This summer's soccer World Cup tournament will provide a rare opportunity for major advertisers looking to engage sports audiences over a month-long festival of footwork, free kicks and the occasional foul - all taking place in the U.S and Mexico. But Major League Soccer (MLS) has a bigger ambition: to convert U.S. viewers entertaining a passing interest in the World Cup into long-term soccer fans of Inter Miami, New York City FC or the Seattle Sounders.
The FT was one of the first to have a subscription business model, because we could see that advertising alone could be very volatile depending on the economy, and so we needed to look at subscription models, but also how we could have direct relationships with our customers. And so that was really where I started. And so when I was approached by Manchester United, the question wasn't do you know sport?