David Beckham will be able to drive from his new home in Beverly Hills to the
Los Angeles Galaxy football stadium in 25 to 30 minutes. On a good day. On
a bad day - and there will be a lot of bad days - it will take him over an
hour each way to crawl through the sweltering Los Angeles gridlock.
Beckham will have to drive west along Sunset Boulevard, winding past the
verdant lawns and faux Georgian and Tudor mansions in Bel Air, some of which
even he could not afford, before turning south onto the 405 freeway. That's
the road O J Simpson famously drove on in his white Bronco, chased by the
cops. Once on the 405, Beckham will drive for about 20 miles, past LAX
airport into the vast, smog-laden flatlands of greater Los Angeles. Finally
he'll turn off at Vermont Avenue and go left onto 190th Street, into Carson.
He'll know he's not in Madrid.
There have been half-hearted attempts to clean up Carson in the past decade,
but it is still blighted by ageing oil refineries, car-wrecking yards, a
sulphur-recovery plant, junk yards and abandoned toxic dumps. It has a
population of around 100,000, mostly black and working class, but with
sizable Filipino and Samoan minorities. Many of its grindingly poor
residents live in the more than 25 trailer parks dotted around the city,
some just a couple of streets from the Home Depot Center. Yes, that's the
name of the stadium of LA Galaxy, the team that Beckham will start playing
for near the end of July. Unlike the football-crazy Hispanic regions of east
LA, almost none of the residents of Carson have any interest in football and
few seem to have any idea who Beckham is. A day after it was announced that
the world's most recognisable footballer would be coming to their fair city,
a local reporter took soundbites on the streets. "I've heard the name," said
Elito Santarina, a councillor, "but refresh my memory." "Did he do a movie?"
wondered a local businessman.
The people of Carson may not know or care who Beckham is, but the announcement
that he would be leaving Real Madrid, signing a five-year contract to play
football for Major League Soccer (MLS), was huge news around the world,
mainly because of the vast sums of money that were bandied around. "The deal
to bring Beckham to America is thought to be the biggest in sporting
history," claimed the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the conglomerate
that owns Galaxy, and Simon Fuller, the pop impresario who manages Beckham
through 19 Entertainment. According to AEG and Fuller, "the combined value
of the player contract with commercial opportunities in the US is in excess
of $250m". Such claims fuelled perceptions that the deal would make
Beckham the highest-paid sports star in the world, outpacing even Tiger
Woods, Michael Schumacher and the basketball player Kobe Bryant.
Money was only part of the historic nature of the deal, said Fuller and AEG.
They expected that Beckham's high-profile move to MLS would exponentially
boost American interest in the sport, which now ranks fifth behind American
football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey in attendance and revenues.
"David Beckham will have a greater impact on soccer in America than any
athlete has ever had on sport globally," insisted Tim Leiweke, AEG's
president and CEO.
Not everyone was convinced it was a wise move. Some felt that Beckham had
taken - or had been pressured into taking - the decision when he was at a
low ebb. He'd had a disastrous World Cup last summer; it was hard not to
feel sympathy for him when he burst into tears on the sidelines as England
crashed to defeat. He gave up the English captaincy and was dropped from the
team by the new manager, Steve McLaren. In three seasons with Real Madrid,
he and the other expensive "Galacticos" had failed to win a Spanish
championship. He was struggling with injury and finding it hard to keep his
place on the Real team. These observers felt that if Beckham, 32, returned
to form at Real, he could continue playing at the highest level in Europe
for a few more years. He'd have even more incentive if Real finally win the
Spanish championship this season, guaranteeing a place in the Champions
League next season. There was also the possibility that if McLaren could be
ousted as England manager, Beckham would reclaim his place in the team and
win the six more England caps he needs to reach the magic 100.
What is certain is that as soon as he kicks a ball in MLS, he can kiss goodbye
to the possibility of ever playing for England again. The standard of play
is so much lower than in Europe. Most of the best American players,
including 13 who play in the Premier League, are in Europe, tempted by the
high standards and the potential for greater financial reward. Whatever
misgivings some in Europe may have at waving goodbye to one of the greatest
football players and sporting presences in a generation - and, of course, to
his enigmatic wife, Victoria - on this side of the Pond, people are
quivering with anticipation. "I'm incredibly excited," says Jessica Morgan,
the co-creator of the influential blog gofugyourself.com, which dissects the
style shortcomings of Hollywood celebrities. "They are going to be a great
addition to our celeb-sighting lifestyle." "It will be great for us," says
Brandy Navarre, who runs the photo agency X17. "You don't come to Hollywood,
as famous as they are, looking to hide out and have a private life."
