It’s one of the most frustrating things about sports… highly-paid players who don’t get the job done. Who hasn’t thought after a loss ‘I think our team could have played harder’ or ‘if only that player hadn’t given up in the 4th quarter.’ Well, a group of fans in England are going to be reimbursed after having that experience.

Last weekend, Wigan Athletic suffered a horrifying 9 – 1 loss at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur. Hundreds of Wigan fans had made the trip to see their team play, only to watch them concede eight second-half goals. In an almost unprecedented move, the Wigan players have offered to reimburse any Wigan fans who purchased a ticket at the stadium that day.

With player salaries in the English Premier League being well above those in Major League Soccer, no one should worry about the Wigan players going hungry. The gesture, however, is one to take note of. These are professional players who realize that they did not do their job, and that their ‘bad day at the office’ cost hard-working people money that in this recession, isn’t easily parted with. It is refreshing to see a group of professional athlete take their responsibility seriously.

Their captain Mario Melchiot was quoted as saying “We feel that as a group of players we badly let down our supporters yesterday (Sunday), and this is a gesture we have to make and pay them back for their tremendous loyalty.” Now, no one gets to choose whether they see Kobe’s 81-point game or Kevin Garnett’s 14-point one (I personally attended the latter), but the recognition by these players that the fans loyalty should not be taken lightly is a lesson that should be learned by all sports business professionals, especially in this economic climate.

We saw a whiff of this last month when wide receiver Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals teamed up with Motorola to purchase the remaining 1,200 tickets to his teams’ home game against the Houston Texans. If those tickets hadn’t been sold, the game would have been blacked out in the Cincinnati area  and many die-hard Bengals fans wouldn’t have been able to see their team play. In these especially hard times, it seems especially important to find a way to make sure fans stay connected to their favorite teams, even if they can’t afford to go to the games. Black-outs are just about the exact opposite of that philosophy, as it removes an important touch-point between fans and their team.

So, what can teams do? Well, here’s an example of what NOT to do. Don’t sue your season ticket holders who have legitimate hardships. The Washington Redskins opened up a huge flap by suing season ticket holders who asked to get out of their contracts. Instead of working out a payment plan, offering to try to re-sell the tickets, or just excusing the fans from their contracts, the Redskins filed lawsuits. Lifelong fans not only lost their coveted tickets, but lost faith in their team.

In these tough times, teams need to continually be on the lookout as to how they can provide better service to their fans. Refunding them after a particularly brutal loss might not be the way to go, but there are certainly opportunities for teams to make their fans feel appreciated. Preventing black-outs, making affordable tickets available, and offering free access to select team events are just a few ways to keep fans connected and ultimately generate greater lifetime value and fan loyalty.

Normally, I don’t like talking about events that take place on the field, but today I’m going to make an exception. On Wednesday night, a World Cup qualifying soccer match was decided by one person who made a mistake that was easily identifiable by a simple video replay. However, because the sport was dependent on an archaic system of in-game governance that was developed decades if not centuries ago, the result of the game and any number of future events has been permanently altered.

This same situation has happened in multiple major sporting events over the past few months, including several prominent errors in the MLB playoffs, but for the most part, the governing bodies for these organizations prefer to stand by and depend on their “traditional” means for making all in-game decisions. This system may have made sense was professional sports was more of a casual pastime, but now it is a multi-billion dollar global industry, and each one of these incorrect decisions can have serious repercussions. A team that misses the next round of playoffs because of a bad call loses out on millions in ticket revenue. A player that is invalidly judged by an official’s decision can lose the chance at significant endorsement money. An entire league can suffer (or benefit) because of an officiating decision that impacts what teams are playing and the television ratings that come with those teams.

