Dan Mullen made waves at SEC Media days when he said only soccer fans rival the passion of fans in the SEC.
Editor’s Note: Part I in a two-part Series focusing on soccer and the SEC, the premier conference in college football
Neil W. Blackmon
With the World Cup withdrawals wearing off a bit, soccer fans have turned their eyes back to the club level, whether it be the tremendous years in both MLS and the NASL, or, more regrettably, to the European club “silly season”, which used to occupy minds mostly in August but in the constant news stream universe of digital social media, essentially begins when the last whistle is blown in the Champions League final in May. After a World Cup, the silly season feels even more frenetic: new fans are swearing allegiances to clubs, particularly in the Barclay’s Premier League, and post-World Cup “bounces” for the players who shined brightest on the global stage dominate the news. It all makes for great talking, and little else, which is why it’s advisable to tune out the white noise as much as possible and focus on the club soccer being played in the United States. Plus, nobody wants to read another awful “What’s Next for Soccer in the United States after the World Cup” piece.
That isn’t always easy, however, especially for newer fans looking to latch onto club football for the first time in the wake of a thrilling World Cup. At TYAC, we’ll leave the debate over what new soccer fans “should” be watching, and whether they absolutely must support the MLS or NASL immediately in order to truly become a fan of the sport, for another day. More interesting to us are the recent inroads the sport of soccer has made with other popular sports in the United States. To be sure, heightened television ratings and nearly across-the-board attendance increases demonstrate soccer’s growing appeal, both in the domestic league and in terms of eyeballs fixed on the Barclay’s Premier League. But what’s more fascinating, in our view, are the recent news stories emerging from the second-most popular sport in the United States, based on attendance and television ratings and revenue: college football. A brief recap for those in the dark follows.
The closest thing to the Premier League’s “silly season” in American sports may have been ESPN’s round-the-clock “As the LeBron Turns” coverage- made even more theatre of the absurd when they lost the scoop decisively to Sports Illustrated– but college football’s media days, a month of press conferences dubbed “talking season” by legendary South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier, runs a close second and is arguably first, given it is an annual event and “As the Lebron Turns” appears to be a quadrennial deal. Over the past decade, the best conference in college football has been the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The league has won seven of the last ten national championships, and features multiple powerhouse programs (Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida). Among fans, passion for the sport (and the league) is unrivaled in American sport. In the south during college football season, parochial and university allegiances trump even family ties. Media days for the SEC, held every July in Hoover, Alabama, kick off college football’s “talking season.” This year, the talk in Hoover turned, oddly enough, to soccer on more than one occasion.
Liverpool’s fans, whose passion is passed down through the generations through joy and tragedy alike, are but one example.
First, Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen suggested that the passion of the fans in the SEC is similar to what is seen in the Barclay’s Premier League and elsewhere in Europe Largely, Mullen would later explain, this has to do with longstanding parochial alliances that survive lifestyle changes and regardless of changes in geography, are handed down through families. Split families are equally common, as anyone who has watched an Auburn-Alabama game or a Manchester City-Manchester United game can attest. Family comes first, but not on football Saturdays or in Europe, the occasional Sunday. It’s the passion of the fanbases, Mullen argues, that helps make the product the premier product in each sport: the best players want to play in the league with the most passion and the most at stake. Getting a handful of great players begets more great players. Passionate fans are rewarded with football of the highest level. People watch, regardless of time zone differences and geography. The SEC, Mullen argues (and he’s right), shares many of these characteristics.
“I do think that SEC football could be compared to European soccer,” Mullen said. “The passion our fans have is equal. Now I’m sure I’ll have a lot of European nations very upset with me saying that and teams throughout the world upset, but that is one of the things that makes this league so fun is the passion that our fanbases have for football is similar to watching the passion these European soccer teams and followings have, which is a pretty neat deal.”
Many folks, this site included, have argued this for years– that’s why longtime college football writers like Spencer Hall at EDSBS follow (and now sometimes write) about European soccer, the Premier League, or the World Cup. The similarities between the sports, on a pure “passion begets great players which begets more passion” level, is striking, particularly in the SEC. But it’s fascinating that this line of thinking is validated at SEC Media Days, by a man charged with leading a program in that conference.
Clubs like Portland, whose supporters are among the league’s best, were consulted by the SEC this summer.
The second story tying the SEC to soccer at this year’s Media Days was the revelation that the SEC front office and a handful of its member institutions were consulting with clubs from Major League Soccer regarding fan experiences on gameday. There are a host of reasons this might be surprising at first glance. After all, there’s no debate college football remains higher in the American sport fan pecking order than MLS, regardless of the growing popularity of soccer stateside. And, as noted, the passion of fans in the SEC, the premier conference in college football, is unrivaled in American sport. So why would SEC schools seek advice from a much more fledgling sport? The answer is somewhat complicated.
MLS as a sports league is certainly growing, with the hope being the league will ultimately expand to 24 teams. And while there’s a raging debate about the “bubble” or ceiling for MLS expansion, participants in that debate seem to agree on one overarching fact: the league continues to rely heavily on attendance at the gate for a large portion of its revenue, given the meager nature of its television viewership and contracts. Debating the efficacy of this model is fine intellectual exercise, but little more than that– the league will continue to rely on attendance to drive revenues even in a world where the television deal improves and eyeballs on televisions increase. Even the Barclay’s Premier League, which has better ratings than regular season NBA in the United States, has a comparatively meager television deal (80 million), meaning an improved MLS TV deal accompanied by better ratings won’t move the profit meter dramatically.
