MLS Goes the Reality TV Route to Pick Players

By: Laurie | January 11th, 2009

Last week I got an email from Sounders FC, the new Seattle expansion team, with the following interesting news about how one of the new players will be selected:

Beginning on January 23, fans can visit King5.com to view videos, bios and comments from evaluators for all 10 finalists. Fans may vote for their favorite player from January 26-30. The finalist with the most fan votes will be guaranteed a spot in the final four.

The final tryout show will be broadcast live on Sunday, February 1, 2009, following Super Bowl XLIII on KING 5 (approximately 8:30 p.m.). The winner will be selected by a distinguished panel of judges and awarded a spot on the 2009 Sounders FC roster.

Or, in other words, this is an opportunity for giggly preteen girls to go in and pick the four cutest trialists, one of whom will get a spot on the roster.

And at leftback we have…Sanjaya!!

(No offense to Sanjaya, who I’m sure is a wonderful person, but if you’re in the US you know exactly what I’m talking about.)

It’s not the first time this has been done — in 2007, the LA-based Chivas USA signed 18-year-old Jorge Flores after he won Sueño MLS on the Spanish-language channel Univision. In 2008, both Chivas and FC Dallas played the Sueño MLS game, bringing in Briant Reyes and Gabriel Funes, respectively. But I’m not sure that Sueño MLS has the audience voting thing.

I can’t decide how I feel about this. On the one hand, I love the idea of open tryouts. I like the thought of MLS teams discovering players who haven’t come through the traditional pipelines and would otherwise be overlooked. And part of me recognizes that, given the issues MLS has in drumming up interest, taking these tryouts to TV via the reality show format does give the teams the chance to get additional publicity.

And audience participation does get people genuinely interested and invested in the outcome. How else would somebody like Clay Aiken become a national star?

Also, on the plus side, at least the player who makes the team will be picked by ~~Simon, Paula and Randy~~ “a distinguished panel of judges” rather than viewers. That’s something. Right?

But does any other MLS fan find this whole thing kind of…degrading?

Sigh.

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J

Only 1 finalist is chosen by fan participation, the other three are chosen through an 11v11 scrimmage. Sounders coaches and other coaches make the final decision. I don't understand why that is degrading to anyone, I doubt any of the participants feel it's degrading. After that the winner is only invited to preseason camp and is not guaranteed a roster spot, the ultimate winner will deserve it. The only thing that is degrading is people like the original poster of this article implying that the participants are akin to sanjaya.
Marco P.

Good one Brickski. Australia's jumped on the bandwagon too then it seems.
Brickski

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Jack

If it was a reality show where we had the chance to vote the Sounders out of footballing existence, that might be something with at least an ounce of interest worth watching. But voting for a player to join the squad... nah, not so much.
Marco P.

Yes it's degrading, but how else are you going to get Seattle denizens interested in their soccer team? And I mean really interested, not the light "oh cool, we have a soccer team in the MLS" comment.

And since you're mentioning reality TV, this isn't the first time they tried it for sports. In North America, shows like "Making the Cut" and "The Contender" come to mind.

But in Italy, they even tried it with a soccer team, Cervia, back in 2004-06. The show was called Campioni, Il Sogno and was a reality series in full-effect. I think they cancelled it after two years though, because the ratings weren't very good.
jon

hahah.

methinks some folks have "clay aiken" google alerts, and defend him in all corners of the internet.
RedLine55

^^ what the hell?
Jean

Dan, how right you are. Clay could have become a huge star without AI if he went to the right people-and he was 'spiffed' up a little the way AI stylists spiffed him up, also. He did record two demo tapes, at age 19!!, that were incredible (you can d/l the songs from clackunlimited.com - most of his covers are better than the originals - songs from several different genres!!)-his voice was perfection and so was the production. His mother sold them to whomever she met up with. His fans just wished they landed in the right hands back then.
Dan

"And audience participation does get people genuinely interested and invested in the outcome. How else would somebody like Clay Aiken become a national star?"

That guy is a huge talent. All he needed was an audience.