Ever since the news broke earlier this summer that David Beckham had signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy for a reported 250 million over 5 years, he has been hyped as the man to bring soccer into the U.S. mainstream. Many people in LA hoped to see "Beckham transforming the Galaxy and American soccer in the same way that Wayne Gretzky transformed the LA Kings and US ice hockey in 1988."
But through his first 7 matches he hasn't done a whole lot of anything, and it's begun to upset a lot of fans. Over at CNBC.com Sports Biz' Darren Rovell is beginning to wonder if the MLS and soccer in the US will end up worse off with the addition of Becks.
Here are the stats everyone now knows on Beckham's first seven games. He's only been on the field for 33 out of a possible 630 minutes, or 5.24 percent of the time.That's surely angered those who have sampled soccer through Beckham, whether it was the people that went to games or some of the record 1.5 million people that tuned into ESPN's broadcast of Beckham's debut that was promoted to the hilt only to see Beckham trot out for a promotional 12 minutes.
For those who have "seen" him in person, it's undoubtedly worse. They go to a game, buy a Beckham jersey and in some cases -- like the folks in New England who didn't see him play --have bought a four-pack of tickets just to see this game and then he doesn't show up. The buy-four-for-one package most recently happened with LeBron James during his rookie season when he went on the road. The difference is that LeBron played in these cities. He played in 79 of 82 games that year.
Last week in DC it was clear that many fans were upset with the result of seeing Beckham play a whopping 21 minutes at the end of the match. Just ask Bobby Boswell what he thought of the way ESPN handled things. And the third largest stand-alone attendance in New England Revolution history saw Becks spend the entire game on the bench. "The mass exodus with 10 minutes remaining spoke volumes about the interest in soccer vs. the interest in celebrity."
While Beckham's lack of ability to play in his much-hyped matches can be begrudgingly attributed to an unfortunate ankle injury, Rovell also noticed something odd with the ticket sales for Beckham matches.
The sneaky behind-the-scenes story with the Galaxy is that, although there is never a guarantee that a player will play in a game, they put a "Beckham might not play" disclaimer on their Ticketmaster site for all their games, before he even came over to play, leading me to believe that they knew exactly what they were selling to fans. As far as I know, no team in the history of sports has ever gone out of their way to put such a disclaimer on a ticketing site.
So the MLS, ESPN, and Los Angeles Galaxy promote matches where the great David Beckham will be playing, then fit in a disclaimer that he might not actually play. His ankle injury, which occurred on June 6th and was re-injured in his last game for Madrid, didn't come to light for most American fans until after they had already bought tickets to his matches. Says FoxSoccer.com's Nick Webster;
I think we