Meanwhile, sports organizations have embraced technology in almost every other form, from evaluating the players statistically to refining their business processes. Clearly everyone recognizes the importance of technology as sports have evolved, but yet for some reason, they refuse to let the technology onto the field in the form of instant replay. Would any other industry operate in this manner? Can you imagine if Walmart decided that they needed to use a more “traditional” way to run their checkout lines and made the staff type in each number, because “that’s how they’ve always done it.” The errors that would occur would ultimately have a significant impact on their business, ruining their other technological advantages that they’ve developed in their inventory management processes.

I understand that trying to add instant replay into sports is a complicated process with many potential pitfalls. This is why I give a lot of credit to the NFL for their work in this area. They acknowledged the problem, created a replay system, and constantly work to refine it based on the needs of the sport. I would hope that more sports, like soccer and baseball for example, eventually decide to follow the NFL’s lead and develop their own comparable systems. Putting aside the game for a moment, there is simply too much money riding on what happens on the field for everyone to overlook these issues.

Today’s post is courtesy of Amanda Miller, who has contributed to the blog in the past and will be a regular contributor moving forward. You can read her full bio here.

If the only sports radio you listen to is ‘Jim Rome is Burning,’ you might think professional soccer in the United States is hearing its death knell. To the contrary, skeptics and fans alike can see the growth in popularity of the game, with the most obvious sign being the enormous success of the Seattle Sounders. The Sounders are Major League Soccer’s newest franchise, the 15th in the still-growing league.

While the Sounders inaugural season ended in heartbreak after an overtime loss to the Houston Dynamo on Sunday, they have an enormous amount to be proud of. A few of their 2009 highlights include:

• Having more season ticket holders than any team in MLS’ 13-year existence
• Becoming the first expansion team since the Chicago Fire in 1998 to make the MLS Playoffs
• Winning the 2009 U.S. Open Cup
• Setting a league record for average attendance at 30,943 fans

The Sounders also single-handedly kept MLS attendance numbers from taking a huge hit due to the recession. Without Seattle, Major League Soccer would have seen a 9.5% decline at the gate but instead had only a 3.3% decline (courtesy of SBJ). That number was less than half of the decline that Major League Baseball saw in 2009.

One of the aces up Seattle’s sleeve was popular comedian Drew Carey. Carey fought hard to give Sounders fans a serious voice. Every season ticket holder gets to vote on the direction of the club. If they are not happy with how the front office is being run, they can vote the general manager out, and the owners will need to choose a new one. This gives the fans an enormous amount of buy-in to a team. In most markets, if the team started doing poorly, the fans might feel disenfranchised and walk away, but in Seattle, they have a valid reason to stick out the hard times.

All signs point to 2010 being a year where soccer in the United States is raised to an entirely new level. The World Cup will be held in South Africa and the U.S. has qualified for the sixth consecutive time. While other American teams are used to dominating their sport, the U.S. Men’s National Team didn’t qualify for the World Cup for forty years (1950-1990).

Also in 2010, MLS will welcome its 16th team as the Philadelphia Union begins play, while Vancouver and Portland anxiously await their inaugural matches in 2011. Viewership of MLS games increased on both the ESPN family of channels as well as Fox Soccer Channel (courtesy of SBJ). With the success of the Sounders, the brilliant run of the U.S. Men’s National Team into the finals of the Confederations Cup , and the beginning of U.S. Soccer’s bid for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, soccer has been in the collective consciousness throughout the year.

So, what do you think? Is all this just sound and fury? Is soccer really becoming more popular in the United States? Are the Seattle Sounders an anomaly, or can other teams copy their success? Will soccer continue to make the Top 10 highlights on SportsCenter even when it’s not a run-up year to the World Cup?

David Beckham recently return to MLS and the Los Angeles Galaxy after his stint in Europe with AC Milan.  Now the first time that Beckham joined the Galaxy, his fans in the U.S. went crazy buying up tickets and merchandise.  He was going to put soccer and MLS on the map in this country, but unfortunately, the impact of his celebrity has only had a short-term effect. It turns out that he didn’t enjoy playing for the Galaxy, and he made these feelings well known during the team’s negotiations with AC Milan.  However, as part of the loan agreement between the two teams, Beckham will continue to play for the Galaxy when AC Milan is not playing.