That was obvious when Victoria flew in and out of LA in the weeks following
the announcement, provoking a media firestorm whenever she landed at LAX.
She was looking for a house and a school for the kids. But the trips clearly
had a subtext: to establish Victoria as a brand name in the US. So, her
daily schedule leaked to the tabloids, she was tailed by scores of paparazzi
who snapped her every well-planned move. There she was, going in and out of
trendy stores; there she was, enjoying meals at the Ivy, one of the most
public spots in LA, with her new best friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
The strategy paid off. By the end of February a deal was announced for her
to star in her own six-part reality-TV series for the NBC network. "It will
give viewers a glimpse into what makes Victoria so popular and admired,"
said Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC. "Our audience can become insiders
in this fascinating personal view of what being 'Posh' truly represents."
"The Americans were falling over themselves to sign her up," said Simon
Fuller, who brokered the deal.
As the creator and producer of American Idol, the unbelievably successful
spin-off of Britain's Pop Idol, Fuller is currently the most powerful man in
American TV. Which can help when you're negotiating a deal. NBC offered
Victoria nearly $20m for the series. The announcement of the deal fuelled
speculation that the ambitious Victoria, obviously looking to revive her own
career and even re-form the Spice Girls, had been the driving force behind
the move to the US. Another possibility is that Fuller knew he had to offer
Victoria an enticement to move so she could help persuade David, who would
be earning the really big bucks - for her and for Fuller.
Whatever the truth, both the Beckhams now have a reason to be in LA. But
nobody quite knows where they will fit into Hollywood's unique social
pecking order. "It will be interesting to see if they continue to socialise
with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes or if they'll find themselves a new crowd,"
wonders Jessica Morgan. "It's possible they'll be like the cool new chick at
school: they'll get invited everywhere and get to hang out with a whole
bunch of people before they decide who they really want to be friends with."
"They're good-looking and rich, but I don't know where they're going to fit in
out here," says one movie producer with solid A-list credentials. "They
don't really have anything anyone wants here. I mean, they're not going to
be in movies. You're certainly not going to see them at Warren and Annette's
for dinner, talking about politics. They're going to have to find an 'issue'
if they want to be taken seriously: maybe something like breast cancer or
the environment." Whatever their own expectations, the Beckhams soon
discovered that the media hype deliberately generated by their imminent move
had serious downsides.
The most troubling was that some of the schools they were interested in were
horrified by the media circus that surrounded Victoria when she came to
check them out. What may have seemed like a normal media entourage to her
was the worst kind of arriviste faux pas to them. The schools were also
fielding furious calls from parents concerned about the paparazzo lines they
and their children would have to brave every day if Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz
were accepted there.
The other problem was that such vast sums of money were being talked about in
connection to the Beckhams that even the wealthiest denizens of Beverly
Hills and Bel Air were impressed. So when the Beckhams started
house-hunting, they found that prices were jumping as much as 25% when
sellers discovered who the potential buyers were. "They were looking to
spend no more than $20m," says Bruce Nelson, one of the top-end estate
agents in Beverly Hills. "But you'd be amazed by how little $20m buys."
The Beckhams were prepared to make an offer on Meg Ryan's seven-bedroom house
in Bel Air, but that transaction snarled, possibly because Ryan set the
price above $20m. At the end of April, Victoria flew into LA to sign an
agreement on a 13,149-square-foot, six-bedroom Italian-style single-storey
villa, a few blocks north of Sunset Boulevard. The Beckhams apparently paid
the asking price: $22m. The newly built house is described as "modern, airy,
very light and spacious with lots of windows".
But the property, which used to be owned by the emissary of the Sultan of
Brunei, has other benefits. It is very close to homes owned by some of the
most powerful people in LA: David Geffen, the music mogul and co-owner of
DreamWorks, and Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate. And Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes have just bought a house a couple of streets away.
