Homeless World Cup

Melbourne hosted this year's Homeless World Cup, and I was lucky enough to be visiting during the event. The event unites homeless people to represent their country in an international soccer tournament. The Homeless World Cup seeks to end homelessness for the one billion people worldwide who are without this basic human need.

photo by Andrew Kelly/Photoworx

Federation Square, located in the center of Melbourne, hosted 4v4 street soccer matches between 56 countries. The quality of play was great and the international competition made for some extremely intense matches. I witnessed a Portuguese player nearly score on a bicycle kick, impressive footwork from Zimbabwe and England, and penalty shootouts won by the Greeks and Americans. Melbourne is home to a broad range of ethnic groups, so there was singing and flag waving for many different teams. I've never been to the real World Cup (yet), but I'd like to think this was an authentic, small scale version of the original.

photo by Richard Sharman/Photoworx

My Take
I enjoyed this event as both a soccer fan and from a lifestyle marketing perspective. The event planners understood that their audience would attract hardcore soccer fans, so they focused on producing authentic soccer matches. The matches were free to the public, with t-shirts, food, and The Big Issue magazine for sale as fundraising components.

Details are crucial, and they got these (mostly) right.
First, Melbourne's international culture provided the perfect audience, because many of the teams had supporters present. Located in the center of the city, the event was easy to access for everyone: hardcore soccer fans, workers on their lunch break, and tourists wandering through. I especially loved that many of the teams were wearing the same uniforms as their professional counterparts. And because the matches were free, I came back a second day to watch more and buy a t-shirt.

It was a good choice not to interfere with the matches by adding information on homelessness. I anticipated an announcer feeding us "did you know?" facts on the epidemic during half time and warm ups, but surprisingly there were none distracting me from the high level of soccer I was watching. My support for soccer was easily translating into support for the homeless, but I wasn't given any tools or information as to how I could help. I wanted to see a poster or flyer that gave me some quick facts and the best ways to help out. The event left me wanting to know more, but maybe that was the goal. The Homeless World Cup has great information online on how to get involved, and I'm even writing about it to spread the word.

But what about the sponsors?
Nike, UEFA, Vodafone, and many more contributed as sponsors to the event. Fittingly, their names and logos were displayed on the pitch walls and posters, but not much more was done to leverage them as already established, well-known brands. It was important to make sure these sponsors didn't overshadow more important aspects, and the Homeless World Cup probably made the right choice by not going to far with promotions. This helps both the sponsors and the event itself from seeming like sell-outs.

Overall, I personally enjoyed the Homeless World Cup very much. Even though they put on a great show of soccer and sportsmanship, I also hope they achieved their goals in promoting awareness and solving this important problem.

Soccer versus Football

What do you do when you have a major sports brand that caters to two important sports? When you type in nikefootball.com or adidasfootball.com, what do you expect to see? Soccer is a globally relevant sport, but football is America's current national pastime. Because they share the same name, some even consider the two sports rivals.

It may seem simple once you've seen these solutions, but both Nike and Adidas get it right. By letting their visitors choose their sport, they avoid a dangerous situation in which they assume which one visitors are seeking. These are the types of details that lifestyle brands must get right to be successful.

Three Ways ESPN Can Double its MLS success

As we see over and over, sports marketing boasts some of the best lifestyle marketing approaches. However, when ESPN signed on to cover Major League Soccer in the U.S., they took a pretty traditional approach to marketing a new league. As a result, their ratings were flat, on par with the WNBA. ESPN and MLS have a huge opportunity to improve their ratings if they remember some key lifestyle marketing rules:

1. Focus on the core.
When ESPN introduced MLS, they chose the slogan, "You’re a soccer fan; you just don’t know it yet." This slogan forced soccer on the mainstream and is a great example of how ESPN tried to attract new soccer fans without first gaining the respect of the old ones. They used the NFL's Skycam and also zoomed in on players faces like an NBA game. This didn't work well for the core audience, who missed key plays during the match because of the superfluous camera work. MLS is now using the slogan, "Football. Futbol. Soccer," which is a great move in the right direction to acknowledge the global nature of the sport and support hardcore fans both inside and outside of the U.S.

2. Educate us all about soccer.
I believe that every sport is inherently boring if you aren't properly educated on how to watch it. Any hockey fanatic will tell you to watch the players not the puck, and MMA fans know the difference between a great guard and time wasting. The NFL has a done a great job teaching people how to watch the game by drawing out the receiving routes and blocking schemes. The MLS shouldn't be a carbon copy (see my first point), but it has many opportunities to teach both hardcore and mainstream fans how to better watch the game.

3. Know the important details and them right.
I was excited when Sportscenter included a free kick by Manchester United's Paul Scholes as one of it's top ten plays of the week. But I cringed when the announcer mispronounced his name (it's Skoals, not Scholls). This is the type of detail that ESPN has to get right if it's serious about building up the MLS.

Since last year, the MLS and ESPN have smoothed out their relationship with hardcore fans, but things can still be better. I urge them to stay focused on the specific needs of soccer and it's fans to make the league as successful as it can be.