U.S. Soccer on the Eve of the 2006 World Cup

MS. NISBET: I’d like to welcome Sunil Gulati. He is currently the Professor of Economics at Columbia as well as taking on the role as President of the U.S. Soccer Federation. He’s here today to discuss some of the coming events of the World Cup. Just in the coming week, the U.S. Soccer team will be playing Morocco, Venezuela and Latvia. These are exhibition games and will then they go on to Germany. I’ll pass the mike over to Mr. Gulati who can talk about the upcoming events. There will be Q&A afterwards. Please state your name and affiliation before asking your question. Thank you.

MR. GULATI: Thank you. We do have, as just mentioned those three friendly games this week, although I suspect it's three other games that we have in early June that we might be talking a little bit more about while we're in Germany.

I was elected a couple of months ago in our annual meeting in Las Vegas for a four-year term, and we've announced a number of things that we want to try to do in U.S. soccer over the coming years. I don't need to tell any of you about the international part of the game, but it's the domestic part of the game that we're going to focus most of our efforts on as well as some international initiatives. And obviously over the next 45 days or so, the focus of the world of our Federation and everyone in it, and hopefully the American sports public is on the World Cup, where the U.S. team will play in Kaiserslautern in Nuremberg and Gelsenkirchen.

I think I'm going to stop there and really just take questions. We've announced a number of things, some of you read about them and I think we'll cover most of the ground that I want to talk about, or that you want to talk about, in questions. So with that, let me go ahead and take any questions from anywhere.

QUESTION: Good morning, professor. My name is Maho Kowachi from Nikkei news, which is a Japanese economic news, as you may know. Because I'm a business reporter, I would like to ask you from this aspect. I have two questions actually.

First question is, what do you see the economic impact on U.S. thanks to World Cup, in which -- in that case, in which industry is appreciating this event?

My second question is, traditionally audience-wise, the soccer is very popular among Europeans and Latino countries. This time excitement is spilling to so-called mainstream audiences which love traditional baseball or football or basketball.

MR. GULATI: The first question, you know, in economics class when we talk about economic impact, we're talking about very big numbers. In an economy like the U.S. the economic impact of the World Cup, when it's played outside the U.S., is pretty minimal as a share of U.S. GDP or anything like that. So obviously the sectors that are involved with the travel sector, the apparel industries, the Nikes and Adidases of the world -- we will probably have more fans at this World Cup than we've had in the combined history of the World Cup, excluding of course, the World Cup that we hosted in the United States in 1994. My guess is we'll have 10,000 or more people cheering for the U.S. at every game that are coming from the United States. And we get that number by ticket buyers online and through our Federation. But in terms of the U.S. economy it's not a noticeable impact at all.

Regarding the second question, I think the interest in the United States for this particular event will be greater than it has been, again, for any World Cup except the one that was here, and that's probably for two or three different reasons: One, the success of the U.S. team at the last World Cup, so expectations are higher than they've ever been. It's very hard to deal with those expectations because we have former World champion teams that haven't made it out of the first round. But there's a feeling the U.S. can now certainly compete, which perhaps wasn't the case when the last tournament started.

Second, the demographics of American society have continued to change and the demographics of American soccer have changed over the last 10, 20, 25 years, and those continue to change in our favor, whether it's the Hispanic community, whether it's more kids playing and so on.

And third, the popularity of the game has been changed by Major League Soccer, a professional league in the United States which has risen the bar and risen awareness of the game. In various barometers, whether it's number of fans, whether it's the number of accredited journalists, whether it's the rights fees payment by American television, whether it's the number of games that will be on TV live in two languages, and in some cases more than two languages, is pretty extraordinary compared to any country in the world on that latter score. Obviously, you know, we're not going to have a 75 share on any particular U.S. team game, like might be the case in Holland or Mexico or another country. But I think it's all changing in our favor.

MS. NISBET: Mr. Gulati, if I could interrupt. We have a correspondent from the Washington Foreign Press Center. If you could look either -- it's probably easier to look straight ahead at this monitor. Go ahead Washington.

QUESTION: My name is Giampiero Gramaglia. I'm the correspondent from the Italian news agency ANSA. What do you know, Mr. President, and what is your appreciation of the (inaudible) going on in the Italian culture? And do you think that it will impact the chances of the Italian team in Germany?