As soon as interior designers heard the Beckhams had bought a house, they were
scrambling to pitch them ideas. "It could take them $2m to decorate," says
Gillian Lefkowitz, who designs for some of Hollywood's biggest stars. "I
think they'd go for a modern look." Of much greater long-term significance
is how David Beckham can meet the incredible expectations that he can
single-handedly transform football into an important sport in the US.
At a recent LA Galaxy vs Chivas USA game at the Home Depot Center (named after
a US DIY and home chain), most fans in the near-sellout 27,000 crowd were
convinced Beckham would have a huge impact on MLS.
"This place is going to go nuts when he arrives," said Daniel Zevallos, a
producer at a local Spanish-language TV station. Like Zevallos, many
supporters of MLS teams are Hispanic. The reason for Zevallos's excitement
was obvious: the Galaxy-Chivas game, which Galaxy won 3-1, was fun more for
the razzmatazz that Americans like with their sports, including fireworks
and constant interruptions on a huge video screen, than for anything that
happened on the pitch. "The quality is not here yet," said Jorge Casillas,
who works at a local photography company. Casillas is a supporter of Chivas,
which shares the Home Depot Center with Galaxy. "Beckham's far better than
the guys playing now. When Real Madrid played here it was like a soccer
clinic. Galaxy barely touched the ball." Whether one player can transform
the game in the US is doubtful, though.
To start with, football has almost no media presence. MLS is almost never
featured on TV sports shows and usually merits only a brief story in the
sports sections of newspapers the day after a game. The Spanish channels in
the US are dominated by games from Mexico, which are often shown live. But
AEG, which owns Galaxy, is betting Beckham will make a difference. AEG is
owned by the reclusive billionaire Phil Anschutz, who is worth around $7.8
billion. He's well known in Britain because he won the bid to turn the
Millennium Dome into the O2 sports and entertainment complex, and became
notorious for his friendship with John Prescott, whom he welcomed to his US
ranch.
AEG had long been interested in bringing Beckham to the US, and in 2005 AEG
and Beckham set up the David Beckham Academy at the Home Depot Center. But
their relationship, and AEG's relationship with Fuller, goes much further
back: AEG is one of the largest concert promoters in the US and has worked
closely with Fuller on the annual American Idol concert tours. Over the
years, top AEG executives, including Tim Leiweke, met the Beckhams, both for
business and socially. Leiweke believes they really connected when he went
for dinner at Beckingham Palace in 2003.
"David looked at us and you could tell he felt we had a chemistry between our
company and his family." The announcement of Beckham's arrival has already
been a financial boon to Galaxy, which claims it has sold $13.5m in
additional tickets. Galaxy has also signed a deal worth $20m over five years
with Herbalife, which sells nutritional and weight-loss supplements, to
carry the company's logo on its shirts.
The team has added other new sponsors, including Delta Airlines, with total
sponsorship income tripling to around $10m this year. Galaxy and Adidas are
also anticipating an increase in the sale of Galaxy- and MLS-related
products once Beckham starts playing: they will be rolling out a new strip,
and sales in the US and worldwide are expected to be huge. Even so, sales of
football items in the US are tiny compared with those of other sports.
Beckham's arrival will boost MLS-licensed product sales above the $150m sold
last year, but that's chicken feed if you consider the $3.5 billion the
National Football League (American football) makes in product sales each
year. Maximising those revenues is also important to Beckham and Fuller,
because, when all that hype is stripped away, it's clear that Beckham is
guaranteed nothing like the $250m that had been bandied about.
"The $250m figure was very calculated," believes Grahame Jones, who writes
about football for the Los Angeles Times and has followed the Beckham saga
closely. "It was a figure arrived at, as far as I can tell, by Beckham's own
people. They thought, 'This will make a huge splash if we say he is getting
$250m.'" In fact, it now seems clear that his salary from MLS will only
be $6.5m a year, while he looks to be guaranteed only about another $3.5m
through side deals with AEG, for boosting attendance, increasing sponsorship
revenues, and from jersey sales. This works out to only $10m a year, or $50m
over five years. That's not to be sniffed at, of course: assuming he plays
40 games a year for Galaxy, that works out to $250,000 every time he steps
onto the pitch. But it's a fifth of what people were led to believe he was
making from the deal. It's also much less than the salaries of a number of
big American sports stars. For instance, the 44-year-old baseball star Roger
Clemens has just signed a $28m, one-year deal with the New York Yankees.