The good news? MLS attendance is doing more than its share of paying the bills. Attendance league-wide is around 19,000 a game this season, which is better on a per-game basis than all but two of the professional sports leagues in the United States (NFL, MLB). And once you factor capacity into attendance metrics, MLS sits second, running just due south of the National Football League. By and large, this has to do with a combination of factors, in no particular order: an improving on-field product, limited opportunity to view matches on television (even locally, to some extent), and a rewarding experience at stadiums for fans and families. It’s the latter factor that so fascinates the SEC. But why?
Can MLS help fill the Swamp again?
While football in the south is a second religion that can fissure families in the autumn, the passion of fan bases has not moved the meter at the stadium. In fact, SEC game attendance across the board has decreased for five consecutive seasons. Multiple member institutions (LSU, Texas A & M, Missouri) are working on increasing stadium capacity, but one school (Kentucky), is actually decreasing capacity. And while season tickets for a handful of member institutions remain “wait list” only, a number of institutions, including traditional powers Georgia and Florida, have had to embark on aggressive advertising campaigns to sell season tickets, and will still almost assuredly fall short of the originally allotted number. The reality is that with ever-advancing television technology and a massive broadcasting deal that sees almost every SEC game televised), the the cost of attendance (a typical family needs to travel to the school, in some cases, secure lodging, tickets and the like to attend a college game), many fans of the SEC find it a better option to simply sit home and watch than attend. Making matters worse, students at the universities themselves have turned away in recent years. Notable examples include Florida, where only 66% of students possessing “student season tickets”, which come at a heavily discounted rate, attended games in the famed “Swamp” the past two seasons, and Alabama, where the number was closer to 80% but was low enough for head coach Nick Saban to convince the university to pass a policy whereby a student who fails to attend a game loses his seat for the next game. Such draconian measures happening at schools where the football is good (Alabama), is probably a more telling indication that there’s an “attendance problem” in the SEC than the fact that Florida, who has fallen on down times, is having its own issues.
Enter MLS. In May, a group from Florida’s athletic department became one of hundreds of sports teams to visit Sporting Kansas City, the reigning MLS champion, and Sporting Innovations, the team’s spinoff consulting firm focused on fan engagement and technology.
Sporting KC is trending in the opposite direction of SEC football institutions. The team formerly known as the Wizards averaged 10,287 fans a game in 2010. Then it rebranded, moved from a minor-league baseball stadium to soccer-specific Sporting Park and saw attendance climb to 17,810 a game. That number has increased this year to a franchise-record 19,709 per MLS game.
This overhaul has drawn interest throughout the SEC and college football as a whole. In addition to Florida, which sent a representative to Kansas City in the fall before a bigger team went in May, three other SEC schools have visited Sporting KC, Heineman said, while Oklahoma State announced a deal with Sporting Innovations in March.
Sporting KC’s approach to accommodating younger fans goes beyond giving them fast Wi-Fi so they can use their smartphones. At a time when some colleges don’t keep records on student attendance, Sporting KC collects data on everyone from season-ticket holders to single-game buyers through Sporting Innovations technology, which they offer to college clients. They now have close to 250,000 profiles of fans who have attended games, Heineman said, with information as detailed as when, where and how they bought tickets, what time they arrived at games and who they sat near.
In exchange for that information—which they say allows them to understand their fans better—they offer perks. Sporting KC pays for their fans to attend road games and organizes social events for young professionals in Kansas City. The result is a fan experience on gameday that is the culmination of information-gathering, transparency and incentivizing attendance.
For college football schools, the lesson is more instructive because the sport appeals first and foremost to a younger demographic. While older alumni do constitute a large portion of the ticket-buying fan base, the demographics of the sport are extremely young. Student sections constitute a significant portion of every stadium on gameday, and single game ticket buyers almost universally are younger fans and alumni who can’t afford full-season ticket packages. Finding what appeals to these younger demographics in other areas is something the SEC can certainly harvest.
For its part, the University of Florida plans to implement some of these policies. Individualized surveys are sent to ticket buyers following games, asking what would make the experience easier and better. Perks and incentives are given for responding to the surveys, and more incentives for purchasing single game tickets. Florida also consulted with Orlando City SC, who will enter MLS next year but draw well already for a third-division side, and the Portland Timbers, among other teams. They’re hoping these consultations better connect them to their younger fan base down the road.
There is irony here of course: MLS teams would give an arm and a leg to have even a slice of the SEC television package, and all its attendant revenue and eyeballs. But those are more “product on the field” questions, for the time being. And long-term, the consultations make huge financial sense for the SEC institutions, who bring massive amounts of revenue to their cities and university not simply because television deals are good, but because they fill the town on gameday. Lose the younger fans who have started turning away at the gate- and you start to lose the game.
Meanwhile, MLS hopes for a butterfly effect, where fans tell their friends and families sell their kids on their product. Even if that pays most its large dividends years down the road.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @nwb_usmnt.