There are a few things that have been detrimental to the image of MLS this week, including Alexi Lalas’ face appearing every time I open the MLS homepage. High on my list would have been MLS moving the Fire’s away playoff game at New England to Sunday from Saturday, just two days after they had scheduled it for the original date in the first place. Apparently someone at MLS head office went to Walgreens and figured out what all the scary looking decorations they were selling were for.

I digress, but only because rarely do we see MLS worry about its image when it comes to accommodating supporters who already had travel plans for a game a few days away. Instead, it busies itself handing out an absurd fine to DC President Kevin Payne, who a few days ago made some petty but fairly truthful comments about the play of certain MLS teams to Soccer Insider:

You look at the way Real Salt Lake played when they came here [a 0-0 tie in May] and sat 10 guys behind the ball. You don’t have to do that. Sometimes that is the best way to get a result — if you don’t care about the product, if you don’t care about advertising your league. Long term, who wants to watch that?

Now, as we commented, Payne’s comments were a rather poor effort at covering his own backside for a team incapable of playing good football and winning this season. But certainly, even a hardcore MLS supporter and Direct Kick subscriber like myself has trouble finding the motivation to track down a San Jose-Colorado game in July even when my television is starved of the beautiful game.

A couple of days passed and MLS sent out a press release saying “Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber today fined D.C. United President Kevin Payne $5,000 for public comments deemed detrimental to the public image of the League.

I don’t particularly feel sorry for Payne being knocked down a peg, but it’s typical of MLS to waste time worrying about how the league appears instead of working on improving what it actually is.

Update: maybe it was worth MLS doing this, just to see Kevin Payne eat humble pie.

I deeply regret some of the comments I made in an interview published earlier this week. In trying to explain the, sometimes, unfair expectations on the Head Coach of D.C. United, I made critical comments of Colorado, New England, Real Salt Lake and the League. Those comments were unprofessional. I have great personal regards and professional respect for my colleagues at those organizations and for their ownership and fans. I have apologized to those teams and individuals privately and now do so publicly

Big Story
DC United’s club president Kevin Payne has never lacked for chutzpah, and after a season in which the team launched a website called “We Win Trophies” but have failed to make the playoffs for the second year in a row, arguing that DC had at least earned some kind of a moral victory for their style of play is quite something. “We don’t want to play like Colorado or New England, which most of the season sat with eight or nine guys behind the ball. How many people go to watch Colorado or New England play? That’s a problem for our league,” Payne told Soccer Insider.

“We can’t play like we’re a team desperately trying to remain in 14th place in the Premiership. Our market isn’t there yet. They want to see something that is entertaining, and D.C. United has always had a way of playing. Given a choice, we would rather attack than cynically defend. You look at the way Real Salt Lake played when they came here [a 0-0 tie in May] and sat 10 guys behind the ball. You don’t have to do that. Sometimes that is the best way to get a result — if you don’t care about the product, if you don’t care about advertising your league. Long term, who wants to watch that?”

Payne’s comment might have more to do with the fact he’s feeling the pressure of living up to the standard himself and DC set in the early years of the league, as the club has won just two trophies since 2000 (the MLS Cup in 2004 and the US Open Cup last year), after dominating in MLS’ first four seasons, winning a remarkable five major championships (three league titles, one US Open Cup and one CONCACAF Champions Cup). While the cynical play of many teams in MLS is a concern marketing-wise, there is actually no bar to playing good football and winning, as Columbus has showed two years in a row. DC simply aren’t good enough these days and that has much more to do with the personnel decisions Payne’s leadership has made than whether or not they’re trying to play pretty football.

