FC BARCELONA US TOUR 2006 CALLED GREATEST IN HISTORY
I have the distinct honor of having been on the PR team for the FC Barcelona United States Tour 2006 which took place from August 4-12 in Los Angeles, Houston and New York for three exhibition games. FC Barcelona is part of the Interliga.
Due to the recent FIFA World Cup media coverage, the sport of soccer is enjoying what is perhaps its greatest popularity ever in the US. This tour confirms and further illustrates the power of professional sports icons such as Ronaldinho of Brazil, Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon and Rafa Marquez of Mexico, all of whom play on FC Barcelona. FCB boasts the largest fan membership of any soccer team on the planet.
I was recruited for this fascinating assignment by Miguel Sebastia, President of I-Latina in NY, with whom I also share this enviable success.
The tour was promoted by Major League Soccer and sponsored by Cingular. The team itself is also sponsored by Nike. The tour included two unforgettable Nike clinics in L.A. and NYC on two recently renovated soccer fields located in inner city communities. In NY for instance, the clinic took place on the Lower East Side. Unfortunately, the rain diminished the number of participants to a couple of thousand people (Yes, that’s right that’s the diminished number). While in L.A. over ten thousand attended the clinics which featured players like Lionel Messi giving pointers to inner-city youth interested in the game and featured a three-on-three tournament after the team’s visit.
The most impressive thing to me was the amount of people which attended the games. In both L.A. and Houston attendance records were set for the matches against Chivas Guadalajara and Chivas America respectively. Both those matches ended in ties by the way.
In NY/NJ the match was against the NY Red Bulls at Giants Stadium. By media accounts, the Red Bulls normally average a bit over 15,000 fans. The August 12 match was sold out and attended by no less than 70,002, according to the stadium announcers calling the game.
The press coverage was a frenzy and my personal institutional efforts netted hits in print, TV, the Internet and other media. Chief among the institutional tour for the team was a visit to a local children’s cancer hospital in Houston where sick children from around the world were able to meet, greet and get autographs from FC Barcelona players, some of whom were so moved they reportedly left the hospital in tears. The team also was treated to a special visit to NASA facilities in Houston that not even certain armed forces generals and members of the executive branch ever get to see.
I had the honor of working with SUMWorld publicists David Morton and Gabe Gabor, who recently informed me that due to our combined efforts, “This tour was the greatest ever in the sport of soccer and the history of the U.S.” These gentlemen are tireless and top professionals in the field. It has indeed been my pleasure to meet them in the process of handling the tour’s institutional media coverage of team executives.
J.M. De Jesus
President
QUADRANT TWO PR