MR. GULATI: Well, I only know what I read in the newspapers about it. We've obviously been following it, not only because Italy is an opponent for us in the World Cup, because it impacts soccer generally so we have certainly watched the story unfold. We know some of the people involved because we've dealt with them in the past. Obviously, the Federation president and vice president resigning was big news for us. I'm not in a position to predict how it might affect the performance of the Italian team. We've read accounts that the coach is now potentially under pressure to resign. But I think it's generally a good policy.

Two good policies in this case that we've got in the United States: One is that until there's evidence and until there's actual charges that it doesn't really make sense for us to comment on what might or might not be the case. And secondly, it's really not directly our problem. We have 23 players and a coaching staff that are very focused on playing three games, and hopefully at least one or two more after that. And one of those games against Italy; they're a great time. I am sure they will be a great team regardless of anything that happens between now and the 17th of June. And if they're distracted that would be unfortunate. I guess we would be the beneficiaries of that, but I think we've got a pretty good team in any case, so we look forward to playing them on the 17th.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Ollie Herralla (ph) and I come from Finland, Helsinki-based (inaudible) at the business daily. I'm asking about the average pay in the MLS. I'm wondering that how can you keep your best players if your pay's still much lower than the European countries?

MR. GULATI: Well, let's be clear; it's much lower than in some European countries. We've got essentially four leagues in the world that attract many of the top players in the world, obviously the Premier League, the Germany League, the Italian League and the Spanish League. Those four countries are magnets for players from all over the world, including more recently, for each other's players, so you've got arsenal (ph) with a number of players from abroad, Chelsea, obviously the same and so on. So, yes, the average pay in Major League Soccer is less than it is, certainly in those leagues, certainly that it is in the Mexican League or a few others.

But one only has to look at the roster of players that's going to the World Cup and the question is answered: There are 23 players on a World Cup roster; 12 are European based; 11 are domestically based. But I think it's 19 of the 23 have played in Major League Soccer or are currently playing in Major League Soccer, out of 23. That's a pretty good track record. That will change over time and my economics training tells me there's only way that players or workers in general will stay at a particular job if it's economically in their interest to do so. So we think over time as Major League Soccer continues to grow, compensation levels for players will increase and more of them will want to stay.

But it's completely natural for players to want to go abroad. It's completely natural for a German player, let's pick one at random. I don't know, the German national team captain for example, who two days ago announced he's leaving Germany's most storied team and going to an English club. Part of that is financial, part of that is a new challenge, part of that is a team that he would like to play for.

So you have players from all over the world: Spanish national team players that play in England; English national team captain who plays in Spain, and that's just part of the globalization of international football like it is of most other industries.

QUESTION: Olli Herrala, Kauppalehti, Finland. How much are the players making?

MR. GULATI: Roughly about 110,000, a $120,000 per annum, with the ability to visit some great beaches in California.

QUESTION: Hi. I'm Debbie Kraus with ADR German Television and we've been bombarded with requests on what preparations are underway in the States in advance of the World Cup. You mention that there were fans who were going over there. Are they going over as part of a complete package? They get the tickets to the event along with travel packages or do they just buy the tickets and do it on their own? And also I wanted to know if there were any send-off events, other than these friendly matches.

MR. GULATI: The answer to the first question is actually under FIFA's rules, you're not supposed to package tickets with other elements. And the notion is to allow a fan to make their own arrangements, or to buy all of the elements, outside of tickets, in a package and buy their tickets through the organizing committee, through the local Federation, and it's simply to stop, frankly, the tickets, which is a critical element in such a package from driving a price through the roof on other components.

So for example, we have roughly between 3,000 and 4,000 fans per game who've bought tickets from the Federation as part of our allocation. They'll buy their tickets from us and then they buy the other components, either they go and stay with families or there are tour operators that are setting up all the other components: air, ground transport, transfers, hotels and so on, and whatever components they may want to add. But fans have the choice. We have other fans who've bought directly on the internet through FIFA, some through lotteries and they're making their own arrangements. We have a tour company that works with us, but it's not a complete all-inclusive package, which is strictly prohibited by FIFA's rules on the World Cup.