Worldwide News

• Speaking of failure, Toronto FC supporters “won’t stand” for continued ineptness on the field, writes Paul James in the Globe and Mail, warning owners MLSE face a backlash and “should prepare themselves for an onslaught”. Despite the club’s profitability and packed stadium, TFC have yet to make the playoffs in three seasons in MLS, quite an achievement in a league that still manages to reward mediocrity (New England and Real Salt Lake are both entering the playoffs with a negative goal difference). This issue has been bubbling under the surface for a while in Toronto, as everyone there knows MLSE have been happy to see their hockey team, the Maple Leafs, achieve little while selling plenty of tickets. Is James right, and will TFC fans force MLSE to act, unlike the Maple Leafs soporific suits who pack the stands come what may?
• Who is running Rangers?  The financial crisis in Glasgow continues to deepen, and impact further on the playing side. Rangers are $50m in debt and haven’t bought a player since the summer of 2008, with manager Walter Smith questioning who was running affairs, with Lloyds Bank’s “business transformation specialist” on the board.
• Meanwhile, Twohundredpercent updates us on the crisis at Liverpool (yes, we should have a moratorium on the use of the word ‘crisis’ here on PI), looking at the battle between the growing protesting group led by the Spirit of Shankly and the club’s ownership, asking as we did last week if Liverpool are the next Leeds. “SOS, the acronym surely no accident, have combined with ‘Share Liverpool FC’ in providing more detailed analysis of Liverpool’s finances than they are given credit for, certainly by the club, who accuse them of un-necessary ‘scaremongering’.”
• Alex Ferguson is facing the music in his ongoing war of words with referees, charged by the Football Association and now being accused by senior referees of not understanding the laws of the game.
• Blogistuta comments on an interesting hire by Roma, who have given the brilliantly named job of Coordinator and optimizer of human resources in the sporting area to a higly successful volleyball coach. I always find this sort of cross-sport recruiting interesting, so let’s see if he can reinvigorate a struggling club.
• Jamie Carragher is back to his best according to Rafa Benitez, who apparently didn’t notice the rapidly aging centre-back practically running backwards in his effort to keep up with Michael Owen’s zimmerframe run to goal on Sunday.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Would you believe it: how about an expensive marketing campaign focused on the history of a club and the sport, promoting an actual competitive domestic match — in American soccer.

So much of this “summer of soccer” in the U.S. has been huff and puff about games that don’t matter (aside from the $$$), with the series of high-profile friendlies sweeping the nation featuring Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea et al. These are all well and good, but the point of a competitive sport is, after all, to win trophies: and DC United’s marketing campaign for the upcoming U.S. Open Cup final to be hosted at their stadium hammers home that point with some verve.

We Win Trophies

The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup — America’s oldest cup competition, founded in 1914 –  is sadly neglected by US Soccer and MLS in terms of promotional dollars and ideas; despite the drama it provides, the fairytale upsets for lower-league teams, and the attractively simple knockout format, it’s never received the marketing buzz it deserves — and hence, attendances are usually pitiful.

DC won the bid to host the final on September 2nd this year at RFK Stadium against the Seattle Sounders, whose own marketing machine this year has been quite the marvel — partly prompting DC President and CEO Kevin Payne to pump some serious cash (by MLS standards) into promoting the game to prove DC remain the standard-bearer for MLS as they look to add another trophy to their cabinet.

DC’s campaign has gone into overdrive for the final focusing on the club’s history of success. The first hints of it came with some simple but effective teaser marketing in the form of a sticker campaign across D.C., with an enigmatic rendering of the actual US Open Cup trophy (enigmatic given so few people actually know what it looks like!), the date of the match and “peel here” on the front — with the reverse side simply reading WeWinTrophies.com.

As you can see, Wewintrophies.com itself is masterfully simple, on-message, and easy to share virally — everything almost every MLS website hasn’t been for years (Seattle’s set a new standard recently, with DC’s main page also a vast improvement over many others). Tellingly, DC aren’t missing any of the tiny details either: even their Twitter icon has that same image of the cup and the date of the game on it. And popular urban news website DCist.com is completely blanketed by an advertising background with the same imagery promoting the game.

WeWinTrophies.com makes abundantly clear DC’s history as the most successful team on the field in MLS history. It includes an open letter from Kevin Payne addressed to “Washington, D.C.” playing this angle up. Payne writes “Since our first season in 1996, D.C. United has won 12 major domestic and international trophies and is firmly established as the most successful organization in the history of U.S. professional soccer.” (Some may quibble with this final statement: paging Kenn Tomasch!). It’s an old adage, maybe, but nothing sells like success, and seeing history (albeit only since 1996) touted in MLS is a welcome sight.

