Half of the American Populace is Blissfully Unaware of David Beckham

David Beckham will officially be introduced as a member of the LA Galaxy on Friday, which will come in handy for the 48.1% of the American public that does not know who he is. Statistics like that renew my faith in humanity. It means that there are at least a few people out there who have something better to do than sit around all day reading soccer blogs. Crap, there goes The Offside’s business model. Carry on reading…

The news that one in two Americans couldn’t pick Becks out of a prison lineup evidently should be interpreted as a good thing if you are Beckham’s marketing team, which I know you are. It means he already has good market penetration and that once the hype machine is in full swing he’ll have better name recognition than most US senators. Heck, people will probably even vote for him to become a senator.

For the sake of comparison, Mia Hamm is the second most well known soccer player in the United States with 48-percent of the populace agreeing that she could have done better than marry Nomar Garciaparra. A measly 25-percent of Americans know the San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan, which probably would make it easy for him to go out in public without drawing a crowd if he weren’t 7-feet tall.

And then there is little Landon Donovan. One person’s hero is another person’s “who the hell is that?” Landycakes is known by only 9.1 percent of Americans. Ignorance is bliss.

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Category: MLS, World Football