In Thursday's Soccer Daily, we discuss what the North American pro sports really have to teach England's Premier League from a sports business perspective.
By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Jan 20, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Too much of the time, cross sports business comparisons end up downplaying the peculiarities and day-to-day realities between codes. The National Football League is the biggest professional sports draw in the United States, but their clubs are only responsible for selling an eight-game regular season. The National Basketball and National Hockey Leagues play over 40 home games, but charge premium prices. Baseball is normally the cheapest ticket of any of the pro sports in a metropolitan area, but that's the cost of getting in the building.
In real terms, comparing the business side across sports isn't as difficult as teasing out if a football player is a better athlete than a basketball player, but it's also not straightforward. Bringing us to soccer in general, and the English Premier League in particular.
Our English friends have spent a lot of time over the past decade or so paying very close attention to the North American pro sports model. In big picture terms, that's a set of basic ideas establishing sports as yet another business and working towards brand marketing and broader appeal than just your traditional home area. In some instances, it works. In others... well, if you expect to see people repping your team all across the country that team better be about to win a championship and contend the next season.
England has no problem with the concepts involved in how North American sports manage their business except for one. This stubborn idea that English fans choose a club for life and will not be swayed. It's somewhat of a sweeping generalization in both directions, but suffice it to say that it's simply not true. A lot of English supporters discovered that they'd really liked Chelsea all along when that club emerged as a Premier League force. Lots of fans probably forgot how much they liked Leeds United when that team faded.
Is it at North American levels? Probably not. There was a kid at my high school that cleaned out the sports store at the mall. Any team even remotely in contention got his support and likely meant the purchase of a Starter cap. Hey, I was in high school in the early 90's. His run of glory came to an ignominious end when the Atlanta Braves - everybody else's favorite team where I grew up - made the World Series and our gloryhunter attempted to switch allegiances yet again.
That level of wandering team spirit isn't the norm, but it's also one of the realities facing American pro sports teams. Everyone involved in the business of sports knows the limits of fan loyalty. Even without the looming threat of actual relegation, there's a public perception relegation at work in the North American pro sports teams and it's caught up with marquee teams in every league.
Arsenal have become one of the leading proponents of the North American pro sports as business model not because they hired a former Major League Soccer executive to run the business operations of their club. They weren't the first to adopt the chief executive role, make North American connections, and stress the business side. They've just had more success with it.
Their game has evolved past stocking their squad and fighting for trophies. Though they're not naive enough to think they can skimp on the first team squad, they're also generating revenue through control of a modern stadium in the biggest market in the country and property development.
Where they've gone, others would very much like to follow. The current public negotiations over what club will get London's Olympic Stadium after 2012 is very much about the Arsenal model. Both West Ham United and Tottenham would have available land where their current stadiums now stand. Tottenham's plan would include a rebuild of the Olympic Stadium site that would put them and their partners Anschutz Entertainment Group in competition with other new stadium venues in greater London like Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and Wembley.
Spurs have already helpfully reminded anyone not familiar with the current Premier League table that they're currently in a better position and far more likely to be in the Premier League by the time their rebuilt stadium on the Olympic site would be completed. In competition with Chelsea and Arsenal and trying very hard to expand their drawing power locally while thinking internationally, it's an obvious step.
But the real lesson of North American pro sports is that there might not be a set of best practices that actually work within a sport, much less across them. Baseball played to nostalgia for over a decade of stadium construction. Basketball tried that with a retro arena in Indianapolis that didn't lead to the same copycat approach from other teams. The NFL's recent ultra-modern stadium boom already has people grumbling about the realities of watching pro football at the New Meadowlands.
Team logos have become trendy in the full sense of the word, but nobody seemed to really be able to judge the limits. Lots of teams pushed a lot of products that ended up having a very limited shelf life. On the field, it's still the old winners rule model.
In the Premier League, it might be trickier. Clubs need to win, but there's a growing malaise in only coming close enough. Top four is expected of a handful of clubs, and not reaching that in a given season throws them into crisis. That's a tough way to operate a business, with no real sense of a long view, growing from within, and being better in three years because you didn't overreact now.
For Premier League clubs, too much gets caught in that overreaction state of mind. The result could be another race to create modern facilities that don't seem to realize stadium concert touring isn't a growth sector. Or trying to impose a tweak on the North American model in areas where there's simply no need.
Historically, the English model has dealt with local realities. Even a winning team with a small population base isn't likely to draw as well as one that's an established international presence. Mimicking what that bigger in the full sense of the word club might or might not be doing is a risk. Resisting that follow along approach is difficult. A lot of teams have put themselves into financial jeopardy by deciding there was a business need for a new stand or even a new stadium, along with that club record transfer.
Look at it like this. Faced with relegation and the buying and selling of players rather than trading them, North American sports business models would be categorically different. With that in mind, it's worth asking what lessons the North American sports really have to teach the Premier League.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