This isn’t a cheap campaign based only on stickers and a website, though. United also splashed out on a full-page ad in Sunday’s Washington Post printing Payne’s open letter to the city. The selling point Payne emphasises is success and city pride: “I know not all of you are D.C. United fans,” Payne ends the letter with. “Many of you aren’t even soccer fans, but a challenge has been issued and we expect all sports fans in D.C. to meet it. Join us at RFK. Hear the songs of passion. Feel the stadium bounce. Stand up and cheer. Stand up for another championship. Stand up for D.C.”

DC United vs. Seattle; or, Kevin Payne vs. Adrian Hanauer

Dig deeper into the letter, and it’s clear that the motivation for this angle of the campaign is fuelled by the feud between Seattle and DC over the decision of US Soccer to award the final to DC following their secret bidding process.  Tellingly, Payne writes:

Our opponent, Seattle Sounders FC, is new to MLS. They’re in the midst of a great inaugural season and have developed a large and passionate fan base. The Sounders, and its fans, have said that Washington, D.C. and its fans do not deserve to host the match at RFK. They insisted the match should be played in Seattle.

For 14 seasons, our fans have been the standard by which other fans in Major League Soccer are measured.

For 14 seasons, our fans have brought unmatched energy, enthusiasm and passion to RFK Stadium and Major League Soccer.

And now, after 14 trophy-filled seasons, it is time for our fans – for all D.C. area sports fans – to remind everyone who the best sports fans in the country are.

Payne’s motivation to prove this is pretty obvious, following his public spat with Seattle boss Adrian Hanauer, who criticised US Soccer for awarding the final to DC, and not to his expansion franchise with their legion of fans at Qwest.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was frustrated and somewhat skeptical of the process,” Hanauer said. “I don’t think D.C. has played a game in the Open Cup on the road in two years. They had a road through all lower-division teams to get to the Open Cup Final. I’m not in the know … enough to be able to raise any real issues, but I’m frustrated and I wish U.S. Soccer would explain why one bid wins over another.”

Hanauer then really stuck the knife in, suggesting if Seattle hosted the final they’d have packed their stadium with 30,000 fans and pointedly predicting DC would fail to attract a strong crowd.

“Our fans deserve some answers,” Hanauer said. “And, by the way, U.S. Soccer has been trying to raise the profile of the U.S. Open Cup. A game in front of 10,000 fans at RFK I don’t believe is going to raise the profile as much as a game in front of a sold-out Qwest Field.”

Hanauer was probably wrong when he said Seattle would have sold-out Qwest: as US Soccer obviously knew, scheduling issues in Seattle meant that had the game been there, it would have to have been played on a weekday afternoon. But it’s true that for last year’s final, only 8,212 showed up at RFK to watch DC win their last trophy.

The comments from Hanauer, in his first-year as an MLS GM, enraged Payne, who has been (on and off) leading DC since the first season of MLS in 1996. “I was surprised and disappointed and offended,” Payne told Soccer Insider. “Adrian uses the word ‘skepticism’ to describe the process, which seems to be implying that it wasn’t on the up-and-up. Which is really an outrageous implication. . .Adrian has no knowledge of what we bid or didn’t bid; my guess is that we bid more aggressively than they did. I appreciate that Seattle’s fans are great. Our fans have been great for 14 seasons. It’s really unseemly for Seattle to suddenly show up in MLS and everything should be handed to them.”

Payne went on to say that DC would “promote the game aggressively.” He has been proven true to those words: as we can see with this campaign, United are pulling out all the stops to ensure the crowd is significantly larger than the 10,000 Hanauer predicted would show-up at RFK.  DC  are spending “significantly more” than on the 2008 campaign, their marketing department told us.

If it takes a bit of a feud and a smart marketing campaign to raise the profile of the U.S. Open Cup and get a strong crowd out for a nationally televised final in D.C., then this is all to the good. A little juice and bitterness does wonders for fueling interest. And if DC can make money on the final thanks to their marketing (as Payne believes they will), then perhaps that might, just might convince US Soccer and MLS teams to invest some money to make some money by promoting the tournament as a whole with further similarly smart marketing campaigns next year.

Comments made by former MLS Commissioner Doug Logan to the Oregonian in this regard made waves recently. “Soccer audiences at their best have got to be a little dangerous,” Logan said. “It’s three guys with a beer cursing at the guy on the field. It’s not a family activity. If you want a family activity, go to the circus.”

