By most measures, the NFL has MLS beat. The NFL is one of the most successful and profitable sports leagues in the world with huge attendances, TV audiences, and merchandise sales. MLS, in contrast, has trumpeted as success the fact that some of its teams recently reached profitability and that it signed a TV rights deal in which it would actually be paid (as opposed to having to pay) to broadcast its games.But in one way, MLS is cleaning the NFL’s clock: marketing to Hispanic fans. A recent New York Times article covers the NFL’s struggles in marketing to this segment of the population and also contains some interesting morsels about the efforts of MLS to do the same.

The article cites a survey of “600 senior-level sports industry executives” in which 44% said that MLS was doing the best job of marketing to Hispanic fans of any American sports league. It mentioned that Hispanics account for 35% of MLS fans and that all teams have Spanish-language radio broadcasts.

But the picture is not completely rosy. As Andrea Canales at Sideline Views points out, not all MLS teams have websites in Spanish, shockingly including the L.A. Galaxy. Either Team Beckham has ceded the Spanish-speaking fans to Chivas USA or the marketing department there needs a wake-up call.

For a while, it was the whole league that needed a wake-up call. MLS’s initial marketing efforts were geared almost exclusively at “soccer moms” and their families. Gimmicks like having the clock count up and the shootout turned of may serious fans, including Hispanics. As MLS has matured as a league, so too has its marketing policy. It now promotes itself to suburban soccer families as well as Hispanics.

Some teams have been more successful in marketing to Hispanics than others. The Galaxy’s failure to even put up a Spanish language website stands in contrast to DC United’s sustained efforts to reach out to the large Hispanic population in the nation’s capital. United boast one of the best fan clubs in the league, which is not coincidentally a mix of white and Hispanics. The Barra Brava takes their name from fan clubs in Latin America and sings in both English and Spanish (they also recently brought their brand of support to a Washington Capitals hockey game to mixed reviews). They have a manager of Hispanic relations, whom I have often seen quoted in Spanish-language media in the area.

One interesting aspect of appealing to Hispanic fans is the language in which it is done. As the Hispanic population in this country grows, so too does the diversity within it. In the year 2007, it cannot be assumed that Hispanic means primarily Spanish-speaking. As the American-born population increases, the number of Hispanics speaking English at home has risen as well. (This linguistic shift has not occurred without controversy: see the furor raised by the magazine Tu Ciudad, which is geared toward a Hispanic audience but published since its 2005 founding in English).

The growth in Spanish-speaking Hispanics has been linked with a shift in sporting taste. The same New York Times article quotes a study showing that the NFL is the most popular of all sports leagues among Hispanics who speak primarily English at home. Is this because they speak English or simply because such fans have grown up in this country and feel more connected to American football? According to David Steinberg, general manager of Fox Sports en Español, “the key word is acculturation”

Both the NFL and MLS face a demographic imperative in figuring out how to appeal to Hispanics, both in English and Spanish. The Hispanic population truly arrived in the American psyche when, in 2003, they overtook African-Americans as the largest minority in the country. Today, Hispanics account for “one of every two people added to the population through immigration and birth.” Tomorrow’s America will be more heavily Hispanic than today’s. Whether these Hispanics will become fútbol, football, or soccer fans is the challenge for both the NFL and MLS.

It would seem on first blush that the connection between The White Stripes and Roma of Italy’s Serie A would be tenuous at best. But a piece on the public radio show The World last year showed that there is a link between the two.

No, Meg White is not having Francesco Totti’s baby (a scary thought indeed); instead, the connection is purely musical. For it seems that Roma’s fan club Roma Boys Ultras has taken the White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army” as a battle cry. The idea to use this song as their own came after being taunted with it during an away game in Belgium. The Roma Boys Ultras thought, like many before them, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And that’s how it is that the bass line in a song written by a band from Detroit came to be heard in the Stadio Olimpico.

Click here for the full story.