In terms of the sendoff, our team has been in Cary, North Carolina, for the last 12 days, only had all of the 23 of its players for a couple of days, but we were down there. I went down there on Tuesday and everybody's healthy. As has been previously pointed out, may or may not be wealthy, but they're healthy and wise. And a number of them are pretty wealthy, I guess, as well. We'll play three games this week. They moved to Nashville this morning for our game tomorrow against Morocco. We play Venezuela in Cleveland on Friday and then close with Latvia in Hartford.

The sendoff is primarily those three games. They'll be a couple of small events for the teams, but there's not sort of a big sendoff from New York or Washington, anything like that. The emphasis is really on playing those three matches. And after that last game the players will go home, those that live in the United States, for a few days to see families and so on. And then the team will leave on the first of June for Hamburg, which is where we'll be based during the World Cup.

MS. NISBET: It looks as if we have a question from Washington. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Mr. President, my name is Hector Cerpa from the Voice of America in Washington, the Spanish branch. You're talking about the (inaudible) of the last World Cup, the team of the last World Cup. What do you think about this World Cup, the U.S. team in this World Cup and the group from the U.S. team?

MR. GULATI: It's so much easier Hector to talk about the last World Cup. (Laughter.) I was hoping I was going to be able to skate through on that. We're obviously the tough group; that's pretty clear. We've drawn the Czech Republic in the opening game, Italy in the second game, and a tough opponent, Ghana, in the third game. So it's, you know, when we look at the last World Cup and not our performance, but let's say Argentina and France, both World Cup champions that failed to advance past the first round, it gives you an idea of how difficult this event really is. We're already ahead of 170 countries is one way of looking at this and it's the 32, so that's a good start.

Our expectation is, I think very similar to 31 other countries -- 30 other countries. I think our coach has this right: Brazil goes to the World Cup expecting to win, needing to win, having a national identity that is centered on winning and usually winning. Thirty-one other countries go hoping, praying, playing, scratching, kicking, clawing to get through the first round and then anything's possible. So I think that's our general expectation. If we can get a good result in the first two games, in one of those first two games at least, then have everything online for that third game against Ghana, then I think we have a reasonable chance. But it's, you know, you need a little bit of luck and you need to be injury-free and then it's in the hands of, or the feet of the players, and the hands of the referee and the whistle and all of those sorts of things and posts and we'll see. I'm optimistic but we're going to be cautiously optimistic and silently optimistic.

QUESTION: Thank you. Good luck.

MR. GULATI: Thank you.

QUESTION: Sie-Wai Cheung with Ta Kung Pao Hong Kong. I want to follow up my Finnish friend's question and get it more close and personal. The Federation is a major federation here in this country, but compared to the four professional teams like the Major Leagues and NBA, Mr. Sterren (ph.) and Mr. (inaudible) and all those people have been more like a celebrity. And what is your position, how do you consider your job growing in the next several years? I was here, in fact, in 1994 to cover the World Cup and there was nobody really talking about it, except minorities. I mean, mostly immigrants who really have a crazy feeling about this and what about the situation today?

MR. GULATI: Well, I don't need to be a celebrity anywhere but my class at Columbia and they all pay very close attention because they have to take exams at the end of it. We've got clearly, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the NBA are in a unique situation in American society. Hockey's a little bit different and soccer is growing. I think in a heartbeat we would trade our position currently for the popularity of some of those sports, especially when it comes to TV ratings and the media markets. But it's growing. I think they would in some cases trade some of our numbers of youth participation, some of the demographics we have, especially in the Hispanic community; of our international appeal. And it's changing. You will see in the United States for the World Cup around the U.S. team greater interest than has ever been the case for soccer in this country.

Some of it will last beyond the World Cup and some of the interest in the Super Bowl, you know, diminishes after the Super Bowl. I'm not comparing soccer and the NFL, which is an extraordinary property. But if we look at growth patterns, it's been extraordinary, starting from a small base. If we look at success of the teams, it's been pretty good. If we look at the size of our league -- we didn't have a league 12 years ago. And if we look at the NBA, for example, in the pre Larry Byrd-Magic Johnson era, they've come a long way in that period. We're adolescents; we're 11 years old. The Premier League has been around a long time. The NFL has been around a long time, and I think with continued patience we'll get there.

