ARTICLES Sociology of Sport Journal, 1996,13,238-258 0 1996 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

What's Left When the Circus Leaves Town? An Evaluation of World Cup USA 1994

John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson University of Brighton, UK

This article reviews the impact of the 1994 World Cup (Soccer) Finals upon contemporary US sports culture. The authors draw upon historical and sociological scholarship on North American sports culture, participant observation data generated by them during the World Cup itsel$ and empirical sources on the context and impact of the World Cup 's development and implementation. These sources are used within an analytical framework derived from critical and investigative sociological traditions. The article situates the case study within debates concerning the USA's sports space and the nature of globalizing processes within contemporary sport. It is concluded that though the World Cup was notably successful as spectacle and event (as predicted by a number of commentators), and as the accomplish- ment of interlocking networks of sports administrative elites, its impact upon established US sports culture and space has been minimal.

Cet article porte sur l'impact des finales de la Coupe du monde de soccer 1994 sur la culture sportive contemporaine ame'ricaine. Les auteurs utilisent des e'tudes historiques et sociologiyues sur la culture sportive nord-ame'ricaine, des donnies obtenues 6 l'aide de leurpropre observation participante pendant la Coupe du monde et des sources empiriques sur le contexte et l'impact du de'veloppement et de l'e'tablissement de la Coupe du monde, duns un cadre analytique de'rive' des traditions sociologiques critiques et d'investigation. L'article situe l'e'tude de cas au sein des de'bats concernant l'espace du sport ame'ricain et la nature des processus globalisants du sport contemporain. I1 est conclu que si la Coupe du monde a e'te' un grand succts en tant qu'h~tnement, en tant que spectacle et au niveau de la re'alisation de re'seaux d'ilites administratives du sport, son impact sur la culture et l'espace sportifs ame'ricains a par contre e'te' minime.

The 1994 World Cup produced a turnover of $4 billion with 32 billion tele- vision viewers. I mean no disrespect to other sports by saying that even the Olym- pic Games cannot compare. The World Cup was a fabulous success.

-Sepp Blatter (December 1994), RFA general secretary (cited in World Soccer, 35[3], p.10)

John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson are in the Sport and Leisure Cultures research group in the Chelsea School Research Centre at the University of Brighton, United King- dom.

This article is a part of a larger project by the authors, which is scheduled for publi- cation in 1998 as Sport in the Global Village: FIFA and the Development of World Soccer (Polity Press).

World Cup USA 239

In June and July of 1994 the major event in television sports across the world was the football World Cup-the world championships of soccer, as the host na- tion of that year preferred to call it. Yet in the US itself there was much skepticism about this event, for the US has never embraced soccer as a major competitive, spectator-based, high-performance sport. Alongside baseball, American football, and basketball ("the big threew)-and the claimant to entry into a big four, ice hockey-soccer has looked unquestionably minor league. And yet at the World Cup Finals of 1994 ticket sales exceeded those of any previous World Cup, the games were widely recognized as splendidly entertaining, and television record- ing and reproduction techniques guaranteed high-quality coverage of and feed- back on almost any aspect of the game, its players, and the tournament. How was this possible? And what has been the impact of the successful staging of the tour- nament upon sports culture in the US? And upon soccer itself?

The answers to these questions have far-reaching implications for an under- standing and theorization of contemporary sport, bearing as they do upon the issue of globalization. Debate in sociology, associated social sciences, and within the sociology of sport itself has highlighted the importance of globalization as a cen- tral contemporary social process. Robertson has argued that a historical, compara- tive, and interdisciplinary social science framework can be developed if social theory is "refocused and expanded so as to make concern with 'the world' a central hermeneutic, and in such a way as to constrain empirical and comparative-historical research in the same direction" (Robertson, 1990, p. 19). For Robertson, the con- cept "should be applied to a particular series of developments concerning the con- crete structuration of the world as a whole" (Robertson, 1990, p. 20), and with "the question of the actual form of recent and contemporary moves in the direc- tion of global interdependence and global consciousness" (Robertson, 1990, p. 22). With these concerns and questions in mind, Robertson offers "in unavoidably skeletal terms" a fivefold classification of "the temporal-historical path to the present circumstance of a very high degree of global density and complexity " (Robertson, 1990, p. 26). Early "germinal" and "incipient" phases are followed by a third phase that Robertson labels the "take-off phase," which covers the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th centuries. In this phase, instances of interna- tional communication and international relations escalate, and global competitions are developed-"e.g., Olympics, Nobel Prizes" (Robertson, 1990, p. 27). The gov- erning body of world football is also established at this time (Tornlinson, 1986; Tomlinson, 1994), and the first World Cup (expressing many tensions between the established elite of the Western European world and the emergent soccer-playing powers of the Americas) is staged in 1930 in Uruguay. Such tensions embody the core characteristics of Robertson's fourth phase, which he calls a "struggle for hegemony," which runs through from the 1920s to the mid 1960s. The final phase in his model is one of "uncertainty," in which intensifying forms of global con- sciousness are achieved in a "consolidation of global media system[s]" alongside an increase for many societies in "problems of multiculturality and polyethnicity." It is interesting that Robertson specifies the Olympic Games as evidence of early forms of globalization. Clearly, the features and dynamics of supranational sport- ing organizations and events revealed some of the core characteristics of global- ization processes. Houlihan observes that "while the World Cup has been free of overt politics by comparison to the Olympic Games it has not been able to avoid the intrusion of politics completely" (Houlihan, 1994a, p. 27). Indeed, the World

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World Cup USA 241

practices in sport and their contribution to globalization processes, this article evalu- ates the genesis, impact, and legacy of one of the world's highest profile sports events. In this context, the Markovits (1990), Sugden (1994), and Sugden and Tomlinson (1994b) theses on the marginality of soccer in the sports space of the USA are reviewed in light of the profile and impact of the USA '94 World Cup.

