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Scotland’s Bad News Bears to become America’s Team for TV audiences

It could be the best of TV. It could be the worst of TV. If Paul McDonald has his way, this summer fans will be making the calls on who plays and who doesn’t on a small football club tucked in the highlands of western Scotland.

A few weeks ago there was a a flurry of news coverage about the project in the UK. Little if anything appeared here in the States, which made the new franchise’s name-America’s Team FC-all the more curious. But the BBC picked it up, so it must be real. And it is, but as of yet only 62 people have voted on the TV show/team’s website for who they think should be the first recruit, so there’s not exactly worries about the website crashing–or producers cashing in–just yet. And they’ve only got 51 Facebook fans, so while the BBC found it novel enough to cover, the buzz isn’t exactly blowing up.

But those few people could make some history if they choose to pony up $50 to play real-life fantasy soccer (and maybe watch as their preferred winger gets in a fight at the pub for making out with some Scot’s girl). It’s just all so weird, sad, fascinating, ridiculous, evil, genius–I had to learn more. If not this show, there’s no doubt TV is heading toward the interactive. Soccer on the cutting edge or cutting down the game? But damnit, this means I’m going to have to pause The Rock of Love Bus to give McDonald a call and get to the bottom of this…

First, the 4-minute trailer:

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Thanks for taking the time Paul. I’m curious to first know your background–where do you enter this project? through TV or soccer?

My background primarily is media. I am a media director for a very large international retail company in the fashion industry. I never say it because I don’t ever want to use that to promote my other projects. So I keep that under wraps. I’ve been doing media for twenty-plus years. My training is in that area—campaigns, television commercials, fashion role outs, print photography, e-commerce. So it runs the whole gamut. That is my “job job.”

I had the idea to do this show about the time MLS signed the contract with Beckham. I had been thinking about the idea of trying to do a soccer reality series for awhile. I couldn’t quite exactly find the match, but I can remember making dinner with my wife and we’re talking about Beckham—we’re soccer fans, and I’ve been a Scottish soccer fan for most of my adult life. I follow all the divisions and all the leagues—and so I started talking about that no matter how great Beckham is, America will turn his back on him or take him for granted because he is not one of us. I said the only time American seems to get involved or excited about soccer is when it is Americans doing well overseas. Or the World Cup here in 1994. The stadiums were packed and the TV numbers were high. Same for 2002.

So I thought, let’s take this concept further. I started thinking about what if you took a group of Americans over to a team in Europe and gave the States an adoptive team to root for? The World Cup only happens every four years so it’s hard to get really excited about that every year. And then you need some other drama. Women love reality TV too, so it can’t be just sports. Maybe the guys would watch that, but studies show that women will decide the success of a reality show. So we had to design it for all sexes in mind, as part soap opera part drama. So we sat there at the dinner table and brainstormed the whole thing out.

When I was in Scotland 10 years ago, there was a team called Fort William Football Club that was just awful, and I know they are still really awful. I spent a few months clandestinely researching them and seeing how they are always at the bottom of the league, always getting outscored by 100-plus goals [in a season]. They actually had a lot of big name players come from that area; they just left as soon as they could. They’ve basically been the Bad News Bears of European soccer. I flew over to Scotland and approached them—I didn’t really tell them who I was or what I was doing other than I was an American coming over to see a game—and then presented them with the idea and plan. And they loved it from the start. So we have been working on it ever since.

Did you have any previous connection to TV—even just some contacts? This seems like a shot at the moon at this point—random guy makes TV show?

I personally have not worked on reality television, but a couple of my good friends have. I actually took one of them, Alfonzo Wesson, over to Scotland to direct the shoot we did. He was the director on both seasons of Real Housewives of Atlanta. He did Making the Band with Puff Daddy. He did the first four seasons of The Real World, back when it was good. He has a pretty good background, and actually considered one of the pioneers of the industry. He was the first person outside my family that I shared the idea with. He loved it, and had the same concerns: “Hey, every sports reality show in America has bombed. What is going to be the hook to get the women into it?” So I spent the next two months formulating that and that is basically where we came up with—first of all they are going to be very good looking guys—how the show will not just be the matches and the sport, but it will follow the players’ lives, their girlfriends, their relationships. I think soccer is the best sport to attract women because they can be more involved in soccer, especially that 25-49 age range in which a lot of them are soccer moms—so they understand the game. All of those things plus the fact that soccer is a sport on the rise in America made us feel like the time was right to do this. I jokingly say that I hope to succeed where Beckham failed, which is to bring soccer to mainstream America.

