Category Archives: sports business

April 7, 2014 · 9:59 am

Don’t Be An Idiot

Over the weekend, CBS and Turner tried an interesting experiment around the Final Four broadcast. They set up “homer” channels which have nothing to do with The Simpsons and everything to do with a particular team. Called TeamCasts, the channel would have announcers who openly rooted for a particular team and called them “us.” There was also a traditional, play it right down the middle broadcast available.
Apparently, not everyone got the message (or managed to decipher what the on-screen graphic meant that said it was a TeamCast) and Twitter filled up with complaints. Leave it to Charles Barkley to explain the problem:


Maybe a little harsh, but Chuck makes an excellent point, one we should remember.  People ARE idiots.  OK, not you and not me.  But there are idiots in the world.  Ever notice when you buy a cup of coffee that it says “this cup is filled with very hot liquid”?  That’s thanks to an idiot.  Ever see a piece of wrapped food that instructs the purchaser to “remove wrapper before consuming”?  Another idiot.

I don’t raise this to degrade my fellow humans.  I’m pointing it out because many of us assume the consumers are a lot smarter than they often demonstrate.  I am very aware of David Ogilvy‘s famous quote – “the consumer is not an idiot; she is your wife” and I agree with his point.  You can’t treat people like idiots.  You also cannot, however, assume that they’re a lot smarter than they are. They may not realize they have a problem that your product solves.  They may believe a competitor’s silly claim  that has no basis in fact because most people are too lazy to seek out the facts (just turn on one of the many news channels and you’ll be able to see hours of undocumented “facts”).

Don’t be an idiot.  As a marketer, strike the balance between respecting consumers and treating them as if they’re not really very bright.  As a consumer yourself, pay attention to facts and don’t go jumping on social media to proclaim your outrage when in fact you’re demonstrating ignorance.    Simple enough, right?

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August 21, 2013 · 8:34 am

Kids And Cards

Once in a while I spot something that elicits an “Aw come ON” from me as I read it. Let’s see if you agree. Bowl-BlackBackgroundThe piece was in yesterday’s USAToday and was a front page article in the sports section on the topic of high school football all-stars.  You can click-through the previous link to read it if you care to.  In a nutshell, participants in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl are asked to sign a couple of hundred trading cards each.  The kids aren’t told what the cards are for nor are they made to participate.  It’s “an opportunity, not a requirement.”  The cards are sold and in some cases they become quite valuable.  No money goes to the kids.

While I have some qualms about that, what caused the aforementioned response is the attitudes displayed by the adults involved:

“The answer is, ‘Well, you don’t have to.’ But for many of these players, this will be the only time in their athletic careers they are on a trading card. To be singled out at that point in time for their athletic achievement is not a bad thing.”  Leaf CEO Brian Gray says there is no pressure put on the high school players and they have the option to decline. “But really,” he says, “If you don’t want to be on the card, there’s something wrong with you.”

Seriously?  Anyone care to name an athlete who knowingly permits their name, likeness, and autograph to be used for purely commercial purposes without any compensation?  I’ll wait.  Didn’t think so.   Most of the kids think the cards are being used for non-commercial purposes – donations to soldiers, for example.  They are never told, and when they find out they don’t really understand how much some of them are worth.  Indianapolis Colts QB Andrew Luck (a Stanford grad and by all accounts a smart man) objected to the card being issued, saying he had never approved it.  The company’s response:

Leaf responded by suing him, saying it had a First Amendment right to do so, claiming that the game operators had granted Leaf the license to player likenesses. The 2008 game was before Leaf began issuing sets of trading cards from the game, but it has issued alumni cards – such as the 2008 Luck card.

Now, I’m in my third decade working in sports and I’ve NEVER heard anyone claim they can issue merchandise as part of the First Amendment.  There’s a multi-billion dollar business called licensing that would disappear if that’s the truth.  Rationalization aside, why not just tell the kids clearly upfront what’s going on?  Hiding something?

One of my favorite Saturday Night Live characters is Dan Aykroyd playing a smarmy guy named Irwin Mainway who, among other things, sells “Bag O’Glass” and caters a school breakfast program with coffee and cigarettes.  His take is that “it’s a bottomless cup of coffee” makes it all just fine.  No, it really doesn’t and the trading card company’s isn’t OK either.  You agree?

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July 30, 2012 · 11:46 am

Getting Authenticated

I spent a good part of the weekend watching the Olympics (can I use that word without IOC permission?). Authentication FailNBC is wall to wall with them across all of their networks and it’s great. It’s truly the smorgasbord of sports – a grand buffet with a little something for everyone. Just in case you’re still hungry, NBC is also streaming everything to anyone who can prove they have a cable TV subscription. Seems fair – why have to pay for the same content a second time?

As an aside, that availability of this streaming has me confused about why people are complaining via social media about NBC’s TV coverage – what they choose to air  on which networks, etc.  You can be your own producer, and if you’re tech savvy enough to complain in the Twittersphere about it you’re probably savvy enough to figure out how to hook a computer up to a TV screen to watch the streaming as if it was TV.

I tried to get myself authenticated to do exactly that and found out that the weak link in the chain is actually the cable operator.  Well, specifically MY cable operator.  Every time I went through the process, which involves going to the NBCOlympics.com site and entering your cable user ID and password via your own provider’s site, I got a weird server message.  Not an error message as if I had the wrong information – a message you see in the graphic that’s indecipherable.  I finally emailed Cablevision support.  To their credit, they emailed me back within the hour that I was now authorized.  I wasn’t – same message when I went to sign in.  I used an online chat link they sent me to try to resolve it.  The very nice person (named Keith, coincidentally) let me know after a few minutes that he was a TV support guy and I needed to chat with the Internet guy.  Start a new chat.  Kevin (the new rep) asked if I had Cablevision’s internet service, which I don’t.  I reminded him that as long as I had TV I was supposed to be able to watch the streams.  He checked (5 minutes) and discovered I was right.  The issue turned out to be Chrome on a Mac – I was authorized instantly on a PC using Firefox.  Once I installed Flash into Safari, it worked on my Mac as well.  Strangely, it now works on Chrome too.

I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this as the pipe we use to access content becomes less important than the content itself.  I’m hoping the bumps will vanish and that rather than a great product such as this surfacing once every four years, we can use it every day.  What about you?  Have you tried the streaming?  What do you think?  Any issues getting it to work?

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