Methods

In constructing the case-study of USA '94, we have adopted a multimethod approach, the analysis drawing upon a range of sources. These include secondary sources such as established survey databases; media representations of sport and soccer; archival sources on the political economy of world sport; insider and cul- tural commentaries on the nature of the event; and forms of participant observation for one week at the beginning of the Finals, and a second week at the culmination of the event. Time was spent going to games, talking to fans of many nationalities, and gathering sources and materials as the Finals Tournament unfolded. One week was spent on the East Coast of the USA immediately prior to and following on from the opening of the World Cup Finals. This included time among immigrant Irish and American Irish fans in Rhode Island; with sports academics and soccer cognoscenti in New Haven, Connecticut; and with immigrant Irish fans in Man- hattan. In particular, in Manhattan, soccer games were viewed in two typical Irish American sports bars across the first full weekend of the Finals Tournament. Throughout the tournament, responses to the event were reviewed in both the gen- eral print media and specialist magazines, and the television coverage of games was monitored in both the US and the UK. Over the last days of the tournament, participant observation was conducted in Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Santa Monica; both the World Cup Final and the play-off game for third place were attended.

Since the end of the World Cup Finals, further materials have been gathered from specialist sources and archives in the Paul Ziegler Resource Center at the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles pertaining to the economics of the event, networks of sports entrepreneurs in California, the media impact of USA '94, and the nature of sponsorship of soccer in the USA. The range of methods used in this analysis is not justified on the basis of any model of triangulation, as multimethod approaches have been by methodologists such as Smith (1975, pp. 27 1-292). Rather, the multimethods approach employed here embodies the au- thors' commitment to a critical investigative sociology (Douglas, 1976; Sugden, 1995; Sugden & Tomlinson, 1995b) informed by an openness to the pertinence of sociologically relevant, if at times sociologically unorthodox, sources (Tornlinson, 1984). Such an approach can be controversial, as Hammersley and Atkinson, in an annotated bibliographic comment on Douglas, note, adjudicating Douglas to be cavalier in his "treatment of philosophical issues" (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983, p. 240). But, in work on the past in which the sensitivities of the present are no threat, the use of such a range of methods is commonplace; in critical social his- tory, the scholar must draw upon and interpret what is available and accessible. The analysis presented in this article constitutes a form of critical social history of the present, in which no faith is placed in the superiority of one method or another, or in the foolproofness of pseudo-autonomous methods whose internal validity is presumed to guarantee the reliability of some shared finding. Critical sociological work at times depends upon following leads rather than implementing ready-made

242 Sugden and Tomlinson

methods or techniques, and upon making connections between fragments of infor- mation, the relevance of which will not always be clear at the outset of the inves- tigation. For the following analysis, a range of conventional and nonconventional sources is drawn upon within this investigative and critical framework.

Prior to the analysis itself, the main arguments concerning soccer and US sports culture are reviewed, with particular emphasis upon the concept of sports space.

Soccer in USA Sports Space

Classic sources on the history and sociology of American sports have paid little heed to the story of soccer in the USA, though enthusiasts for the game have sought to remedy this. Foulds and Harris (1979) retrieve some of this ignored if not hidden history and report that the American League of Professional Football Clubs opened its season on October 6, 1894. An early blend of professional and amateur players in Boston drew upon the textile communities of the region, play- ers emerging from "large, immigrant soccer-educated populations" (Foulds & Harris, 1979, p. 13). Only 6 years after the formation of the professional Football League in England, teams such as the Boston Beaneaters, the Brooklyn Superbas, the Washington Senators, and the New York Giants were competing (under the name football) in soccer matches. Despite optimistic reception in some quarters of the press, matches staged on weekday afternoons failed to capture a large follow- ing. As Foulds and Harris put it, "the failure of the promoters to realize that the basic support in the initial stages of the league rested with the large soccer ad- dicted foreign-born blue collar working population of the Eastern industrial states was unfortunate" (Foulds & Harris, 1979, p. 13). Despite evidence of subcultural popularity-among Jewish communities and teams in the New York area, for in- stance, in the 1920s (Murray, 1994, p. 262)-attempts to introduce high-profile professional soccer remained short lived if successful, or merely marginal (Murray, 1994, pp. 265-272). As Markovits and Sugden have demonstrated, the historical, social, and cultural odds were stacked against football/soccer becoming a main- stream professional sport in the USA.

For Markovits, a European raised intellectual, sports fan, and soccer aficio- nado, the lack of American response to soccer World Cups (particularly when the Finals took place in a contiguous neighboring country) has been intriguing. He noted that when the 1986 World Cup Finals were hosted by Mexico, "this event failed to capture the imagination of the American public," and he described the American interest in "the world's most important media event" as "strikingly minute in comparison to that exhibited in virtually every country in the world" (Markovits, 1988, p. 125). His explanation for the failure of soccer to gain a hold in USA sports culture revolves around a notion of sports space, and the argument that in the formative period of USA nation building, three vigorously characteristic Ameri- can sports took shape: baseball, American Football. and basketball. This had the consequence that "America's bourgeois hegemony and legacy of the 'first new nation' . . . contributed substantiallv to the continued absence of the world's most popular team sport as a major presence in American popular culture" (Markovits, 1988, p. 125). The sports space, Markovits eloquently and convincingly argues, was occupied early in the USA, so that a fully matured form of association football or soccer (as developed formatively in Britain and its imperial and trading networks)

World Cup USA 243

had little chance of gaining any serious foothold in the USA's sports territory. Soccer was crowded out from below by baseball, with its myth-like resonance of rural community, and from above by American Football, with its initially college- based rationalistic personification of the new industrial order. Indoors, basketball also took hold on the sports consciousness of the expanding nation-very much, though Markovits does not touch upon this, in waiting for its development in its professional form by black Americans (George, 1992; Novak, 1976).

In the pre-World World I era, in the places where soccer did take hold, it "remained closely associated with immigrants, a stigma which proved fatal to soccer's bf becoming a popular te& sport in the 'new world7 " (Markovits, 1988, p. 135); and even on its reintroduction as a UniversityICollege sport in the latter half of this century, "soccer has remained largely the domain of foreigners and recent immigrants, both as players and spectators" (Markovits, 1988, p. 136).