We're not planning to displace any of those major sports. I certainly wouldn't want to displace Mr. Stern's (ph) celebrity status. Mr. Tagliabue (ph) is 6' 7" so there's no chance I've got of displacing him on any podium or anywhere else. But I think we'll over time take our rightful place and I still have a few black hairs that'll maybe all be gray by then, but we'll get there.

Hang on, we're going to get you a microphone.

QUESTION: Dave Watkins, South China Morning Post Hong Kong. I was just thinking with the success of U.S. soccer at the youth level, as you just mentioned, what are the challenges in maintaining that interest and, you know, as more traditional American sports kind of take a more sort of central ground in terms of kids' interests as they grow up? I mean, how do you try to maintain this interest because, at a youth level, obviously you're very successful?

MR. GULATI: Well, a couple of things. It's not an automatic, and I say this to my colleagues involved in soccer, simply because we've got millions of kids playing that there's a way to easily translate that. And the example I always give to, whether it's a journalist or my colleagues, is almost all of us were swimmers when we were kids, almost all of us played badminton when we were kids, almost all of us went skating at least once, and so on; but very few of us go and watch a swimming event where we're paying for it, and probably except for the Olympics don't watch too much swimming on television, or volleyball or field hockey or badminton or cycling or whatever it might be. In most cases that's true.

So this issue of what I call connectivity is a very important one. How do we get a U8, and under eight kid that's playing in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon, to understand, appreciate that there's any connection between what he or she is doing and what Landon Donovan will be doing in two weeks in Germany. That's a hard one. Certainly, television is a big part of it so that they see what's happening on TV is the same sport. My son is pretty passionate about it and he knows a lot about it, primarily because he happens to be my son, but his teammates on his team, while probably more educated about the national team than another team might be because they know my son, you know, don't identify in the same way as they might if they were following Barry Bonds's home run quest or as if they were following Tom Brady's touchdown passes at the Super Bowl. So that's a long-term challenge.

On the other hand, for example, in a community that is in the news quite a bit these days, the Hispanic community is not a community that we have to teach the game to. They know the sport. They've grown up on the sport. Those kids do have a great identity with the sport in a different way than just playing.

Now, when it comes to following a national team, it may be a different national team. It may be a different club that's called Club America, which is based in Mexico City and not the LA Galaxy. But I think that will change over time and, you know, our goal in that community, frankly, and a number of ethnic communities is we want to be their second team. Even if we can't be the most popular team for them, being their second team would be pretty good. So if we're playing anybody but Mexico, having the Hispanic community behind us would be a good thing.

QUESTION: (Dave Watkins) What needs to happen for the connection to be made? Is it generational (inaudible)?

MR. GULATI: I think both those are true, but success on the field is a big part of it. I think we've got a lot of credibility in a number of communities when we did as well as we did in the last World Cup, when we went out and beat Mexico in a World Cup game. On the women's side we've got an extraordinary, different challenge than most countries do, and it's an easier challenge in that sense because it's developed. We're world champions. We've got some extraordinary icons and ambassadors for the game. But tradition takes time and we don't have that tradition at a spectator level for this sport. I think we will, but you know, I don't think it'll be in six weeks after doing well at the World Cup or not doing well or whatever happens. I think we're getting there. We're getting there. The growth numbers are all good.

QUESTION: Andy Robinson of La Vanguardia, Spain. Could you just -- you said the growth numbers are good. Could you give us an idea in terms of soccer as a business, TV rights, merchandising, the marketing of the sport, how much it has grown over the last few years and what -- you know, how much you expect it to in the future?

MR. GULATI: Well, I'm not going to get into specific licensing numbers because I don't have those at my fingertips, but I guess the growth numbers I would look at are, you know, over the last 20 years and we could look at the Federation, for example, at revenues 20 years ago of a couple million, revenues now are at 40 million. You have two non-profit organizations, one that didn't exist 20 years ago called the U.S. Soccer Foundation, and one that had a deficit 20 years ago, now at combined net assets of $110 million. You've got a league that didn't exist 20 years ago, one now with 12 teams. So right off from that you've got roughly 300 people employed as professional soccer players in a division one environment that didn't exist 20 years ago. You have a couple of companies, one in particular, Nike, that was certainly around 20 years ago but wasn't really focusing on this sport. If you walk down the road to Nike Town here in New York, you'll see the entire front display is all soccer and that's a multi-billion dollar business that was at a starting point of zero for that particular company, which is the worldwide leader in sports.

