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Inevitably, the viral, communicative power of the Web and video gaming is also part of the change. EA Sports is seeing startling changes in its FIFA 10 soccer game. On any day, about 750,000 Americans compete online — second only to the British — and their choice of teams and players reflects what's happening in soccer. "That's where I learned about all the players in the world," says Donovan. Games like FIFA 10 and Konami's Pro Evolution are transmitting the soccer culture at a new level. When Arsenal plays Chelsea or Barcelona plays Real Madrid, the game is repeated online by hundreds of thousands of gamers in the U.S. "We don't see it as ethnic," says Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. "We see FIFA 10 as a game that creeps into every neighborhood in America. The world champion FIFA 10 gamer, by the way, is an American.
Moore's reference to ethnicity hints at a deeper issue. The browning of America is changing soccer's complexion too. The Hispanic-American population — young, growing and passionate about soccer — doesn't have to be converted from other sports. One of the soccer teams that is most popular in the U.S. is Mexico's. The future might look something like Herculez Gomez. He's the leading scorer in the Mexican league — and a forward on the U.S. national team. Gomez, 28, was born in Los Angeles to Mexican-American parents and could have played for either country.
The Mexican team isn't the only foreign outfit that draws big in the U.S. Last year, in what it called the Summer of Soccer, MLS's marketing arm promoted international matches involving teams such as Mexico, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Two million fans showed up in a 51-day period. "It's almost inconceivable that another American sport can consistently sell out American football stadiums for exhibition games year in and year out. More people are attending soccer in the U.S. than in most countries around the world if you put all those games together," says Garber.
The ability to see soccer's best players on television and on tour is another factor in its popularity in the U.S. Paradoxically, that can be a challenge for MLS, which has to compete with not just other U.S. sports leagues but also European soccer. "This is the only sport on a global basis where the best players do not play here," says Tim Leiweke, CEO of the Anschutz Entertainment Group Inc., which owns the Los Angeles Galaxy. "Sometimes in the U.S., we struggle when we are not the center of the universe." So MLS is about to spend big on the global stars its fans already know. This summer, French star Thierry Henry will sign for New York's Red Bulls. He joins L.A.'s Beckham and Seattle's Freddie Ljungberg as marquee players.
People such as Skipper and Roth represent the kind of soccer aficionados who are in a position to move the sport along. Roth played in the ethnic cauldron of New York City and in college and then coached his kids after he moved to California. In the Seattle Sounders, he saw the game's future. And profits. "You see the same kind of demographic you see in Europe, as opposed to soccer moms taking their kids out for babysitting," he says. "That's not a model that works, because it's not real."
Skipper is from North Carolina and, like many Americans, was introduced to the game through his kids' teams. Then, on an assignment in London for ESPN, he watched a match and returned a fan. When he got the top programming gig, soccer moved up on the priority list. "I got this job in October 2005. When I was writing up my plan for the job, I wrote that I thought that soccer was going to happen, and if we were going to be involved in making it happen, we needed to have the World Cup."
Even in the White House, the game has changed. The second George Bush was a former baseball team co-owner. The current President is a hoophead, but his press secretary played soccer in high school and college. It's one reason the U.S. team merited a White House visit before it took off for South Africa and why there is hope that Obama may show up at the U.S. vs. England game.
Roth says he waited decades for the opportunity to invest in soccer, until he saw all the elements coming together. Soccer participation is huge in the Northwest, and players there have in turn become sophisticated fans who will not settle for a second-rate experience. "We are going to have the two most important events in the history of the game in the U.S.," says Roth. "We are going to break all records for the audience watching the World Cup. And you are going to see some of the greatest players in the world join Beckham."
That's not going to set off a soccer revolution. No one in Philly is going to trade Eagles tickets for tickets to the new MLS franchise, the Philadelphia Union. But the Union will play in a new soccer-friendly stadium with 12,000 season-ticket holders. U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, who has witnessed enough false dawns in this sport to gain perspective on it, still sees the game's evolution as a 50-year process that began in 1984 with its success at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The goal is to win the World Cup, which isn't likely to happen this year. By that measure, soccer is halfway from its potential.
But even Gulati feels the fever rising, especially in e-mails he gets when the U.S. team loses a game. "We have 310 million people in this country, and we're not used to being second best," he says. And in this game we call soccer, we no longer are.