In Becks We Trust

January 26, 2007

by Jonah Gold

David Beckham has proved once again that he is still the world’s largest sports star. Just as he departed Manchester United in 2003 for Real Madrid to a great deal of fanfare, his transfer to the Los Angeles Galaxy created dozens of front cover headlines and filled sports sections with stories and features for days on end. But while the stories have begun to decline, Beckham’s impact on Major League Soccer will not.

Beckham’s trade is a tremendous step for a league ready rise from its second-tier status and continual economic woes.

The most surprising fact about Beckham’s signing was the eye-popping price tag of $250 million for five years. Many initially questioned whether a league as small and financially unstable as the MLS could afford such a contract, especially for a player who seems to be in the decline of his career.

However, Beckham’s contract is actually far different then the one reported in the headlines. Beckham’s contract has very little actual relation to his salary. It seems that the inordinately high number was used by the MLS to make the deal as monumental as possible in order to increase press coverage. It worked.

Beckham’s actual five year salary will be much closer to $50 million. The $200 million difference between Beckham’s actual salary and the reported deal were explained as Beckham’s expected profits from his shares in jersey and ticket sales. Still, the $50 million contract is by far the largest ever in the MLS, a league with a second highest salary of $900,000 and a league average of just $90,000. Recent MLS rule changes in reference to players’ salaries were a major factor in making the trade for Beckham as economically manageable as possible.

Beckham is MLS’s first “designated player.” These “designated players” are allowed to have salaries higher than the league average for standard players. Each MLS team is only required to pay $400,000 per year, per “designated player.” Thus, the league will only pay for $2 million of Beckham’s contract each year.

The remaining $48 million will be paid by the Galaxy’s owner, Phil Anshutz, a man worth almost $8 billion according to Forbes. With this current agreement the MLS has created the ability for the league to attract stars with contracts that greatly exceed the economic means of the league itself, but not of its owners. If more owners like Anshutz are willing to pay the great majority of these designated players’ salaries, then the league has almost unlimited potential. This payment agreement allows MLS teams to trade for European players without running the league into bankruptcy. This policy might actually lead the league in the other direction.

In just the few weeks since Beckham’s signing was announced, MLS has already seen significant changes. Ticket sales have increased since the trade. The Galaxy have already sold more than 5,000 season tickets, the new Toronto FC club has already sold 2,600 of its 10,000 season tickets, and the Houston Dynamo reported a 200 percent increase in its ticket sales.
For a league that has struggled to consistently fill stadiums since its conception, this a positive sign that if the MLS presents not a better product, but simply a more marketable one, the seats will fill themselves.

David Beckham has the potential to be a star for MLS the way Landon Donovan and Freddy Adu never could. For many years MLS has struggled to expand into American markets, but a lack of local government support, soccer friendly stadiums, and solid fan bases has made it difficult. For the first time, MLS truly seems to be a league on the rise.

Currently many children play, or have played soccer, but live with parents who have instead played baseball, basketball, or football. The MLS has struggled to appeal to these families in which the only people able to afford tickets, the parents, often care little for the sport of soccer and may not even truly understand its rules of play.

With each passing year more and more children who have played soccer will begin families and pass down their love of the sport.

This new market is where MLS’s future lies and the attainment of players such as Beckham is necessary to make MLS the most attractive product possible. Beckham’s true value thus is not his ability to score goals, but rather his ability to fill seats. Beckham’s superstar status is what MLS is trading for, not his actual soccer ability.

It is for this very reason, though, that MLS cannot merely content itself to this one acquisition. No one player is able to raise the entire level of play within a league. What Beckham can do, like Pele a generation before, is create headlines and publicity for a league that lacks the money to advertise on a large scale.

Still, unless more talented European and South American players are added to MLS rosters, the league will have problems battling the image of itself as a second-tier soccer organization.
Right now MLS is making serious moves to change its perception among Americans. Beckham wasn’t the most talented player that MLS could have acquired, but he was the best choice given their current position. Beckham is not only tremendously famous, but he’s attractive, and speaks fluent English unlike arguably better South American players. Beckham is MLS’s first true star. He just might be bright enough to light the way for the league into a new era.