‘NBC, Fox bidding for World Cup: Unlike last time, SUM faces a fight’.Issue 23 (8), p1 & 32. By David Shemilt.

This article discusses the fight between NBC Universal, Fox Sports and ‘Soccer United Marketing’ (SUM), to see who will get the rights to show both the men’s 2010 and 2014 World Cup soccer tournaments, as well as two women’s World Cups.
Currently SUM, who will sub-license next years World Cup in Germany to ABC and ESPN, have the rights to this property. However, they face stiff competition, especially from NBC Universal who are making a joint bid and are cleverly channeling their efforts to market the product to the Spanish audience, which is sure to be greatly received and supported by the huge Hispanic soccer pockets throughout the country.
The World Cup of soccer is the second largest in the world behind the Olympics and the eventual victors of this package will have to pay out a cool $250 million. However, even the fact that there is now a fight to show soccer in the US is a sign of how much the game has grown in this country. Compared to the 1998 World Cup, where instead of a fight for the rights to show the World Cup games, rights actually had to be sold to the television companies themselves due to the unpopular appeal of soccer in the US at the time, there has been a phenomenal growth and marketable appeal to the game of soccer. Why? Well, first of all the success of the men’s National soccer team in the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea saw a huge boost for soccer in the US. Success brings interest. Interest brings a marketable product, and this, in-turn, brings in the $. Along with this, the globalization of soccer has seen many European soccer stars and teams visit the US, either on pre-season tours or promotional visits that has consequently seen the MLS league grow and progressively develop both in terms of soccer and its marketable value. This can clearly be seen in the realms of the television networks, with, for example, Fox rebranding Fox Sports World as a soccer channel. The MLS is only in its first decade of existence and ranks poorly in terms of how it markets itself in comparison to the NFL and MLB. However, the growing popularity, especially amongst the American youth and minority groups in the country, should see soccer grow and grow and, as this article points out, with this growth sees the development of a potentially huge product with which sponsors and TV networks alike will want to be associated with and will therefore pour money into. Soccer certainly has the potential in the US to expand its product and commercial viability as shown by the fight of TV network’s big guns to show the next two World Cups. However, unless the MLS, the countries bread and butter in terms of making soccer more established and popular, starts to compete commercially and effectively with MLB and the NFL, then this apparent up serge in soccer as a marketable product will diminish just as quickly as it has risen. What do you think?