Q&A with David Downs, Executive Director of the U.S. World Cup Bid

(WFI) David Downs, executive director of the U.S. bid, explains why landing the World Cup is important to American soccer and talks about the benefits of hosting the 1994 tournament, President Barack Obama’s support for the bid and what his committee aims to achieve at Soccerex in South Africa next week.

It's the latest in WFI's series of interviews with the 10 bids in the race for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. The other bids come from: Australia, England, Holland-Belgium, Indonesia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, Russia, and Spain-Portugal.

Downs has been involved in televised soccer in the U.S. for more than 30 years as an executive with both ABC and Univision Communications Inc. During this time, he aided successful negotiations with FIFA to acquire the U.S. TV rights to every World Cup beginning with USA ‘94, including the 2010 and 2014 tournaments.

Downs has been president of Univision Sports, the fifth largest TV network in the U.S., since 2001. He oversaw the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup and the 2006 edition in Germany.

Born in Leiden, the Netherlands, Downs’ family moved to the U.S. when he was a young child. He attended his first professional match in the early 1970s when his uncle took him to an Arsenal match at Highbury, turning him into a fan of the Gunners for life.

World Football Insider: What does the U.S. bid concept offer to FIFA and the global football movement?
David Downs: First of all we are very confident the United States is technically capable of hosting an absolutely first-class World Cup. We did it in 1994 and I think surprised some people back then. I don’t think it would come as any surprise if we were to host a wonderful World Cup in 2018 or 2022. Second, we believe very strongly that while the 1994 World Cup radically changed the soccer landscape in America for the better, there’s still some opportunity for growth and significant growth at that, hosting the World Cup here in nine or 13 years would I think really further that growth tremendously and be an inspiration to a whole new generation of soccer players, fans and officials and so on. And then finally because we have the luxury of not having to spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on construction of airports and roadways and stadiums and infrastructure in our cities, we can afford to focus on some of the more social aspects of a World Cup. By that I mean leaving a legacy of using the sport for positive social change or for promoting “green” aspects of staging the competition that may alter the way people think of sports for decades to come.

WFI: What is different between this bid and the one for the 1994 World Cup and what has U.S. Soccer learned from hosting that event?
DD: The process is dramatically different. Leading up to the 1994 World Cup this was much more of a story-telling exercise, almost like a lawyer doing closing arguments. Now it is much more of a contractual process. We’re not just explaining to FIFA why we believe we are ideal to host a World Cup, we’re literally contracting with cities and stadiums, and training sites, and hotels and the federal government for guarantees on how they will deal with the influx of tourists and athletes and officials. And that’s a dramatic difference. The biggest difference between 94 and what we’re shooting for from FIFA’s perspective is that there is not that element of doubt – is it right to award the United States, a country that arguably doesn’t have soccer as the number one national sport, the right to stage the most important event in the sport and possibly on the planet. I think that that’s not something that would be called into question from a technical standpoint. Obviously our competitors are worthy nations as well and have similar arguments for their ability to host. I just don’t think there is any doubt about the United States ability to host it, and prior to 94 there probably was some and it would have been legitimate.

WFI: How will the World Cup help promote soccer in the U.S.?
DD: If there is a World Cup coming to a city near you in a decade’s time, or whatever the actual time turns out to be, I think that will absolutely be on every youth soccer player’s mind. We’ve encouraged the cities that are in dialogue with us to have a decade-long marketing program that will promote the sport in their market through everything from staging international exhibitions with the top clubs in the world to youth tournaments. I think it’s only logical that if we have this World Cup on the horizon to inspire us all, it will be in the marketing plans of companies throughout the country that use sports in their marketing and that will have an enormous effect. You already see it in subtle ways and it will only get more so. One of my favorite examples to cite is ESPN these days… turn on Sportscenter and look for the top 10 plays of the day, you almost inevitably see a soccer highlight in those top 10 plays. That was not the case probably even five years ago. I think you would just see more of that happening and the impact would be tremendous.

WFI: What is the total budget being proposed and how many new stadiums need to be built?
DD: In our case not a single new stadium would be built for the purposes of hosting World Cup matches. It is quite possible that stadiums will be built between now and 2018 or 2022 for other reasons that would be ultimately used in the World Cup. It is virtually completed now but, for example, the new Meadowlands Stadium in New York which is being built for the Giants and the Jets is likely to be used for World Cup matches if we are lucky enough to host. Everything in our bid will be photographed, if new stadiums are built after we win so be it. We may consider including them if they are fantastic. But there is no cause for any new construction whatsoever. In one or two stadiums they may need to manipulate the first couple of rows to make sure there is plenty of room on either side of the pitch, especially down in the end zones. There is some temporary installation that goes into dolling up a stadium appropriate for a World Cup, but no construction from the ground up. Each country is going to have a different budget and we haven’t actually got to the point of figuring out what it’s going to cost, although we are certainly working on it like crazy. I mean you are talking about hundreds of millions clearly, but that is offset by revenue stream so it’s not a drain on anybody.

