MLS had 79 days.
When Landon Donovan was named the 2014 MLS All-Star Game MVP on Aug. 6, it was another accolade for the player considered by many to be the greatest American-born soccer player of all time. So the next day, when Donovan suddenly announced on his personal Facebook page that he would retire at the end of the current MLS season, the U.S. soccer community had to come together quickly if it wanted to collectively send off their biggest star.
“After we heard the retirement news, I got a call from [MLS Commissioner] Don Garber that he wanted to put together a very comprehensive plan to celebrate Landon’s legacy and fully appreciate his impact on the growth of MLS, U.S. Soccer and North American soccer,” said MLS Chief Marketing Officer Howard Handler. “The story of Landon has a lot of parallels to the story of MLS and the coming of age of soccer in this country.”
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MLS moved quickly to create a comprehensive plan after Landon Donovan announced his retirement.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The list of people who would be involved in the planning was long. It included Garber and Handler from MLS; LA Galaxy President Chris Klein and the team’s senior director of communications and digital, Brendan Hannan; U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati and the group’s senior manager of communications, Neil Buethe; along with both Donovan at times and his longtime agent and confidant Richard Motzkin.
The challenge was to put together a plan to celebrate not only Donovan’s accomplishments and legacy, but also his impact on the rise of MLS and soccer in America more broadly.
The time was short — 79 days — between the Aug. 7 retirement announcement and the Galaxy’s last regular-season match of the season on Oct. 25, so there was a heavy effort from the league to ensure that all aspects of the plan were in sync and that everyone was on board, including MLS’s corporate and network partners.
A decision was made to focus on highlighting specific dates ahead, with content, celebrations and activations planned along the way. One immediate date circled: Oct. 19, the last regular-season home match for the Galaxy. A second key date would be Oct. 10. That would be Donovan’s last appearance with the U.S. men’s national team (for a match versus Ecuador) — but that showing would have the undercurrent of Donovan’s controversial exclusion from the U.S. World Cup squad this summer.
“Around the same time there was conversation with MLS on what was the right way to honor him; U.S. Soccer also had the idea to honor him,” Motzkin said. “You could imagine the initial reaction, but the more we thought about it, having that one last hurrah with the fans was meaningful to him.”
Flagging those two match dates helped the plan become clearer. Content was then rolled out across the league, honoring Donovan in a number of ways. The two biggest components were video series.
Donovan was included in the Grantland series “The Finish Line,” having his own four-part series focusing on the end of his career and those final days and games. Executive produced by Emmy Award-winner Jonathan Hock and one-half of the “Men in Blazers” duo, Roger Bennett, the series is being presented originally on Grantland but then cross-posted and made available to other ESPN platforms. The first video was posted Oct. 16, and other roughly 10-minute episodes will be released over the next few weeks.
The other series was done by Copper Pot Pictures in conjunction with MLS+, the league’s content and distribution group. This six-part set of videos rolled out each day between Oct. 14 and 19, leading into Donovan’s last home match. Each highlighted a specific aspect and moment of Donovan’s career. The themes included phenom, front-runner, icon, leader, human and champion. The packages were picked up by ESPN and were translated into Spanish for Univision, to be featured both online and during broadcasts.
“We wanted to make it so every stakeholder could tell part of the story,” Handler said.
In addition to ESPN and Univision, NBC Sports Network, Fox, TSN and RDS have provided Donovan-specific coverage since his Aug. 7 announcement. MLS and the LA Galaxy also arranged a Los Angeles-based media tour over the course of two days that saw Donovan conduct one-on-one interviews with a number of media properties, including USA Today, CNN, Telemundo, Televisa, The New York Times and The Associated Press.
The MLS league office provided a toolkit of sorts to the rest of the league’s clubs, as well, aiming to help them offer their own Donovan-related coverage as the season (and his career) wound down. A 60-second package produced by MLS was provided to clubs that could be used in-stadium or could be shared on team websites or through social media.
Some teams additionally highlighted specific, Donovan-related moments for their fans when the Galaxy and Donovan came through town. For example, Columbus highlighted his role in the various U.S. men’s national team games played in the city prior to a Crew-Galaxy match, and San Jose looked back to his years at the club (2001-04). TSN and RDS, meanwhile, showcased Donovan’s games played in Canada over his career prior to the Galaxy playing Toronto FC on Oct. 4.
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Gatorade’s salute was featured during Donovan’s final match with the U.S. team.
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Still, the Oct. 10 and 19 games were the focal points of the plan, and the group planning the tributes intended to make them as prime as possible. League, team and U.S. Soccer partners similarly used those games as focal points for their efforts. Among them, Gatorade created a 60-second ad that debuted on Oct. 10 and was featured during ESPN’s coverage of the USA-Ecuador match. Aiming to highlight Donovan’s impact on soccer in the United States and around the globe, the
commercial took footage of Donovan’s deliberate penalty kick routine and intertwined those clips with shots of younger players making similar actions. Nike, EA Sports and Wells Fargo were also involved in on-site activations before and during the game that made mention of Donovan’s career.
At the last Galaxy home match on Oct. 19, Donovan was saluted with a special banner tifo — an honor more traditionally seen in Europe, with fans staging a choreographed, visual celebration. That recognition was planned for the match’s 10th minute (to match Donovan’s jersey number). Along with that, Boyz II Men, Donovan’s favorite group, was tabbed to sing the national anthem for the match, and John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting rewrote one of the group’s more popular songs, “100 Years,” as a tribute, playing it prior to the game in-stadium in conjunction with a highlight video.
Donovan’s last days in the league will continue to live digitally on the MLS website, which will archive and create a destination to house all of the different elements presented in the plan. Social media has been an important component of the farewell plan, as well: Fans were able to follow along using the hashtags #LegenD and #ThanksLD.
Despite the level of detail being put into all the plans, there was some reluctance initially from Donovan’s camp to be involved.
“There was hesitation [from Donovan] at first, and we had a lot of conversations about his comfort level in regards to getting this level of attention; he’s not the kind of guy that demands the spotlight,” Motzkin said. “Ultimately, Landon was never entirely comfortable with it, but he was so pleased by the fact that everyone wanted to honor him in these ways. He also wanted to show his gratitude in reverse.”
The Galaxy’s season continues. The team was scheduled to begin a two-game playoff semifinal versus Real Salt Lake this past weekend, with a home match set for Sunday. As for any celebrations planned for that game: There will be no additional elements, as the group decided to focus strictly on the competition of the playoffs.
“Landon has been pulled in a lot of directions and it’s been really nice to be part of a group that has worked well together and are sincere in their desire to do the right thing, but at the end of the day, all Landon cares about is trying to win another MLS Cup,” Motzkin said. “It’s teamwork at its finest.”