So he’s back, but this time around, people don’t seem too excited about it.  In a recent match between the Galaxy and the Red Bull New York at Giants Stadium, about 22,000 tickets were sold.  This is just a slight drop-off from the first time Beckham played in Giants Stadium, when over 70,000 tickets were sold!  On top of that, I received this email earlier today:

The first time around, there was no need to discount his merchandise, but things are a little different now.  What do you think Beckham’s ultimate legacy within MLS will be when all is said and done?

This year’s MLS All-Star Game is being held later this month in Salt Lake City, so Home Depot is running  a special program to celebrate Utah’s Community All-Stars.  Fans can visit www.mlsnet.com/works and nominate someone that has helped improve their local community in Utah through any type of volunteer activities.  Their applications will be reviewed and five winners will be selected to win a $1,000 gift card from Home Depot and an MLS All-Star prize pack that includes two tickets to this year’s all-star game.

This might seem like a pretty simple promotion, but it’s a very valuable and effective one.  Home Depot recognized the fact that Utah leads all state in total volunteerism, so this type of program really taps into that volunteer spirit of the all-star hosts. Additionally, anytime you can incorporate and promote the charitable efforts of your team or league (in this case, MLS Works), you build good will towards your fans and encourage them to help support the same charitable initiatives.  Finally, it’s always nice to see how sports teams look for ways to reward their fans and give back to the community at large.

So if you know someone from Utah that deserves some recognition for their community efforts, nominate them for this program and maybe they’ll be rewarded as a community all-star.

This week, the United States national soccer team beat the top-ranked team from Spain 2-0 in the Confederations Cup.  To call this an upset would be a understatement.  The United States was lucky to even make the semifinals of the tournament, getting in through a three-team tiebreaker, while Spain had won 15 straight matches and had a 35 game unbeaten streak.

Like many other sports fans, I wasn’t able to watch this match because I was in the middle of my workday, but upon hearing that the U.S. had won, my first thought was, “if this is as big a win as it seems, how will it impact soccer in the United States?”  So I asked some of my peers through Twitter and Facebook, and these are the responses I got:

• “No”
• “None whatsoever”
• “Not sure about that but should be huge for WC2010 excitement in US”
• “Ah, no, none whatsoever. BUT if they ever win a World Cup semi-final, that would be a different conversation”
• “Judging by trending topics on twitter, nobody seems to care that it’s the US team that beat Spain, just that Spain lost. In other words: it’s business as usual for soccer in America.”
• “Nope. Hardcore futbol supporters will continue to be there & rest will go on with their lives. Do it in the WC? Much diff story”
• “The US was playing a game? If so then I’m thinking that that is mostly the answer to your question. ”
• “As the most casual of casual fans, I might decide to leave SportsCenter on when they show soccer highlights, instead of simply changing the channel. But I’m going to need a lot more convincing before I pony up the cash for tickets to an MLS game. Especially if I could be spending my money on baseball tickets instead.”
• “doubtful, but if they follow it up with a win against brazil and then go far in the next world cup, its got a chance. the problem is that MLS doesnt have the marketing power it needs to grow the stage at the same rate the quality of play is growing.”

I feel pretty comfortable saying that despite the magnitude of this win, it has practically no effect on the status of soccer in this country.  However, if the U.S. can carry this momentum into their 2010 World Cup appearance, some believe that the attitude could then change.  As a sports business professional, you hate the idea that you have to depend on team performance to generate interest and business success, but is there anything else that MLS and the national team could do right now?  What are your thoughts?  I do not follow the sport very closely (I guess I’m part of the problem in that way), so I need to know what others think.