MLS announced at the end last year that in the 2007 we would see advertisements on the fronts of team uniforms. This is common practice among most European teams, though surprisingly has never been tried in uber-capitalist America. While only Real Salt Lake has announced a deal on shirt advertising (the “mangosteen” beverage company Xango), speculation has been rife about which teams would follow.

One of the most interesting, or at least funniest, pieces of such speculation is that Chivas USA would soon be sponsored by Bimbo, the Mexican bread consortium. Some on Big Soccer even went so far as to post what such a jersey would look like:

I can’t decide whether I think the idea of putting Bimbo on the Chivas uniforms is a potentially genius move or as ridiculous as it seems on first impression. I mean, the name of the company is Bimbo, for God’s sake. Does the company really think it can break into the American market with that name? It made me think of what I had always heard about the failed attempts by Chevrolet to take its car, the Nova, to Mexico (“no va” means “it doesn’t go in Spanish). So, in doing a bit of research, it quickly became apparent that this story is, in fact, an urban legend. According to the urban legend busting website Snopes, it just ain’t true. The car was sold in Mexico successfully for several years (perhaps until people there realized it was a crappy car, regardless of its name).

So, given this, can Bimbo succeed as the name of a bread company in the US of A? Perhaps. Not only because, if the brand is successful enough to establish itself in the mainstream, people will come to associate the word Bimbo more with the bread than with, say, Kelly Bundy, to use an example provided on Wikipedia. But one major factor playing in Bimbo’s favor is that there is such a large Hispanic population already in this country. Mexicans in this country know Bimbo as bread. Putting it on Chivas USA jerseys is not a risky move because most fans of the team are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. The Bimbo company may be aiming more for these customers than gringos.

In fact, it turns out Bimbo already has some footing in this country. Just yesterday, I saw a Bimbo truck doing deliveries to stores in my almost exclusively Hispanic neighborhood. There’s a new bread company in town, and its placement on Chivas USA jerseys may just redefine what you think of when you hear the word Bimbo.

Then again, if Chivas USA decides to incorporate the Bimbo sponsorship deal into the uniforms for its Chivas Girls (across the chest, perhaps?), all attempts to redefine the word may be for naught.

P.S. According to the same Wikipedia article on bimbos mentioned above (I love the fact that Wikipedia even has an article on the word bimbo), bimbo is a “derogatory term for a person with african [sic] roots.” So perhaps not the ideal sponsor for Bayern Munich, then.

P.P.S. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term bimbo originally came from the Italian “bambino” or baby and only took on the connotation of “loose woman.” So any potential transformation of the word bimbo by placing it on soccer uniforms would be its second such change.

Many clubs in the world have extremely strong ethnic identities. Everyone knows that Celtic represent the Catholic half of Scotland (and most of Ireland for that matter) while Rangers are supported by the Protestants. But some clubs take their club’s identity to another level and only have players of a certain nationality or ethnicity. Here are several examples:

1. 1. Athletic Bilbao represents that city in Spain. They also see themselves as representing the entire Basque region and as such only use Basque players (there have been some exceptions, click here for more information).
   2. Chivas of Guadalajara prides itself on using only Mexican players. Throughout its over 100 year history, Chivas have never fielded a non-Mexican (this is contrast to their biggest rivals, Club America, who make a habit of bringing in expensive foreigners). Ironically, Chivas was founded by a Belgian, Edgar Everaert, although their current owner, is Mexican vitamin magnate Jorge Vergara.
   3. Vergara is also responsible for another club exclusively fielding players of one nationality. In 2003, the Mexican purchased the Costa Rican team Deportivo Saprissa and implemented the same policy which had given Chivas such popularity in his home country. Since Vergara took over, Saprissa have fielded only Costa Ricans.
   4. Jorge Vergara also attempted to implement a similar policy when he founded Chivas USA of MLS in 2004. Vergara initially said he would field a team of all Latinos. This policy was quickly scrapped as Vergara realized that it would lead to a rather unsuccessful team.