Television, where we will have something like 175 games, professional games on television, of the American League or the U.S. Team in the United States market. Add that to the number of games that are coming from foreign leagues and in the World Cup and we've got hundreds and hundreds of games. Clearly, someone is watching those games or the people that are broadcasting them wouldn't find it in their commercial interest to put them on. So there's an interest and in some cases it's a niche interest. All of those fronts playing. We now have, I think the Nielsen ratings are something like 18 million participants in the game, and that's players, referees, coaches and so on.

Our numbers in certain ethnic communities are much higher than you'd expect. Twenty years ago we were playing World Cup qualifying games in a stadium in St. Louis with 6,000 seats and worrying about how we were going to fill it up. We now play games that are World Cup qualifying games in small stadia so we can have primarily an audience in some cases that is rooting for the U.S., but we could easily sell out 75- or 80,000 seats, if we played Mexico, for example, or if we played El Salvador or if we played Costa Rica in a stadium that was big enough. You've got international games that are being played in the United States that didn't exist.

So on all of those fronts, if I had them in front of me and I gave you, you know, total sales from U.S. replica jerseys, it would be three, four, five, ten times what it was four years ago. Would it match what Manchester United is selling? The answer is no. Would it match what the New York Yankees is selling? The answer is no. But my guess is there aren't too many people on this block or anywhere in New York City that doesn't know who Mia Hamm is. That certainly wouldn't have existed ten years ago.

QUESTION: I'm Anil Padmanabhan from India Today. My question is that are you using the nontraditional media to bring the game to the United States? Basically I'm referring to internet television or like the NBA, you know, beaming stuff on the cell phone. Like would you be using this World Cup to promote soccer?

MR. GULATI: Well, I'm not sure in the year 2006 any of those things is nontraditional media anymore. They've become very traditional media very quickly. So the answer is, yes, we are focusing on that a number of ways and I can give you a few examples, pretty straightforward.

We've set up, or will have set up in Germany, in addition to the broadcasted games that's been going on for a long time, we'll have our own studio in the players hotel. And every day they'll be streaming video on the U.S. Soccer website of interviews with players and so on and so forth. My guess is, in terms of the accredited journalists that we have for the U.S., there are as many from what you've called nontraditional, we might call new media sources as there are. Certainly, some of our sponsors have found that a very important way to do what they do in conjunction with us. So I think the answer is, yes. To the extent that things like direct marketing or old media, which no one likes old things anymore, we still use some of those things as well.

But clearly, given the demographics and the young demographics of our sport, some of those new media sources are very important. In terms of beaming all of our games onto people's cell phones, there's a supply and demand issue. We're working on the demand side of it; the supply is there. Mr. Stern (ph) has a little bit different demand for his product than we do right now, but we'll certainly stay in touch and keep working at it.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Your predecessor, Mr. Rothenberg, and also head coach, Mr. Arena, once said that the U.S. man's national team will be top favorite for the World Cup victory in 2010. Would you please comment on that from today's point of view? Thanks.

MR. GULATI: Yeah, there's lots of comments on that. We initiated a program some years ago. It was -- as we were leaving the stadium in 1994, after the World Cup final, Mr. Rothenberg was with our General Secretary Hank Steinbrecher and I and said, okay, we've hosted the World Cup. What do we do next? Well, I'd like to win the World Cup, so let's make sure we do that in our lifetime. We had a meeting at 7 o'clock the next morning, which I think was probably as symbolic as anything else, to start talking about that.