Sugden and Tomlinson (1994a), referring to other spheres beyond just sport, have commented that "as a nation," the USA "has often appeared reluctant to im- port cultural forms which might highlight its own cultural and ethnic diffuseness" (Sugden & Tomlinson, 1994b, p. 9), and this theme dominated Sugden's discus- sion of the USA and soccer. Taking Markovits' brilliant initial insights further, and citing Oriard's work on images of sports in American culture, Sugden (1994) de- veloped more fully the notion that the quest for distinctive forms of homegrown sport represented a thrusting new nation's yearning for self-identity-not least by evolving nativist cultural forms. Indeed, one might go further still from this per- spective and note that the USA's big three are evidence of a unique society's quest for an appropriately unique sports and popular culture. With "the working class and middle class 'sport space' of the American public already crowded . . . there was little or no room for another outdoor team ball game, particularly one, like soccer, which could be readily associated with anti-American traditions" (Sugden, 1994, p. 235). Sugden emphasizes the notion of American nativism, which is mani- fest inthe celebration of one's own identity and, simultaneously, the denigration of the Cultural Other shown in "an intense distaste for and suspicion of foreign sub- cultures and alien traditions" (Sugden, 1994, p. 235). He also argues that when soccer did take hold in American high schools in the 1970s and the 1980s, along- side its "elevated status as an intercollegiate sport," it did so on a middle-class base and on the basis of "a youth caucus which was not so obviously dependent on immigrant and ethnic involvement" (Sugden, 1994, p. 243). Soccer, ironically (given its status across the world as a proletarian and working-class rooted sport in its professional spectator form), now offered the indigenous American middle class a positive, essentially reconstituted, amateurist alternative to the excesses of violent professional sports-especially American Football. Compounding this antimasculinist,~on-~meGcan status of soccer in the perception of the American public, the USA women's team became world champions in 1991, beating Nor- way 5-2 in China. (Although Norway avenged this defeat with a 1-0 semifinal victory in the 1995 Women's World Cup in Sweden-and went on to become champions, defeating Germany in the final-the USA team secured third place with a 2-0 win over China, and so still figured among the strongest contenders for the forthcoming inaugural women's soccer event in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.) It is hardly surprising, then, that Sugden could conclude, "no matter. . . how well the World Cup is organized, and regardless of how many tickets are sold, so long as soccer in America continues to be viewed as a game for foreigners, rich white kids

244 Sugden and Tornlinson

and women, its chances of becoming established as a mainstream professional sport there are minimal" (Sugden, 1994, p. 250).

These analyses do not suggest that space is simply full, like some popular restaurant with a waiting list for reservations. The concept of sports space should be understood as referring to that which is culturally constructed, not merely physi- cally determined. There is no reason why any particular society should have two rather than three, or three rather than four or five dominant sports-and of course this is particularly true of advanced societies with large populations, such as the United States. But sports space refers to the cultural meanings of a sport and to the capacity of a society to value a particular kind of sport and render it meaningful and of social significance. There are socially determined and culturally specific conditions in which cultural forms such as sport are established and developed in particular societies and times. In Cuba, for instance, the post-revolutionary sports culture could harness well-established sports such as boxing and baseball to the explicit values of the revolutionary society (Sugden, Tomlinson, & McCartan, 1990). Other societies keen to excel at Olympic levels have also demonstrated how the available sports space can be reallocated. These include not just the communist societies of Cuba, the former Soviet Union, the former East Germany, and China, for instance, but also Spain and Canada among liberal-democratic capitalist soci- eties. Sports space should therefore be seen not in any oversimplified spatiophysical terms, but in the context of culture and power relations in particular societies. Criticisms have been made of the concept of sports space and of its explana- tory limitations. Waddington and Roderick criticize Markovits, Sugden, and the football historian Tony Mason for what they call "an implicit-and there- fore unexamined-assumption that in each society there is a limited amount of 'space' for sports, and that once this 'space' has been 'filled' by one sport, there is no room for other sports" (Waddington & Roderick, 1996. p. 45). But space is not "filled" simply on a first-come first-served basis. It is disputed and contested by social groups and actors with particular sets of interests. Positions within any society's sports space can thus be denied by dominant groups and alliances of interests. This sense of sports space as contested cultural temtory and as a sphere of established institutional interests is fundamental to our own conceptualization.

Other analysts (Williams & Giulianotti, 1994) also adopted the predictive mode in analysis of the forthcoming finals, and argued that a "predilection for the present," so characteristic of North American forms of popular cultural consump- tion, would hardly guarantee "a stable or lasting future" for professional soccer. For them, American participation would be a " 'fad': a pleasurable leisure experi- ence while it lasts, and perhaps profitable for sponsors and manufacturers, but unlikely to be replicated through a settled and successful national American league to replace the failures of the past" (Williams & Giulanotti, 1994, p. 14). Such social scientific analyses and commentaries were complemented by observations from inside the game. The English First Division soccer player Garry Nelson, striker for the South London side Charlton Athletic, was holidaying in Orlando with his family when the Finals began. His diary for Wednesday, June 15,1994,2 days before the opening game, contains an entry in which he notes that whoever wins the World Cup, it will not be the USA. Therefore, he goes on, "soccer/foot- ball is going to resist all the commercial efforts to catapult it into the big bucks stateside. It will remain the passion of the ethnic minorities and the 'safe' game

World Cup USA 245

that middle-class Wasp kids are allowed to play before they're considered mature and tough enough to play American football" (Nelson, 1995, p. 13).

In light of these analyses and predictions we look, in this article, at some themes and discourses around the buildup to World Cup USA '94, the event itself, and its legacy, as bases for an informed retrospective evaluation.

USA '94: The Buildup: Some Themes and Discourses

In 1988 the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), awarded the 1994 World Cup Finals to the USA. The United States Soccer Federation's (USSF) bid "received more votes than Brazil and Morocco put together" (Palmer, 1994, p. I), supported as it was by an infrastructure of stadiums, hotels, transport networks, and projected sponsors.