Any additional money Beckham will earn will come from the endorsements and
sponsorships with companies like Adidas and Gillette that he already has,
and from any new sponsorship deals he signs. At the moment he is believed to
make around $25m a year from those deals. What will help him boost his
earnings is that, unless he is in Galaxy uniform, he will fully own his own
image rights - rights to earn money from having his name and face on
products.
This was always a big issue at Real Madrid, which insisted on keeping 50% of
its players' image rights. Even if he is able to leverage his earnings to
that $250m figure over five years - $50m a year - that still leaves him a
long way behind some other big sports stars. Tiger Woods earns around $90m a
year, and Michael Schumacher was estimated to have made around $85m in 2005.
But Beckham's people now refuse to talk about figures, even though they were
the ones who put the $250m into play.
"I would view it as a potential figure he could reach," says Simon Oliveira,
Beckham's spokesman at 19 Entertainment, "or even exceed. What I will say is
that the contract he has with Galaxy is quite unique for any player
globally. I don't know if there's any other sports figure who has a share in
the success he brings to the table, so if he has an impact on shirt and
turnstile sales, then he will get a percentage of that." That is unique,
particularly the revelation that Beckham will get a cut of the gate at the
games he plays.
The deal has not gone down well with some of the other team owners. They are
worried it will lead to the salary inflation that destroyed the attempt to
establish football in the 1970s, when players like Pelé and George Best were
lured to the US with huge salaries. They are concerned that MLS has thrown
all its eggs into the Beckham basket. To start with, it has totally
restructured its season - some say it's entire raison d'être - around the
arrival of its new megastar. Galaxy will now be playing just 12 league games
in the first half of the season, before Beckham arrives, and 20 after. And
most Galaxy games in the second half are away games, so he can be introduced
in almost every city that has an MLS team.
That alone would be a tough schedule, but as it seeks to extract its pound of
flesh from its new ambassador, MLS has already arranged a number of other
tournaments. Beckham is expected to make his first appearance against
Chelsea on July 21 in the World Series of Football, a four-team tournament
featuring Galaxy, Chelsea, the Korean team Suwon Bluewings, and Los Tigres
from Mexico. The winner will be crowned, in true American fashion, World
Series of Football Champion! Galaxy have also arranged a six-game,
post-season Asian tour that will take them to four countries including
Australia.
This backbreaking schedule will be tough for a player who has barely had a
break for two years: from the 2005-6 Spanish La Liga season, into the World
Cup, then into the 2006-7 La Liga season. No wonder he's been injured so
much and has seemed so out of sorts. And if, as expected, he leaves Real
Madrid in the last week of June, he may only have a three-week break before
he plays his first game for Galaxy.
The other problem is that the distances between cities in the US can be as
much as 3,000 miles, so there will be much more travel than he's used to.
Even worse, MLS has so far refused to allow Galaxy to charter a plane for
its away games. MLS is concerned that other teams won't be able to afford
charters and it doesn't want Galaxy to have an unfair advantage. That means
that Galaxy and Beckham will, God forbid, be flying commercial, which is a
nightmare, involving more travel time, delays, being forced to arrive and
land in public terminals, with all the security that entails.
It will also cause problems with other players. Beckham has professed a desire
to be treated like other players, but he, Frank Yallop, the coach, Alexi
Lalas, Galaxy's president and manager, and a few other high-ups will travel
first class. The rest of the team will be consigned to the "coffins" in the
back of the bus. Great for morale. When Beckham arrives in those cities,
he's going to face other challenges. The most jarring for people in Britain
will be the sight of him singing the American national anthem, The
Star-Spangled Banner, the words to which were written to bolster American
resolve during the 1812 war against Britain. "David's going to have to learn
The Star-Spangled Banner because we do it before every game," insists Lalas.
"It's part of the tradition of sports in the United States."
Beckham will also have to get used to another tradition: the open locker room.
The media will have access to him and the other Galaxy players before and
after every game. It's not clear that Beckham or his managers, who
negotiated the contract with MLS and AEG in just 10 days, realised how much
pressure he would be under. His managers are worried now, though, and have
been talking to Galaxy and MLS about the issues that concern them most, such
as how to deal with the crush of attention from the huge numbers of
journalists who will want to talk to him before and after every game.
