Real Madrid is one of eight teams participating in the Guinness International Champions Cup. (Photo by Real Madrid)
For millions of fans around the globe, soccer is the go-to sporting event. RSE Ventures’ soccer division, Relevent Sports, is hoping that passion will translate to the United States for their first International Champions Cup 2013.
The elimination-style tournament is an anomaly in soccer, where competitions are classically played in a round-robin style, where each team meets all other competitors on scheduled dates. The International Champions Cup (ICC) pits eight teams from across the globe — including the Premier League’s Chelsea F.C., Spanish League’s Real Madrid, and Major League Soccer’s LA Galaxy — against each other in a 12-day competition that meets its apex at Sun Life Stadium in Miami.
Relevent Sports CEO Charlie Stillitano said that the format of this tournament was very important to Steve Ross, owner of Sun Life Stadium, the Miami Dolphins, and co-founder of RSE Ventures with Matt Higgins.
According to Stillitano, Ross set out with the idea of an international soccer tournament with Miami as the focal point.
“Steve Ross and Matt Higgins have a big stadium renovation planned for Sun Life Stadium and believe in Miami as a great soccer market,” he said.
Ross was set on having ICC structured a certain way, not sticking with the traditional round robin system. “We set up a couple of different groups and [Ross] said, ‘that’s not a tournament, a tournament is elimination like the NCAAs,’” recalled Stillitano.
Having an elimination tournament presented some challenges for the ICC from a marketing perspective because, until the games begin, it’s unclear which teams will be playing each other at each specific date.
“It’s very difficult to have a tournament that isn’t round robin in soccer because it’s not yet an established property,” said Stillitano. “It’s very different when you have the NCAA Final Four or the US Open in tennis where people will buy tickets for any given day and see some great players.”
“I think we’re trying to sell it by really just speaking honestly about it,” he added. “We have 35 of the top 100 players in the world. It’s remarkable the amount of talent you’re seeing.”
Two venues, Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles and MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, will host doubleheaders, bringing four teams to the city. The finals at Sun Life Stadium, Aug. 6-7, will bring all eight teams to the field.
“It’s very different with single games. If you’re looking at one-offs, you can have a little advertising and if you have good ticket sales, you’ll end up doing well,” said Stillitano. Because the costs are higher in a tournament, ticket sales alone won’t always make an event a financial success. “In a tournament you’re looking at three areas you have to get right: tickets, sponsorship and TV.”
Tickets for the double-header at Dodgers Stadium, Aug. 3, start at $25, with pricing up to $550 for baseline club sideline seats. Stillitano said that even with four teams playing in one day, it’s important to keep tickets affordable for families.
“We can’t double the price — it’s not right for the fans,” he said. “A lot of the financial burden falls on us and on Steve Ross. We try to make it up with sponsorship and television deals, but it’s quite a challenge.”
Guinness has been secured as a title sponsor, and Insignia Sports & Entertainment’s Matt Grandis said that more sponsors will be announced this week.
“A tournament like this has never been done in the U.S., so it generates more buzz for sponsorship as well,” said Grandis. “We’re building a new property and investing a lot into it, but we’re excited about the opportunity to work on this as a property and build a great sponsor roster.”
(Photo by Relevent Sports)
The sponsorship platform is international, with sponsors being brought on for the entire event, not just one game. Insignia Sports & Entertainment, part of RSE Ventures, also handled the television deal with Fox. The tournament will be broadcast in the U.S. on Fox Soccer, with other deals extending the reach to 150 countries. Also, the Real Madrid game at Dodger Stadium will be shown on the main Fox station.
When it comes to choosing the venues for the tournament, Stillitano said it was a combination of picking a good market and securing iconic venues. He said that baseball stadiums work particularly well for summer soccer because their teams are in season and can promote.
“In the summer, if we’re dealing with NFL stadia it’s tough because they’re not in season, but if we’re dealing with baseball and they have a home game, they can promote a game coming up a few days later,” said Stillitano.
Brad Hansen, senior event coordinator at San Francisco Giants/AT&T Park, said the stadium has had a few Relevent Sports staff on the promenade for promotions during recent baseball games. As of July 23, about 10,000 tickets had been sold for the Juventus versus Everton match.
There have been a couple of challenges from an operations perspective. First, the broadcast areas need to be moved due to the location of the field. For baseball, the press box and broadcast area is behind home plate, which would put the media at the very corner of the soccer pitch. For ICC, AT&T Park is moving the broadcast booths to its luxury suites, which means the venue loses out on potential single-game suite sales.
“It’s a challenge because we usually sell those suites to customers and, if we have the ability, we typically try to keep the suites next to the broadcast areas empty, too,” which means sacrificing more sales, said Hansen.
Also, with a baseball game on July 28, and both soccer teams practicing at the stadium July 30, there isn’t much time to convert the field. Dodger Stadium is also undergoing a field conversion to host its first-ever soccer match.
“There were some logistics figuring out how to hold a soccer match, but when we got into the details we realized that we could do this, and we think it’s going to be the first of many,” said Dodgers President Stan Kasten during a press conference. “This field, which has held so many kinds of events over the years, is going to be world class for the soccer competition, and we’ll be able to restore it to world class for the next time Ryu (Hyun-jin, Dodgers pitcher) takes the mound.”
Relevent Sports is responsible for conversion costs, which Stillitano said is more than a $100,000 investment at each venue.
He said that converting the field in baseball stadia is easier and less expensive than football stadia in a way because they are smaller and already have natural grass in the outfield; however, it’s also somewhat more stressful.
“It’s much trickier with baseball because you’re talking about taking the mound down and building it up again, which is sacred in most places,” he said.
It is worth the hassle and expense of conversion since international soccer teams won’t play on turf.
“There is still very much a mental block against turf,” Stillitano added. “In the rare times when teams have been willing to play on turf — no matter how good the surface is — they’ll invariably rest players, and you don’t want that.”
“You want both teams going full strength for a great game,” he said. “That’s why we make the commitment to put grass in.”
Relevent Sports plans to make the International Champions Cup a yearly tournament, although it hasn’t been decided whether the format will be changed to a round-robin style in the future.
“I think it will always be sort of a knock-out final,” said Stillitano. “U.S. fans are sophisticated enough to know that, if you bring enough talent to the table, any two of these eight teams playing each other will be a great final.”
“If I take off my promoter hat and stop stressing about whether people are going to come or not, I get excited and think, ‘Yes, I would 100 percent pay to go as a fan,’” he added.
Interviewed for this story: Brad Hansen, (415) 972-1800; Stan Kasten, (323) 224-1301; Charlie Stillitano, (212) 500-0795