Football Partnerships

By Alex Kotler

Slightly darker with sand in my shoes, I hit the New York City pavement a more rounded player and professional having traveled to Oceanside for the Southern California Beach Soccer Championships.

The two-day amateur and professional tournament, preceded by a clinic for athletes and a reception for partners and special guests, is nothing less than magnificent. From dawn to dusk, thousands of people – from players to parents to passersby – gather to compete and watch and cheer and eat and shop and tan and whatever beachfolk do. Even in the case of this year’s event, which unfolded beneath a cloudy marine layer on both days, the crowds came and stayed.

Beach soccer is fun to play and entertaining to watch. It’s a challenging sport that demands peak conditioning and aerial skill. Unlike traditional football, where the kickoff is a set piece in neutral territory, in beach soccer it represents one of the most potent attacks. One player flicks the ball up to a nearby teammate who volleys goalwards. This strike, though predictable, is difficult to defend and calls for a player to stand beside the goalkeeper to block the weak side.

Other scoring opportunities are created via overhead kicks. Forward players receive the ball with their backs to the opposition’s goal, taking the ball from the air or auto-flicking it up and bicycle kicking it.

Regardless of talent, players must overcome the inconsistency of the sandy surface, adapting to unexpected bounces, whiffs and deflections. Some wear special socks to provide traction and control over the beach ball, which is smoother and hollower than a typical field ball. All are filthy by the final whistle, with white teeth on smiling faces the only body part not sand-caked.

Watching both the professionals, which included the Senegalese National Beach Soccer Team, and the amateurs, which predominantly included youth and adult teams from the southwestern US, I got an appreciation of the spectrum of talent on hand as well as the value proposition offered by the SoCaBeSoCha, the latter of which is mostly described by fun.

As a professional advisor to soccer-related organizations, I traveled to southern California to learn about the event to provide more comprehensive services to current and prospective clients. It was a success for me, and I am in discussions with the organizers of this event and others like it on how to increase revenue streams, partnerships and commercial opportunities. Thus, I’ll withhold any constructive criticism for the time being; however, the truth is that – if the bottom line is fun and player/fan activation – the positives outweigh the negatives to the tune of Maradona circa 2000 versus Maradona circa 1986.

In any case, I invite you to view video footage of the 2009 Southern California Beach Soccer Championships, featuring this year’s winners: The Senegalese National Team.

Finally, a special thank you to Marc Koehler and Gino Rossi, my hosts for the trip and organizers of a great event.

By Alex Kotler

About the same time as I key the final punctuation mark in this piece, my weekly Offsides column, the Soccerex London Forum will be opening its doors at Wembley Stadium.

I picture crisp collars, shiny cufflinks, rimmed glasses and polished shoes opposite a mountain of promotional handbags. The suits stand in a line. The bags sit in a heap. Friendly faces from Soccerex await a stroke of the minute hand to connect them.

Inside jacket pockets, families of business cards cling together before they are dispersed like seeds. Wrenches and drills twist and twirl to fasten fixtures and set stages. It’s nearly show time.

I don’t see myself in these visions, but that’s because I’m sitting at my desk in New York conjuring the images. I won’t be there. Instead, I’ll head to California tomorrow for one of the United States’ top beach soccer events.

Let’s evaluate my decision:

West London v. West Coast
Thames River v. Pacific Ocean
Big Ben v. Big Beaches
Wembley v. Bikini

Need I go on?

In truth a scheduling conflict is what keeps me on American shores, otherwise I would be in the UK. That, and Gino Rossi, Managing Director of the Southern California Beach Soccer Championships (SoCaBeSoCha), persuaded me westward.

Beyond fun and sun, because this not a vacation, I am attending the SoCaBeSoCha to do the following:

1. To observe participant/partner engagement
2. To measure sponsorship satisfaction and perceived ROI
3. To appreciate the scale of the event (15,000+ attendees)
4. To understand the amount of work involved
5. To meet Gino Rossi and partners
6. To strengthen ties to the west coast
7. To critique the integration of non-football activities
8. To watch some great competition
9. To get a tan

As I did whilst in South Africa for Soccerex, I’ll endeavor to take notes and provide commentary on my trip – savory details omitted, of course. While I’m gone, I invite you to:

1. Listen to the interview of Gino Rossi and get the skinny on the SoCaBeSoCha

2. Listen to the interview of Misha Sher and get the lowdown on Soccerex Londontown