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A good lot of us want to have a magazine devoted to US
professional soccer, specifically, MLS. I don't know if subscriptions to Soccer America
have gone up since MLS began play, but I suspect, only marginally. Give SA their
due, they were there when few others were. but the soccer world has a good number of
slick and fun soccer publications, such as World Soccer, FourFourTwo, and at least a
hundred more, if you count non-English publications. SA seems content with their format,
which I find unimpressive. Should MLS get in the soccer magazine business? If so, how?
There are two clear options: The Superedition, or the Hotsheet.
If MLS does venture into the soccer Superedition route, the
best way to begin is by requiring all season ticket holders to take it. Raising the price
of every season ticket package by 12 bucks, to finance the first year or so of the
magazine, is a must. If the season ticket holder does not want it sent to them, they can
pick the Boys and Girls Club, local soccer association, school, Children's Hospital, or
local dog pound as the recipient. No big sacrifice there. It's an extra perq for the
season ticket types, and they and they alone would be given a special "Charter
Member" premier issue, slightly different than the "Premiere Issue" that
appears on newsstands.
The next Superedition problem is the number of editions per
year. If you make it monthly, you can forget about making it a news magazine. Core
MLS fans rely on the Internet, radio, and a little television to find their news. If you
publish once a month, you're not news. That means you need to get exclusive and
interesting interviews, columns, feature stories, business stories, tournament reviews,
and team member profiles. It can be done, but the writers have to be bound NOT to publish
the same material in two places.
The Web edition would be the most cruel of all. In the
egalitarian utopia of the Internet, everyone expects it to be free. You cannot support a
Superedition by publishing it on the Internet. But in order to gain credibility as a
publication, you have to have a web site that lives up to the hype. On the Open to the
Public side, you have the same info you can get on the official MLS page. You also include
the lead paragraph of every article in the subscriber edition. The Subscribers Area needs
to include video and audio clips, audio library, a stats database that you can query and
make tables from, and exclusive player/coach/fan interaction.
So, a monthly magazine might work, but with only 12 (soon to
be 14) teams in the Major League, is there enough material every four weeks to publish?
The A-League is finding significant stability, and has racked up enough steady attendance,
and victories in the U.S. Open Cup, to deserve a dedicated amount of coverage over the
long haul. It is pro soccer, and it is vital to the game that the A-League survive.
Cultivating A-League fans helps MLS TV ratings.
A smattering of D3, a bit of NCAA, and below that, well, I
admit I don't know my way. But here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a goldmine of soccer
fans exists that could not be more ready for the mining: Youth Club Soccer. I would wager
that, wherever there is an MLS team, or an A-League team, there is a
"Classic," "Select," or other Club soccer league. These leagues are
typically at loggerheads with the local media. Local news outlets have been generally
opposed to providing significant coverage to private club teams, with a few notable
exceptions. They ignore them on the grounds that youth athletics not associated with a
school, is irrelevant. I beg to differ. Your typical parent spends from $500 to $2000 a
player on competitive club soccer, when you figure in everything from shoes to airline
tickets. For the top U-17 and U-18, the top figure might be closer to $5000. Those
same parents spend their lives being a soccer parent. To me, that kind of money,
time, and dedication is a media opportunity.
Can you imagine the circulation of an MLS/A-League magazine
that included four pages per issue of Youth Select Soccer? If the future of soccer
is before us, the time to show the seamless integration of U-8 to U-19, to D3 and
A-League, to MLS is now. The message you send to every U-whatever in America is, you
are being noticed. You are saying, "listen kid, if you get good enough, your name
will go from the Youth Club straight to Project 40, and into the big glossy pages of you
and Cobi Jones having it out on the endline. How many twelve year-old baseball studs can
say they were in the same magazine as Sammy Sosa? Between the regular season and the
endless tournament schedule, there is plenty of youth cup soccer to fill four pages every
month.
The Hotsheet option is equally intriguing, though less
inspiring. Tune in next week for that option.
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