Soccer United Marketing

In 2002, if you were the Chief Marketing Officer for a major American corporation trying to understand the soccer market your assistant might be putting through the following calls: it’s US Soccer on the phone, they would like to talk about sponsoring their teams it’s MLS on the phone, they would like you to sponsor their league it’s US Youth Soccer on the phone, they have 3.2 million kids you can sponsor it’s Concacaf on the phone, do you want to sponsor the Gold Cup? hola, its the Mexican Federation, their team is playing next week… would you like…? it’s Manchester United on the phone, do you want to sponsor their tour? You get the picture. The marketplace was fragmented, competitive and confusing to just about everyone in corporate America. Companies may have thought they wanted to buy “soccer” but had very little idea as to what that really meant. Other sports were simpler, if corporate America wanted baseball they could buy the “MLB”, football the “NFL”, basketball the “NBA”, but soccer, well, that just confused them and as such the “boss” was most likely off to the SuperBowl again!