MLS, Black Friday, and the Fourth of July

MLS has no Holiday that we associate it with, so I've come up with a solution
In the last several years, the idea of attempting to symbolically tie MLS to a certain holiday as part of an effort to stamp the league into the national consciousness has been floated more than once.  At the time I loved the idea of MLS getting in on the effort to capture a holiday as a time in which the league takes center stage, but did not give much further thought to the what holidays would make the most sense.  The unusual timing of the MLS calendar makes the summer a seemingly ideal time to try to capture the most amount of unattached fans, but the weather makes it difficult to imagine snaring as large of a TV audience as would be hoped.  But the fall is completely dominated by all of the most popular sports in America (NFL, NBA, College Basketball and Football), and seems to be a minefield of popular sporting events.

The fact is that MLS is too late to the party to simply take over a holiday.  If there was an obvious holiday in which networks could expect an  unusually large audience, it would already be jam packed with big ticket events.  So instead of focusing the league's efforts on a losing proposition such as trying to wrestle Thanksgiving away from the NFL, or trying to turn the Fourth of July into an entire day of family TV watching, we should be thinking about making smaller attacks on multiple fronts.

I believe that in the coming seasons, MLS should focus a large marketing campaign on the duel benchmarks of the Fourth of July and Black Friday.  Despite the dynamics of the Fourth not playing into the idea of a captive TV audience (because of weather, outdoor activities, fireworks, etc.), it still remains as the largest American holiday that is not completely dominated by another major sport.  Baseball has of course long had a history of playing games on the Fourth, but there is not a massive media blitz and buildup before the occasion.  The NFL advertises their Thanksgiving day games for months before the actual day arrives, and the NBA follows a similar strategy with their much hyped Christmas day games.


The league should begin by adjusting it's schedule so that the All-Star game falls on the Fourth of July.  I firmly believe that MLS has the most entertaining and interesting All-Star game in all of sports, and tying it to a large national event could help bolster its visibility.  League games might not yet have the ability to pull the casual fan away from Fourth of July festivities, but international friendlies between European Superpowers have begun selling out all over the country.  It's much  easier to imagine casual soccer fans being drawn in by a game that features a side such as Bayern Munich or Real Madrid than one between Houston and Columbus.  In the future, it might be possible to shift the Fourth of July schedule over to one that is basically a heavy run of league games, but in order to shoehorn into the Fourth of July tradition there needs to be a game changing draw.


Black Friday should play host to the MLS Cup.  Jonah Freedman wrote a very interesting article today on MLSsoccer.com about the possibility, and I couldn't agree more with the marketing strategy.  He basically asserts that in order to become a part of our country's sporting tradition, MLS needs to find a way to bully into the most important weekend of the year.  College football currently sits atop the Black Friday throne, but often at this time of year the games mean little beyond their regional rivalries.  It is no small obstacle to overcome, but one of the many that MLS will need to face in the next decade if they are truly going to become a top league in the world.

A league that is less than 20 years old has no deep seeded tradition simply by definition, but there is precedent through which the process can be accelerated.  Planting their feet firmly on the Fourth of July and Black Friday for the two biggest events of the MLS season would go a long way toward solidifying the league on the national stage.  And who knows, in fifty years we could have traditions that feel as time honored as watching the NFL on Thanksgiving.