How much is Justin Rose worth, now he’s won the US Open? Keen students of the sport/business/media nexus will be familiar with this question.
There are three basic rules to follow when responding*:
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Separated at birth. A ruthlessly ambitious hard man unafraid to crack a few heads to get what he wants.
And Mayor Carcetti from The Wire.
Sports award impresario Nick Keller, earlier.
Pet theory. The new VW Beetle is a cop out. It looks like an Audi. It looks expensive and executive. Rather than a sign of Germanic confidence, it reveals the opposite. They’ve turned the Beetle into just another posh car. But one which is trying very hard to be the geek. It’s a fake nerd. A ferd.
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Don’t usually look below the fold, but this might just be the dumbest comment I’ve read this year. It appears under Tanya Aldred’s very good piece in The Daily Telegraph on BBC Test Match Special. Aldred asks why Alison Mitchell is not going to be part of the TMS team commentary team for the Ashes.
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1 Golf’s traditions are a trap
We get it. Values and history are part of the golf sell to sponsors. But for every sponsor which wants to reach blokes in chinos for financial services and upmarket cars, there are several looking for a sexy tech platform and innovation. This point was made clearly by Chris Burton, head of sponsorship for SAP: ‘there is nothing for us to sponsor that showcases our technology’.
2 ‘What would Red Bull Golf look like?’ is not a hypothetical question
This question was asked on one of the panels, as though it was some future gazing blue sky idea. But Red Bull were in golf five years ago. They came out because (anecdote from a Red Bull exec) they didn’t want to build golf’s database for it. Too many governing bodies to deal with with too little information on who is playing the game.
3 What the Tours say and do matters. A lot.
Women. Minorities (aka ‘Coloureds’). Ties in the clubhouse. Mobile phones on the course. Fear of the new etc etc etc.
4 Disruption will happen to golf, it won’t be in control of it
If you wanted to construct a comms plan to position golf as a complacent, backward looking sport, the interview given by Tim Finchem at the KPMG Golf Business Forum would be how to go about it. He wasn’t sitting in a leather backed chair holding a cigar and brandy. But in my head he was.
5 Close your eyes and it’s as though the financial crash never happened
The language of the developers has changed to reflect the new environment. There’s much talk about sustainability, both financial and environmental. But they still want to build big green courses in areas of the world that are over populated and in danger of running out of water.
6 Snowboarding saved skiing
This comment came from Dana Garmany of Troon Golf (smart cookie) in a private round table I ran with Dana, Chris Burton (SAP), Andrea Sartori (KPMG) and Martin Gilbert of Aberdeen Asset Management. It was the single smartest thing I heard.
Skiing was dying on its feet. Too stuffy. Hidebound by rules and snobbishness.
Enter the boarders, with their caps the wrong way around and blew the snow business up. Twenty years later, those boarders are skiing.
Ringing any bells?
1 Have we got Adam Smith wrong?
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Labelling this story as ‘the battle for the future of news’ may be pushing it a bit. But not much.
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Much of the stuff around Beckham’s retirement was pretty predictable. But some tried to take the conversation forward.
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Went to a very good evening at LBS devoted to the globalisation of sport. Excellent panels, engaged and smart audience. Nice snacks.
Here’s some things that stuck:
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There has been a shift in the way sailing has been sold to the sponsorship and media markets in recent years, an attempt to tell a sexier story. America’s Cup and Volvo Ocean Race in particular have pushed a more overt connection between their properties and formula one, both in terms of the technology involved but also the inherent danger. “They wanted to make this sport no longer a race between sailboats but between high-tech industrial products” says Patricio Bertelli in this interview with Patrizio Bertelli, owner of America’s Cup challenger Luna Rossa, the boat on which Andrew Simpson died so tragically last week.
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If you have time to form a coherent view on one issue this week, it should be where you stand on the Bloomberg story.
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Pet theory: Samsung is Brand of the Year despite its marketing, not because of it.
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A rare interview with Phil Knight, in which he talks to Rance Crain of AdAge. Nice snippet about the role of controversy in relation to Nike’s personal endorsements.
Got to hand it to Nick Keller. The Sport Industry Awards was pretty bloody good.
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The Rugby World Cup 2015 news conference contained some nuggets.
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This is a BIG mistake.
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The Jason Collins story has been given a business spin, with several media commentators suggesting that as the first major league athlete to come out as gay, he will become a hit with sponsors.
This may or may not be true, particularly longer term. But I would need to be convinced that any rush to associate with Collins heralds a new era in corporate attitudes, or whether they are doing what sponsors always do, chase a big media event.
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Good piece in AdAge noting the growth in the commercial value of the NFL Draft, the ‘McRib of sporting events’.
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Spent yesterday at the BFI Southbank listening to people debate the future of the sponsorship industry. You should read Ben Wells’ blog as he’s already done a very good run through, read it here.
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