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Another Column About the Philadelphia Union and Media Coverage, or Lack Thereof
Published:
I threw this up on social and it stirred up a bit of discussion:
The Union are first place in the Eastern Conference, haven’t lost a game since mid-April, and are once again full of blue collar grinders that fit the mold of the ideal Philadelphia athlete. But outside of a few niche media outlets, or individuals running substacks or social media accounts, there’s not much coverage at all.
What gives?
Starting with the obvious, soccer is not the most popular sport in the area. Never will be. Coverage will always trickle from the top down, meaning that it’s going to be Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, then everything else, in that order. That’s the same hierarchy we follow at Crossing Broad, because the customer is always right and the customer reads more about football and baseball than anything else. When the customer spends more time on Eagles and Phillies stories, you’re making more money there, whether it comes in the form of programmatic (ads), sponsorship (this story brought to you by a shitty car dealership), or affiliate conversion (click here and put in the promo code).
So if you want to make money and stay afloat, you’re “playing the hits,” as they say in the radio business.
But the crux of the debate really centers on two rhetorical questions:
- Does the media have a responsibility to cover certain topics?
- Did the chicken or the egg comes first?
Starting with the first question, we’ve accepted the premise that Union stories and Flyers stories won’t generate as much traffic as Eagles and Phillies stories. But the debate is whether we write those stories for those fans anyway, or simply become an Eagles and Phillies blog, i.e. 94 WIP in written form. It’s a good question, actually. If an outlet is making money off football and baseball, aren’t they well within their right to ignore everything else? Sure. This is private sector Capitalism and they can do what they want. It would be like making 90% of your money selling dishwashers but dedicating half the display floor to water heaters. If the demand is for dishwashers, then focus on dishwashers.
At the same time, nobody is asking for 20 Union stories, 20 Flyers stories, and 20 Eagles stories on a website. They’re not asking for 3 hours of hockey talk on PM drive. But what you’re seeing a lot of time now is 75% Eagles, 25% Phillies, and 0% everything else, so the representation of the other teams is close to nonexistent.
That’s understandable since the Flyers and Sixers stunk up the joint this winter, so you’re obviously not devoting much bandwidth to teams that suck, but the Union don’t suck. They’re very good, a pleasant surprise and deserving of media coverage because of they way they’ve played.
Which brings us to the second question about the chicken and the egg, and I’ll use a Flyers example here –
Are the Flyers ignored on sports talk radio because no one cares about hockey? Or do Flyers fans ignore sports talk radio because they know the hosts aren’t going to talk about hockey anyway?
You know what I’m getting at? Which is it? People will say, “well no one gives a shit about hockey,” but maybe hockey fans don’t give a shit about a media that doesn’t give a shit about them.
It’s somewhat similar with the Union, but fans aren’t naive about the realities of the situation. A few years ago, the league moved the games behind the Apple TV paywall, which resulted in the loss of casual fans within the market. I got a lot of emails from people back then, four-for-four types who would catch the occasional game on PHL17, but they weren’t big enough fans to go sign up for MLS Season Pass. At the same time, Major League Soccer brought in a bunch of paying customers from all over the world who subscribed just to watch Lionel Messi, so philosophically I think the big wigs were okay with sacrificing 55-year-old Jim from South Philly if it meant picking up 22-year-old Sergio in Spain.
You also ask yourself if the Philly media should spend time talking about a team if that team is locked behind a paywall. I think the Apple deal did a lot of harm within the market, and I don’t think it was good for the Union at all. But to the original point, we’re not asking for Joe Giglio and Hugh Douglas to break down the difference between the 4-4-2 empty bucket double pivot vs. Jim Curtin’s single-pivot diamond; it would just be nice if they at least acknowledged the existence of a first-place team that features more players from the Philadelphia area than the Sixers, Eagles, Phillies, and Flyers combined.
Maybe there’s some fatigue, too, from casual interest that quickly disappears when the Union smash their head on the ceiling. It’s like the journalist who cried wolf in a sense, because every time the Union get close to a trophy, and garner some respect, they get hammered by a better team or find a way to lose in a soul-crushing fashion. See: 2023 Leagues Cup Semifinal, for instance. Maybe that lingers in people’s minds and keeps them away, while the U continue to play a difficult-to-market blue collar team game devoid of needle-moving superstars.
Two more thoughts –
1) Sometimes it’s as simple as people in decision making positions being fans of the sport. The soccer demographic is younger and more diverse. Philly has a lot of middle-aged and older white men who work as TV producers and digital editors and they tend to really like baseball. That influences coverage because when the Phillies and Union are both in-season together, the Phils will get about 99% of the focus when they’re decent, which they are now. Philly really loves baseball and so does Boston and New York, which is part of the reason why the MLS teams in those markets are afterthoughts. And it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that MLS Cup took place on the same day as game six of the World Series, which was a killer for the Union, who played for the title and were still second fiddle. What’s more is that some of the older/conservative sports fans still think soccer is “gay” and/or European and that remains a roadblock for market penetration as well. As ridiculous as that might sound in 2025, it’s still very true, this dislike of the sport that continues to fall on sociopolitical lines.
2) There’s also the soccer fan who watches the Premier League but not MLS because it’s lower level soccer, and that’s not insignificant. They will watch Chelsea on a Saturday morning, or go to the Arsenal party at Misconduct Tavern, but can’t be arsed to care about the local team that actually plays on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. That’s tough to swallow sometimes. If the old school Eagles fan doesn’t like the Union, no problem, but the poser in the Real Madrid jersey shitting on the Union is a bummer.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a first-place Philly team to get a little bit of love. 95% of what we write and talk about is still going to be Eagles and Phillies.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com