We initiated a program. It was called Project 2010, with the notion of making the U.S. team competitive in the World Cup by that date. Some people would say we were a little bit early by being so competitive at the last World Cup. It's hard to win the World Cup. Bruce Arena actually, like most good coaches, doesn't want to be quite so bold, and maybe that he's coaching our team, then maybe not. He is on record as saying he doesn't think that we'll win the World Cup in his lifetime. I am on record as saying we will win it in my lifetime. I called Coach Arena two hours after the World Cup final in Tokyo and I was at the game. He was back in New York. I didn't reach him but I left a message on his cell phone saying, "You're on record as saying. I'm on record saying this. How do we reconcile those two views without me having to commit a felony on you?" So we're working on that.

I am quite sure that when I dream about soccer and the success of the U.S. team in the future and it's not being arrogant in saying we're going to do it this summer. There are some great teams that have never won the World Cup. We are still learning how to walk. But I don't dream about finishing second. And I can guarantee you Bruce Arena doesn't dream about finishing second.

Yeah.

QUESTION: I'm Prakash Swamy, writing for the Indian Media. First of all, congratulations on the new job. My question is two part: One is in your acceptance speech you said about the International Relations Program, does it include countries like India? And number two, how and when your love for this game started in your life?

MR. GULATI: Well, thank you. Thank you for your comments. We did announce an International Relations Program that I haven't touched on that's a key part of the initiatives that we're going to have. It will be in some ways modeled along the lines of the English FA International Assistance Relations Program. We will probably announce much more about it in 20 days or so. And the answer is, yes, it does and could potentially involve India. We've actually had some contact with the Indian Federation and the president is a friend. And since I made those comments, they've written to us.

I happened to be in Delhi three years ago when they had a Vision India Conference for Soccer. A different challenge in India, but we will meet with them, talk with them about some of the things that have worked. And obviously, there's a natural connection for me with the country. But I think our interests are anywhere and everywhere that people may be interested in talking to us about those programs.

Again, we’re not planning to go and teach soccer around the world. That would be far too presumptuous of us. But my guess is there are some things that we've done successfully. And in India, the obvious commonality is that there is another very large 800-pound gorilla and it's a sport. In our case, we've got two or three of those. In the Indian case, it's pretty clearly cricket, but we'll figure out how we do that, first in the U.S. and then we'll start -- see if we can get Mr. Kandilukur (ph) to put down his bat and pick up a ball and kick it over the goal or something, I don't know.

Other questions. Yeah.

QUESTION: Andy Bettag, Fuji TV. In the last, FIFA rankings, I saw the United States was ranked fourth in the world, but I've heard some people are somewhat skeptical about that. Where do you think the United States soccer team ranks and talk about their relative strength, please?

MR. GULATI: I have great respect for FIFA's ranking system and wouldn't seek to argue with it in any way, shape or form, especially since after I was elected, we moved up two spots following a loss and a tie, so how could I knock that system. I think it's fair to say that we are in the top 20, which puts us in a situation where we're competitive. Clearly, in the rankings we're fifth. But there's a little bit of an anomaly where we're fifth, the Italians are ranked behind us, I guess. But the folks that make or break their money on predicting these sorts of things don’t have us as favorites. So the bookmakers don't have us as favorites against the Czech Republic or the Italians. They're usually a little bit better predictors of on-field success.

On the one hand, and which is the good news, I guess, we lost to the Czech Republic 5-1 in a very painful game in 1990 that I happen to sit through. We were bombarded by the Italians in the second game. And we only loss 1-0, but it could have been much worse. And it was a great performance by our guys. I don't think the Czech Republic is in any way, shape or form thinking they've got an easy game and whether they'll have three goals at halftime.

I don't think the Italian fans are thinking along the lines of what they were thinking when we played at Saudi Olympico (ph) in 1990 which was how many do we get past the U.S., right, and our big equivalent of holding a cross, I guess in front of a vampire, was we were going 0-0. They didn't score a lot of goals and that was, no, no, no, it can't be. I don't think they're thinking about getting 10. So we'll be competitive. I don't -- I think it's safe to say between our performances, our experience of our players and in some cases just the brashness of some of our younger players who don't care what the rankings are. They don't know if it's Brazil or Latvia, just go out and play -- a great spirit that way. I don't think they fear anybody. They respect a lot of teams. We're not going to go thinking that -- you know, the same way the Italians don't think they're going to stick five past us, we're not thinking we're going to go out and beat the Italians by five goals.

