Introduction:
Last week, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lock eyes with one of my all-time soccer idols, Wayne Rooney, and ask him the most random question of all time.
Basically, I asked him how he felt about a TV show that doesn’t even exist yet: the rumored behind-the-scenes docuseries for MLS on Apple TV. But, instead of shrugging away the question (like I half expected him to do in a post-match presser after a loss), he gave me a very thoughtful answer:
Wayne Rooney burning a hole through my skull with a single glance (Via The City Boys Show)
“I think it’s great for the fans. I’ve watched a few of the ones that have been on already” he declared confidently, with his delightfully Scouse tone. “But of course it has to be right for the players”, he added, “the players need to be comfortable.”
He rounded out his answer by chuckling out with a shrug and a nod, “I’m sure it’s gonna come. I’m sure.”
But, what exactly are we talking about here? What’s coming? And why was Rooney so confident in its arrival, its effect on fans, and stressing the need for players to be comfortable?
Some Background:
There’s a whole lot of “new” going around Major League Soccer these days - even more so than usual for the ever-mercurial young league.
Did MLS undergo their biennial re-org of their playoff format? You bet they did. Boom, now there’s a wild card matchup and a 3-game series to kick off the first round.
Was a new Concacaf-sanctioned tournament announced? Of course there was! The League’s Cup will play its inaugural running this summer, where MLS and Liga MX clubs will duque it out in a World Cup-style, knockout tournament smack in the middle of July.
Is there another new expansion team joining the league this year? Obviously! It’s MLS…we do this every year…right? St. Louis City have joined the league, and promptly won its first FIVE matches (…okay that part doesn’t happen every year).
St Louis City SC celebrating one of their many goals already this season (Via MLSsoccer.com)
But, there is one "new" thing that is new even by MLS standards, and that’s the Apple TV deal. Everything about this beast feels completely and utterly different than anything we’ve seen before, and we’re still very much in its growing stages.
Fans are getting used to the tech giant’s fresh approach to covering the league, and additional content like MLS 360 and the MLS Review show have been generally well reviewed so far. But, I think the greatest piece of MLS content on Apple TV could be yet to come, and that’s from the newly announced partnership of Apple TV and Box to Box Films.
While you might not be familiar with the name “Box to Box Films”, you probably are familiar with some of their recent work, which includes smash hit sports documentaries like F1: Drive to Survive, Full Swing, and Break Point.
Box to Box Films and some of their partnerships (Via me, I edited this one if you couldn't tell)
And, we’ve seen some massive success stories with this type of content in soccer already, with Amazon’s All or Nothing series, and FX’s global hit, Welcome to Wrexham.
While no specifics of the Apple and Box to Box partnership have been announced yet, you’d imagine a similarly styled docuseries could be in the works to cover Major League Soccer.
But, how would a Drive to Survive series even work for MLS? Would it cover all 29 teams? Or, would it pick one club to cover for a whole season? What kind of access would they have? There are so many questions to answer with a project like this.
So, since there have been no details released yet, and since I haven’t seen anyone else do this, let’s try to design this series from the ground up. For now, I’ll call it MLS: Common Goal.
How this could work:
I’m calling it ‘Common Goal’ because I think the best way of going about it would be league-wide, wholistic coverage of MLS, rather than doing deep dives into individual clubs for an entire season like we saw in All or Nothing. This is, admittedly, a huge challenge given there are 29 clubs in the league already, with more on the way. But, it falls in line with how MLS and Apple have organized themselves up until this point.
MLS has always been a “league first” organization that prioritizes the growth of the league as a whole rather than the growth of any one individual club. Apple’s new deal has helped this narrative, as the common game times on Saturdays have shepherded viewers into watching the aforementioned MLS 360, which provides whip-around style coverage of every game at once, similar to NFL RedZone.
MLS 360 on Apple TV (Via Apple TV)
I think you could bring that same whip-around style content to any given episode of MLS: Common Goal. As you may have seen in Full Swing, Box to Box’s golf series, episodes will often do deep dives into individual competitors, and connect each competitor with a common theme, struggle, or goal at hand.
I think this same strategy could work in an MLS setting. For example, one episode may be about rivalries, and could do deep dives into different MLS rivalries from the point of view of each club. The episode could bounce back and forth between the clubs involved, taking a behind-the-scenes look into their training and preparation through the week, and ultimately culminate with the rivalry match being played in some theatrically-produced rendition of the match highlights.
Other common episode themes could include supporters’ culture of different MLS clubs, or episodes that highlight big name designated players, young rising talents, or even top coaches. Whatever the theme may be, I’m sure they could connect these commonalities across multiple clubs in each episode, while peeling back the curtain and giving unique insight into each team involved.
Jordan Morris Getting Interviewed Behind-the-scenes (Via Seattle Sounders on YouTube)
By the end of the season, this could easily cover each of the 29 clubs league-wide, providing all of them with at least some of the spotlight.
Hopefully, if done well, the series won’t just be able to capture all of these individual storylines, but the larger narrative of that MLS season in particular. So, while fans would be getting insight into particular matchups, players, rivalries, and culture, they would also be getting a general overview of how the season is unfolding. Who are the contenders? Who’s punching above their weight? And ultimately, who’s winning MLS Cup?
