MLS TV Coverage Just Might Improve in 2008

By: Laurie | February 16th, 2008

Did anybody watch David Beckham’s first US game on ESPN2 last summer? The LA Galaxy vs. Chelsea friendly? Remember when they cut away from play to interview Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Arnold Schwarzenegger? Didn’t you just want to hurl a cleat through your screen?

In my mind, the TV coverage of that game epitomized all of the problems with American soccer TV coverage. The celebrity interviews. (During play.) The sideline player interviews. (During play.) The endless shots of David Beckham sitting on the sidelines. (During play.) With focus on his new boots (during play), complete with approximately four-thousand reminders that the boots had the names of his wife and three kids on them and had been made specially for that night. And the endless, ninety-minute prattle about all the stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with what was happening on the field. (During play.)

Oh, and did I mention that all this took place during the run of play?

Some potential good news for US soccer fans. MLS may have heard our collective groans. I read this article over at USSoccerplayers.com and felt great hope for the future of our telecasts. It’s an interview with Michael Cohen, “the Executive Producer for Major League Soccer and its marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing.” In other words, he’s the guy who’s responsible for what shows up on our TV screens.

If you’re a US fan of the games, I’d recommend reading the entire article, but here are a few of the highlights.

USSoccerPlayers: You were talking about working with people who are experienced in producing soccer. How do you balance the expectations of the casual American fan, who is used to a specific way of watching sports on television, with those of an American soccer fan?

Cohen: There’s a natural maturation of what’s happened in our broadcasts. Over the last 12 years, we’ve all realized that maybe we shouldn’t spend our energy on trying to rein in the ‘casual fan’ on our MLS broadcasts. The telecasts are going to be designed not to shut out the average sports fan, but a little more to the point where we are going to go towards the soccer fan.

Do you think this means that we’re not going to have broadcasts dedicated to winning Jennifer Love-Hewitt fans over to the beautiful game? What a novel idea.

On using TV to market the game in America:

[Cohen: W]e did have to understand that we are trying to market and promote a game a little more aggressively here. I don’t like to use the term ‘Americanization,’ but we are sensitive to things that they don’t have to be in Europe. Sometimes we get in trouble because of that, but in most cases I think we’re doing the right thing. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

In 1996, our director Doug Wren, who is one of the top directors in sports, had this vision of bringing more cameras down to field level so that when the ball went out of bounds, we could shoot the faces and the jerseys to build this brand, and try to turn these guys into stars.

On the Beckham and Blanco effect:

USSoccerPlayers: It does seem, though, that there is an emphasis on Los Angeles and Chicago, which is understandable because you want to showcase Beckham and Blanco. But are you worried about Beckham Overload, meaning that the desire to showcase one of the biggest soccer stars in the world overshadows not only the other teams in the league, but also the other 21 players on the field?

Cohen: There are two different issues. The first is overexposure. We want the biggest audience we can possibly get. At the same time, we want to promote our league. So if having 12 Galaxy exposures on national television is going to garner our biggest audiences, that’s a positive.

If you go back to what NBC used to do with the Chicago Bulls, they had a camera following Michael Jordan around for the whole game. So ESPN had a Beckham-cam so they could show an isolation replay of him. Once you’re in the broadcast, it becomes this balance of having a major worldwide star, and broadcasting a soccer game.

I don’t know about you, but I was a lot more hopeful about watching televised games after reading this. It’s as if they’re aware of the things we hate and actually interested in doing something about them.

Now to get the message across to ESPN2.