Casey Wasserman Fights Back on Darren Rovell’s SportsBiz

There is a very interesting interview on Darren Rovell’s Sports Biz that touches upon an interesting subject- should banks who have received tarp money from the government be sponsoring golf tournaments in such a poor economy? Is it fair for banks to be sponsoring PGA Tour events and giving away lavish gifts at these events morally right?

Casey Wasserman, CEO of the Wasserman Media Group and the 46th most powerful person in sports according to Businessweek comes out and says golf tournaments are an important part of corporate marketing efforts and should in no way be looked down upon- even in this economy.  The question remains, are corporate sponsored golf tournaments an efficient marketing tool? Aren’t there better ways for companies to be spending their marketing dollars? In the interview Darren asks Casey whether in his mind sponsoring events such as these where ROI is not easily measurable is excessive. Also in the interview advertising guru Donny Deutsch comes out and says the ROI on golf tournament “stinks”.

Is it bad publicity for banks or financial services companies to spend tarp money on sports marketing events where ROI is at best questionable?  Check out the interview, it raises some great issues.

It’s Been A While! Couldn’t Stay Away From Blogging

Took a short break from blogging. Sorry the reviews of the L.A sports agencies never came to fruition- life got in the way. None the less, I really couldn’t stay away from blogging for very long and can assure you, new content is on the way!

A Review of The L.A Area Sports Agencies

I’ve decided to do an analysis of the local sports marketing agencies. Stay tuned for in depth coverage on all of them.

Cubs To Auction Off Seats at Wrigley Field!

Apparently the Cubs have 71 new seats at Wrigley Field, and they are being auctioned off on a per-season basis on their website. According to the article over at the Sports Biz with Darren Rovell, “The seats are appropriately sponsored by the Chicago Board Options Exchange are the opening bids were at about $17,000 per seat (about $210 per game), with the lots being offered in chunks of two, four and five seats. “

Now although this is interesting, what is more interesting to think about is what will happen when all teams in a league begin to this? Could/Would this ever happen?  What is the aftermath of having all of ticket sales done through auction? Is this a system that could work? I wonder if this is what we are heading towards. Rovell in his article does an interview with Mr. Michael Lufrano, who talks about why the Cubs are going about selling these tickets this way. What I find to be intriguing is that Mr. Lufrano claims that this is a response to the Cubs not having a new stadium (which puts them at an unfair advantage), and needing the extra revenues in order to compete in the NL Central.

This is truely a unique way of selling these tickets, and I can definitely embrace the fact that the Cubs are using the internet to promote the auction, and that sports is being bettered (or worsened) by the prosperity of the internet. I just think this means much higher prices, which is not good for the average fan.

Check out the full article here.

Michael Jordan Still Dominating The Athletic Shoe Market

Michael Jordan is still all over the place. A quick quote from the last ESPN:The Magazine,

“Nearly seven in 10 sports fans say Michael Jordan is still the man.”

I just read an article over at Darren Rovell’sSportsBiz that talks about Jordan’s continued success as a marketer of shoes. According to the article, Nike (who has 86% of the U.S share of athletic shoes) is still dominating in large part due to the success of the Jordan brand.

According to the article, the Jordan brand is worth an estimated $800 million dollars (I bet Adidas wished they had come at Jordan with a better contract 23 years ago). Another amazing stat is that about 40 of the top 50 basketball signature shoes in 2007 were Jordan styles. Not bad for a guy who played his last game in April of 2003.

Check out the interview with Jordan about his brand’s continued success, and how the Jumpman brand dominates the premium segment of the athletic shoe market. It will be interestingto see if any of today’s superstars (Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony) could ever manage to construct a legacy that could have such an impact on athletic apparel. Nike obviously did the smart thing in signing Lebron James (and Tiger Woods), as he seems to be the only current NBA player that has the mystique that could ever amount to anything close to what Michael has done for Nike.

Check out the recent ESPN:The Magazine article in which Jordan sounds off on what is wrong with the NBA.

Tony Romo’s Marketability Is Rising Quickly!

We recently listed and took a look at the top 25 most marketable athletes according to marketing executives from around the country,and Tony Romo was not even on the list. I am going to have to say that if he isn’t on the current list, he’s soon going to be. The guy is everywhere, and he’s doing it in style. Not only is he the star QB for the Dallas Cowboys(not a bad gig), but he was a judge in the Miss Universe Pageant, has been seen running around with Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson. The guy has the number one selling jersey this year and also  just signed a new contract that is worth $67.5 million over 6 years. He seemingly is becoming one of the more marketable athletes in the NFL. According to MSNBC, some recent advertising appearances by Romo include:

-ESPN’s This Is Sportscenter Commerical

-AT&T Ads

-Diet Pepsi Max

 If Romo could pull off a win this week against Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers Romo’s stock will rise even more. It’s too bad that the game won’t be televised nationally, or a win would REALLY do wonders that would translate into dollars (The Solution To The NFL Network Problem) Over at the MarketingArmBlog , R. J Gonser of Creative Artists  Agency is quoted as saying that you haven’t seen nothing yet. Gonser comments, “It’s the perfect storm with Tony…You’ve got the cachet of Tony being quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and being a dynamic person.”