Red Bull New York has been working on building their new facility for a couple of years now.  They ended up about a year behind schedule, so instead of playing there this season, the team will play one more year in Giants Stadium before moving to Red Bull Arena in 2010.  When that day comes, the allure of the brand new, soccer-only stadium is sure to provide an excellent boost for new season ticket sales.  But what about today? 

Current season ticket holders will clearly get the first chance to lock up their seats in the new building, but is that enough to get people to commit to a 2009 season ticket?  As a customer, you have to imagine that the price of that very same season ticket is going to jump when the team moves, just like what has happened with the Giants, Jets, Yankees and Mets this year. Knowing this, Red Bull has gone one step further.

Red Bull New York has a special offer that does a great job using the new stadium in 2010 to sell season tickets.  Ticket prices for the 2010 season in Red Bull Arena will be frozen for all 2009 season ticket holders. Normally you do not see a price freeze announced this far in advance, but by doing this, they quell any fears that new ticket buyers would have about buying this year, allowing them to start using the benefits of the new facility a full season before it opens. It also helps them in their efforts to overcome the challenges of the today’s tough economy without cutting their existing prices. The team might be sacrificing some amount of potential revenue, but I think this is outweighed by the security of growing the season ticket base today.

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Paulo da Silva, Arizona State Sports Business MBA, Class of 2009.

Major League Soccer (MLS) and its Commissioner Don Garber seem to be committed to take the world of sports by surprise. Since 2006, David Beckham’s transfer to the LA Galaxy and the continuous team-expansion announcements to Seattle and Philadelphia (starting 2009 and 2010, respectively) have given the MLS a year-after-year unprecedented growth not only in retail sales, which has more than doubled from $145 million in 2006 to $300 million in 2007, but also in visibility over the South and Central American leagues worldwide, with an increasing regular season stadium attendance registered at 3.27 million people in 2007. 

Don Garber once said “We don’t know how this is going to work, but I’m excited about it, very much so”. However, Garber seemed to have a very good idea of how he wanted the MLS to proceed and, in order to achieve these results, they decided to implement the following five-point strategy:

1. Raising the level of respect and credibility given to MLS in both North America and around the world: David Beckham made the international community take notice of the league. Most importantly, even though the LA Galaxy haven’t won any competitions since, Beckham’s quality of play on the field has convinced the media and won him the respect of fans across the MLS. At the same time, there is an increasing acknowledgment of the talent generated in North America, as the recent sale of New York Red Bulls youth product and MLS star Jozy Altidore to Spanish club Villarreal confirmed last summer.
2. Get all MLS teams playing in team-owned and operated soccer-only stadiums: Garber said that by 2010, 12 of the league’s 16 teams will be in soccer-specific stadiums, including Real Salt Lake’s new home opening next season, New York in late 2009, Philadelphia in 2010 and new stadium projects underway in San Jose and Kansas City.
3. Continued growth in metrics like TV ratings, attendance and corporate support: 2008 was the first season in which every MLS game was broadcast either locally or nationally on ESPN, ABC, Univision, Fox Soccer Channel, HDNet, and in Canada on Rogers Sportsnet and CBC. These games are shown not just in North America, but also in Mexico, Central America, Europe and parts of Asia. League numbers state that TV ratings are up 20 percent from last season on ESPN, and 10 percent on Univision.
4. Turn North American soccer fans into MLS fans: North American soccer fans, used to watch European and Central and South American soccer, need a solid and attractive league in order to transition to MLS fans. The MLS Designated Player Rule is a step towards better quality and to a better identification with the fans’ sporting culture in the US.
5. Continue to improve the quality of play, and come up with innovative ideas to reaching new levels of quality: The main initiative implemented by the MLS on this matter was the MLS Youth Development Rule that provided a League-wide structure for youth development and positioned the MLS as the leader of the sport that now totals nearly 18 million participants in the United States.