So I think we've earned a very high FIFA ranking, whether it's four, five, nine or twelve, I don't know. But we're, you know, we've done some wonderful things against teams that are very highly ranked. And let's see how it goes. We may not be fourth or fifth, I don't know. I'm not sure if people would argue that the Czechs should be something lower than second. Argentina's had a pretty good team for a long time. The Dutch have a pretty good team, but they've missed a couple of World Cups which hurts them in the rankings. And as I -- you know, all of you or most of you now live in the United States for some period of time, the NCAA rankings matter. But March Madness is starting, so the rankings are out the window. July madness, June madness. We hope it's July madness for us, but we know it's at least June madness.

Other questions? Let's -- one over here first.

QUESTION: Hi. I'm Matthew Hall from the Sydney Sun Herald. There's a lot of parallels between the football experience in the United States and with Australia on the field commercially, demographics. There doesn't appear to be any relationship between the two countries, though, football wise. Is that important? Is it on your radar and how can we build a relationship between the U.S. and Australia with football?

MR. GULATI: Well, the problem is I keep calling over there and waking somebody up and I just can't get the time thing right. Actually, there are a lot of differences as well. And that's one point and second, we do have some relationships. We gave them a lot of advice, in fact, on starting up the new league. They were deciding how they were going to set up that league and Michael Thompson (ph) who used to be at FIFA and was their marketing director before moving on, I think, to Nike, and I spent quite a bit of time with some of their officials.

We actually have an American player who's famous -- who's father is famous in this city -- we won a marathon, Alberto Salazar's brother is playing for the team. I'm not sure if it's in Sydney. I think it is. So we've had a -- I'm sorry -- he's come back. See, that's a good experience. We sent him over to you for training and he came back. And we've obviously played them in some games. But the experiences are actually very, very different in many ways. Demographically, yes, generally affluent societies, but size wise, geography, all those things make us very, very different. While we have some of our players playing in Europe, we've got at least half our top players playing at home, which is a different challenge than Australia has. Our league now has been around 11 years, so it's immature, compared to the top European Leagues, but more mature than the Australian League. So there may be some areas that there's further cooperation, but there's some pretty big challenges as well. I think Australia is closer to a position that we were in in terms of the World Cup a few years ago where they're kind of the upstarts, even though they've been there before. It's been awhile now and they'll be hoping to pull an upset. I don't think anyone's thinking the U.S. is there as -- you know, and we if we win a game it's a huge upset. But they've got some very talent players, so we'll see how it goes. Some of the players certainly that play in the premier league I've seen quite a bit.

Yeah.

QUESTION: You mentioned Mia Hamm and her being a household name. How is it that soccer is perceived to be more of a women's sport in this country?

MR. GULATI: No, I don't think that's a fair statement. We could go out this week and watch Colombia play Ecuador at Giant Stadium and my guess is it'll be 30, 40, 50,000 people at the game. In that particular game, there'll be very few women. If you go to a typical U.S. National team game, it's probably 60-40 and it could be either way. If you go to a women's national team, you know, there are going to be more women and more girls playing. So I think what -- it's not that it's more of a woman's sport, it's just the role of women in American society and role of sports in American society on the women's side are very different than they are in most countries around the world, so there's a greater balance. If you go to a typical English Premier League game or to the Champion's League game, which I went to this past Wednesday in Paris, my guess is 90 percent of the audience was male. Now that's not what it is, even at a men's national team game in the United States or it might be the case in a football game, an American football game.

What's happened on the women's side in the United States is that we've been world leaders on that side primarily by winning World Cups, by having a program that existed long before many countries in the world which, it's not surprising to me that Scandinavian countries have been very successful early on the women's side of things or that Germany's been very successful. And now a number of other countries are improving in that area, but dedicating more resources by having a changing role of women in economies in society. So Mia Hamm has become an icon because at age 15, 16, she was a wonderfully gifted player. She's won three -- two world championships, multiple gold medals at the Olympics, has been on a lot of TV commercials, a few with Michael Jordan, and is a wonderful person and has had a large building named after her at Nike, the largest building they've got.

