascimento—known to the world and American Express as Pele—out of retirement. Then Toye added Franz Bechenbauer, captain of the 1974 West German World Cup championship team, and Carlos. Alberto. captain of Brazil's 1970 World Cup champions, and the Cosmos cre­ated a virtual World Cup all-star team play­ing the world's most popular game in the world's most cosmopolitan city. At the end of the 1977 season, as Pele played the last match of his career, crowds of more than 75,000 poured into Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ.

Even after he retired, the big crowds kept coming. The leaders of the U.S. soccer community reasoned that as the millions playing youth soccer came of professional­ playing and ticket-buying age, the boom could only get bigger.

But the boom went bust.

And although the sport now appears to have been in its zenith in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Toye says it was at that very time that the supports of outdoor soccer were undermined.

In 1978, the NASL expanded from 18 to 24 teams.

"The problems began with the expansion," said Toye. who was acting president of the NASL when it folded. "Within a short time, six of the existing clubs changed hands. So. very quickly. in 1978, we had 50 percent new ownership and 50 percent new management.

'It was not expansion per se that was dam­aging, but the nature of the people we added. We went from a league that knew its direction to adding people who were attracted by the wrong reasons - large crowds."

Toye and others find fault with the ex­pansion because it was too much, too soon. The Cosmos, drawing on the New York area's culturally mixed population. could draw huge crowds. But could it be done in Tulsa? People involved in the game in this country from its beginnings say the NASL, particularly the expansion group, failed to realize that the success of the late 1970s was a false one created by imported play­ers, that owners got giddy from the crowds. "In '77 everyone thought we had made it," said Gordon Bradley, who coached both the Cosmos and the Diplomats and now is coaching at George Mason University. "I thought we had made it. Everybody thought we had made it. But what we really did was we started at the top of the pyramid. There was no base to it."

Bradley uses this analogy to a pyramid often, saying the NASL failed to realize that the top of the pyramid-high-priced foreign players was a false creation. The original idea was to sign World Cup stars to big con­tracts to sustain the sport's growth until the broad base - the youngsters who were growing up here playing soccer - matured into quality players.

Americanization, it was called. Prime the pump with imported players, and in 15 years when the demographics catch up, bin­go! American stars.

It did not work.

If expensive foreign players drew crowds, owners reasoned, even more would bring greater crowds.
Although he began the importing, Toye blames it largely for the financial troubles of the game.

"The bringing of Pele, Beckenbauer and Cruyff was a positive because they sold tick­ets because of their mystique and majesty," said Toye. "But the problem was they (own­ers) spent the same money on average play­ers.

"They cost people bloody fortunes. My wish at the time was that Beckenbauer would be the last foreign player. The other owners didn't understand that if Pele was worth $2.8 million, that Gerd Mueller (Fort Lauderdale) wasn't worth $1.5 million or even $100,000. In the later days, rosters were full of overpaid, overweight nonsuperstars."

What resulted was a failure to Ameri­canize. "Somewhere in the late '70s. the time came for having a lot more American play­ers," Toye said. "But there was too much of an emphasis on a continuum of foreign play­ers. Many clubs gave lip service to really developing players. It was easier to pick up the phone and buy a 30-year-old European who you knew was good than to scout high schools and colleges and take a chance on someone's judgment."

Toye and Bradley point to the expansion as the catalyst for overspending and thus the eventual downfall of the league. But Phil Woosnam, commissioner of the NASL at the time of its expansion, said the decision was not a mistake.

He said expansion was designed to attract television. It did - ABC began broadcasting a game once a week - but the broadcasts failed to attract viewers and they were discontin­ued. Woosnam, instead, points to the failure of the broad base of that pyramid to mature as the deciding factor.

That failure has mystified many people in soccer. Organized amateur soccer is thriv­ing in this country, but it never has translated into box-office success or the antic­ipated home-grown stars. On an international level, U.S. teams have suffered dis­mal failures in the last year. First failing to advance in the Olympics and more recently being eliminated from World Cup qualifying, losing, 1-0, to Costa Rica in a game in which even a tie would have meant advancing.

Some people say the losses are not indic­ative of the quality of U.S. players, that these setbacks are simply unfortunate fail­ings. The United States Soccer Federation was so unable to make sense of them that recently it fared both the national team coach. Alkis Panagoulias. and the director of coaching, Karl-Heinz Heddergott.

Others say the demographics have not quite caught up, and that U.S. soccer hopes should rest on the 16-and-under team that will play in a World Cup competition this sum­mer in Peking. Still, others say the United States lacks an effective development pro­gram. suggesting either a minor-league sys­tem or closer professional ties to colleges.

