US Soccer Bites the Hand that Feeds Its US Open Cup

By: Laurie | July 23rd, 2009

Once upon a time, there was a website called USOpenCup.com that was dedicated to bringing attention to the best tournament that nobody knows about, the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.

It was so comprehensive, so well-researched, and so professional that most of the people who visited didn’t realize it wasn’t run by US Soccer, the sponsors of the tournament. When people went looking for full US Open Cup coverage, this was where they went, simply because it had the best information out there.

Explanations of the rules? Check. Tournament brackets? Check. Game recaps? Check. History, dating back to the Open Cup’s start in 1914? It had that too. (For fun, check out this historical recap of the tournament in 1914. Then tell me you’re not impressed.)

But there was a problem. Anybody who’s run a website can tell you it’s not free. US Soccer was perfectly fine with the website drawing attention to its event and doing work that nobody else was willing to do. But because the site was unofficial, they prevented the domain owners from selling advertising or doing anything else that could raise money to cover costs or compensate the people who did the work. When the issue came up, US Soccer suddenly had a problem with the site.

It was learned at that point that Demosphere, who owned the domain name USOpenCup.com, were unable to authorize [things like selling advertising] because the USSF had informed them that they had a right to the domain name due to the fact that they own the copyright and trademark for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

The USSF was more than pleased with the work that was being done on USOpenCup.com, but if it was determined that money was being made on a domain name that they had a legal right to, that was going to cause a problem.

In an effort to avoid future conflicts, Demosphere signed the domain name over to the USSF, making them the rightful owners. All parties involved agreed that the website would not change as a result of the official change in ownership of the domain name.

So the obvious next step, now that US Soccer owned the site, would be that the people doing the work would get paid by them, right?

Wrong. For awhile, it looked like this would happen, but in the end US Soccer decided that the money just wasn’t there. On the surface this sounds like a valid reason, because we’re talking about soccer in the US, where the money is never there.

Where this argument breaks down, though, is when you consider that there could be money if the site were allowed to sell advertising. Just like the folks who ran it originally proposed.

But that’s apparently not going to happen. And so, instead of a fantastic site at USOpenCup.com, what fans of the tournament will get are the same people running a different site: TheCup.us, which will go live on September 1, the day before this year’s final between DC United and Seattle Sounders FC.

US Soccer will apparently still hold the rights to the old name, but my guess is that there won’t be anybody around to put the time into it to make it anything special. Definitely nothing like they had before.

And soccer in the US wins by this…how, exactly?