Don Garber’s first year as MLS commissioner has been a learning experience, and he’s ready to put that know-how to work as the league focuses on the future.

SOCCER AMERICA: In what area do you feel you’ve been able to make the biggest impact since taking over as commissioner?

DON GARBER: I think the thing that I feel best about is having people feel good about who we are, what we do, taking pride in working for Major League Soccer, not apologizing for being in the soccer business and feeling like we’ve got ourselves on the right track.

We have a better understanding of what we’re supposed to be doing, we’re doing things smarter and doing them with a greater level of intensity. From that comes increased morale.

I think that exists throughout our league, and I heard that this weekend. There’s more enthusiasm from our ownership, which leads them to increase their investment in the sport and their long-range commitment to it. And you can’t buy that. You have to earn that by trying to be smart and serious.

SA: Has the job been what you expected?

DG: It’s been more of everything. It’s certainly been more fun. I didn’t realize there were so many people connected to this sport at so many levels. I get stopped on planes, walking in our team’s cities – there’s just more of an awareness of MLS than I expected.

It’s certainly more work than I thought needed to be done, it will be harder than I expected, but without any question, there’s more opportunity. There is a huge, huge market for us that we have not tapped.

With that, while everybody has always had this big dream of soccer making it in this country, I can see it now. We now feel that it’s right in front of us. We’ve spoken to those people, we know how many there are and we know how little we’ve impacted that group so far. The opportunity is great.


‘Expansion is a real priority’

SA: I understand you’ve been working on a strategic marketing plan for the league. That’s still in progress, but can you tell us a little bit about it?

DG: Really, what we’re trying to do is come up with a five-year business plan for the league. This league never had a long-range plan. … We’ve been working on it since I started. These processes can take a year, and it will likely take a year for us.

It started with an enormously extensive national survey of sports fans, of the general market, of soccer fans, of different ethnic groups. … Now we’re trying to establish what our real priorities are, what are the strategic imperatives. And we’re getting pretty close.

That will deliver for us a five-year economic model, and that will be used by our investors and our future investors. … It looks like we’ll be getting it done by the end of the season.


‘We think things through’

SA: You mentioned the league will expand by two teams – one in New York and another in Philadelphia or Atlanta – by 2002. What are your primary concerns with expansion?

DG: Expansion is a real priority for us. Our economic model is going to improve with better revenues from television. You need to have more than 12 markets in order to have increased coverage. …

Although it’s going to be a while before we have 20 to 30 teams like other leagues have, we need to grow those areas of influence.

A second team in New York is a major priority. They have 13 million people in that city. There are [huge] numbers of soccer people within that city.

Additionally, we think we’re underrepresented on the East Coast, where there’s huge concentrations of people and huge concentrations of soccer people. We are looking to do that in cooperation with the WUSA and we’ve got a lot of work to do to finalize those decisions, but we’re feeling confident we’ll get there.

SA: How long before the league can compete financially, from a player’s standpoint, with overseas leagues?

DG: I think it’s going to be quite some time. But the real question, to be specific about what drives a lot of these decisions, is that we’ve got to spend our resources where there’s a return in attendance or increased credibility or a raise in profile with the media.

We’re not just thinking about how many tickets will Joe-Max [Moore] sell if we re-sign him. We’re thinking about the value of him doing well over there, what relationship will he have with the national team, what’s the media going to think about it, what are the fans going to think about it, and who do we replace that player with.

So we really want everybody to know that this is a very complicated business. We think these things through with unbelievable detail. We make every decision with intense scrutiny so that when we make it, we’re making it because we have to or because we want to, not because we are trying to just do the easy thing.

SA: What more do you want to do to improve the television product? Not so much expanding the national footprint, but the quality.

DG: I think the quality of the product has improved this year. … Again, the quality and expertise is also a factor growing up around us. The media is growing up with our sport, like the expertise of our staff and the production personnel.

You need to have cameramen who understand the game and editors and producers who understand the game. Like our referees and everybody else, everybody’s getting better each year. It can’t happen overnight.

SA: Had you hoped to announce the sale of D.C. and Tampa Bay this weekend?

DG: We had hoped to announce it six months ago. These transactions are complicated. They’re more complicated than people understand. In essence, people are buying into an ongoing business. In this particular case, this transaction has taken longer than everyone, I think the purchaser included, had hoped. So we would have liked to announce it, we were expecting to, but we’re continuing to push for this deal to close soon.

SA: It’s not an indicator of things running afoul?

DG: No. Not yet. [Laughs]


‘We’re making progress’

SA: Any other news from this weekend’s meetings?

DG: Not specifically. … We spoke a lot about stadiums. Mr. [Philip] Anschutz presented his plans for what he hopes to achieve in L.A., which could be one of the greatest sports development projects in the world.

We’re making progress in New York, we’re making progress in Chicago, so we’re moving the meter on the stadium side. I know people are frustrated that it’s been two years since we opened a new stadium, but it’s similar to sale transactions. …

It’s not going to be the difference between success and failure. It’s going to part of what I said before. Increasing the credibility and respect of this sport is probably the most important thing we need to do. All of us need to feel good about it and feel that MLS is driving that – that we are the vehicle driving this sport.

by Soccer America associate editor Will Kuhns