The choice of the USA as host for the World Cup Finals was greeted with a combination of disbelief; hoots of derision; and skepticism among journalists, com- mentators, and professionals, both within and beyond the USA. The draw for the tournament was held in December 1993, and even at that stage, just months before the event itself, print media columnists could seek to mobilize nationalist senti- ment against the most popular sport in the world on the basis that it was very strange indeed to give so much credence to a sport that was based upon the skillful manipulation of a round ball by the foot. Tom Weir commented that spectators in the USA are thrilled most of all by action from the waist up:

all arms and hands, things that happen from the waist up . . . The World Cup draw is Sunday and admit it, you don't care. And no matter how much this event gets crammed down your throat . . . you still won't care. But don't feel guilty about it. There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer, even if it is the national passion in Cameroon, Uruguay, and Madagascar. It's because you are an American, and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pickup or spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control. (Weir, 1993, p. 3C)

Such rhetoric is of course fueled by the columnist's eye for controversy, and there are many other places beyond the US where pick-up driving and channel surfing are well-established and extremely popular. But the implication is that (how- ever globalized they have become) these are quintessentially American activities, and that soccer is not. The subtext to Weir's tirade is a separatist and nativist one.

If US journalists were dismissive of soccer on the basis of an ethnocentric celebration of their own culture, other writers were uncritically celebratory of soc- cer and dismissive of US culture and mores. One British journalist, for instance, stressed the more absurdist side of the draw in a puritanical piece on Las VegasIUS culture:

filthy lucre it is that bought one of sport's great events for a nation of philis- tines who continue to treat it with yawning indifference . . . the American organizing committee called a media conference for 12 noon, and arrived 65 minutes late. What followed was truly Pythonesque, with Roy Post, of the US Mint, treating the world's football writers to a lengthy dissertation on his commemorative coin programme. (Lovejoy, 1993, p. 24)

Monty Python's Flying Circus (the classic surrealist British comedy series), Mickey Mouse, and Disney-these were the cultural references and metaphors with which

246 Sugden and Tomlinson

Lovejoy made sense of the draw. Though the metaphor of the "circus" is multifac- eted, evoking notions of festival, fun, entertainment, daring, as well as clowns and ridiculousness, British journalistic responses to the draw touched more upon the clownishness and the absurdity-as well as a perceived tackiness--of the event. Other British sports journalists (Gardner, 1994; Lacey, 1993; Wilson, 1991) were skeptical about or dismissive of the stages of the buildup and media events such as the draw (though nothing could be less slick, sophisticated, or engaging than the televised draw for the English FA Cup, even in its revised prime-time format as launched in Autumn 1995).

The draw itself was broadcast in the UK on the obscure Eurosport cable channel, in a mid-evening slot up against the competitive schedules of the terres- trial network channels. It opened with a series of welcomes from apparently high- profile television, film, and sports celebrities, including the movie stars Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges and several sports stars. "Hello world, welcome to the USA" was the repeated line as these celebrities performed, for the most part, lim- ited tricks with a soccer ball. US President Bill Clinton then appeared to state that the country was "proud and excited" to host the World Cup and that "World Cup fever" had gripped the whole nation right through to the White House. He then relayed some participation statistics that showed that soccer was the fastest grow- ing youth sport in the United States. Three thousand guests at the Las Vegas draw were then offered snippets on the world profile of the game, with movie celebrity Faye Dunaway cohosting the program. Dr. Joao Havelange, President of FIFA, was welcomed for what the host acknowledged as "one of the most complicated draws" ever to have been conducted, linked as it was to a seeding system and the demographics of ethnic and immigrant communities across the venue cities and regions. The holders of the World Cup trophy passed the Cup to Havelange, and he passed this on to Alan Rothenberg, lynchpin of the organization World Cup USA '94. Rothenberg stated that it was with "pride and humility" that he accepted the trophy for the period of the Finals, which, he was convinced, would "establish a legacy for USA soccer to flourish at every level of play," including at the level of a new professional league-the proposed Major League Soccer-which would soon rank with any other in the world, and for which Rothenberg himself was responsible. Soon after awarding the Finals to the USA in 1988, HFA, it has been claimed, had been active in campaigning against the USSF's incumbent elected president, Werner Fricker, and had been directly implicated in the election of Rothenberg as his successor. Palmer reports Rothenberg on this: "The World Cup was dead in the water when I came in. . . .There was even talk about taking it away from America" (Palmer, 1994, p. 2). The draw, and the line-up at the draw, were testimony to Rothenberg's revivalist impact.

Roberto Baggio of Italy was presented with not just the Player of the Year award, but also with the Adidas Energizer trophy; a few welcomes were then shown from some of the host cities. Mickey Mouse introduced the viewer to the attrac- tions of Orlando, Florida; night life, cars, and people were highlighted as the spe- cial qualities of Detroit, for instance. Nike, Delta, and Ope1 graphics then led into a sustained Nike advertisement-"You can't live without. . . . Just do It7'-which conflated soccer, sex, and youth style before the event returned to welcome the top FIFA careerist, Sepp Blatter.

The razzmatazz of the buildup anticlimaxed in singer Diana Ross' penalty kick at the Opening Ceremony in Chicago on July 17. She struck the ball with a

World Cup USA 247

jerky mechanical swing of the leg. The ball rolled painfully and apologetically wide, and simultaneously the goal itself collapsed. Ironically, the Italian star Baggio was to shoot the deciding penalty of the Final over the bar in Pasadena just a few weeks later.

Nevertheless, early concerns at the staging of the event in the USA were assuaged by the time of the later stages of the buildup. The goals would stay the same size, the matches would still be played in two 45-minute halves rather than in quarters, and all the matches would be played on grass. Indeed, skepticism among some was tempered by an eager anticipation of the effect of some brave innova- tions by FIFA: a subtle amendment to the offside law that would favor attacking play; the stricter interpretation of foul and violent play that would inhibit the more physically intimidating side of the game, especially among defenders, and so pro- mote creativity; a strict line on how to deal with injured players; and the award of three points to teams for first-round wins. These innovations matched the image of soccer in the USA that sponsors were keen to promote-a free-flowing, creative game with few of the trappings of overt aggression and violence characteristic of other top-level professional team sports.