Logan further criticised the reliance of MLS teams on group ticket sales to youth soccer groups. ”Success at the gate has to have a tribal following and not just a van of soccer-playing kids who come to one game a year,” Logan said. “If your business model depends on youth soccer, it won’t be enough.”

This might seem an obvious statement to fans outside the U.S., but for years, soccer marketers in MLS have mainly been all too on message that the sport is a family-focused activity based on appealing to youth soccer. In recent years, that’s begun to change league-wide, and Logan was recognising that, albeit clumsily.

Yet Logan’s comments were curious in that he himself was MLS Commissioner during the period of its launch years that most of its teams — DC and Chicago excepted — were attempting to sell the sport solely as a family activity, and doing little but alienating the 18-34 adult demographic in their pursuit of the youth soccer crowd: which led to most MLS teams cracking down on anything that might potentially alienate their own stereotyped view of a sensitive soccer mom, who’d be frightened away at the mere hint of a swear word.

We can all get along

While he did not address the league’s past failures, it seems that what Logan really meant to do was point to the fact that MLS teams do now need to market more to adults who like to drink beer and come out to matches with friends to support their team week in-week out, rather than solely to families and youth soccer team groups — especially if the aim is building a strong season ticketholder base. What he failed to acknowledge was that this doesn’t necessarily exclude attracting families and children elsewhere to the rest of the stadium, and that many of them can also be passionate  fans themselves.

In a recent interview on du Nord, the Fire’s former President and current Red Stars President Peter Wilt explained that the two demographics can co-exist, with some effort to grow understanding on both sides.

The two most important audiences in American soccer are suburban families, which are traditionally conservative and sensitive to vulgarities and rowdy behavior, and young, urban, male, passionate fans who like and partake in extreme behavior. It’s two extremes that are oftentimes seated side by side. It’s ironic that they have this dichotomy while their end goal is the same: supporting the team they love to victory.

Throughout my time with the Fire, the key I found was communication. I get most credit for my dealings with Section 8 — with the young, urban, passionate fans — but I spent just as much time dealing with the suburban soccer community. It’s important that both constituencies understand each other and that they’re empathetic to each other.

Interestingly, this was a similar point to one made by Portland Timbers owner Merrit Paulson in an interview also published in the Oregonian this week, in which he deliberately played down the ‘danger’ of American soccer when asked about Logan’s comment that soccer support needed to be “a little bit dangerous.”

I disagree with that, strongly. I strongly disagree with that. That sort of plays to the worst stereotypes. But I understand the point, and I just think he’s trying to make the point in a flamboyant manner.

And the point that I agree with is a model that just targets soccer moms and youth soccer is an inherently flawed model. Those people spend their lives going to soccer games every weekend. Trying to target them for season tickets is the wrong way to go.

Now, the reality is, you’re going to get some of those folks. One hundred percent, you need a family environment. I don’t know if you could see a better family environment than Seattle right now. It’s one big party.

But in my mind, soccer is about the new America. It’s a younger demographic, by and large. The 20- to 30-somethings, more urban, is definitely a sweet spot. But families and sports fans and suburbanites are very much a target. And it’s a really unique sporting experience. I don’t think it needs to be dangerous.

What I’d say to that is, we have a section of our supporters, the Timbers Army, which adds to the ambiance, adds to the atmosphere, and I would not suggest that families sit there, with kids. So you need to have different environments for different people. And that’s part of the show, the Timbers Army.

So I would agree with him to the extent that there’s probably a section that’s not a family-oriented section. You get a lot of the European flair here — especially in Portland, even more so than in Seattle, in terms of the standing and the chanting and the synchronized chanting.

It’s never been clear to me why it’s been so difficult for so many MLS executives at the team and league level to figure out that the two demographics are not mutually exclusive, as Wilt and Paulson explain. One section or even end of ‘rowdy’ fans isn’t going to put-off most families attending in the rest of the stadium; in fact, the unique atmosphere that supporters’ groups engender is only likely to improve the spectacle and differentiate a soccer game from the other sports youth groups and families attend.