It's surprising that Galaxy and MLS are going to put him under such stress.
They have so much money and prestige riding on him that the last thing they
can afford is for him to be injured. Beyond that, the possibility of injury to
Beckham and the fact that all MLS players' salaries are paid by MLS, not the
individual teams, raises serious doubts about how competitive the league can
be when its fortunes are so dependent on one superstar. Will word go out to
other teams to go soft on Beckham? Not to go in for the hard tackles? Will
referees be told to protect him? "The coaches say no, they are going to
treat him just like any other player," says Grahame Jones. "The league says
obviously we will have a word with the referees, not just to protect
Beckham, but to protect all the skilled players. So that's the party line.
Whether there is a private word to the referees is another matter.
It will be interesting to see if there is a pattern for players on opposing
teams getting cards for coming anywhere near him." Just to be sure, the
league has taken out an insurance policy to cover the eventuality of a
serious injury to Beckham, but that policy is unlikely to cover intangibles
such as his value to the sport as an ambassador. There's another issue that
will dog Beckham, because of his personal history.
As a standard-bearer for football in the US, he will have to keep his nose,
and other parts of his anatomy, completely clean. If there's any hint of
hanky-panky with nannies, or dirty text messages find their way into the
tabloids, his American adventure could come to a very sticky and costly end.
For one thing, under California's community property laws, if they divorce,
Victoria will be entitled to 50% of anything he makes while they're living
there. Also, in the US, "morality clauses" are standard in sporting
contracts and in those that stars like Beckham have with sponsors.
Oliveira denies Beckham signed such a clause. "Absolutely not," he insists.
Even so, the issue of morality is very real to Phil Anschutz. He is a
conservative Christian who likes his businesses to promote the traditional
family values he believes in. He will also be anxious that Tom Cruise, a
leading Scientologist, has become such an influence on Beckham. Before
agreeing to come to the US, Beckham said he had talked with Cruise for two
hours about it on the phone. "Obviously, I asked him for his advice, because
he is a very wise man and a very good friend of mine," Beckham said. "It's
going to be a big help for us to have friends when we arrive in LA."
Anschutz is right to be worried: Cruise would count the conversion of David
Beckham to Scientology as a huge coup. If Beckham is to be such a powerful
ambassador for football, just imagine what he could do for Scientology.
These issues will become clearer over the next few years, but in the
meantime, most people in Hollywood will be interested in the Beckhams for
what they have are most famous for - their personal style. "David is much
more fashion-forward than the typical Angelino," says Jessica Morgan. "We're
very casual here on the West Coast. Guys generally wear jeans and a dress
shirt and that's about as formal as they get. He definitely likes to push
the fashion envelope, so it will be interesting to see if he starts dressing
down or if everybody else starts dressing up.
"As for Posh, during the World Cup last year, every time you saw a picture of
her she was in short shorts and big sunglasses and a giant bag and wedges,
which is going to fit in fine." As they settle into their new life, it will
be fascinating to see, after all the initial hype, whether expectations
about what Beckham can achieve in the US will be reined in. At Galaxy, they
are already tamping them down. "He is without doubt a huge star," says
Lalas, "but he is coming to a city with many, many stars. I think he is
going to get a tremendous amount of attention. But that's the sort of life
he has created for himself."
Yes, it is the life that he has created for himself, and that much money will
surely compensate for many things. But, in a few years' time, when the
excitement has died down, how will he feel as he as he drives down the 405
to Carson four or five days a week, or boards another plane for another
forgettable game against another mediocre team in Kansas City or Salt Lake
City? It will be hard for him not to obsess about what might have been. If
he had not been injured in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. If Wayne
Rooney had not been sent off. If, if, if… Would Beckham really be seeing out
the last years of his amazing footballing career at the Home Depot Center in
Carson, when he could still be playing at the highest level in Europe?
Perhaps, as he watches his wife's career blossom, sees Fuller's already vast
bank account balloon with commission from his earnings, and listens to yet
another pitch from Cruise about Scientology, he may come to wonder if he
wasn't bounced, at a very low ebb in his life, into a decision he never
really wanted to make.
