Starting in late 2017, an anonymous Twitter account going by “Global Soccer Fan” began attacking Major League Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Federation, comparing their leaders to notorious criminals.
The tweets from @fan_global compared MLS commissioner Don Garber and USSF president Sunil Gulati to convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein and the late Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, and the person behind the account likely would have remained secret forever. But then former North American Soccer League chairman Rocco Commisso spent years funding an antitrust lawsuit against MLS and USSF.
Discovery in that lawsuit revealed that Commisso is Global Soccer Fan. He sent the tweets.
In September 2017, U.S. Soccer denied NASL’s application to renew its Division 2 sanction, which ultimately led to the NASL’s collapse and all parties sparring in Brooklyn federal court more than seven years later. NASL and Commisso allege that MLS and USSF conspired to tank the fledgling league.
Shortly after, Commisso—the billionaire founder, CEO, and owner of cable conglomerate Mediacom—started tweeting.
Monday was the ninth day of the jury trial where NASL seeks $170 million in damages from USSF and MLS. (Damages awarded are tripled under antitrust law.) On Monday, the trial’s ninth day, MLS’s outside counsel read out the most incendiary tweets uncovered during discovery. The NASL side had tried to keep them sealed.
“If NASL lawsuit continues, the skeletons will come out of the closet,” Commisso agreed during testimony he tweeted from Global Soccer Fan on December 16, 2017. “USSF has been raped by the Harvey Weinstein of US Soccer – Garber, who with MLS owners and Gulati, have engineered a Madoff-type scam on all of American soccer.”
Brad Ruskin, MLS’s outside counsel, asked Commisso: “I think you agreed with me that you understood the absolute horror of equating something or someone with rape; correct?”
Ruskin followed: “You chose to equate someone with rape over a business grievance where you didn’t get what you wanted, correct? That’s when you decided to do this, yes or no?”
Commisso simply replied “Yes” to both questions.
As Global Soccer Fan, Commisso frequently compared Garber to Weinstein and equated his management to rape. In court Monday he admitted he posted this on Dec. 22, 2017, about an executive named Kathy Carter. “At SUM, she ran a corrupt enterprise for boss Donnie Garber, the Harvey Weinstein of U.S. Soccer raping USSF for fifteen years for MLS owners,” he wrote.
SUM is Soccer United Marketing, at the time a joint MLS-USSF marketing and media company.
Commisso owned the NASL’s New York Cosmos and still owns the Serie A club ACF Fiorentina. Mediacom Communications, the source of his fortune, a cable operator in 22 states. When questioned by his own lawyer, Jeff Kessler, Commisso said he started the anonymous account so as not to interfere with his media company’s business. He later conceded he set up a second anonymous Twitter account under the name Virgil Kane, and instructed his public relations executive at Mediacom to post damning posts about MLS and USSF.
Commisso frequently entangled Mediacom with his soccer interests. When Fox analyst Alexi Lalas criticized the NASL suit on his podcast, Commisso sent a letter to a Fox executive asking for Lalas to be disciplined because Mediacom and Fox were business partners, according to his own testimony.
“Lalas knows he walks a fine line with rocco,” Commisso wrote from his anonymous account in May 2018. “He cannot offend his masters at MLS/USSF. Garber has final say as to whether he can telecast MLS games. But he also cannot offend rocco, as his Mediacom cable tv company has paid FOX hundreds of $$ millions over yrs. Be careful Lalas.”
A few days later he tweeted, “MLS is like a prostitute. You only get if you pay.”
Commisso, visibly bruised from a weekend fall in the shower, expressed regrets for the tweets on the witness stand. “I don’t feel good about it because it’s not me,” he testified on Monday. “I stopped the Twitter account. I haven’t done any Tweets in five or six years and I’m happy for having stopped all the social media stuff.”
He answered “I don’t think so” when Ruskin, the MLS lawyer, asked if he had apologized to any of the people he had “smeared” with the tweets.
It appeared to be a taxing day for Commisso. When the judge in the case, Hector Gonzalez, told him he could stand down, Commisso asked, “I can go home now?” Gonzalez said he could, to which Commisso retorted, “Oh my God. Thank you jury. Thank you, judge.”