USA '94: The Event

A barrage of quantifiable facts can be marshaled in support of a case for the success of the event. Media viewing figures, both for the USA and the rest of the world; ticket sales and capacity crowds; merchandise turnover; and computer in- novation were all features of USA '94 that cannot be ignored; but they are not the primary focus or concern of this paper. For such data alone cannot evoke the cul- tural impact of the event. Though before, during, and in the immediate wake of the event these indicators seemed to set the stage well for the legacy anticipated and predicted by Rothenberg, the actual nature and impact of the event cannot be cap- tured by such quantifiable indicators. In this section, therefore, we emphasize much more the cultural dimensions of the event, based upon our own observations on the East Coast for the opening days of the tournament, on the West Coast for the final stages, and on our immersion in the event itself within US and UK sports culture.

On the eve of the Ireland-Italy game we arrived in New York City, meeting up with Irish American football fans in Manhattan. On the first night of the tourna- ment, P.J.'s Irish bar revealed the cognitive complexities of contemporary forms of global sports affiliation.

To enter P.J.'s on any night is to step into a twilight world between the United States and Ireland. To enter the bar the night before the Republic of Ireland's open- ing World Cup game against Italy in Giants Stadium was more like stepping out of New York and into Dublin. The place was decorated as it would be on the eve of St. Patrick's Day. It was packed with Irish-Americans, Canadian-Irish, and other Diaspora Irish from as far afield as Japan and Australia and countless fans who had made the trip from Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. Many were gath- ered around a large screen at the far end of the bar watching reruns of and post- mortems on Spain's surrender of a 2-0 lead in its opening game with South Korea. Others were hanging around the counter, quaffing beer and competing with the hard rock blaring from the juke box, with their own mixture of Irish laments and football songs.

On a smaller television set, some were watching the fifth game in the NBA

248 Sugden and Tomlinson

basketball finals between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets live from Madison Square Garden. There was plenty to watch here. But suddenly a groan issued from P.J.'s as live coverage of both the soccer tournament and the basket- ball game was suspended to bring live coverage of an even bigger, unfolding sports drama: former all-American football star and media personality O.J. Simpson's flight from the system of justice. On the screen appeared a white Bronco being pursued along a Los Angeles highway by a phalanx of black-and-white patrol cars and a swarm of police and media helicopters. The start of one of the USA's longest running sport-related stories of all time was upstaging basketball and the World Cup. That week, the New York Yankees also beat the Baltimore Orioles in Yankee Stadium, and Tabasco Cat was hot winning the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park. In American Football, the New York Giants and the New York Jets were to begin preseason training the following week. As Markovits asserted on the basis of his historical and social scientific analysis, there are few openings in fiercely con- tested American sports space. This truth was subjectively experienced by every occupant of P.J.'s Irish American bar on the night of the first day of USA '94 (Sugden & Tomlinson, 1994~; for corroborating accounts, see also Usborne, 1994, and Wilson, 1994). Scottish novelist Don Watson, elsewhere in New York, was at that moment in

a place called 188 Houston, which is usually a music bar but has been taken over tonight by Knicks fever. . . . The Knicks will win this game, to put them 2-1 up in the series and in sight of the NBA Championship, but this will be dwarfed on TV by the news that breaks as we watch in the bar, dumbfounded . . . O.J. Simpson has been found, and that now famous scene of him driving up LA Highway 405 in the white Bronco is being broadcast live on one of the six television screens in the bar. . . obligingly, Channel 4, which is broad- casting the Knicks game, puts an insert of the O.J. chase on the picture. (Watson, 1994, p. 72)

The matches of the opening day of the World Cup soccer tournament were low profile in comparison. In sports bars across the USA, where visiting fans and soc- cer fans among ethnic minority populations gathered, cultural misunderstandings and disputes were manifest on this inaugural night of the soccer World Cup. This reaffirmed the reciprocal ethnocen&ism that can characterize culture clashes in sport, as portrayed in, for instance, Rayner's idiosyncratic account of the noncommunication between American and British males on the theme of "foot- ball" (Rayner, 1992, pp. 44-45). Our own observations, corroborated by other writ- ers, analysts, and commentators, show such interpretive conflicts over the mean- ing of football to be widespread in the dynamics of USAtnon-USA sports publics.

Nevertheless, where soccer's cosmopolitan roots were manifest, a truly in- ternational event was under way. Earlier the same evening, Don Watson had been celebrating the South Koreans' fightback in the game against Spain: "In a bar in New York City a Honduran and a Scot slap palms in celebration of a goal scored in Dallas by a South Korean" (Watson, 1994, p. 72).

The carnival atmosphere in Southern California on the weekend of the World Cup Final reaffirmed soccer as the worldwide people's game, with cosmopolitan parties on the streets of Santa Monica and Pasadena, and a global festival at the Rosebowl, Pasadena, for the Final between Italy and Brazil. The event was a re- sounding success (television executives no doubt sweated at the lack of goals in a

World Cup USA 249

godless draw, but revived for the dramatic climax of the penalty shoot-out). The Final was a quintessential celebration of sport's contribution to global consumer culture, with flags of competing nations matched by banners of sponsoring muIti- nationals. The prematch spectacle included cheerleaders, massed bands, rock-and- roll singers and jazz musicians, downs, fly-pasts by the United States Air Force, and an invasion of the Rosebowl playing area by hundreds of children drawn from the USA's ethnically diverse population. And, for the first time in World Cup his- tory, the team of the host nation did a lap of honor at the tournament final with the youngsters. The great Brazilian soccer player Pele also skipped into the grounds with singer Whitney Houston. The establishment of the world sports organiza- tions-Samaranch of the International Olympic Committee, Nebiolo of the Inter- national Amateur Athletic Federation, and Havelange of FIFA-were in the best seats in the house, along with Alan Rothenberg. In the seats next to our own sat three Ulster men from Coleraine. They had a point to make with images drawn not from sports merchandising, but from the tortured history of Ireland. They held aloft between them a large Ulster flag, the red cross of Saint George against a white background with the red hand of Ulster and a gold crown at the center. Here to support any team that competed against the Republic of Ireland, the final be- tween teams from predominantly Catholic countries appeared to present them with a dilemma. This they resolved by supporting nobody, sitting stoically and silently for the duration of the game. If globally popular sports can be vehicles for interna- tional understanding and mutual respect, their capacity also to symbolize and os- sify conflicts was starkly reaffirmed by these Ulster loyalists.

