Every week I have my students read one newspaper or magazine article in English. Mostly they come from Monterrey’s local English weekly, City News, or the Miami Herald (which is actually less expensive than Monterrey’s main paper, El Norte). But this week’s article came from The Economist.

I practically have it memorized now that I’ve had to explain it to more than 15 students.

The Soccer Business: Scoring in America describes how Jorge Vergara, the owner of Mexico’s most well known soccer club, Las Chivas from Guadalajara, has exported a reproduction of the team – Chivas USA – north of the border to compete in the US’s MLS league.

At the time of the article’s publication, Chivas USA still had yet to win their first match, but The Economist seems convinced the new club is a good investment for three reasons:

1. Demographics:
   

   There are no around 40 million Latinos in America – some 13% of the population – and by 2025 their number is set to increase to around 61 million, or 18% of the population.

2. Brand Recognition
   Seriously. We’re talking much more than the Lakers or Yankees. In Mexico I think Las Chivas are only behind Chuy.
3. Rivalry
   This is what I found to be most interesting. Vergara paid an extra $15 million to be able to compete in the LA market with the already established Los Angeles Galaxy. Sure, the fact that half of the city is Latino was a huge factor. But according to Vergara himself, what he was really looking for was the excitement and attention that a rivalry generates. More than just the Chivas USA – Galaxy rivalry though, what Vergara really seems to be counting on is that Club America from Mexico City will start its own team north of the border, possibly in Houston.

The rivalry between Chivas of Guadalajara of America of Mexico city is legendary. The stuff of ancient Greek epics. The entire country catches fire like a backdraft when these two teams play and more often than not blood gets spilled both in the stadium and outside it. I asked my students if they thought that same kind of fervor could be reproduced in the United States.

Expecting them to say no, I was surprised when every single student said this was a brilliant marketing idea and that of course it would work. But I continued to be skeptical: “sure the rivalry between the Chivas and America might extend upwards with recent immigrants – especially since many come from Jalisco and Mexico City, but from what I’ve seen, not many first generation Mexican-Americans have the same interest in soccer as their parents do. In fact, every American-born Latino I know is a much bigger fan of baseball or basketball than soccer.”

Most of my students admitted I had a point, but they said that trend won’t continue in the future as more recent immigrants are starting to keep better contact with their families and traditions and that even third or fourth generation Mexican-Americans are rediscovering their heritage because of greater access to travel and communication like the internet. Soccer, they say, is destined to conquer America like it has everywhere else on the globe.

What really interests me though is, when will former national sports leagues will start spilling over across borders? Both Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League are bi-national with teams in the US and Canada. And soccer in Europe has been internationally friendly (and not so friendly) for decades now. I’m surprised that more sports leagues don’t follow suit.

Food and music, it seems, are setting the pace in distributed cultural globalization. Why are sports still lagging behind? In an era when multi-national companies are started overnight with a couple Skype calls, it seems that sports leagues should start pushing beyond the previously assumed boundries.

The expansion team that eventually became the Washington Nationals was also considering Monterrey, but investors and the league backed out of what they saw as a risky investment in untested foreign fans. I think this was a mistake. Baseball is surprisingly popular here in Monterrey (nearly every day I walk by batting cages downtown) and is home to the well kept Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame. Furthermore, you’ll never have supportive fans until they have a team to support. And finally, Mexican immigration to the United States is no longer restricted to Texas, Arizona, and California. Migrant workers are following employment booms into the Northwest, North Carolina, all the way up to Connecticut (and increasingly, Canada). A tri-national baseball league would offer a shared interest and point of reference (as well as friendly rivalries) throughout all of North America.