In Ted Turner’s heyday, he liked to do big and bold things. Turner was one of the early adopters of cable TV with TBS and cable news with CNN. He also went deep into sports, buying the Atlanta Braves, Hawks, and Thrashers, plus buying World Championship Wrestling to take on Vince McMahon and WWE.
Turner made a lot of big purchases, but there was one that he briefly considered that would’ve potentially changed the direction of soccer in the United States.
Dick Cheatham, the former group controller of TBS, recently sat down with Conrad Thompson in a podcast for Ad Free Shows. While discussing his time at Turner while WCW was going on, Cheatham revealed that former Turner Sports president Harvey Schiller once pitched Turner to buy Arsenal FC.
It seemed like things didn’t go very far, but Turner was pitched, and Ted wasn’t the one who said no.
“[Schiller] wanted to be [George] Steinbrenner,” Cheatham said. “He thought he could [take] over sports, and we started doing goofy **** then too… He wanted to buy a soccer team, and it was Arsenal. He wanted to buy that.”
“[Schiller] had worked out a deal where he was going to end, he made the pitch to Ted where they were going to buy Arsenal using TBS stock. There was a guy over there who was Harvey’s number guy, Alan, but he convinced Harvey that this was a terrible mistake…TBS stock wasn’t liquid and it had better value in another deal.”
On top of the issue with TBS stock, Turner probably would’ve entered another issue had he sought Premier League TV rights for the United States. The Braves provided lots of programming for Turner, one of the main reasons he bought the team. But he likely wouldn’t have been able to do the same with Arsenal. Rupert Murdoch tried to buy Manchester United in 1998, and issues were raised based on his Sky Sports network having Premier League TV rights. That deal was eventually blocked.
Cheatham didn’t specify a timeframe, but Schiller joined Turner in 1994, so this must have occurred after that. Also, considering the plan involved Turner stock, that puts it before the merger with Time Warner. That was in October 1996, so this had to have been between 1994 and ’96.
It’s an interesting “what if” scenario had the planets all aligned and Ted Turner bought Arsenal. For one thing, it would’ve been a massive deal for soccer in the United States. With the success of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, soccer was big, but club soccer wasn’t nearly on that level. MLS wouldn’t start until 1996, and finding European games on TV was challenging. If Turner had gotten Premier League rights, he may have just shown Arsenal games, but it would’ve been Premier League soccer on a top cable network in the mid-90s.
In addition, it would’ve made Arsenal far and away the most popular club soccer team in the United States. Just like how the Braves were popular, Arsenal could have experienced something similar if they were the only ones on TV all the time. They’re still popular in the U.S., but they would’ve been “America’s Team.”
Alas, that didn’t happen. After the Time Warner merger, Turner himself bought the Atlanta Thrashers NHL expansion team in 1997. And he never got into soccer ownership. But there was a time when it was considered.