Tn a spectacular postmatch finale, fireworks displays recolored the Califor- nian skyline, and vintage biplanes meandered through the colors. For this conclud- ing scenario, Darryl Hall boomed out the soundtrack with a gutsy rendition of Glory Land, the World Cup '94 anthem.

Three and a half million tickets had been sold for the 52 matches of the finals, a FIFA record; and much to the delight of the sponsors and TV moguls, several billion viewers had tuned into the games all around the world. The fans were happy; FIFA and the organizers and their contractors could be congratulated on a challenging job well done; the official sponsors had had undoubted value for money-good news for Canon, Coca Cola, Energizer, Fuji Film, General Motors, Gillette, JVC, Master Card, McDonald's, Philips, and Snickers; and the media were content, some even apologetic and eating humble rather than mom's apple pie. Grahame L. Jones, for instance, recognized not just the creditable performance of the USA team in getting beyond the first round of the tournament, but also the "drama and pathos and emotion and passion and patriotism" in a "World Cup filled with spectacular games and stirring upsets" (Jones, 1994, p. 28); and there would be a huge windfall for noble causes such as UNICEF (Sugden & Tomlinson, 1995a). The World Cup Final was a truly spectacular and memorable climax (with music, dancing, fireworks, celebrities) to a buoyant tournament. There may have been a lack of goals in the final throes of the tournament, but Roberto Baggio's imitation of Diana Ross finished the action in unforgettably theatrical style. Would the legacy promised by the USA organizers be grasped though? Would the people's game, the global game, thrive when the circus left town? In responding to this question, glib prophecy and thin history must both be avoided. Eighteen months on from the event is a short timescale on which to base any substantive historical assessment. Our analysis should therefore be seen as a preliminary one, open to

250 Sugden and Tomlinson

discussion, debate, and response. At the same time, the deep-rootedness of the long-term trends that continue to affect the context and profile of soccer in US sports culture is such that the analysis-however preliminary--is sociologically and sociohistorically well-founded. These points should be borne in mind as the legacy of USA '94 is assessed.

USA '94: The Legacy

The World Cup had a bigger media impact in the USA than many pessimists had anticipated, hailed as "the surprise sports story of the year7' with television ratings "20%-30% higher than many expected" (Media Sports Business, 1994, p. 10). Live games on the ESPN cable channel attracted viewing figures equal to the rating for prime-time Wednesday Major League Baseball games: "The July 17 championship final, Brazil vs. Italy, drew an unprecedented 9.5124 (8.95 mil.) on ABC plus another 1.62 mil. on Univision, the Spanish network available on cable and off-air TV" (Media Sports Business, 1994, p. 10). Press coverage also ex- ceeded expectation.

In light of this profile of the event, substantial impact was widely assumed. Claims have been made that the 1994 World Cup has generated a high level of interest and recruitment to the grass roots of the game. The United States Youth Soccer Association reported that in the follow-up to the World Cup its member- ship increased by 9% to 2.1 million; the American Youth Soccer Association's membership was claimed to have increased by 14% to half a million (Sports In- dustry News, 1995). And certainly young people comprised the primary market- ing target-"The US Soccer Federation claims 16m registered players-more than any other FIFA member--of whom most are children" (Berlin, 1994). But the professional game continued to face difficulties in "attracting investors, finding adequate stadiums and local franchise control" (Sports Industry News, 1995).

The professional game was fragmented, with the 5-year-old American Pro- fessional Soccer League (APSL) continuing to plan its own expansion from 7 to 12 teams at the same time as the proposed full-time Major League Soccer (MLS) initiative was stalling. Yet the highest average gate in the APSL, in the 10,000 capacity California State Fullerton stadium, was 5,300, following the Los Angeles Salsa, followed by averages of 4,200 and 4,873 for teams in a different country, the Montreal Impact and the Vancouver 86ers respectively (Media Sports Busi- ness, 1994, p. 11). As Paul Gardner's overview (Gardner, 1995) has also indicated, the situation a year on from USA '94 did not augur well for the future of profes- sional soccer in the USA. The new professional league (Major League Soccer), pledged to FIFA when the Finals were given to the USA, had still not started up, and its starting date had been put back from the postponed date of April 1995 to a further postponed date of April 1996. Ten teams were planned, but only eight sites had been found by April 1995. Gardner describes a divided, factionalized, part- time soccer culture in the USA, with four existing leagues (two of these indoor) currently in existence, and none of them willing to give up any share of the soccer market. The US public is also used to paying to see the best, and to hailing its indigenous sports as "world-class." An English professional soccer star with many years of experience of the game in the US, Rodney Marsh, pinpointed this, 3 years before the event, as a problem for the future of the game after the World Cup:

World Cup USA 251

1995 will be the kill or cure year. . . Assuming the World Cup is a success in soccer terms . . . assuming the football captures the American imagination, the pro clubs here will have to show a big improvement or go under. Once people have seen the best there is no way they'll go back to watch second- rate stuff. (Wilson, 1991, p. 39)

The ever acerbic football journalist Brian Glanville reiterated this point after the Finals: "Having watched the World Cup, Americans were never going to settle for junk soccer" (Glanville, 1995, p. 72).