Whatever the structural failings of out­door soccer in this country were, they were magnified by the introduction of the indoor game. The Major Indoor Soccer League, founded by Earl Foreman in 1978, was hailed by many as the form soccer would adopt in this country. The indoor game is faster, as players shuttle in and out fre­quently; it is more exciting, with the ball careening off the wall creating multiple re­bound shots; it is higher-scoring. In short, many say it is what U.S. fans expect.

Within the NASL, owners squabbled about whether to play the indoor game. In 1979-80, the NASL played its first indoor season. In some NASL cities. such as San Diego, Chicago and San Francisco, it caught on. But in others -Vancouver, Tampa, New York - the indoor game was played in near-empty arenas.

Teams were playing year-round soccer, but only half of the year was successful. But outdoor teams needed indoor teams to play, and indoor teams needed outdoor teams. In 1982-83, the NASL decided not to play an indoor season and San Diego jumped to the MISL and won the championship. In 1983- 84, the NASL again played indoors. Mean­while, amidst the pressures of yeat-round soccer, the NASL dropped from 24 teams in 1980 to 21 in 1981 to 14 in 1982.

"It was like saying, 'Let me take my mar­bles to do this and you take your marbles and do that over there,'" Toye said, 'We finally got to the point last August when everyone was prepared to recognize that we were in the wrong league together and that we had not been bound together, there wasn't a snowball in hell's chance that we would be in the same room together."


"We all wanted different things. So finally we said, 'You want to go indoor? Fine, go indoor. Just leave us alone to build our own outdoor league.' We were left behind to restructure a league that had been battered privately and publicly, things only got worse.

"Everything associated with the NASL smelled of doom. negativism and defeat," said Ray Klivecka. who coached the Cosmos through their final season.

The Cosmos, NASL champions in 1972, '77, '78. ·ao and '82, failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1975. They jumped to the MISL, but the poor outdoor team was even worse indoors, and the club dropped out of the league in February.

With a mediocre team and few marketing funds, the Cosmos' attendance dwindled. Meanwhile, the NASL was trying to recuit teams, and the question on the minds - of investors was always: Will the Cosmos be in the league? The NASL couldn't say because the Cosmos had not posted a letter of credit. Finally, in March, the NASL was forced to expel the Cosmos, who then announced their 15-game international schedule.

Without the Cosmos, the NASL didn't have much of a chance. Without a league or the financial resources to market the inter­national  schedule sufficiently,  neither did the Cosmos.

Was the game the problem? ls indoor soccer, which some purists wince even to call soccer. destined to be the version of the game played in the United States?

Foreman, surely one of the indoor game's chief advocates, maintains the outdoor game has a much larger potential in this country.

"The bulk of interest in this country in out­ door soccer is outdoor participation. As a spectator sport, it's always laid a big fat egg," said Fore­man, whose MISL operates 13 teams.

"The outdoor game has always been han­dled wrong in this country. It should be big­ger than the indoor," he said. "'But what I did with the MISL is almost exactly oppo­site of what the NASL did. We've expanded slowly. We only go in when the market is there. For three, four, or five years. it was going so good they couldn't louse it up; In the end, they did."

Toye, Bradley, Klivecka, Foreman and oth­ers say there is room in this country for pro­fessional outdoor soccer. Toye is involved in seeking to form a new league. And there are teams playing shoestring-budget soccer while they wait for a league to arise.

Tampa Bay, San Jose, Football Club Los Angeles, Football  Club  Seattle. Tulsa. Houston, Dallas and South Florida are play­ing games against each other, against inter­national teams, whomever they can find. But nearly every day there is a rumor of another failed franchise, another "total reorganization," another office phone call goes unanswered.

"What we've got to do now," Bradley said, "is start again, because before we started at the wrong end."

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Thursday, July 18, 2024

What happened to TV Viewership?


My sources for daily TV viewership have dried up. Sports Media Watch, my most recent source, stopped posting daily figures about a month ago and Spoiler TV... is a mess.

Tracking down numbers from PR accounts is time-consuming and paints an incomplete picture of viewership.

It is no secret that networks and other stakeholders are not comfortable with all the data being available, let alone someone tracking it closely. Requests for data have not been answered.

I've enjoyed posting the data over the last 4 years and hope a dark knight appears from the shadows to post the Nielsen data again.

Data is what matters in any performance-based industry. Tracking it the way I did shines a light on what drives the massive TV Sports industry. Tracking soccer viewership the way I did is a first for the industry and I am proud of that.