Did you go after or contact MLS or USSF in regards to the project, or did you want this to be independent from day one?

Pretty much independent from day one. I am near the Columbus Crew and there are some people here who know about the idea and I have exchanged a few emails with the marketing director of the USL-1 level, and I need to reestablish that because that is a strong base that we will be recruiting from. That’s the kind of level we are going after. But I haven’t relied on their dollars or marketing power yet, but will be calling upon it soon.

So the funding at this point is you, Alphonzo, and private investors?

Well Alphonzo hasn’t put any money into it, other than his work. The dollars have come primarily from me and a few other investors who chipped in just to help cover some of the expenses of room and board and travel to Scotland over the last shoot that we did, as well as helping me pay for a guy to program the website. And my lawyer is 5% of it. 11% these other guys, and the rest of it belongs to me.

You’ve obviously got a lot invested in this. Would you describe this as a project of passion or is it more just that you think this could be a big success in terms of its popularity and financial return?

I’m not looking so much for financial returns. I really am looking to build interest in the sport. There are certainly people who are watching this in the investment community to see how well this first version does. I know a very large bank that has very close ties to Latin America have already basically said,  “If this works, we’ll fund your America’s Team Latin America.” I’ve gotten practically begging emails from a team in South Africa and one from the English Conference that wants to do something similar.

And they all found out about it from the media coverage, through the BBC or whatever?

Exactly. The Latin American connection I made myself, but the others came out of nowhere and said, “Will you buy our team too?”  Uh, No (laughing). This one has been hard enough to get off the ground, so let’s work on that and we’ll see.

That had to give you some confidence that you were on to something.

Yeah. It’s definitely building a ground swell of attention. Personally, we’d like to get more attention over here in the States as much as we are overseas.

That was actually one of my main confusions. All the press seems to be coming from the UK, so I’m not sure if this is an American TV show or a UK one, or strictly one on-line.

The intent is for it to be both a UK and a U.S. show.

And when the time comes you’ll be looking for broadcast partners or distributors?

Right. We’re actively pursuing that now.

What would be your network of choice?

I’m looking at more large scale production companies, but there have been smaller cable networks that we have had conversations with. One of the groups who is very interested in it is the company called Endemol, which is based out of the Netherlands. They do everything from Big Brother to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to Deal or No Deal. They do things for all the networks and have programming in, I think, 33 countries, including the UK and U.S. One of the things they immediately were attracted to this that this could air in many markets and many countries, and then have many potential spin-off opportunities. That is what makes this potentially a powerful franchise.

And that obviously just boils down to the global reach of soccer more than reality TV’s popularity.

Exactly. They look at the Far East, Europe, USA and on down the line. ESPN is considering it. Bravo network is considering it. But we would probably prefer to land a deal with a larger production company and kind of just let them run with it at that point. If we went a Bravo route, or a Spike TV route, which is something else that has come my way, its also my responsibility to get sponsors, which is the other route I could approach. Domino’s and Coors are looking at it, but if I go to a Spike TV route, I have to change the model up a little but and make it more male oriented and also bring along with me a bevy of sponsors that makes it more financially attractive to them. So that is why I would rather not do that, but if we have to I certainly will.

So much of this project to me depends on the players you are able to find. You mentioned USL-1 as being the target and on your website you have a fan vote regarding who should be the first signed player. Matt Pickens is probably the only name on that list most people would recognize. Where in that search process are you and how do you see it panning out given you are looking for more than just a good soccer player?