So we'd like a few more Mia Hamms that are known as well Mia on the men's side as well on the women's side. So I don't think it's primarily a women's sport. I think we'll show on the 12th of June against the Czech Republic that the men's side of things is very much alive and thriving in the U.S. as well. But having said that, Mia will be at some of those games. She's a spectator, too, which is a good thing for us.

QUESTION: Hi, I'm Martina Buttler working for ADR German radio and I have two questions.

MR. GULATI: It was a handball, first of all. Let's get that clear. (Laughter.) I was a handball in the line and you know it. It's a private thing between Germany and the U.S.

QUESTION: I'm very sorry. We still debate that.

No, but my questions are number one, did the amount of tickets that you were supplied with meet the number of requests? And number two, which benefits do you think backfire on American soccer from the fact that most of the sponsors are big American companies like, for example, Budweiser or McDonald's, Coca-Cola and so on and so forth?

MR. GULATI: The answer to the first question is, no. The supply did not meet the demand. And that statement, my guess is, I could make at any podium in any country out of the UN members and it would have been the case. It's an extraordinarily popular World Cup. It's a great destination and it's in the middle of Europe. It's going to be a popular event. If the euro had been strong as it is six months ago, maybe a few less fans would have gone. I don't know. But, no, in no way has ticket availability matched our demand. My guess is we could have sold four or five, six times and maybe ten times what we did for our games. My guess is that we could have come very close to filling, filling at least for the first two games, the entire stadium with American fans and our opponents probably could have done the same.

Having said that, the efforts made by FIFA and by the organizing committee to try to help us with additional tickets has been extraordinary. We know from putting on a World Cup, and we did it here, that it's impossible to have sufficient demand for such a popular event, as it for a Broadway show in New York or a playoff game at Gillette Stadium in Boston or whatever it might. So that's a challenge for anyway.

The second part of the question, I'm sorry was --

QUESTION: Is there a (inaudible)?

MR. GULATI: Sure. Yeah, you've mentioned that a number of the key FIFA sponsors are American-based. Our challenge there is to get some of those sponsors who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the World Cup and related programs to activate their programs in the United States. That's a big challenge. And if we can get them to do that on moving, you know, as we say moving the needle of that connectivity issue of getting kids to appreciate it, if there's a picture of Landon Donovan on every milkshake cup at McDonald's that's a plus for us. If MasterCard or new (ph) FIFA sponsor Visa has got, you know, an identity card that's got Abby Wambaugh on it; that's a plus for us. But there have been a few of those sponsors who have not activated in the United States in the same way. It's been primarily an international purchase and we need to help them understand and, frankly, FIFA. And we have met about that, how we get some of those sponsors to really activate in the U.S. and that's less about how they become partners of the United States Federation or sponsors, but activate their soccer program. Because in the end, what we're selling is the sport. It's not necessarily a logo, although there are a few logos that if we're selling, we'd put those up front. It's the sport. Play soccer. Watch soccer. Participate in soccer. Buy soccer, whatever that means. And those sponsors could certainly help. They've got budgets that are far beyond the numbers that I've mentioned for our net asset positions.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Martin Dowideit with Die Welt, the German newspaper.

MR. GULATI: You were still a handball, right? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: When you went against Czech Republic and on the same day Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run. What will make the front page?

MR. GULATI: See, this is the good thing. You have no confidence in Mr. Bonds. He's going to hit 715 long before that. So what will make the front page? If we're playing the Czech Republic, both will be on the front page, both will be on the page. I'll guarantee you when we're playing the Czech Republic on the New York Times and USA Today, we'll be on the front page. Barry Bonds -- it's not a fair question because he'll hit it before that, I think. But if he did hit it on that day, we'll be on the front page, along with Barry Bonds which is going to be A1, I don't want to predict. Which will be on the evening news that night, well, that's easy, it depends on the time and you've got different times. They keep messing us up there in Germany. I can't remember if that's an afternoon game or not. But they'll be playing at night, unless -- oh, it's a weekend, the 12th of June. I don't know. It's a Monday, right, so we'll be playing at night. It will be afternoon here. We'll be make the news. We'll be on the lead on the news. We'll be on ABC nightly news long before Mr. Bonds will be playing that evening. So I think you'll see that this summer it will be a little different.

MS. NISBET: Thank you so much, sir.