Television and the NASL

Looking at the greatest match in history

Television and the NASL

People still talk about why the original North American Soccer League folded.

There are a number of reasons. The U.S. economy went through a downturn starting in 1981, which discouraged would-be venture capital from being dumped into the soccer league. Some of the European stars decided to stop playing in the American summer league, especially considering how common injuries were on the AstroTurf that was so prevalent at the time. The NASL wasn’t exactly a great fan product, either, especially considering how poor the officiating was for the entire existence of the league.

However, I think that television played a huge role in the fact that the NASL never developed into anything.

Interestingly enough, the NASL didn’t have a full television contract until 1979, when it convinced ABC to pay $1.5 million for two seasons worth of action.

From Sports Illustrated, February 12, 1979, page 32

The big problem here wasn’t the bizarre need for constant commercial breaks. The problem, rather, was how spotty and how generally bad ABC’s coverage was.

Jim McKay knew very little about soccer, and was an announcer more appropriately suited for the extremely little known sports that were usually featured on Wide World of Sports. Airing 9 live games over the course of each summer across the United States was also not much of a recipe for success — especially when you realize that those numbers included the playoffs.

The first leg of the famous 1979 Vancouver - New York series, which is commonly remembered as the greatest series of all time, was aired only locally. And, even then, there was a chance that Vancouver would have asked that the game be blacked out:

From The Province, August 29, 1979, page 14

In the end, the first leg was shown on channel 8 in Vancouver:

From The Province, August 29, 1979, page 16

A New York station picked up the broadcast as well, though the late starting time must have meant awful ratings:

From New York Daily News, August 29, 1979, page 77

Sadly, it seems that nobody was able to record the first leg of that series. I’d love to see a tape if one ever surfaces.

The second leg was extremely famous, a 3 1/2 hour marathon that was aired nationwide in the United States. Thankfully, somebody did manage to video tape that entire game. I recently uploaded a resynced version of the game after being frustrated with awful audio-video sync in the existing versions.

The broadcast itself was pretty poor, featuring bad replay angles and constant cut away interviews during the live action. It did manage to get somewhat respectable ratings, however:

From The Montana Standard, September 8, 1979, page 22

Note, however, that the match was not a sellout — far from it, in fact. This was a Labor Day weekend match, and really should have sold out. Giants Stadium had something like 80,000 seats — and yet the Cosmos didn’t manage to get even half that number.

In my opinion, the poor television ratings (note that the nationwide rating and share numbers for the playoff game weren’t quoted here) and the poor attendance showed that interest in the NASL was already fading. It’s no surprise that the league went completely under within 5 years.