This plan was designed following the strong and determined leadership of Don Garber, who has been League Commissioner since 1999. As a senior vice president/managing director of National Football League International (NFL International), Garber was well aware of the needs and challenges regarding the internationalization of the American sports business’s model and, throughout the years, he has been able to build a strong basis for the league to grow and think as global as the sport of soccer itself.

The outstanding measure undertaken by Garber happened in 2001 when he re-structured the MLS and led the formation of Soccer United Marketing (SUM), a company owned by MLS investors that stands as the preeminent commercial soccer entity in North America. SUM represents several prominent soccer properties, including the U.S. Soccer Federation, the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the Mexican Soccer Federation for all sponsorship, marketing and game promotion in the United States. In addition, SUM manages American tours for some of the world’s most powerful soccer clubs, including Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Chivas de Guadalajara.

Most recently, Garber was instrumental in the creation of the SuperLiga, the innovative professional tournament between MLS and Mexico’s First Division club that has both helped Central American clubs and audience to change their perception of MLS soccer and improve its teams’ quality of play by interacting with better teams in a consistent basis.

These outcomes were not but the result of the hard work developed by Don Garber, the MLS and its partners and the benefits from it are starting to show in an unquestionable fashion. Nonetheless, some challenges still lie ahead: Are all league partners and members up to the quality of play and business Garber wants to ultimately implement? Can the competition for the US sports fan market smother MLS’s growth? Is this growth sustainable? If so, when is it going to stop? Hopefully not soon, I’d say.

Today’s post is courtesy of Jackie Adkins, a senior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel Hill.

Way back in November, I made a blog post about Miami’s vie for an MLS team and basically, why it was important that they submit a legitimate bid and ultimately get a team with the backing of FC Barcelona, Spain’s soccer equivalent of the New York Yankees. Well, recent reports indicate that the folks at Barcelona are reconsidering their $20 million expenditure to obtain 50% ownership in the future Miami team. Barcelona CEO John Oliver stated the complicated economic situation in the US and their desire to avoid financial risk as the main reason for re-evaluating their commitment. To put this in perspective, their top 3 players, Messi, Eto’o, and Henry, make a combined 23.4 million euro per year. Now I don’t have my exchange rate machine with me, but I know that makes buying an entire team for $20 million look like pocket change.

If Barcelona does end up part owner of the club, it will be very interesting to see exactly how closely they associate Barcelona with the team and how they do it. Jerseys that looked similar to Barcelona’s famous red and blue stripes are the most obvious option to do this. Another consideration is naming the stadium something similar to Camp Nou, the famous Barcelona stadium which seats over 100,000. What would REALLY be cool, and probably would be a long shot, would be to see some FC Barcelona players make guest appearances at games, whether it be as an honorary team member who just sits on the bench, doing an event with fans, etc. The point: the possibilities are endless. Conversely, Barcelona may try to distance the Barcelona name from the MLS team, at least until it proves to be a success, in hopes of not eroding its own brand image.

The willingness of a European super club to commit to help grow soccer in America by owning a portion of a team is a huge step in adding credibility to the MLS, and is an opportunity the MLS should take steps to ensure they capitalize on. Barcelona may be using some “Jedi mind tricks” to get the MLS to lower the $40 million price tag of a new franchise, softening the financial risk they will be taking on. If that’s the case, the MLS should be willing to do so, maybe in exchange for some extra exhibition matches when Barcelona tours the US, which they are already scheduled to do over the next five years. Another option is the MLS could allow Barcelona to postpone its bid for a couple of years to a time where the financial uncertainty isn’t quite as high. This seems a likely scenario, as the MLS has been a league which has taken small, deliberate steps so far to grow.

So, my message to the MLS: Please, please, please don’t let this deal get away!

Thanks to Russell for letting me hijack his blog today! You can visit my blog, Jack and the Biz Talk, at www.jackieadkins.blogspot.com, where you can find even more sports business posts like this one!