Soccer United Marketing
Encyclopedia
Soccer United Marketing is a business to business soccer sponsorship company wholly owned by Major League Soccer
and is responsible for the US English
and Spanish
broadcasting rights for the World Cup
. This group's goal and role is to be an instrument of MLS that will help it gain the media exposure and credibility of other major US professional sports leagues, like Major League Baseball
, the National Football League
, National Basketball Association
and the National Hockey League
. MLS owners all own a portion of Soccer United Marketing, which was purported to have made a profit for the league's owners in the first half of 2006. Since the company is privately owned, the company's private financial details are not disclosed to the public.
SUM helped MLS negotiate the new Major League Soccer TV Rights Deals with ESPN/ABC, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports en Espanol, Univision, and HDNet and the August 2011 deal with NBC Sports. The deals are rumored to be worth around 20 million dollars per year to the company. It is currently unknown whether any of the league's Canadian broadcasters pay a rights fee.
It is hoped by the company's founders that this company will one day build soccer into one of America's top sports. SUM previously undertook the responsibility of producing the league's various games. The deals together represent the first time in American history that a domestic professional soccer league was able to command TV rights fees.
Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer is a professional soccer league based in the United States and sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation . The league is composed of 19 teams — 16 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada...
and is responsible for the US English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
broadcasting rights for the World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...
. This group's goal and role is to be an instrument of MLS that will help it gain the media exposure and credibility of other major US professional sports leagues, like Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
, the National Football League
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
, National Basketball Association
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
and the National Hockey League
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
. MLS owners all own a portion of Soccer United Marketing, which was purported to have made a profit for the league's owners in the first half of 2006. Since the company is privately owned, the company's private financial details are not disclosed to the public.
SUM helped MLS negotiate the new Major League Soccer TV Rights Deals with ESPN/ABC, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports en Espanol, Univision, and HDNet and the August 2011 deal with NBC Sports. The deals are rumored to be worth around 20 million dollars per year to the company. It is currently unknown whether any of the league's Canadian broadcasters pay a rights fee.
It is hoped by the company's founders that this company will one day build soccer into one of America's top sports. SUM previously undertook the responsibility of producing the league's various games. The deals together represent the first time in American history that a domestic professional soccer league was able to command TV rights fees.