The challenges
While a 29-team, in-depth docuseries of each MLS organization sounds like a truly amazing piece of content, it also sounds like a massive headache for anyone involved in making this thing come to life.
The first issue is one that Wayne Rooney mentioned himself right off the bat: “the players need to be comfortable”. And while Wayne seemed to be pretty un-bothered by the whole idea, I’m sure there are other managers who would be less than enthused to have everything they do or say potentially end up in a documentary.
Just think about how differently you would act if you were on camera all day today. Would you act the same? Would you speak the same way to your friends? Hell no you wouldn’t, you’d probably be like “oh my god I’m being filmed right now”.
Behind-the-scenes pre-match locker room chats (Via NYCFC on Twitter)
So, how exactly do we expect the players and coaches to focus on their actual job, which is winning matches, when they are basically serving as part-time actors in a TV show? Would players be able to interact the same way? Would coaches be able to give the same team talks? Or would it just all be one big distraction?
Separately, there would be the challenges of making sure each team is represented in the series. Now, I don’t think there should be an even split between each of the 29 clubs because, let’s be honest, some teams are just way more exciting than others.
But, if we’re continuing to push the “league first” narrative, every team has to be represented in some way. I’m not suggesting that the Colorado Rapids should get the same air time as LAFC, Atlanta and Seattle, but for the sake of telling the league-wide story, smaller market clubs can’t be over-looked here.
Wayne Jones, owner of supporter's pub in Welcome to Wrexham, just one of the cool details captured in the show (Via Daily Mail)
But, while sharing the spotlight between each club is great for pushing the whole league forward, it would limit how in-depth Box to Box would be able to go into any particular storyline or narrative for a given team. There are only so many hours of content you can jam into one season, so if you spread the attention across every team, you risk loosing the very details that made shows like Drive to Survive and Welcome to Wrexham so popular in the first place.
How Box to Box and Apple will sort this out, I have no idea. But, given the pedigree of both parties, I’d imagine they’d be able to figure it out. But, how they address the above issues could have a serious impact on the relative success of the show.
The Benefits:
In the end, what do we want MLS: Common Goal to achieve? Do we just want more MLS content to fulfill our insatiable desire for more soccer in our lives? Or, do we want something that’s transformative for the league and the sport? Given the impact we saw from F1: Drive to Survive, I would say the latter may not be as far-fetched as you might think.
Drive to Survive has been largely credited for helping Formula 1 achieve enormous growth of late in the United States, seemingly thrusting the sport from relative obscurity in America into something that a lot more people are paying attention to. To use a very unscientific bit of personal research, I had exactly zero friends who watched F1 before Drive to Survive, and I now have a lot of friends who watch F1, and credit the Netflix series for getting them started. I’m sure it’s the same for many of you…
Some of the over 240,000 fans that turned out to the F1 Miami Grand Prix last year (Via F1 Miami GP)
So, why can’t Major League Soccer do the same? Sure, MLS will always be competing for eyeballs with other more established leagues around the world, but maybe this could be our differentiator? Instead of trying to be the “best” league on the field, what if we could be the most entertaining league off of it?
I’ll reference an interesting excerpt here from my friends at Hudson River Blue, and their conversation with NYCFC’s President and CEO, Brad Sims:
“Sports teams are now media companies, they’re content companies. Only 1% of fans that we have in our ecosystem (that follow us on social media) actually attend our games. The other 99% consume in other ways.” He continued, “We need to lean into that. It’s a commercial opportunity to lean into that.”
NYCFC President and CEO, Brad Sims (Via NYCFC)
I couldn’t agree with Sims more. If MLS is going to differentiate itself from other soccer leagues around the world, or even from other American sports leagues, it is going to have to be from a content perspective. I strongly believe that good content will carry this league further than good soccer.
Can we compete with The Premier League on the pitch? No, absolutely not at this stage in MLS’ growth. But, can we create better content than the Premier League? Of course, why the hell not?
Soccer is a form of entertainment, and that entertainment doesn’t necessarily have to come from having the best quality product on the field. Rather, given the way soccer (and content in general) is consumed in today’s ever-growing digital world, the winners of this battle for eyeballs will likely be determined by which leagues do it the best off the pitch. Who can best grab people’s attention? Who can create the best narratives and storylines? And fundamentally, who can provide viewers with the best entertainment?
Hopefully, MLS can be the league that gets it right in that regard. If done correctly, a show like this theoretical MLS: Common Goal could be a huge driver in that battle to become the best content creators in global soccer.
A Brief Conclusion
So, will Box to Box films produce something resembling Drive to Survive for Major League Soccer? Probably, but you know as much as I do in that regard. All I can say at this stage is that it would be foolish not to do so given the success of Box to Box’s previous works and the ambitions of this league to become among the most popular in the world.
Apple TV has provided the league with a platform, and therefore an opportunity. Now, it’s up to Box to Box and MLS to capitalize on that opportunity.
In the end, I think the success of this theoretical show would be determined not just by its success among the already MLS faithful, but by how well it can penetrate the non-MLS market.
If it can grab the attention of soccer fans worldwide that don’t watch Major League Soccer, then I think you’d count it as successful. But, if it can capture the hearts and win the eyeballs of non-soccer fans, in the same way Drive to Survive did for non-Formula 1 fans, then you have yourself a smash hit, and something that could really drive MLS into a new era of popularity.
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