The excitement is beginning to amass for the glamour friendly between Melbourne Victory and David Beckham’s LA Galaxy on December 6, in what is set to be a pulsating encounter.

The centrepiece will showcase some of the best talent to surface in both the Major League Soccer (MLS) and the A-League.

In Melbourne, on a 24-hour pitstop, was LA Galaxy President Tom Payne, who was here to perform media commitments for the blockbuster showpiece, whilst inspecting the city of Melbourne.

A successful businessman, Payne has an extensive background in the sports and entertainment industry.

He has worked with the LA Galaxy since 2003, performing an array of different tasks, including – assistant General Manager, Vice President of Programming and Business Development and currently President of Business Operation.

The American is eagerly anticipating the forthcoming friendly, where the LA outfit will be making their third trip down under in three years.

Whilst discussing the tie between Victory and Galaxy, Payne also expressed his sentiments on the landscape of the MLS, competitive competition in the US and its parallels with the A-League, LA life post David Beckham and his influence on the game in the US, community exposure and why he believes Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia.

Welcome to Australia, Tom. Not sure if you’re aware, Melbourne was recently voted by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Survey as the most liveable city in the world, surpassing Sydney in sixth position.

What are your first impressions of Melbourne?

It seems beautiful; I haven’t spent a ton of time here. The airport wasn’t easy today, something was going on I guess, it took me a while to get out, but the city looks great. The hotel we’re at is lovely; we’re looking forward to it. We’ve heard great things all through the year.

I even had a talk with one of our star player’s Landon Donovan last week about this trip and he cannot wait to come back to Melbourne, he’s been here before.

It’s going to be the end of our tour, the last game. So it’s an opportunity for all of us to visit the city and see the sites and have a really good time here, we’re looking forward to it.

It won’t be the first time LA Galaxy has ventured down under, playing Sydney FC in an enthralling encounter in 2008, whilst recently playing Newcastle Jets last year. What is it about Australia that encourages the Galaxy to promote your brand?

I think there are parallels, I’ve been asked that a lot, between the A-League and MLS. We’ve been going now for about 15-16 years; we were in very similar points a while back. We’re hoping that we can expand the sport and bring some new variety towards it. Certainly anywhere David [Beckham] goes it brings the spotlight on the sport and the game.

The game in Newcastle last year, they’re a smaller town, we have a lot bigger towns in the US, but it was compelling – the game and the atmosphere and the environment – and we’re looking to do the same thing here [in Melbourne], we want to sell the game out and have a great time. We have some great players [on show] like Harry Kewell, Landon Donovon, Robbie Keane and David [Beckham] who will make it a great spectacle for the fans. We think it’s a natural thing to come back here because everyone has treated us so well every time we’ve been here before.

Since the inauguration of David Beckham in July 2007, LA Galaxy has become one of the more prominent football clubs worldwide in terms of marketability and promotion. How has the transformation changed in the last four years?

It has changed in every way, not only for us [LA Galaxy] but for the league. He’s meant a lot for the league, as far as expansion and the national TV rights deal. In our country we have ESPN doing our games every week, that’s a big deal and we have that now. David has a lot to do with that.

For us, it’s the same thing, when players want to come to the US to play, or think about it, generally it’s the Galaxy they talk to first, because they know of the Galaxy because of David Beckham and the brand we’ve been able to build around that by travelling to places like Australia, by going to Asia and all those things. LA is also pretty well known for the beach and everything else around the world, so think that’s all part of it.

4. Has the club planned for life after David Beckham? Should we anticipate another signing reminiscent of Beckham’s calibre in the not too distant future?

[Laughs] Well if you think about it, I think our company is willing to do those things; we’re the ones that built the finest stadium (The Home Depot Centre) in the country when nobody was doing it.

We brought in Beckham, we brought in Robbie Keane, we brought Landon Donovan back, the best American player, we brought him back into the league before we signed David. So I think yes [we can bring in another big name player], I mean who’s the next David Beckham? I don’t know if there is one, it transcends the sport with a guy like David Beckham, there’s very few people like that. So, we always look at everything that comes down our pipe.

We have rules in our league, so we can’t just sign any player we want, there are financial ramifications that we have to consider, so we’ll look at things.

The popularity of the MLS has cultivated immensely since its inception in 1996, initially starting with 10 clubs, and ultimately expanding to an 18-team competition. What do you put this down to and where do you foresee the MLS in 5-10 years?

Well I think David helped, the expansion really took off with the new variety David brought to the league and certainly to so many people watching on national television and all those things.

I think as far as expansion, we want to be a little bit careful, obviously we want to get it to 20 [teams], because 19 is an odd number to have. Then I think we should sort of take our time, there are a lot of cities interested in us [MLS], but I was mentioning this earlier, one thing that is important is that teams play in soccer specific stadiums.

We’re not trying to put 20,000 people in a 60,000 seat stadium because that’s a bad perception, doesn’t look good on TV; it’s a bad environment for the fans that are here. It’s just not what you want. If you want to come into our league as an expansion [team] such as Vancouver Whitecaps (2011), Portland Timbers (2011), and Philadelphia Union last year, you have to have your own soccer specific stadium or build one. Now you’re not just paying to have a team in the league.

Our expansion fees are probably 40 or 50 million dollars now, I’m not sure that’s a league issue. But then you have to commit to having a soccer specific stadium. Now you’re talking, maybe a 200 million. The one thing about that is our ownership group is as strong as any other ownership group in America, so that’s a great thing.

