MLS commissioner Doug Logan sees a great challenge and a rare opportunity in his new job.
The new boss of American pro soccer is a near-stranger to the sport, yet he’s already mastered the fine art of blending realistic promises and lofty hopes.
Introduced at a press conference in New York City on Nov. 21, Doug Logan is the product of a long quest by an MLS search committee and a sports executive headhunting firm that evaluated hundreds of candidates, yet actually interviewed just four.
He brings to MLS nearly two decades of sports and entertainment promotion and marketing experience — and virtually no knowledge of big-time soccer.
Which, he feels, is not necessarily a bad thing.
“I’m not a soccer specialist, but that has not been an inhibiting factor in other major league commissioners taking jobs,” said Logan, 52. “They’ve come from the legal profession; they’ve come from academia, in the case of [former baseball commissioner] Bart Giamatti; they come from other leagues, like [NHL commissioner] Gary Bettman.
“While I consider that there is a significant challenge ahead in getting up to speed with regard to a learning curve of an international sport … I don’t see it necessarily as a drawback. I have no illusions that I’m going to have to learn an awful lot.”
The push for a commissioner to run the league came at the behest of several MLS owners, notably Stuart Sobotnick of New York/New Jersey and Lamar and Clark Hunt, which own 51 percent of the Columbus and Kansas City franchises.
“Doug Logan is highly regarded within the industry,” said Lamar Hunt. “His work ethic and experience will play a key role in the future of Major League Soccer.”
MLS chairman Alan Rothenberg, who has led the efforts to establish a pro league, plans on returning to full-time work with the Los Angeles law firm of Latham & Watkins, which he left to head the 1994 World Cup organizing committee.
“If all goes well, I can just sit there, have a good time and watch Doug work real hard,” said Rothenberg, who reportedly has invested $1 million in MLS, is a member of the league’s investment committee, and will continue to serve as chairman of the board.
“He’s a good leader, he’s shown he can build a business, he’s an excellent manager, and he’s proven to be a success in the event and sports promotion business, which is, let’s face it, what we’re all about.
“But I’ll do what I’ve intended to do once MLS was set up: Go back to my law firm and spend more time as president of the Federation.”
‘Bitten by the bug’
Logan started in the sports industry in 1976 by overseeing the development of the MetroCentre in Rockford, Ill, and also served as the general manager of the CBA franchise in Rockford during the 1986-87 season. In his 10 years in Rockford, he promoted more than 860 sports and entertainment events.
From 1986 to 1993, Logan worked for the entertainment division of Ogden Corp. as its senior vice president in charge of marketing and promotional operations. Under Logan, this unit of Ogden Corp. grew from a start-up operation to gross revenues of more than $230 million in 1993. (Ogden Corp. grossed more than $3 billion in revenues in 1994.)
Originally a food-service concessionaire to stadiums and arenas, this branch of Ogden, under Logan’s leadership, expanded to a full-service entity, including promotion of events and facility management, and eventually took on development and financing projects as well.
Ogden Corp. was selected by the city of Anaheim, Calif., to develop, finance and operate the Arrowhead Pond arena, home to the NHL Mighty Ducks and the CISL Splash. It also played a role in the development of new arenas in Vancouver and Ottawa, and services more than 100 facilities around the world.
He has a working knowledge of most MLS stadiums, and through his own CBA involvement and consulting jobs with NHL and NBA teams, has some grasp of how to fill them.
“It’s going to take a number of years to build crowds to fill those huge stadiums,” he says. “In the first year or two or three, we’re going to have crowds that are, let’s say, substantially less than one-third the capacity of those huge stadiums.
“That being said, those are the only facilities we can play in. Like all leagues, we’re going to have our growing pains. It’s going to be a process, and you can’t put that instantaneously on the field. It doesn’t bother me as long as everybody has realistic expectations of where we’re going to be.”
Logan relocated to Mexico City in 1993 to work as the president and CEO of OCESA, an international entertainment corporation, and to run the Mexico Aztecas of the Continental Basketball Association. He says if not for the devaluation of the peso, he and his family could well still be in Mexico instead of their home in Sarasota, Fla.
On the day he announced the CBA move, Logan hopped across the border to conduct press conferences in San Diego and Tijuana; he spoke English at the former and Spanish at the latter. His fluency in Spanish stems from Cuban heritage on his mother’s side. Born in Glen Ridge, N.J., he spent much of his childhood in Havana, where his grandfather owned a winter league baseball team.
“When I was 3 or 4,” said Logan, “I’d go to baseball games, sit in the owners’ box, and meet all the players. I got bitten by the bug very early in life.”
Scant soccer background
He lettered in varsity soccer at LaSalle Military Academy, and attended three matches at the 1994 World Cup. Aside from an awareness of the North American Soccer League and some discussions with former MISL commissioner Earl Foreman regarding indoor soccer, he’s a neophyte as regards to running a soccer league.
“The NASL may have been in existence a little ahead of its time,” he says, “because there’s no doubt the competitive and attractive imbalance between the New York franchise and the rest of the teams wasn’t helpful. It was almost like two leagues: the Cosmos and the others.”
He believes the MSL business plan circumvents many of the problems wreaking havoc in other pro sports: NFL teams who abandon fans by moving, labor disputes that caused work stoppages in baseball and hockey, and the disputes between the NFL and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones over licensing and sponsorship.
All MLS players are owned and paid by the league, and its business plan clearly defines which sponsorships are controlled by the league and which are to be marketed by the franchises.
“The financial strength of the ownership group is unprecedented in the infancy of a new league,” he says. “It’s an extraordinary business challenge. A league has been carefully and meticulously put together to ensure its success, not only for coming years, but also for the decades and, hopefully, centuries to come.
He has placed the CBA team in a blind trust and is curtailing his consulting operations as part of his commitment to MLS. Logan has a five-year contract, the terms of which were not disclosed.
“I’m honored to have been chosen as the custodian of this dream,” said Logan, crediting Rothenberg as the dream’s creator. “For someone who, for the last 20 years, has spent his life in sports and entertainment, it is extraordinarily unique.
“It encompasses a lot of very interesting facets, not the least of which is making a little bit of history: Finally, successfully bringing First Division soccer to the United States.”
by Soccer America senior editor Ridge Mahoney