Sports Illustrated has been running an interesting series of articles on the globalization of sport. The last of the four articles focused partly on the creation of a new Hispanic-owned MLS team, Chivas USA. Chivas USA is owned by billionaire Mexican businessman Jorge Vergara. Vergara already owns the original Chivas, one of the most popular teams in the Mexican soccer league. The idea behind Chivas USA is for the MLS (and Vergara) to tap into the huge Hispanic population of the US. Hispanics currently make up more than 13% of the population, and the numbers are rising.
The plan makes some sense. Use a Mexican owner to give a team Hispanic legitimacy and hopefully US Hispanics will switch from watching Mexican Premiere League games on Univision to the MLS. Chivas USA will get around some of the MLS’ rules limiting foreigners by using young Mexicans (the league has no cap on foreign players under the age of 25) and US green card-carrying older players to go along with the three legit Mexicans they will have (each MLS team can have three foreign players). For the rest of the players, they are currently trying to find US Hispanics to fill their spots, and according to Vergara, “we may have some gringos, too.”
That the team will be so closely tied to Mexico and Mexicans gives me some pause.
First of all, the team will be based in Los Angeles, where the LA Galaxy already play. The Galaxy haven’t won over Los Angeles as much as they could have, but they certainly have some Hispanic fans. You would assume that all of those fans will immediately change allegiances. Every city with an MLS team will likely have the same problem. Sure, they’ll sell more tickets when Chivas USA comes to visit, but possibly at the expense of some current season ticket holders. Overall, I think the addition of this team and the attention it will help the league, but there may be some short-term losses at some MLS venues.
The bigger issue I have is simply with the divisiveness of the plan. If the MLS grows as all involved hope it will, teams will develop natural rivalries. That’s what happens in any mature sport. Rivalries are a big part of what make a league successful.
Rivalries also bring out the worst in people. I’ve seen otherwise rational, compassionate, open-minded people yell the most offensive and stereotyped (and often funny) comments at players and fans of their rival during a big game. They generally don’t really mean any malice, they are just doing it out of fun, but I wonder about what could happen if you threw in real differences. Usually big US rivalries, like Duke-UNC, Alabama-Auburn, Army-Navy and Yankees-Red Sox involve groups of people who are really quite similar. Sure, the combatants like to think they are different, but they really aren’t. With Chivas USA however, there will be real differences. Different languages, different cultures, different nationalities, different heritages, different socio-economic classes (I’m generalizing here) and different ethnicities. There is real potential for ugliness. The only similar example that I can think of is the huge Rangers-Celtic rivalry in Scotland’s Premiere League with their religious conflict (The Rangers are the Protestant team while Celtic is Catholic).
If Chivas USA develops a rivalry with the Galaxy (which seems likely), you know that taunts based on nationality and ethnicity will become regular. There’s no way around it. Fans always seize on the most obvious differences from their rival, particularly if it’s easy to portray some sort of natural supremacy. Private schools mock state schools for being dumb and state schools call the private school fans snobs and pansies. It only stands to reason that Galaxy fans will taunt Chivas USA for being Mexican (and all the stereotypes that come with that) and vice versa.
Soccer, being a global sport, already has a lot of this sort of thing of course. In fact, the historical, ethnic and cultural differences between countries are a big part of what makes the World Cup such a fascinating event. This is particularly pronounced when there’s been some relatively recent conflict. Countries who have fought wars fight again on the field and the fans go wild. The key difference here though is that the divisions are national. Even if England and Argentina hate each other on the field, they only play at most every four years or so. It’s rare that these on-field rivalries have much chance to grow beyond that. England isn’t brimming with Argentinians.
With Chivas USA however, the divide is one within our borders. Hispanics are in every part of the United States. They, along with all of our other ethnic groups, are a large part of what makes us a great country. Creating teams that specifically aim to divide based on those difference is discomforting to me. Can you imagine a baseball team that announced that it would only use Asian players? Or an NBA team that said it would only employ black players? OK, bad example.
So, we’ll see. My guess is that this plan will work well for a while. At some point, as MLS grows though, a decision will have to be made. Chivas USA will have to become less of a niche team or the league will risk making “ugly soccer fan” news right here in the United States. Talk about your globalization of sports.