A quote from the MSNBC article regarding Romo’s Davie Brown Index, “the Dallas QB scores on the same level with other major sports and entertainment names, including Shaquille O’Neal, Roger Clemens, Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld, who have all been in the public eye more than a decade longer than Romo.”

Can’t wait to see what else this guy does. Think about what would happen if he won a Superbowl… Where will Romo pop up next? Any ideas?

Alex Rodriguez and Yankees Reach Incredible Marketing Deal

Alex Rodriguez is back in the news again. According to ESPN.com, A-Rod and the Yankees have reached a deal that could raise the value of his contract to $305 million dollars!

A-Rod would recieve  $6 million dollar bonuses for reaching Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bond’s home run levels making a total of $30 million dollars of his new Yankees contract based on home-run incentives. It is very likely he’ll surpass these home run levels easily, as long as he doesn’t get hurt. Could it be that this whole ordeal with A-Rod, the Yankees and Boras was orchestrated? I think so. Go check out the original article for more details on the specifics.

Basketball’s Top Agencies

For those of you who are wondering who are looking into who the top pro basketball agencies are, here is the list courtesy of HoopsHype.

1. Wasserman Media Group

2. SFX

3. BDA Sports

4. Priority Sports

5. Excel Sports

6. Williams and Connolly

7. ASM Sports

8. Fegan and Associates

9. Rose Professional M.

10 CSMG

11. Goodwin Management

12. Entersport

13. Octagon

14. Interperformance

15. IAM Sports

You can go check out the original article to see how much each agency handles worth of annual contracts. Wasserman Media Group and SFX are by far the biggest basketball agencies (handling about $220 million and $200 million respectively), handling about twice as much as the next closest agency in BDA Sports.

Happy Thanksgiving!! Carmelo Anthony’s New Jumpman23 Commercial Is Incredible!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say Happy Thanksgiving to anybody who comes across this post. Enjoy your familiy, your friends and the day in sports! I just saw the new Jumpman23 Carmelo Anthony commercial during Packers vs. Lions and it is incredible. It’s not up on YouTube yet but you can check out some of his other commercials by clicking here.

Mr. Jordan and Nike have done an incredible job with the Jumpman23 brand. According to Wikipedia, the rest of the athletes signed with Jumpman are:

Basketball

• Michael Jordan
• Carmelo Anthony
• Ray Allen
• Richard Hamilton
• Mike Bibby
• Chris Paul
• Josh Howard
• Quentin Richardson
• Eddie Jones
• Michael Finley
• Joe Johnson
• Derek Anderson

Boxing

• Roy Jones Jr.
• Andre Ward

Football

• Warren Sapp
• Terrell Owens
• Marvin Harrison
• Ahman Green
• Jason Taylor

Baseball

• Derek Jeter
• Andruw Jones

Colleges

• University of North Carolina
• Georgetown University
• University of California, Berkeley

 Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

NFL Fan Attendance Not As Crucial As You’d Think For League Growth

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt made an interesting comment yesterday on the Mike Tirico show and said that the tremendous growth in popularity of the NFL could be attributed to two things: the rise of Fantasy Football, and the increasing popularity of on-line sports gambling, both of which are  mostly done over the Internet. There is no doubt that the Internet has played a big factor in making the NFL the king of American sports, yet advertisers have seemingly neglected to realize this and still believe that stadium attendance is still important.

Pat Coyle over at Sports Marketing 2.0 further proves this point where he takes a closer look at the marketing and media strategies of the big brands who advertise with the NFL. He specifically chose to take a closer look at the Colts and NFL engagement, where he makes the following points:

-The RCA Dome has 280,000 unique visitors per year.

-Colts.com gets about 7.5 million unique visitors a year.

-55% of avid NFL fans will never see an NFL game in person, which means that 45% of fans will only get their fix on T.V, radio, or the Internet.

-Fans spend only 38% of their NFL time watching TV, which means that 62% of the time they are engaged in other forms of NFL media.

I think we can conclude from this data that although people will always continue to go to NFL games to support their teams, whether or not attendance is good does not drive the growth of the league. Focusing on mass media is the wave of the future, as it is the major determinant of revenues.