There are going to be a few open tryouts—we hope to get a couple of folks out of nowhere.  We’ve got a few right people that will help us judge talent and who know what it is like to play in the league. The rest of the positions will be—we kind of know who we want—but the rest will be determined by how much sponsorship dollars and/or network dollars we are going to have  in our pocket to offer these people, so they know what they are getting into.

A couple of players we are very high on are Peter Philipakos—he plays in Greece right now and was born in New York. He is very much a rabble-rouser. He played at Olympiakos, I think even a Champions League game. Apparently he was quite a head case and a little too wild, and now he is playing in the second division in Greece. He’s an attacking midfielder and is very good. He gets a lot of playing time over in Greece and his passport is in good order, so obviously someone we think we can bring over to our team. Another guy, again very handsome, very much the ladies man is Max Cream, which is great because he already has his porn name. He is a striker, born in LA, one parent is Irish, so he owns an Irish passport and is playing over in Ireland. I got an email from some guy who is playing in the English conference from Texas but his mother is Scottish. There are no shortage of these types of players out there. Joe Lapira, who was the NCAA player of the year in 2006 at Notre Dame. He passed on Toronto to go play over in the second division of Norway or something like that—but he has scored 14 goals in 27 games or something like that, so he is tearing it up. That is that ideal candidate I would love to bring over.

What kind of contracts are you looking to put together—they aren’t just for soccer?

I would say financially they won’t be a whole lot different from entry level MLS. Or high level USL-1. What will make it appealing to them—for some folks it may be a step up, for others it may not—is obviously the exposure, the merchandising tie-ins. And obviously when they finish if they do a season, whatever team they go to will have to pay more for them because they will be quite in demand. Whether they are a star or not, they will bring fans. We see that as a plus. The other thing that makes if financially viable for us is with every one of these players we are doing what we call the Simon Cowell Clause, which means we act as agent when they sign onto America’s Team and then go to another team. So we end up getting a percentage just like everyone who goes on American Idol and then gets a record deal whether they win or not. A certain percentage of that goes back to Simon Cowell. Same thing will happen with us. Say Peter Philipakos comes over here and becomes a super star, does calendars and t-shirts and books and  then moves over to the Seattle Sounders for double the price. We get a percentage of that.

How is all of this going to be integrated into the present team and structure of the club? Will the entire roster just be turned over completely for you then to build from scratch?

Yes and no. It will be composed of Scottish and American players.

And there is no ratio or benchmark you want to enforce?

Not legally. FIFA is trying to play with that but hasn’t been successful, so we are not worried about homegrown versus foreigners at this point.

That brings a good point. While this may seem like just TV, the team and its players will be governed as any other soccer team, correct?

Correct. There are no special considerations at all. They have to be visa eligible. Because obviously we are not getting players who have played in 75percent of their national team games—we’re not going to get the DaMarcus Beasley’s of the world…

I hear he might be available.

Rangers need to use him, but they never liked wingers—I don’t know why he is there. But anyway, the whole situation there for our players—they have to have the ability to get that work permit over there, which means basically a mother, father, or grandparent has to be a direct descendent of a Western European nation. Luckily for us there is no shortage of people like that.

How hard was it to convince the front office, coaches, and players of the team in Scotland?

The front office and the coaches were pretty easy. The players obviously were a little more skeptical as they should. I made it very clear from the beginning that no one was going to lose their job or fired from the team for not being able to play football. The Highland League has, like almost every other league, a reserve league, but unfortunately Fort William has not been able to field a reserve team for many years. So some of the players—a lot of the team now is 15, 16, 17 year olds—will drop down to the reserve squad and play competitive games instead of getting their heads handed to them 11-0 every game. Hopefully they will then be able to mature in the process versus now they get no time on the ball. Right now the other team consistently has 75 percent of the possession at every match. Its just not fair.

2008-09’s Fort William Football Club

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What was your understanding of the team before all of this? You said you knew of them as the Bad News Bears, but did you have any understanding of why that was? Why and how they had been so bad for so long?

