The Beckham media surge has begun
The $250 million Beckham deal is earning Major League Soccer some major headlines.
Who would have ever though that the morning after Bush announced an escalation in troops going to Iraq, the lead story on a number of America's biggest news websites would be about soccer? Not me.
CNN, NBC, Fox News and Yahoo have all made it their top story (as of 11am CT). While not being the top story at the Washington Post, USA Today or the LA Times, all three note it on their front page.
Back in England, both the Times and the Sun put it on their front pages.
Time will tell if Beckham is actually a good thing for the league, but he has already brought more news coverage to MLS then anything else they have done in the past 11 years.
Update: CNN's front page poll (towards the bottom of the page on the right) is actually about Beckham coming to the US.
Update 2: The CNN poll was up for about 3.5 hours and asked 'Will Beckham's move to US soccer increase your interest in the sport?' The vote was about 26% yes, 74% no. If 26% of the people who visit CNN.com tune in for some MLS soccer, that will be a huge increase in the current fan level.
Who would have ever though that the morning after Bush announced an escalation in troops going to Iraq, the lead story on a number of America's biggest news websites would be about soccer? Not me.
CNN, NBC, Fox News and Yahoo have all made it their top story (as of 11am CT). While not being the top story at the Washington Post, USA Today or the LA Times, all three note it on their front page.
Back in England, both the Times and the Sun put it on their front pages.
Time will tell if Beckham is actually a good thing for the league, but he has already brought more news coverage to MLS then anything else they have done in the past 11 years.
Update: CNN's front page poll (towards the bottom of the page on the right) is actually about Beckham coming to the US.
Update 2: The CNN poll was up for about 3.5 hours and asked 'Will Beckham's move to US soccer increase your interest in the sport?' The vote was about 26% yes, 74% no. If 26% of the people who visit CNN.com tune in for some MLS soccer, that will be a huge increase in the current fan level.
posted by Mike H at 11:51 AM
2 Comments:
It's still soccer. Most of us Americans don't care and never will. Maybe the soccer-playing kids/alumni, but they're a small minority.
Dear anonymous,
You had to look at a soccer blog to make your comment about it just being soccer, so there you go. Obviously you were interested enough to take your time to come here.
Anyway, there was a time, not that long ago that people didn't care about pro American football. The first few Super Bowls didn't even come close to selling out and had horrible tv ratings, but overtime things changed.
There was a time, not that long ago in the late 1970's, when the NBA finals were not even carried live on tv, but overtime things changed.
There was a time, not that long ago in the 1960's, when heavyweight boxing was a huge event that would get pages of coverage, even in small market papers, but overtime things changed.
It is foolish to say that people 'never will' change their tastes in sports or anything else.
Yes, it is still soccer and who knows, people might just come to like that.
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