CARSON — It's new! It's different! It's exciting!

It's the Lakers media circus with an English accent!

It's Beckhamania, and for better or worse, it finally came to roost Friday at the Home Depot Center, with something called the "David Beckham Official Presentation," a sort of combination photo op/pep rally/news conference to signal the arrival of The New Savior of American Soccer.

For the next five years, all that's resting on the rather slight frame of Mr. Bend It Like Me is the domestic viability and international credibility of a soccer league, a conglomerate's hope of creating a soccer brand with worldwide earning power, and a chunk of the livelihood of the Los Angeles-area paparazzi.

Oh, yeah, he's supposed to help the L.A. Galaxy win some Major League Soccer games, too.

That's quite a bit to ask of anyone, let alone a 32-year-old whose particular set of soccer skills were being judged, rather harshly, to be in accelerated decline back when he signed with the Galaxy. He subsequently underwent a bit of career revival in his final days with Real Madrid — a genuine soccer power of worldwide standing — but still, could anyone live up to what's expected of him, short of some sort of mad-scientist hybrid of Pele, Ronaldinho, Maradona and any two or three others you might throw in?

"We'll see," Beckham said, after the confetti had fluttered to earth and L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had moved on to find the next spot where a congregation of TV cameras outweighed the booing and heckling about his personal life.

"This is a big one," Beckham admitted. "This is a big challenge for me. It's something different, something exciting. But there's expectations all the way through my life, and all the way through my career, and hopefully I can handle it the right way."

Beckham's arrival to join the Galaxy and MLS is, depending on who you listen to, either something totally new or a flashback to the day when Pele joined the New York Cosmos and helped bring the North American Soccer League a brief moment in the spotlight.

But as a media event, well, it's a familiar combination of sports reporters mixed with news reporters mixed with the representative from People Magazine, asking the inevitable Tom-and-Katie questions. (If you have to ask who Tom and Katie are, particularly in this context, welcome back from those years shipwrecked on the desert island.) In other words, it's a confluence of celebrity, sports and business, a story spilling across the usual categorical boundaries and capable of appearing anywhere and everywhere.

Or, even more simply, it's another Kobe Bryant saga — circa the Malone-and-Payton, trouble-in-Colorado era when tabloid TV was drawn to the big top, as opposed to the current, hold-my-breath-til-I'm-traded era, which remains confined mostly to the sports pages.

As was the case then, the games are merely the backdrop for all the other stuff, though the specific "other stuff" is quite a bit different.

Beckham's wife, Victoria — who achieved her fame as a member of the pop group the Spice Girls (and shouldn't they be the Spice Women when they reunite this year?) — gives the Beckham story a paparazzi component unlike any part of the Lakers saga.

Ultimately, this may prove to be more of a business story than anything else, given the involvement of AEG, which more or less sets the standard when it comes to multi-tentacled international sports and entertainment conglomerates.

By that measure, AEG is already declaring victory, given that ticket sales, suite rentals, jersey sales, and interest in lucrative overseas tours have all gone through the roof.

"Everything straight across the board has had a significant increase," said AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke. " David's paying for himself. This has been a good financial investment for David. It's been a very good financial investment for us."

Of course, no major media event is complete without a truly ridiculous comment, and Leiweke provided it when he continued, "That said, this was not about money. This is about a brand, this is about a sport and this is about an investment in this league."

Uh-huh. And why do you make an investment in anything? Oh, yeah, for financial return. And, of course, it's pure altruism behind those $500 field-level tickets — or even the $40 tickets to sit on a grass berm — for Beckham's debut next week against Chelsea. If history tells us anything, it's that AEG's involvement makes it much more likely this will be a business success than a sporting one. To date, AEG is a lot better at real-estate deals with teams attached than it is at actual sporting events.

Those pinning their hopes on Beckham for the Great American Soccer Breakthrough probably don't want to hear that. But Friday, and in the short term, such details hardly matter.

The media circus is back in town. Different star, different sport, same madness.

If you really want to judge David Beckham's impact, check back in five years and see if he's still in the center of the big top.

— Contact Star columnist David Lassen at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.