WFI: Has the World Cup bid learned anything from Chicago’s failed

U.S. Soccer Federation president and bid chairman Sunil Gulati with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger , who is on the board of directors

bid for the 2016 Olympics?
DD: There are a number of differences that outweigh the similarities between the two processes. I think the biggest learning is that we need to keep our nose to the grindstone and not take anything for granted. It is still a political campaign and a ballot… it’s not as if you are presenting to five businessmen on a board of a company and they make a rational decision in front of you, it’s a vote. The lesson from Chicago is you can never do enough to ensure that the vote goes your way and it’s not necessarily a business case decision. But I don’t believe for a second that the voters in that room that day viewed Chicago as the fourth of four candidates. It was sort of technical procedures that led them to losing on the first ballot. The dynamics of the FIFA vote, with 10 nations involved instead of four and clustered in different continents as opposed to being spread evenly around the globe as with the Olympic vote, would tend to lead to a different set of voting dynamics.

WFI: President Barack Obama’s special advisor Valerie Jarrett told me in September the White House was fully behind the World Cup bid. Will you be reaching out to the White House and Obama to help with the bid?
DD: The Obama administration and President Obama himself have already helped out in many many ways. We are in an ongoing dialogue with them over what is part and parcel of any bid which is a series of federal guarantees, how the government will treat the influx of visitors and so that’s going on on a regular basis. President Obama wrote a letter to FIFA President Blatter back in March endorsing the bid. He received in the Oval Office a FIFA delegation in July, when President Blatter and Secretary General Jérôme Valcke were here to award the Gold Cup trophy. So we’re extremely pleased by the level of support we’ve got and continue to get.

WFI: What are key challenges the U.S. bid must overcome?
DD: The biggest challenge that we have is convincing the voters who are 24 people from 24 different countries that the United States bid is not just about fancy stadiums and loads of ticket revenue, that there really is a unique passion for the sport in the United States. We are often judged incorrectly by the strength of the MLS. The MLS is a good league that has accomplished a lot in just 14 years of existence and frankly ranks in the top 10 or 15 in the world in terms of attendance, but if you look at the average attendance and the quality of play on the field, you might say that means the United States doesn’t have a first-rate passion for soccer because their attendance and quality of play on the field is not equal to the Premiership. That couldn’t be a more unfair assessment of the passion for the sport in the United States. The trick is to unify all those disparate factions of folks who are touched by the game, who indeed really worship the game… all those folks who are living here care about the sport, want the World Cup to come here to the United States and represent a passion for the sport that may number 70, 80 or 90 million people. What we need to do is find a way to identify those folks and tell their story and get that message across to the people who may be sitting somewhere across the ocean saying “well, the MLS, America just don’t care about the sport” but that’s just not true and we’ve got to make sure they understand that and understand the logic of our thinking. That’s doable but that’s our biggest challenge.

WFI: In what ways would a U.S. World Cup be different from and improve on South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014?
DD: I’d like to think that a World Cup in the United States would probably have better technical infrastructure both at the city level and the stadium level. I hope that doesn’t come across as arrogant but I think that is relatively matter of fact here. The Fan Fests we would offer, that’s a real change in the nature of the World Cup which we saw first and foremost in Germany with six times as many people attending the Fan Fests as actually had tickets, and those glorious scenes of the Berlin Mile. When you think about the ability of the United States to recreate that – whether its Central Park in New York or the Washington Mall or Broad Street in Philadelphia or Grant Park in Chicago – we have some fantastic areas where we could pull that off. It’s something that we didn’t really do in 1994 and something that we are salivating over for 2018 or 2022. I think the fan experience here will be absolutely tremendous… [helped by] the infrastructure and overall environment. It’s hard to say what other aspects will be different but I’m sure we’ll do some things differently.

WFI: And the next milestones for the bid team – deciding on host venues for the bid book?
DD: The web site was launched on Aug. 12. We’re very pleased with the way it looks, we’ve got over 225,000 people to sign our petition and actively engage as foot soldiers for our mission, which is tremendous. Our next procedural milestone is that we are attempting to reduce the number of cities that we are proposing for the bid from 27 that we are in dialogue with now down to 18. We hope to do that by the end of the year, but since it’s an internal deadline for us and not a FIFA-mandated deadline, it could come earlier or could be a little later. But from a more event-oriented standpoint, we are presenting Dec. 4 along with all the other bidding nations at a FIFA media event and debuting a video there and sort of telling the world’s press what’s up with our bid. Then of course the biggest deadline looming ahead is May 14 next year when we need to turn in the bid book and all the executed contracts of all the cities, stadiums, training sites and hotels.

WFI: What do you hope to achieve at the Soccerex convention in South Africa next week?
DD: We’re going to send a small delegation to Soccerex on the way to our media event in Cape Town and our observers’ program in Cape Town. But our efforts are more from the standpoint of wanting to be represented and working the room than having a formal exhibition. Since we’ve been given this formal exhibition opportunity a couple of days later, it didn’t make sense for us to kind of split our resources and have a huge presence at Soccerex.

WFI: How do you plan to engage the football world and fans during the coming campaign?
DD: We have a fairly active PR campaign. We are pleased with the response to the website and we are going to try and get out and meet as many folks and enlist our cities to get behind that effort. But you know it is everything you would try to do in an election, trying to get as much media presence as humanly possibly through your activities.

Interview conducted by Ed Hula III
Your best source of news about the global football business is www.worldfootballinsider.com

For FREE World Football Insider news bulletins
Click Here

(Copyright 1992 - 2010, all rights reserved. The information in this report may not be published, excerpted, or otherwise distributed in print or broadcast without the express prior consent of World Football Insider and Around the Rings, Inc.)