British soccer star David Beckham only played a few minutes in his American "football" debut this past weekend but that was good enough to give ESPN its largest audience ever for a Major League Soccer match to date. The network said that an average of 1.46 million people tuned in for the L.A. Galaxy versus Chelsea game on Saturday (July 21st) . That's almost half a million more people than watched the previous soccer ratings champ, a 1996 match between DC United and the San Jose Clash.

Beckham came to the U.S. on a wave of hype which included an NBC special on his wife, Spice Girl Victoria "Posh" Beckham, an all-star party thrown by the couple's new best friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and Beckham's own cable reality series.

The jury's out on whether Beckham will ever live up to his hype on the soccer pitch -- an ankle injury has him sidelined for most of the time -- but so far, his trip across the pond has at least raised his profile in the U.S.

One person who hasn't bought into the Beckham hype is veteran sportscaster Al Michaels. Michaels predicted that the Beckham phenomenon is short-lived: "David Beckham and his wife coming over here, yeah, that's going to get a lot of play but that's a shooting star. If soccer was going to be hugely popular it would have been by now. The Beckham thing, yeah sure, it'll get a couple of magazine covers, it'll get a lot of time on national television, but that will come and that will go."




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