The number of American sports marketers transferring their skills from the U.S. to work in the U.K. \u2014 the world\u2019s biggest soccer market \u2014 has been expanding for 15 years. It reflects a trend at the top; 11 Premier League teams are now majority-owned by Americans. <\/p>\n
David Bruce went about things altogether differently, leaving his native England for the U.S. 15 years ago and rising to become CMO at Major League Soccer, only to return home in May 2024 as chief business officer of Sunderland AFC \u2014 his hometown team.<\/p>\n
Three questions with David Bruce<\/p>\n
How emotional was winning that promotion game? \u201cI\u2019ve said on the record that was the greatest day of my life, but my wife reminded me that our marriage and children were also pretty good days. My mom and dad were there in the Royal Box, and my wife at my side. I\u2019d never cried at a sporting event before. Well, it\u2019s the reason you work in sports, right?\u201d <\/p>\n
The difference between football in England and soccer in America?
\n \u201cBroadly, what I take from America is its incredible optimism. In England, we typically wait until something is almost finished before we\u2019ll talk about it. In America, a vision and a dream is all you need to start people talking. A lot of the pleasure of being a fan is riding along on that journey.\u201d <\/p>\n
Something from American sports you imported? \u201cService. We had too much \u2018open the doors at 3 p.m. and everyone will come.\u2019 When I got here, we didn\u2019t have anyone responsible for all of our fan-facing functions. We\u2019ve since tried to instill that our simplest KPI is making a fan smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunderland is a club with a fervent working-class fan base, fueled by more than 145 years of devotion but with most of its best years before World War II. Nonetheless, \u201ceveryone here cares about two things: the football club \u2014 and then their family,” said Bruce. <\/p>\n
No one could term it as cause and effect, but since Bruce\u2019s arrival, Sunderland has been promoted to the Premier League after an eight-year absence. It did so on May 24 with a stoppage-time goal in a dramatic 2-1 victory against Sheffield United. The delirious result: stepping up to the world\u2019s top soccer circuit. The bad news: just 10 weeks to prepare for life in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
With the help of funding from majority owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, who took over in 2021 and hired Bruce in 2024, off-pitch metrics are climbing. Commercial revenue has skyrocketed from \u00a34 million to \u00a318 million. Premium jumped from \u00a33 million to just below \u00a38 million, but not until the club spent \u00a310 million on new premium seating. Retail sales of Sunderland-logoed merch more than tripled \u2014 from \u00a33 million to \u00a310 million. Fueling some of that, ownership spent \u00a3180 million on 15 new players. Average attendance has increased around 4,000 per game at Sunderland\u2019s 49,000-capacity Stadium of Light.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of that is proof of how great a platform the Premier League provides,\u201d acknowledged Bruce. <\/p>\n
Sunderland is proving itself competitive within soccer\u2019s top grade. At press time, it was sitting ninth among the 20 Premier League teams, just ahead of perennial powerhouse Manchester United, and outperforming Leeds and Burnley, the two other teams promoted from the Championship league. A Netflix documentary series \u201cSunderland \u2019Til I Die\u201d has been chronicling the club\u2019s moves since 2018. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve changed our profile considerably; now we\u2019ve got to stay there,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n
When Bruce says \u201cwe,\u201d it\u2019s voiced with conviction. He\u2019s a son of Sunderland \u2014 an industrial Northeast England city of 274,000, once a coal-mining center and known for centuries as \u201cthe world\u2019s shipbuilder.\u201d <\/p>\n
Among Bruce\u2019s earliest memories are huddling at games with his father and unsuccessfully trying to warm up in the frigid standing-room-only terraces, with a mince pie and a hot Bovril beef-extract drink.<\/p>\n
He was in Sunderland\u2019s academy development program from ages 10-16, but it was Bruce\u2019s brother who went on to play professionally (West Bromwich). \u201cI was 5-9 since I was 11, so maybe goaltender wasn\u2019t my best choice,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n
Even with an uncle who was a director for a nearby team, Bruce was so focused on becoming a professional footballer that there was no thought of a front-office career.<\/p>\n
A stint at consultancy Wolff Olins working on the London 2012 Olympics brand sold him on working in sports. While finishing his University of Oregon MBA around 2010, Bruce\u2019s soccer business newsletter led to an interview with MLS Commissioner Don Garber, who asked Bruce how he would spend a $10 million ad budget. Bruce advised him to rebuild the league\u2019s and teams\u2019 brands identities first. He was hired the next day and MLS announced a new branding strategy, including a new logo, in September 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid is one of the most creative marketers I\u2019ve ever been around, and he really left his mark on the league,\u201d said Garber. \u201cHe was our marketing engine; he launched the brands for our youth programs, and built our soccer pyramid of youth programs feeding up to MLS that\u2019s become part of our DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Fox is a former Gatorade, NBA and Nike marketer, who later served as CCO of Arsenal and CEO of Aston Villa before becoming president of the MLS Earthquakes. He credits Bruce\u2019s \u201cinnate understanding of what football means in Europe\u201d in helping \u201cconnect American fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s commercially acceptable there is different and very nuanced,\u201d Fox added. \u201cYou can\u2019t have a drink [within sight of the field] 15 minutes before or after a Premier League game, and there\u2019s absolutely no kiss cams or in-your-face commercialism.\u201d <\/p>\n
During Bruce\u2019s 12 years at MLS, the league expanded from 17 to 30 teams. Bruce met his wife here, had children in the U.S. and was convinced he\u2019d be stateside through the 2026 FIFA World Cup and beyond. Then he had to choose between reuniting with an old flame or remaining an ex-pat. <\/p>\n
\u201cAcross the business, people told me not to do the thing you love most,\u201d Bruce recalled. \u201cMy emotional side was just slamming my logical side. I didn\u2019t want to retire someday and regret not having done this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t leave MLS for anything other than trying to get my club in the Premier League. I\u2019ve got family here and all my childhood friends, but they got more pints with me when I was based in New York, because this job is all-consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of American sports marketers transferring their skills from the U.S. to work in the U.K. \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,9920,573,39932,561,82,63078],"class_list":["post-226700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-epl","tag-mls","tag-print","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-upfront"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}