It’s a combination of many things. One is the sheer fact that they are an hour away from all the other teams in their league. Most of the teams are based in and around Inverness and Aberdeen and they are more down towards Glasgow, so they are a bit removed. They don’t have exactly the interest there as opposed to the competitive rivalries that go on up North. They also are competing against the game of shinty, which is extremely popular, even more than soccer in the Western part of Scotland. It’s kind of a cross between field hockey and lacrosse and the World Cup of shinty is played in Fort William and they’ve won the cup the last so many years. They have a very nice stadium as opposed to the crappy stadium the soccer team plays in. Its interesting. They will get 2000 people for a Saturday afternoon match, but soccer, they are lucky to break 400 at the gate.  But what I have heard over and over again from people who live there in the town is that if the team did well they would probably stop going to shinty games and start going to the football games. And the bottom line is they don’t have the financial structure. The teams close to Aberdeen can pay their players—and keep in mind these aren’t fulltime jobs for them—they can pay their players 500 Pounds a week, so they can make like $50,000 a year playing soccer part time. Most of the players at Fort William make about 25 Pounds a game and if they don’t play they don’t get any money. So folks on a Saturday are saying, “ok, well I can work my job today with a 12-hour shift and get paid X amount per hour or I can take a 6 hour bus ride to go get my brains beat in 11-0 and take a 6 hour bus ride back and basically not make anything but 25 bucks.” Some of them just don’t show up. They are lucky for away games to get 15 boys on the bus.

So right away with your arrival, those kids have the potential to be making more money if they make the team?

Exactly.  If they were to make the starting line-up, they would have the chance to make significantly more money.

he could be making a lot more money next year

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What’s your answer to the people who might say that this is tainting the sport of soccer and its just a rouse to have silly TV?  I can only imagine you’ve gotten that once or twice.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. From a soccer purist level over in the UK I could certainly see where folks may come from. But its kind of like the people in America who stick to traditional baseball rules, which is why baseball is kind of dying now. Because you have to modernize with the tastes of people and the times. The way I look at it is that the internet has basically changed everything about our lives: how we get our news, our information, download our music, everything. Politics—Obama couldn’t have been elected without the internet. Social networking is much more important now than broadcasting in certain situations. It’s not what one person thinks. It’s what the collective thinks. And it seems to have been pervasive through everything that we can touch with the exception of sports. Sports is still controlled by the old white guys in fancy clothes behind closed doors making the decisions. I think with the way people are getting so caught up in fantasy sports and online gaming to playing madden on the Xbox and how interactive that has become—my son I swear creates these players and lives vicariously through them. He comes in after playing a NCAA game and is like, “I failed my quiz today so I can’t practice.” He is 12. I think about the generation that is coming up and know that I need to create a model that beats everyone to the punch. Because I have a feeling that 10 years from now people are going to—the Green Bay Packer fans are not going to be happy to sit in the seats and not be actively involved in the game.

And of course in your research or just as a soccer fan you knew about these quasi-ownership ideas being played with at Barcelona, the things Drew Carrey is talking about for Seattle, and the group of fans in England that I think finally did actually just buy a team under the banner of the website, My Football Club, that they built. And leaving the soccer realm, some of it lines up with how UFC was built by Dana White and his partners—Spike TV reality show, etc, etc.

I don’t watch UFC, but I have seen how they have built it up. I have some friends who had good knowledge of that. I have a good friend in Seattle, Eric Weaver, who is considered one of the top gurus of social marketing. Actually he was just speaking at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) as an invited guest. We are of the mindset that major advertising through broadcasting is kind of in its last days. We need to have hybrid model where the majority of the heavy lifting is being done in the trenches by social networking and that is where you are going to build a base. Then the broadcasting message becomes the icing on the cake that cements it all together and proves your viability and clout, but it is no longer how you build your base.

Then you guys take it a step further than the Barcelona’s out there—maybe sparked by your son’s infatuation with fantasy sports and video games—by turning this real team into a fantasy team. When did that first arrive in your head as a component to this? And how will it work?

