Ads on Jerseys

Slightly more garish than usual Mets

Complaining about things like ads on sports jerseys is a great way to seem very old and crotchety... but there are moments when, well, the crotchety just overwhelms.

To wit, the notion that ads on sports jerseys are not just an atrocity, and an abomination, but also an inevitability.

What's the big deal, fans of the English Premier League might ask? After all, Arsenal makes over $46 million a year in a deal with Emirates, ad Manchester United makes $81.6 million a year from Chevrolet for their deal, which includes jersey-front sponsorship. People in the U.S. should just relax and accept the ads. You won't even notice them after a while.

And sure, the money is great, and they may be right. Heaven knows sports fans in the U.S. have gotten used to many terrible things. But there are a handful of critical differences that make all of the difference in the world. To wit:

1) Teams in leagues outside of the U.S. do not benefit from a closed market monopoly.

If your NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA team is just plain terrible, and doesn't even try very hard to get better, or pay to retain or attract the services of good players, they stay in the league. Forever and ever, really, and the level of derpery does not really matter. In fact, there's a very real chance that a team that does not try to win will make more profit than one that does, thanks to revenue sharing.

In other countries, the worst teams are relegated -- in other words, sent down to the minors. It makes for fantastic drama for a much wider number of clubs, and serious misery and joy for fans and haters of a specific laundry. But what it means, more than anything else, is that making hay while the sun shines is very, very important. As you might imagine, advertising revenue from jersey sales, not to mention tickets, TV ratings and all of the rest, is highly dependent on staying in the first division.

2) Teams in the U.S. benefit from corporate welfare around stadiums and broadcast rights.

Thanks to some highly questionable public service decisions based around the artificial monopoly of "major league" teams, local municipal governments in the U.S. are set up in a perennial game of chicken against other cities, especially when it comes to retaining at-risk franchises in stadiums that aren't quite as new and lucrative for corporate sponsors.

Other nations? Well, there's no artificial monopoly, thanks to relegation and promotion. So there are really no true "minor league" cities -- there are just ones that are at that status in the here and now. Once again, the sources of perpetual revenue just aren't as evergreen.

3) The non-viewing public does not, for the most part, subsidize sports outside of the U.S.

Everyone who pays a cable bill is, whether they ever watch the network or not, paying ESPN about $5 a month. Smaller, but still potent, amounts also apply to other networks that carry sports, including the ones that are actually ran by the leagues. If and when cable becomes unbundled, or enough of the paying public cuts the cord, maybe the math changes, but that's a great deal of inertia to overcome. Other countries, well, not so much.

So the plain and simple is that American leagues are literally awash in money, and simply have to decide whether if there is anything they can do that is so beyond the pale that it will kill the golden goose. Will it be ads on the front of jerseys?

Probably not.

But honestly, why risk it?

Especially when you've already got more money than you will probably ever be able to spend?

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The Internet of Cranks

A year ago, the Gartner Group predicted that an affluent family home might have, within seven years, hundreds of objects with connectivity to the Web. Which has, with the greatest of speed, provoked the backlash of all Old Man Yelling At Cloud backlashes, because back lashing about technology, especially technology that seems unnecessary or exploitative on cost, is like falling off a log. Without wi-fi.

And sure, there's some of that, and it seems like a far off thing to imagine that a connected oven is going to make a lot of sense, since the best it can do right now is just start the oven from an app, as if you've left dinner in the oven before leaving for work. Security issues are also a concern, and a reason why bleeding edge is never fun.

But that dramatically misses the point. The reason why you connect dumb items to the IoT isn't for what they'll do on version 1; it's for the possibility of a version one in the first place, and the much greater potential of a version five. Starting your oven with an app is pointless, but having an oven that never burns the meal, because it's got sensors that prevents that kind of thing? Or coordinates with a future IoT robot? Well, that's handy, and wins on energy and safety, and you can't get to that point without the early stuff that seems pointless.

This also works for just about every other device that seems silly now. The IoT toothbrush? Well, on version one you get kids brushing more and better, because it's an app on their always-on phone that shows all of the places that they are missing. On version two, maybe you've got an early decay diagnostic that will make your dentist trip happen sooner and with less drama, or maybe inspire the flossing that you haven't been getting to.

An IoT mattress pad? I'm getting spam from my bed! Ridiculous, except when it's a potential life-saver if it gets to a strong enough diagnostic level, and part and parcel of a more efficient exit patient strategy for post-op. The IoT toilet? Gross! But the same diagnostic abilities (not pleasant to think about, sure, but true) and I, for one, would be happy to pay for a plumbing situation that alerts me as early as possible when there is a stoppage, so I never have to clean up that job again. The IoT Basketball? Keeps score for you, and gives you the true shooting percentage. (Personally, I'm looking forward to IoT golf balls, because losing golf balls is my personal hate moment.) And so on, and so on.

Will there be abuses? Of course; no progress is ever perfectly smooth or sensible. But there's no chance of progress without the connectivity in the first place, and the price of adding the connection is so borderline trivial, especially as more and more connection points and devices hit the market, because, well, Scale.

So lighten up, IoT Scolds. The future is coming no matter how snarky you get about it, and some of these executions are going to be great. (And others, we'll just giggle at later. Much later.)

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Fighting The Good Fight

The Only Option, Really

This weekend was filled with strong Guy Fun for me, with three events that I enjoy a lot, but are in no way guaranteed to bring satisfaction. The first was hosting my poker game, which went well, with a mild cash in the tournament, and break even in the later cash game. The second was a round of golf at one of my favorite courses, with great weather and good play (had a tap in birdie at a picturesque hole, which is a very rare event for me) making up for slow pace. Today was watching my pro football team (never mind which one; it's not germane to the conversation) and tracking my fantasy football team.

Well, two out of three isn't bad, right?

My teams, both real and fake, lost handily, and both defeats were utterly maddening, in that they didn't play well, but were in contests where just giving up and not watching would have been giving up before the loss was assured. So it was bad time after good, and a situation where I didn't just feel bad about my teams losing, but worse for wasting the time to watch in the first place. (I've also gone on record as not believing in my real team this year, even back in pre-season, and feeling that they were doomed so long as they had the current management... but, well, being right is of no comfort, really.)

Logically, it's a pretty simple solution -- just stop watching the games. I've honestly got enough to do without this amount of timesuck, and my other hobbies are far more participatory. But I've had bad times playing poker and golf as well, and if you give up every hobby that doesn't work out for you every time you do it, you'll be out of hobbies very soon. Besides, I'm a creature of habit, and just losing one isn't very likely, no matter how exasperating my team is. (And yes, they are powerfully exasperating.)

We pivot, as always, to insights about our chosen field. There's been any number of times in my career when, in the back of my mind, I pretty much knew the project was doomed (just like my football team, really)... but had to put my whole heart into it anyway, and find reasons to convince myself to become a fan of it. It's not as if you get into a level of true self-delusion, but without some measure of hope, creative execution of a marketing or advertising program will fall into the dread valley of going through the motions. And no one ever made a good ad or marketing piece that way.

But in the back of my mind, if you had asked me off the record which approaches were going to tank? I almost always knew. And tried like mad to forget while doing the job.

Not every project is going to be a winner. Same as any poker tournament, golf round, sports game, and so on, and so on. But self-sabotaging the process with negativity before hand doesn't make the struggle any easier, or give you any points when it goes off the rails. The only thing it will do for you is give more time to prepare your excuse. And who, really, needs that?

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the boxes on the top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.