Garber looks forward to “largest soccer game in Canada”

Don Garber

Commissioner Don Garber was the featured speaker at Wednesday’s Montreal Board of Trade luncheon, addressing the crowd of over 300 businesspeople on the MLS in general and the Impact’s upcoming debut in the league.

“This club is the result of the relentless efforts of passionate individuals that pulled together to make this a great success,” said Impact owner and president, Joey Saputo, in his opening comments. “I also know that our greatest moments are yet to come for passion and tradition are powerful forces that attract the best. They also bring out the best in all of us.”

Introduced by Saputo, the commish ingratiated himself to his audience from the onset.

“Bonjour mesdames et messieurs. Merci pour l’invitation, “ Garber began. His French vocabulary exhausted, he switched to a more familiar language to continue his talk. “It’s a huge pleasure to be here. I travel around North America quite a bit and take part in a number of events like this. This one is the largest one I’ve ever attended.

“I think it’s a great credit to your community and the connection that the business community has for each other and your commitment to supporting new exciting initiatives in your community,” he continued.

MLS representatives met with the Saputo family three years ago. Recognizing what the Impact had been able to achieve in a lower league made them realize that Montreal and the Saputos might be a good fit for an expansion franchise. And so it came to pass.

“And in less than 30 days we’ll be opening up in the Olympic Stadium. Over 32,000 tickets have been sold for that game already and Joey says that they’re going to sell it out,” Garber said. “That means over 58,000. That would be the largest regular-season game ever in MLS history and it would be the largest soccer game in Canada. So if you haven’t bought tickets buy some and if you have, buy 10 more.”

Saying that the addition of Toronto in 2007 led to a new standard for ticket sales being established, Gerber mentioned that Canadian society is ideally suited to a global game.

“This is a country that is made up of every country around the world. As we as Americans think about what is happening north of the border, particularly in Quebec, it represents the international character that really personifies what is great about our sport. That is what is empowering and driving this opportunity to create a very vibrant and hopefully very popular professional sport in the United States and Canada,” he said before going on to state that it is the goal of MLS to be thought of as being among the top leagues in the world, on a par with La Liga and other major loops.

The game is growing, he said, mentioning that soccer counts more active players in this country than hockey does and that international matches regularly draw crowds that fill (American) football stadiums, double or triple the crowds they drew a decade ago.

“We would have never dreamed, just a few years ago that 50,000 people would turn out for the first home game of an expansion franchise.”

In time, Garber said, the culture will grow even larger, to the point that a local youngster would aspire to suiting up first with a youth academy team and then rising through the ranks to join the hometown starting 11, mirroring the dynamic that one finds in other major North American sports.

Garber also spoke about the close ties that MLS teams have established with the communities they represent, a relationship made easier to establish due to the fact that players are contractually required to make public appearances and interact with fans on a regular basis, something that very few of them have had a problem with as they go into schools and get involved in various community endeavours away from the pitch.

Garber’s speech to the Board of Trade mentioned that an ad agency that has been hired to promote the MLS, a Montreal firm called Sid Lee, who also number Adidas, Volkswagen and Montreal’s public transit system among their clients

“Sid Lee will be the agency for Major League Soccer globally. It’s interesting that we have a French-Canadian advertising agency helping us in America and around the world trying to translate this game and trying to find ways to deeply connect with audiences,” he said to applause from the local businessfolk.

In closing he said that the two things that drove interest in soccer in the U.S. was having the American national team earning a berth in World Cup competition and declared that his league will have proven to have been a success in Canada when that nation also qualifies for the football world’s top honour.

Following his speech Garber, met with local media, fielding questions and elaborating on the themes he laid out earlier stressing that Montreal’s cosmopolitan make-up is ideal for a world sport like soccer, restating his pleasure with ticket sales so far for the opening match, lauding the work that the team has done to establish roots in the community as well as the commercial partnerships they have established, stating that incoming teams have rarely been able to enjoy as much corporate and fan support as the Impact has as early in their tenure.