We'll see where my interests take me here on Helltown. A couple things you can count on with this site is that it will always be ad-free and thoughtful.

Thank you.

Larry.

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ljbaby654@gmail.com

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Soccer Viewership: MAY 27 - JUNE 9

The UEFA Champions League Final takes the top spot on the week and on YTD.

Highlights/Lowlights:

• From Sports Media Watch: On CBS, viewership trailed only Real Madrid-Liverpool two years ago (2.76M) and Barcelona-Manchester United on FOX in 2011 (2.58M) as the highest on record for the UCL final on English-language television.

• Somewhat surprisingly, the CBS broadcast of the match topped Univision by about one million. In just about every other Span/Eng simulcast the Span-lang comes out on top.

• The Concacaf Champions Cup pulled a lot of interest on Span-lang nets with a solid 868k total across all nets. FS1 could only manage 135 of that total.

• USA v Colombia did well on both Span/Eng.

• In domestic league action, the NWSL's 546k on CBS is the second-best number this calendar year and 5th best since I've been tracking.

• MLS averaged an MLS sub 300k number on FOX.

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US TV Viewership: MAY 27 - JUNE 9
PREMIER LEAGUE
LIGA MX
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
NWSL
Viewers (000)Event/GameNetworkDate
3,623UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: DORTMUND/REAL MADRIDCBS+UNI6/1
2,323UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: DORTMUND/REAL MADRIDCBS6/1
1,589SELECCION MX FUTBOL: MEXICO/BRAZILUNI6/8
1,392US SOCCER: USMNT/COLOMBIATEL+TNT+TRUTV6/8
1,300UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: DORTMUND/REAL MADRIDUNI6/1
1,097SELECCJON MX FUTBOL: MEXICO/URUGUAYUNI6/5
868CONCACAF CHAMP CUP: PACHUCA/COLUMBUS CREWUMA+TUDN+FS16/1
710FUTBOL CENTRAL WED MEXICOUNI6/5
709US SOCCER: USMNT/COLOMBIATEL6/8
670AMISTO-POSTTEL6/8
611US SOCCER: USMNT/COLOMBIATNT6/8
553USWNT: USWNT/KOREA REPUBLICTNT+TRUTV6/4
546NWSL: NJ/NY GOTHAM/ANGEL CITY FCCBS6/8
543CONCACAF CHAMP CUP: PACHUCA/COLUMBUS CREWUMA6/1
462USWNT: USWNT/KOREA REPUBLICTNT6/4
457UEFA CHAMP LEAGUE TODAYCBS6/1
346USWNT: USWNT/KOREA REPUBLICTNT6/1
294MLS: ATLANTA UNITED/CHARLOTTE FCFOX6/2
286FUTBOL CENTRAL SAT: UCLUNI6/1
272FUTBOL CENTRAL SAT: UCLUMA6/1
203US SOCCER PREGAME USMNTTNT6/8
196MISION EUROPA+TTUDN6/1
190CONCACAF CHAMP CUP: PACHUCA/COLUMBUS CREWTUDN6/1
187FUT INTL AMISTOSO: ARGENTINA/ECUADORFOXD6/9
178NWSL: BAY FC/CHICAGO RED STARSION6/8
161US SOCCER PREGAME USWNTTNT6/4
135CONCACAF CHAMP CUP: PACHUCA/COLUMBUS CREWFS16/1
106USA SOCCER PREGAME USWNTTNT6/1
91USWNT: USWNT/KOREA REPUBLICTRUTV6/4
72US SOCCER: USMNT/COLOMBIATRUTV6/8
20US WOMEN'S DEAF NT: USDWNT/AUSTRALIATRUTV6/1
-SELECCJON MX FUTBOL: PARTIDO AMISTOTO: MEX/BOLIVAUMA+TUDN5/31

sources: Nielsen Data via Sports Media Watch, Spoiler TV, SportsTVRatings

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Note: My primary sources for this data have been shuffling around a bit. I'm trying to keep up but if I'm missing something, let me know. Thank you.

Questions/comments: ljbaby654@gmail.com

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Soccer Viewership: MAY 20 - 26

Liga MX two-legged final dips -24% from last year. 

Highlights/Lowlights:

• Light week. Only the NWSL and Liga MX in action.

• 2nd leg of the Liga MX Final topped 2m.

• Both legs of the Clausura Liga MX Final were down -24% from last year.

• NWSL dips to the 120s. It's average slipping as summer begins.

