By David Finkel
As a commercial enterprise, the success of World Cup 1994 appears assured. Stands will be packed to capacity or very nearly so. Even more important is the extraction of maximum revenues from World Cup corporate sponsorships, stadium luxury boxes, broadcast fees, clothing and assorted paraphernalia — a science first developed for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and brought to new heights of refinement in subsequent international sporting extravaganzas.
Beyond the tournament's immediate profitability, of course, lies the question of a far bigger pay-off: whether the gamble in bringing the 1994 World Cup to the shores of soccer Babylon will finally crack open the fantastically lucrative US spectator sports market to the world's most popular game.
Preparation for this World Cup has produced the highest level of soccer interest in US history. It's somewhat difficult to convey, however, just how low this level of "interest" actually has been. Media coverage of the upcoming cup is minimal. Results of the US team's preparatory matches are reported in the margins of newspaper sports sections. Greater interest has been stimulated by the experiment of implanting real grass into Pontiac's domed stadium for the matches to be played there. How far can a World Cup go toward transforming mass apathy to rabid fanaticism?
The speculative answer I will offer here is that while World Cup 1994 will have a modest long-term impact on the US spectator sports consumer culture, it will not make soccer more than a secondary presence here; and that this fact should come as a relief to the game's billions of international fans. To explain this leads to some considerations on spectator sports in US mass culture.
Here we are discussing the spectator/consumer dimension of the sport, not the participatory one. Soccer has been growing for at least two decades as a participation sport, breaking out of its historic European and Latino immigrant community base into the schools of mainstream suburbia. (This participation base is already reflected in the fact, although few sports fans here realise it, that the United States is already a dominant power in international women's soccer.)
The game's growth among African Americans is much slower, the reasons for which are readily clear from a survey of the wreckage of untended inner city parks. Indeed, the decline of urban facilities for youth is probably responsible for even stalling the growth of black participation in the professional baseball leagues. Having few places to play soccer and fewer coaches available to teach it, African American athletes are unlikely to attain the dominant position they have long occupied in basketball.
Only to a limited extent does participation translate into spectator consumerism. So far as World Cup 1994 is concerned, the combined spending power of suburban consumer affluence, a flood of soccer tourists and the popularity of the Latin American and European sides among US ethnic communities will fill enough seats. One of the conditions for granting the World Cup to the United States is the formation of an ongoing professional league to make this enthusiasm a permanent institution.
Actually, professional soccer should by now have carved a successful niche as America's second spring-summer outdoor game. Soccer has no chance of displacing baseball in the United States; nonetheless, the sheer size of the market allows for cohabitation.
Organised in 1968, by the middle 1970s the North American Soccer League was a going concern in a dozen US and Canadian cities. The league's base grafted the growing participatory interest in youth soccer, as a safer and less costly alternative to American football, with the sport's traditional immigrant community base.
The Chicago Sting, for example, drew upon that city's Mexican and German communities, while the league championship one year was won by a team called Toronto Metro Croatia. The New York Cosmos coaxed Pele out of retirement, imported Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia and other internationals and for a few years regularly attracted crowds of over 50,000.
Although aesthetically marred by rather small playing surfaces, by that uniquely North American barbarism, artificial turf, and by an absurd "shoot-out" to resolve tied games, NASL at its best was able to present a product that wouldn't have disgraced a lower second division English league side.
This intriguing hybrid was ruined when the league's owners, over the vehement objections of a few who knew better, became "dizzy with success" and convinced themselves that they were on the verge of surpassing the National Football League in the arena of corporate sports gigantism. From 1976-77 on, a forced march expansion of the league and gross overspending on promotion and player imports produced a shambles of franchise shifts, followed by a general implosion. By 1985 the North American Soccer League was dead.
What's remained is a variation called "indoor soccer", which has been a reasonably successful promotion on a minor league level. This is a six-a-side game played at sprint pace with free substitution on a surface the size of an ice hockey rink (roughly 65 yards long and 30 wide). Goals count for either two points or three (if scored from further out), with typical match scores looking like 23-16. This, it is felt, appeals to the US fan's penchant for high scoring; goal-less draws and 1-0 scores have been considered the kiss of death for traditional soccer here. "Indoor soccer" is fun to play, and entertaining to watch a time or two, but lacks the texture and complexity that makes soccer itself a world game.
There are good reasons for soccer fans of the world to be grateful that their game will not become the 500 pound gorilla of the US sports market. Spectator sports in this country are undergoing a profound and unhealthy transformation. An unexpected mass success of soccer in the US would quite likely feed back into the game's European and Latin heartlands, quite possibly damaging the game in the countries where it is central to popular culture.
It suffices to summarise a few of the features of this transformation:
Detachment from community. This process can be dated to the Brooklyn (baseball) Dodgers' desertion to Los Angeles in 1957. It has accelerated massively in the past decade, with whole cites held to ransom by multimillionaire franchise owners demanding publicly built new stadiums as their price for staying in town.
Going upscale. Ticket prices have escalated beyond the capacities of working-class families. New facilities are constructed solely for the purpose of generating revenue from luxury boxes for the super wealthy or for corporate purchasers who write off the expenses against taxes.
Cable and pay television. Many major sports events are going off free home television, onto cable or "pay per view" services. This trend would probably be accelerating more rapidly in football and baseball except for the fear of congressional political intervention, e.g. the threatened removal of major league baseball's anachronistic immunity from anti-monopoly laws.
The marketing of the new US professional league will be heavily tilted toward the prosperous and suburban, not toward traditional, immigrant communities that gave the game its base for half a century. Sensitive international World Cup watchers may want to watch for certain early warning signs of creeping Americanisation of your sport:
Do your television commentators marvel at the modernistic wonders of some of the newer US stadiums? Beware: Many of these are sterile monstrosities built for the convenience of broadcaster and luxury box owners rather than fans.
Do they speculate with awe on the possibilities of constructing domed facilities like the Pontiac Silverdome? Don't bite: This may be a ploy to get you to accept artificial turf, which is ruinous to the game's quality and to the players' physical health.
Do they rave about the security and the absence of "hooligans"? Remember: This may imply the elimination of seating that anyone without a corporate manager's income can purchase.
Do they comment frequently on the supposed desire of Americans for a higher scoring game? Careful: These may be trial balloons for widening the goals, for free substitutions or for eliminating the offside rule. Never underestimate what evil visions dollar hunger can generate. (Would you like typical scores of, say, 10-8?)
Welcome to the World Cup in exile. May it survive the experience. Enjoy the goals. And keep in mind, if you're a fan, that you may need to defend your game from impurities the way the Germans have defended their beer.
[Reprinted, slightly abridged, from International Viewpoint.]