Yep. It happened last January when I had a discussion with Alphonzo. He said, “As a show, you are almost there. It will be interesting but I don’t think it will last long unless you can come up with what is the “Dancing With the Stars”? How do you vote people off? Where is that element of surprise or ownership or investment?” So I chewed on that for about 45 days until I came up with the idea of having some sort of methodology of calling in a starting lineup, which came to me while watching one of those other programs. I was talking to some friends of mine at work about it—soccer fans—and I asked if they would buy in to something like that. And they said, “Yeah, and I’m a member of this My Football Club.co.uk,” which I had not heard of at that time. I went and checked it out and was actually a little pissed at first because I thought they had beat me to it, but then I realized that they were trying to do something completely different and it wasn’t infringing what I was doing. It was good because that was one thing that helped convince my investors give me some of the money, because they saw the potential.

So the idea of making the player/ownership/fantasy sports aspect didn’t come from seeing the Barcelona’s of the world as much as it came from the need to create captivating TV?

Exactly. It was more of taking that challenges—seeing how others involve their audiences and get them to tune-in for the results. You need to come up with that or it’s a one-shot deal.

If this all goes well, how many seasons could you see this one team, not the potential and various spin-offs, but just this first team lasting? Could it just go on forever, you and viewers as longtime owners?

We’re thinking this version could last three years. We have an option to renew for another two at our discretion. But hopefully the franchise in and of itself, and the model of branching this to different areas can go on almost indefinitely. Think about what Survivor has done. We have also already developed a model for arena football. It is of a similar concept and even more interactive. Long story short it would basically give season ticket holders hand-held PSP devices which would allow them to call plays live. And became even more interesting with the Arena Football League extending the play clock. We could either sell it to the AFL or start our own America’s Team franchise within the league.

On the other side of the coin, what if this whole thing bombs? One of your first statements is that you are a soccer fan and would like to help the sport grow here in the U.S. Is this doesn’t go well could this set back American soccer or in some way tell us something about the continued unpopularity of soccer here and its inability to reach into the mainstream? Or is it just a matter of maybe this isn’t good TV?

I think if it makes TV, it will do well. The reason why it wouldn’t work is if it didn’t make it off the cutting room floor. And if that happens it would just a matter of the right idea at the wrong time.

How far can you independently take this without getting the big dollars you need. Will you shoot this season no matter what? Do you have enough money to do that? Or is not definitely going to happen?

We couldn’t do the season unless we got some sponsorship dollars first. That amount of crews going to Scotland and that amount of editing is way too much, but what we could do is a cutback version with a little bit of sponsorship dollars and go for 2010. We would keep it going, but we’d have to cut it down and hope it creates enough groundswell so people buy it.

Well I’m curious to see how it all plays out. I know at least MLS and USSF should be paying attention to see what you do and how well it does.

I would hope so. Like I said I have made some contact with Columbus Crew and I think they are open for some cross promotion.

That has me wondering if you could take players on loan from MLS teams.

If we can get them a work permit, yes we can.

That definitely seems like a good way to cross promote it, as long as the MLS players don’t preform badly.

Yeah. And we think that could be one of the things that—I think that is why MLS would want to get involved.

At least from a soccer fan’s perspective it would be much more interesting if you had Matt Pickens on the field and a few other recognizable MLS faces. Or go out and get DaMarcus Beasley’s brother. Definitely options out there and MLS loans could get you some of those known faces for the short term you need them. Maybe that goes without saying.

Hopefully we can figure it out. I’ve told my folks here in the U.S. that we need make these decisions sooner rather than later because we’ve got to get people through the visa process. We know who has their hats in the ring and need to start solidifying this thing.

I’m guessing no names you can share at this point on the record?

Not yet.

What’s your time line?

Their present season ends in May in Scotland, and they start their pre-season in July. We think we need to have the people picked by April 30th. We’ve talked about arranging some preseason friendlies over here in the U.S. with the Seattle Sounders or whatever, just to get them warmed up, though they’d likely get their brains beat out. The idea would be to get it started over here in the U.S. and see how many dollars we had involved as we kick it off.

It’s interesting you always use the Seattle Sounders when giving an example of an MLS team. Is that a coincidence or is there something behind that?

Ummm… Only because we are hoping Drew Carey will be something involved in the program. (laughing) And that’s all I will say about that.

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