Where soccer did thrive in the immediate wake of the USA '94 adventure was where it had thrived before-in the schools, among particular ethnic commu- nities, and among some women. This is where the sponsorship had already been targeted. The banana retailer Chiquita Brands International sponsored the Chiquita Cup, Fair Play, Clinics, and Soccer Challenges, essentially grass roots programs for youth soccer. Chiquita was also an Olympic soccer and US soccer sponsor. But its World Cup marketing drive confirmed soccer's specific market:

According to Chiquita the company will be focusing on its soccer sponsor- ship through World Cup '94. . . . ChiquitaBrands target 3 demographic groups: children ages 15-16; women ages 25-34; and adults 55+. . . looks for quality events with a 'healthy image' and family image. (Friedman, 1994, p. 48)

Thriving Mexican Leagues playing their matches in Southern California, Hispanic crowds flocking into Los Angeles stadiums for an El Salvador versus Denmark match (Kuper, 1994, p. 157), healthy and athletic women (even if world champi- ons and potential gold medalists at the inaugural Olympic women's soccer tourna- ment in Atlanta in 1996), and senior citizens and children-whatever commitment to soccer these groups represented would be unlikely to guarantee any inroads by soccer into the core sports space of the USA. In this respect the business commu- nity was focused and realistic concerning where soccer's potential in the US mar- ket really lay-belying the rhetoric of Rothenberg and the like.

Staging the event well was a matter of civic pride for many and massive personal profit for a few. There are direct comparisons with the Olympic Games here. In Los Angeles in 1984, armies of volunteers were recruited to help stage the Summer Olympics at the peak of global cold-war politics. Controversies raged over whether these volunteers could be provided with working lunches; the Los Angeles Organizing Committee reported a surplus of 225 million dollars. At the World Cup Finals 10 years on, this same productive-and certainly from some perspectives exploitative-dynamic provided the base for the spectacular staging of a global event of staggering profitability. Tony Mason has summarized the im- pact of the World Cup (Mason, 1995, p. 152). Crowds averaged 68,604, and the aggregate spectator figure was 3,567,415. The 94,194 spectators at the final in the Rosebowl, Pasadena paid $43.5 million for their tickets, an average price of nearly $462 per ticket. Three million dollars' worth of World Cup merchandise was sold at airport and hotel gift stores operated in the USA by the British WH Smith com- pany. And Univision, the Spanish language television network, generated twice as much advertising revenue as during the previous World Cup, Italia '90.

This outcome was not merely accidental or a stroke of serendipity for the organizers. Scott Parks Le Tellier was featured in the British press in 1993 as not just "the managing director and chief operating officer" of USA '94, but also as a

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World Cup USA 253

For the 50 hours a week reported for 1991 (for roles of Secretary, Managing Director, and Chief Operating Officer), Le Tellier's documented annual "compen- sation" was $174,000, with a further $148,697 reported for "other allowances" (Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service, 199111992, Part Y). Le Tellier's address in this return is a Virginia one. For his 0.5 hours per week as Honorary Chairman and Director, Henry Kissinger claimed nothing. For his 20 hours per week as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President Alan I. Rothenberg is documented as receiving no compensation, and just $2,500 in "other allowances." In the following year, Scott Le Tellier, still working 50 hours a week, received $186,000 "compensation," and $414,291 for "other allowances7'-"Mr. Le Tellier's other allowances include the accelerated payment to him of certain vested post-1994 World Cup salary continuation benefits and of expenses and al- lowances associated with his relocation from Virginia to California" (Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service, 199211993, Statement 11, Part V). In this same return, Alan I. Rothenberg was documented as receiving no "compensa- tion," as in the previous year, and $30,000 in "other allowances." But the Treasury was also informed that

The Board of Directors has authorized the payment of salaried compensa- tion to Mr. Rothenberg. Mr. Rothenberg has elected to defer the compensa- tion pending a determination that a sufficient surplus exists from World Cup USA 1994, Inc. operations to satisfy all other obligations. (Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service, 199211993, Statement 11, Part V)

Perhaps the World Cup Organizing Committee's board members did not all recog- nize the full implications of this authorization, made as it was at a time when Rothenberg, as Cart reports, declined a salary offer of $350,000 per annum (Cart, 1994, p. Cl).

Rothenberg had taken over responsibility for the World Cup organizing com- mittee soon after election as USSF president and had assumed a central position in the tangled networks of the USA's soccer developments. Palmer comments,

What bothers some people is that MLS, which is headed by Rothenberg, received £500,000 from World Cup USA, whose chairman is Rothenberg, to pay for its business plan which it submitted to the USSF, of which Rothenberg is president. . . . No-one was very surprised when MLS beat two other bids to set up the national league and then was given $3.5 million by World Cup USA for start-up costs. (Palmer, 1994, p. 2)

No one seemed very surprised either when Rothenberg's claims about the legacy of the World Cup event looked to have little foundation.

This detail of the financial transactions at the heart of the USA World Cup administration is not an indulgent excursus, a mere empirical aside. It is funda- mental to understanding the basis on which the USA World Cup was staged. Like the 1984 Olympics before it, the event was staged to celebrate the ways in which the United States of America could meet a challenge and put on an efficient and spectacular global show. But it was also a gold rush for a thrusting and entrepre- neurial professional elite, whose commitment to soccer development has been questioned. A former English professional soccer player, Graham Ramsay, has said of Rothenberg that "All the reasons for him being involved are financial. He's

254 Sugden and Tomlinson

not there for the sport. The World Cup is like a big circus going through town" (Palmer, 1994, p. 2). British football journalist Brian Glanville questions Rothenberg's, as well as Havelange's credentials: "Havelange . . . has this much in common with the Czar of American Soccer, Alan (£7 million or more) Rothenberg: neither has any real feeling for the game" (Glanville, 1995, p. 72).