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US TV Viewership: MAY 20 - 26
PREMIER LEAGUE
LIGA MX
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
NWSL
Viewers (000)Event/GameNetworkDate
2,104LIGA MX FINAL 2: CRUZ AZUL/AMERICAUNI5/26
1,600LIGA MX FINAL 1: CRUZ AZUL/AMERICAUNI5/23
829FUTBOL CENTRAL PT SUNUNI5/26
316NWSL ION PRE MATCH SHOWION5/25
220ZONA MIXTA - SATTEL5/25
127NWSL: KANSAS CITY CURRENT/UTAH ROYALS FCION5/25
121NWSL RE-RUN: ANGEL CITY/WASHINGTON SPIRITION5/25
116MISION EUROPA+TUNI5/25

sources: Nielsen Data via Sports Media Watch, Spoiler TV, SportsTVRatings

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Note: My primary sources for this data have been shuffling around a bit. I'm trying to keep up but if I'm missing something, let me know. Thank you.

Questions/comments: ljbaby654@gmail.com

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Soccer Viewership: MAY 13 - 19

Club America vs. Chivas took the top spot but the week belonged to the Premier League as they finished their season.

Highlights/Lowlights:

• The drama at the top of the table led to the Premier League dominating soccer on TV last week.

• The PL season is over, friendlies and preseason up next for the league.

• Liga MX hits 1.34m for, really its only premier matchup these days, Chivas v. America. America advanced and will now face Cruz Azul in the 2-legged final.

• NWSL slipped a bit on ION, both matches.

• FOX dropped another stinker for MLS at 220k.

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US TV Viewership: MAY 13 - 19
PREMIER LEAGUE
LIGA MX
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
NWSL
Viewers (000)Event/GameNetworkDate
1,342LIGA MX: AMERICA/CHIVASUNI5/18
1,173PREMIER LEAGUE: WEST HAM/MAN CITYNBC+TEL5/19
1,079LIGA MX: CRUZ AZUL/MONTERREYUNI5/19
847PREMIER LEAGUE: WEST HAM/MAN CITYNBC5/19
523PREMIER LEAGUE: MAN CITY/TOTTENHAMUSA+UNVRS5/14
515FUTBOL CENTRAL PT SUNUNI5/19
505PREMIER LEAGUE: EVERTON/ARSENALUSA5/19
487FUTBOL CENTRAL PT SATUNI5/18
455PREMIER LEAGUE: MAN CITY/TOTTENHAMUSA5/14
369PREMIER LEAGUE: LIVERPOOL/ASTON VILLAUSA+UNVRS5/13
326PREMIER LEAGUE: WEST HAM/MAN CITYTEL5/19
317LIGA PRE 3ERTEL5/19
315PREMIER LEAGUE: LIVERPOOL/ASTON VILLAUSA5/13
311PREMIER LEAGUE: NEWCASTLE/MAN UNITEDUSA5/15
281ZONA MIXTA - SATTEL5/18
275LIGA MX: CHIVAS/AMERICAUNVSO5/15
220MLS: NASHVILLE/ATLANTAFOX5/18
211PREMIER LEAGUE GOAL ZONEUSA5/15
203PREMIER LEAGUE GOAL ZONEUSA5/14
189PREMIER LG LIVE STUDIOUSA5/13
171PREMIER LG LIVE STUDIOUSA5/14
168NWSL: ANGEL CITY/WASHINGTON SPIRITION5/18
136PREMIER LEAGUE GOAL ZONEUSA5/13
136PREMIER LG LIVE STUDIOUSA5/15
136PREMIER LG LIVE STUDIOUSA5/16
121NWSL: RACING LOUISVILLE/KANSAS CITY CURRENTION5/18
118FOTBOL ESTEL CHIVAS EXTRAUNVSO5/16
118FUTBOL ESTEL CHIVAS EXTRAUNVSO5/15
117LA LIGA: ALMERA/BARCELONAESPND5/15
100LA LIGA: BARCELONA/REAL SOCIEDADESPND5/13
70PREMIER LEAGUE: MAN CITY/TOTTENHAMUNIVERSO5/14
54PREMIER LEAGUE: LIVERPOOL/ASTON VILLAUNIVERSO5/13
-LIGA MX: MONTERREY/CRUZ AZULUNI5/15

sources: Nielsen Data via Sports Media Watch, Spoiler TV, SportsTVRatings

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Note: My primary sources for this data have been shuffling around a bit. I'm trying to keep up but if I'm missing something, let me know. Thank you.

Questions/comments: ljbaby654@gmail.com