Two years ago, David Beckham’s arrival in Los Angeles was hailed as a cultural watershed akin to the Beatles landing in New York in 1964.
Not only would he transform professional soccer in this country, we were told, but he and his wife, Victoria, would be a celebutainment bonanza.
To say it hasn’t worked out that way would be a polite understatement.
Now he’s bolting altogether – first to play out the rest of the Italian league season with AC Milan, where he's been enjoying himself as a loan player, and then, most likely, for good at the end of the 2009 season.
What happened to the revenue streams the couple was supposed to generate in the worlds of fashion, music, movies and maybe more?
Where was the giant marketing machine that was supposed to get behind Posh and Becks, turning them into a whole new entertainment mini-industry?
Beckham himself was set to earn $250 million over five years – a multi-dimensional contract unprecedented in the history of any sport.
Now reports are everywhere that if the team he is playing for on loan, AC Milan, can come up with enough money to buy out his contract with the LA Galaxy, he'll be gone this week.
The English midfielder has made little impact as a player. He has spent inordinate amounts of time injured. His team has done nothing but lose. And he and Victoria have made about as much impact on the L.A. scene as a bad Eddie Murphy movie.
All this is putting egg on the face of Phil Anschutz, the Denver-based media mogul who made the ultimate decision to bring Beckham over in the first place.
Back in 2007, sources close to his company, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, told me he agreed to a Beckham deal only because of the potential impact across all his business properties, which include Walden Media, Regal Entertainment, various music and music booking interests and the land on which Los Angeles’ main soccer stadium, the Home Depot Center, stands.
At the time, Anschutz’s chief executive, Tim Lieweke, described the Beckham contract as “the most progressive in the history of sports” and a “master plan for the development of the MLS brand.”
One soccer marketing expert lavishly hailed Beckham as a “Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus type of athlete who doesn’t just transcend his own sport; he transcends sport itself.”
Now, AEG and the other stakeholders in Major League Soccer are furiously spinning a different line – that Beckham has, in spite of everything, been a good marketing boost for the league, that he has increased attendance, spurred the construction of dedicated soccer stadiums around the country, focused media attention on the game and generated millions of dollars in revenue through jersey sales and other merchandising spinoffs.
All that seems to be true – statistics recently gathered by the Sports Business Journal show a definite boost in television ratings for games featuring Beckham, as well as modest increases in game attendance, sponsorship revenue, and so on.