As has been noted, "the World Cup provided a terrific sampling opportunity among American viewers" (Hudson & Boewadt, 1995, p. 266). And some cash will certainly have flowed to the grass roots of the game: "The estimated eco- nomic impact of the circus on the USA was a cool $4 billion, with a direct profit of over $20 million to the US organizers" (Fynn & Guest, 1994, p. 381). But the real legacy of the USA World Cup, once the circus left town, has been the model of a mean, lean, and immensely profitable event management that the organizers of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games seek to replicate. You don't have to like sport to do that. It helps if you do, but the driving force behind USA '94 was a combination of local pride, global posturing, and personal ambition.

This initial evaluation of the nature and impact of USA '94 shows that the Markovits thesis on the fullness of the sport space in the USA is not undermined by the success of the event. For the event was in many ways, whatever its profile in the Summer of 1994, marginal to that space.

Even when the established sports space of the USA was disrupted and ren- dered theoretically vulnerable by strikes in major sports in the immediate wake of the World Cup in the Autumnminter of 199411995, this could not be seized as an opportunity to establish professional soccer, for the public and the sponsors re- mained skeptical about the place of soccer within the canon of US sports cultures.

Conclusions

To combine historical, sociological, political, economic, and cultural analy- ses has been the interdisciplinary challenge of this piece, drawing too upon an eclectic range of methods and sources, from market research surveys to our own and others' participant observation and investigative journalism. We have worked in the tradition of the cultural sciences, as a Pan-European might put it, and a tradition of critical social science and "investigative sociology" (Hargreaves & Tomlinson, 1992; Sugden, 1995; Tomlinson, 1984) that equates with a form of social history of the present. On this basis we have provided answers to the three questions posed in the introductory section of the article. The successful staging of the 1994 World Cup Finals was possible because the set of interlocking alliances and interests in world sport was conducive to its location in the USA, and because the latter's sports administrators and entrepreneurs could draw productively upon an expertise and pedigree in high-profile event management. The impact of this successful staging upon USA sports culture was minimal, due to the unavailability of appropriate forms of sports space within that society. And the impact of the tournament upon football itself has been negligible, though some of the playing reforms conducive to the marketing of the game in the USA have been imple- mented worldwide by FIFA, thus favoring attacking play and protecting the most creative skills. USA '94 also confirmed that a country that hosts successfully a global sports event need not be one of the top competitors in that sport. This will certainly encourage future bids from emergent soccer nations such as Japan and South Korea (fiercely competing into 1996 for the 2002 World Cup Finals), which

World Cup USA 255

have the economic, transport, and communication infrastructure in place for the hosting of an event of this scale. In providing these answers, we have clarified the nature of the success of the USA World Cup as event and spectacle and the cote- rminous and persistent problems for professional soccer in gaining any significant foothold in the territory of dominant USA sports.

The analysis offered here is presented as a modest case study that can be drawn on to inform some central debates in contemporary social theory and a critically informed sociology of sport-including themes concerning cultural af- filiation and identity, the nature of national identity as expressed in a particular society's sports culture, and the process of the intensifying globalization of some aspects of popular culture. Maguire has warned against monocausal thinking on some of these issues, and has argued persuasively for the adoption of "multicausal analyses" through which "we can study the unintended basis of intended social actions that characterize. . . global commingling" (Maguire, 1994, p. 421). Houlihan, too, observes that classifications and typologies are useful in specifying different patterns and "varieties" of globalized relationships, and he presents a taxonomic model of "reach" and "response" as a means of developing "a more useful conceptualization of globalization" (Houlihan, 1994b, pp. 370-37 1). World soccer culture has "reached only partially and unevenly into the sports cultures and space of the USA, met by responses across the last century that range across the three included in Houlihan's model: the conflictual, participative, and passive. In USA '94 the passive response gave way to some extent to an expanded participative response, but with scarce indication of any long-lasting transformation in the cul- tural position and social profile of the sport.

Analysis of contemporary forms of worldwide sports events shows the vari- ety and complexity of forms of the reachlresponse dynamic characteristic of sports as they become more significant worldwide phenomena. Analysis of such cases can also benefit from awareness of Maguire's cautionary remarks concerning the dangers of monocausal thinking. But-and despite Maguire's comment that our form of thinking "remains locked in a 1970s conceptual time warp" (Maguire, 1994, p. 399)--our preliminary analysis of the impact of World Cup '94 is also a reminder that central to some major trends in the globalization of world sport is a political economy that merges the interests of transnational bodies such as FIFA, multinational corporations, and national and regional elites. These interests merge to produce economically profitable outcomes that are entirely intended and, as our analysis demonstrates, identifiable. In this light, to paraphrase Robertson, the analy- sis is offered as an example of the study of an actual form of a globalizing ten- dency, and of, again in Robertson's words, the concrete structuration of one of the world's premier sports events. The analysis is also testimony to the relevance of the economic and the culture-ideology dimensions of transnational practices (Sklair, 1991, p. 6) for an understanding of globalizing sports. The false promises of some of the prophets and makers of USA '94 can only really be explained as examples of the ideological-the masking of real interests and values geared toward a set of particular interests-exploitation of the situation. The embryonic soccer culture of the USA was never likely to make significant inroads into the established sports space of that cul- ture. Further analytical and interpretive work is unlikely to contradict this conclusion. What would repay further research effort would be the continuing investigation of the sociological conditions underlying the social relationships that made USA '94 possible, but at no expense to an ironically vulnerable US sports establishment.

256 Sugden and Tomlinson

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Acknowledgments

The authors' debts should be clear from the list of references. We would also like to express our gratitude to our respective universities (when the fieldwork for this article was conducted, Dr. John Sugden was at the University of Ulster) for support that allowed us to spend time in the USA during the 1994 World Cup and after.

We would like, too, to record our thanks to Dr. Wayne Wilson of the Amateur Ath- letic Foundation of Los Angeles, for directing us to some key sources; to Dr. Alan Sack at the University of New Haven, for an invitation to speak on some of the themes of this article; to the three anonymous Sociology of Sport Journal reviewers for their perceptive, positive, and supportive responses to the submitted manuscript; and to Professor Andy Markovits of the University of California (Santa Cmz) for generous and stimulating re- sponse to our book Hosts and Champions, a response that included hospitality and good conversation in the best spirit of international scholarship.