I’m sure there are other teams with such a strong ethnic identity and which field teams of players exclusively of one ethnicity or nationality, but they escape me right now. In the cases of all the teams above, it is interesting to note that their decision to field only a certain type of player is based on both sporting and business concerns. While they see it as a point of pride that players of a certain stripe succeed, the clubs also gain support from those who agree with their exclusivist policies. Chivas especially has obtained its status as the most popular team in Mexico in part because of its policy of fielding only Mexican players. Ethnic identity is not just a matter of pride, it can also be a money-maker.

Everyone, their mother, and me have had their say about Beckham coming to America. But leave it to Stephen Colbert to come at it from a completely new angle.

Says faux-rightwing nut job pundit, “Even though he’s an immigrant, I’m fine with him coming over here. He’s just doing a job Americans don’t want to do: play professional soccer. But the problem is, he’s getting paid $250 million to do it. Immigrants are supposed to work for less, not five times the rest of the team’s salaries combined. I would hate to see what he charges to put up drywall.”

Watch the video yourself here. And keep watching the video to see Stephen’s hilarious plan to get back at fans of the minor league Oshawa Generals. A little background: fans of the Saginaw Spirit recently voted to name their mascot after Colbert, calling it “Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle.” Oshawa fans familiar with Colbert’s fear of bears, threw teddy bears onto the ice to taunt the comedian. In response, Colbert is urging Saginaw fans to throw copies of GM’s 2005 financial report onto the ice to taunt the Oshawa team, which is based in that relies heavily on its local GM plant. Too funny.

One of the more unique traditions in soccer is the captain’s armband. The only other sport I’m aware of in which the captain of a team is visually denoted is hockey (a ‘C’ on the shirt).

Soccer captain armbands are, for the most part, utilitarian. The Premier League prefers a thin armband with a lion, taken from the unofficial three lions symbol of England.

In Continental Europe, however, captains tend to use a thicker armband, often with just a large C on it.

Captain’s armbands have been used to promote messages, as FIFA did at the 2006 World Cup. There, the armbands worn by all captains promoted FIFA’s Fair Play message (I never noticed that he had taped over the fair play message on his armband; should this have been seen as a hint of what was to come?).

But my favorite two captain’s armbands represent the areas in which they are used. Ajax and Barcelona both use armbands that are distinctive in world football.

Ajax uses an armband that has two red stripes surrounding a black stripe on which 3 white Xs are superimposed. Ajax is based in Amsterdam, which might some people (including me, I’ll admit it) some interesting initial thoughts about the meaning of the design. The actual significance of the design comes from far before Amsterdam gained a reputation as a city of sin. The Amsterdam city council informs of of the true meaning of the crest:

Three crosses form the core of Amsterdam’s city crest. These are St. Andrew’s crosses, named after the apostle St. Andrew who is said to have been martyred on such a cross. The shield on which the crosses stand consists of three vertical stripes in the colours red – black – red. The crosses are in the black stripe.

In any case, Ajax captains are quite distinct wearing this armband, as modeled here by Jaap Stam.

I’d also like to get in a plug for the folks at AjaxUSA, with whom I traveled to Amsterdam in 2005. While in Holland, I purchased several Ajax armbands and gave on to our youngest group member, Sean, on his birthday (6, if I recall correctly). He wore it around everywhere for the rest of the trip.

Like Ajax, Barcelona is a club intimately tied to its homeland. The club prides itself as being “more than a club” and has been a symbol of Catalonian identity since its inception (I recommend Barca: A People’s Passion by Jimmy Burns for those interested in further reading on Barcelona). This status is reinforced by the armband worn by the Barcelona captain, which is, in fact, the flag of Catalonia. Modeled here by Carlos Puyol (if that can be said of someone as ugly as the Barca centerback).

I have noticed recently that other teams in Spain (Zaragoza and Valencia are two I saw this past weekend) also have captain’s armbands based on the regions they come from.

I would love to see more teams follow this lead. Here’s to a global movement to encourage teams to develop unique captain’s armbands that represent something unique about themselves. Who’s with me?