6. Particularly in markets like the US and Australia, engagement with the grassroots and communities are imperative to translate support for the relative MLS clubs. What programs have LA Galaxy implemented in this regard and how has it affected the club’s image with fans?

LA does everything. I just did a presentation the other day at a university. We take our role in our community very seriously. Two of our departments that we report to are our community development and foundations, where we go to hospitals, we read to kids at the local communities. Our stadium is built in an area, it’s not where at risk kids are, but it’s bordering on that. So we do a lot of things, we do camps for kids once a month, we go out into communities for kids that wouldn’t be able to afford to go to a camp or we might put on a camp and pay for it, so we take that very seriously.

From a marketing standpoint, we are always doing the grassroots thing, we had 400 visits from our street team this year who went to 500 different events, promoting the Galaxy, giving away merchandise, just promoting the sport at a grassroots level and promoting the Galaxy at a grassroots level. They all go together, but we take our role in the community very seriously.

7. In many ways, the MLS and A-League have similar working environments. Both battles to gain publicity against the more eminent codes – the NFL, MLB and NBA in the US, while the AFL and NRL are the major competitors in Australia. How has the MLS confronted this issue of cross-code conflict?

I think there’s room for everybody, in the US at least, we’re a big country. In LA we have over 20 million people living in the general LA area. So there’s no reason you can’t have an 18,000 seat basketball game and a 23,000 seat soccer match. When I came in, the thing I made sure my employees understood was that we are going to compete with the baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Angels and those types of folks.

We’re going to be major league, we’re not going to stoop and act like it’s a high school soccer game, we just built a 200 million dollar venue.

We’re going to put on a presentation that is going to be as good as any sports event in our city, and that’s what we do every single week. The key part of our initiative is to make sure people come to our games, because half the people that come to our game aren’t season ticket holders. I’ve got to make sure that they’re having an unbelievable event and an unbelievable night out with their family, without having issues with parking, and whatever it is, but we make sure that’s a really key part of what we do.

We’re not going to be able to compete with the NFL for a long time, we feel like we’re making ground on hockey (NHL) and things like that, but we’re still a long way behind basketball and baseball and the NFL. But we are going to continue to work at it, you can see through the expansion, our average attendances are up 10 percent this year.

Most sports in our market and most sports in the country, with the economy the way it is have gone down about 5-10 percent, we’ve (MLS) went up about 10 percent. As long as kids are still playing and we’re putting a great product on the field and treat people the right way, we’ll be fine.

8. To date Melbourne Victory has been the most successful club on and off the pitch in the A-League. The club has the biggest supporter base and continues to thrive on the pitch. What do you know on a personal level about Melbourne Victory and why did LA Galaxy decide to play the two-time champions of Australia?

The promoter we work with on all these games is based in Melbourne, he’s singing the praises of Melbourne all this time, and it just took him in this case stepping up and wanting to do an event like this. We’ve always had our eye on trying to come to this market; it stands out with Sydney right, when talking about Australia. We had a great event in Newcastle last year and a great event in Sydney [in 2008].

Every time I come into the country, people still bring that game up that they were there; all the media I’ve talked to today were there. We want to do the same here in Melbourne, at the end of the day we know that the Melbourne Victory are sort of the team by which the rest of the league is judged. We feel the same way about our club in our country, we feel like the Galaxy is the most famous club and Victory is the most famous club here. So, it makes sense that we would play each other in a friendly and put on a great show for the fans.

9. Comparable to the lure of Beckham from an Australia perspective, Melbourne Victory recently secured the services of Harry Kewell – arguably the most talented player to ever wear the Socceroos’ jersey. Are you excited about the prospect of Kewell and Beckham going head-to-head?

Yes, I mean soccer is not a one on one game, but David actually plays in the middle of the pitch now, I don’t know where Harry will play. For me it’s just about the better players on the field, the better it will be for the fans, the better the event will be. We also have Landon Donovan, in my opinion is the best American player even. He leads the US in goals and assists all-time, and he’s still the player that’s always counted on in the special moments like in the World Cup last year. So I don’t want to forget about those guys.

Robbie Keane, Marcos Gonzalez – our centre back, who’s on the US national team, he’s 22 or 23 years old and his an up and coming star player, who we’re going to have a hard time of keeping because we’re going to get offers at some point for him all over the world – I’m sure Melbourne Victory has similar players, so at the end of the day, it’s all about putting on a great event, making it competitive, having fun with it and the more good players that play, the better the event will be.

10. Landon Donovan, David Beckham and Robbie Keane are all set to face Melbourne Victory on December 6 at Etihad Stadium. What message can you give to fans wanting to see some of the best talent to surface the MLS?

I hope everyone that cares at all about the sport is there or just wants to come to a big sporting event, I keep hearing that Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia, I’ve heard that since the first time I came, so I hope everyone will come out and prove it. We’ll have an electric atmosphere in here.

They want to see great soccer and a great event with huge players playing in it, like Harry Kewell, David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane. This is going to be the place to be on December 6.

We’re looking forward to it, we’ll have our whole team with us, Melbourne will as well I’m sure, so it should be a fun night.

Thank you for your time Tom and best of luck on your future endeavours for LA Galaxy and the season ahead.

Follow Robbie on Twitter @RobertDiFabio – Courtesy of Goal Weekly