Kevin Payne, DC United’s supremo, figured this out back in MLS’ inaugural season, 1996, and ever since, DC has had strong support and solid attendance.  I interviewed Payne last year, and explained how they facilitated the supporters’ groups who created the most passionate support in MLS at the time. “The biggest difference between our approach and the rest of the league was that we set out from the beginning to appeal to people who already cared about soccer, whether they were American fans of the game or came from another country with a love for the game,” Payne said. “We thought there were enough people like that to be successful. Part of our philosophy was not expecting to attract non-believers.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the league largely ignored this approach, aside from expansion team the Chicago Fire under Wilt, who in 1998 launched to strong attendance numbers and worked with the Barn Burners and the Polish Ultras ’98 (later standing in Section 8 together) who helped develop the Fire’s identity as a club with their tailgates, tifo displays and vibrant support.

In neither DC nor Chicago, despite the existence of strong supporters’ groups, were families and youth soccer groups sidelined as a result or scared away en masse. That’s not to say there was never a balancing act or some explaining to do by the front office, but all it takes is good communication and an effort by the club to connect with both sides.

Again, though, much of the league ignored this success, presumably petrified that the perceived ‘danger’ of supporters’ groups would scare off their dwindling youth soccer crowds. Obstruction to supporters culture based on a customer service rep occasionally receiving a few emails complaining about a curse word or because of the myth that youth soccer groups who come a few times a year would inevitably develop into an adult fanbase on their own dampened the atmosphere and slowed season ticket sale growth. Without a large base of season ticketholders, MLS teams were constantly scrambling to group sales, ticket giveaways and promotions to half-fill the stands at the expense of building an identity as a club people would believe in and support through thick and thin.

Payne’s absence from DC’s leadership from 2001-4 and Wilt’s firing from Chicago in 2005 (by an AEG executive who had never attended a Chicago Fire match) hardly helped matters. But Toronto’s arrival in the league in 2007 kickstarted their approach again with a successful launch with a largely adult supporters base who were already into soccer, an echo of Payne’s approach in 1996.

Toronto’s successful season ticket drive created a bandwagon wholeheartedly leaped on by expansion team Seattle this season, who have over 20,000 season ticketholders in part thanks to their Scarf Seattle marketing campaign. Nearby, Paulson in Portland seems to have the right approach, recognising the base of organic culture the Timbers Army that already exists provides, and planning to grow from that when the team joins MLS. 2010 expansion team Philadelphia have done the same thing, working closely with their supporters group, Sons of Ben, who had thousands of members even before the team had a name and an MLS franchise.

Toronto fans celebrate their first ever goal

Meanwhile, MLS has begun to encourage existing teams to follow this approach, including at teams that have long had very weak supporters’ sections. Brian Bilello, COO of the New England Revolution, told footiebusiness.com earlier this year about the change of emphasis in their marketing campaign, with a new “Defend the Fort” theme aimed at supporters:

The primary reasoning behind the Defend the Fort campaign is to grow the number of season tickets in The Fort, our supporters section. While we’ll do as much as we can to grow the supporters section in general, we feel that season ticket growth is the key because those fans are the most passionate, most involved and have the biggest stake in the game, so to speak. So we didn’t want it to be where people are coming two, three or four games and sitting in that section, but rather growing a base of fans who are here every single week. That will drive the energy in the building.

Whilst this is welcome, hardcore soccer support can’t be generated solely out of a new marketing campaign. MLS front offices can do much to facilitate supporters’ groups, but in many places there is a lot of damage teams will have a hard time repairing, if they even try. The years of neglect and obstruction to supporters’ groups at teams like Dallas and Colorado mean it might never be possible for strong supporters groups to develop there.

It’s a shame it’s taken so many at the top of MLS so long to realise all this, exemplified by Doug Logan’s comments ten years after the end of his tenure as MLS Commissioner. What MLS has long lacked is not just snazzy marketing campaigns or “danger”, it’s the mere facilitation of supporters’ culture, despite the examples set in DC and Chicago and more recent expansion franchises. This does not mean the exclusion of everyone who doesn’t want to stand or sing or drink. Family sections and supporters coexist quite comfortably and safely in European stadia in various places: you can have atmosphere without alienating a family who comes to support the team as well.

What MLS needs to appeal to the 18-34 demographic is not danger in itself, but simply smart, far-sighted leadership by MLS executives and supporters’ groups who can work together to grow soccer culture bottom-up.