So the final edition of the Beckham down under experience has come and gone and with it the now annual comparisons between the A-League and MLS.
Yesterday my fellow Roar writer Luke Doherty wrote: “it would be fantastic to see the A-League champions and the winners of the MLS Cup face off every year for a trophy”.
While I chuckled at the suggestion of calling such a competition “The Salary Cap Cup”, I’m not convinced that it’s either a viable or beneficial concept.
Firstly let’s clear some things up – a match between the champions of both the MLS and A-League would only be a success if David Beckham happened to play for the winning team. With Golden Balls’ American journey about to end, that seems more than unlikely.
Do you think 36,000 fans would stump up to see Houston Dynamos (this season’s other MLS Cup finalist) or Real Salt Lake who won the league a couple years ago as they did in Melbourne on Tuesday night? The answer is no.
With members of A-League clubs having to buy tickets for such an encounter the organisers would be lucky to get more than 10,000 through the gates.
Secondly there would be almost no increase in brand awareness for the local team in such an encounter. The Galaxy friendlies worked because associating your club with Beckham is a positive public image move.
Finally, putting together some make believe competition between the two countries would not increase the fixture’s competitiveness. How do I know this? Because it’s been tried before.
A similar tournament – the Pan-Pacific Cup – was run by the same marketing company behind the MLS and even with all their experience and industry strength they couldn’t make it work (a little know fact – an edition of the tournament ended up being hosted in Australia one year) but even that competition had to include Beckham’s Galaxy to have any broad value.
To me the whole concept sounds a lot like the AFL’s international rules competition and we all know how seriously both players and fans take that.
In fact, it goes hand in hand with the greater desire we seem to have with comparing the A-League with its American counterpart.
While there are a handful of similarities, both leagues are based on entirely different structures with completely different markets.
FFA could have avoided a number of mistakes if it had of done better research into the experience of the MLS but the same is true for Japan’s J-League and even European football.
While I applaud Lou Sticca and his promotional company for once again putting on an enjoyable and positive event, I hope we’ll start considering these fixtures for nothing more than what they are – a bit of fun.
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