The man in the Make America Great Again hat could not have been more direct.
“I’m being evicted from the premises because we can’t wear Donald Trump hats in public,” he said to his camera from the stands at a St Louis City game in late July. A security official lingered in the background, asking him to leave as he delivered his next line: “Trump is not welcome here.”
The man, Michael Weitzel, is a season ticket holder who was eventually led outside the gates of the stadium as the security official told him that he sympathized, that he was a “Trumper” too, but that he had to follow policy.
Weitzel’s video is fairly tame, as these things go – the situation never escalates beyond a somewhat exasperated conversation. It went viral nonetheless, with a parade of influencers and publications that don’t ordinarily pay much attention to Major League Soccer suddenly taking a very keen interest in what seemed to be a landmark one-sided enforcement against political speech. Some even called it a first amendment issue – which it isn’t, because the first amendment concerns government action and MLS is a private business.
What it is, though, is the latest of a long line of incidents to shine a spotlight on MLS’s fan code of conduct, which has banned political displays in some form for much of the league’s history. Regardless of wording, the policy has seemingly always been a controversy magnet. It is also emblematic of one of MLS’s foundational challenges as it pursues its goal of being one of the top leagues of the world – how to live up to both the norms of global soccer, and those of major American sports leagues, even when the two are wildly different.
League commissioner Don Garber defended the policy earlier this year when asked by the Guardian about anti-Ice signs and banners that were confiscated at various games – actions that have caused a revolt among multiple supporters’ groups.
“We want our stadiums to stay safe,” Garber said. “We want to ensure that we’re having displays that are not going to incite anyone, and at the same time not take care of one audience, and at the same time having to deal with another audience that might be on the other side of this issue. The best way to do that is to have the policy we have.”
MLS has discouraged political displays in its fan code of conduct for many years, with the removal of banners reading “Refugees welcome” from a Toronto FC game in 2015 standing as an early…