When Live Sports Fail

Not Excited

Tonight as I settled in to watch my sporting jones of choice -- NBA playoff basketball -- I was hoping for a close game. Instead, for the second straight game in the Western Conference Finals, in a matchup that I've been anticipating all year, I got a boring blowout, and in all likelihood, the end of all drama in that series. Which comes on the heels of earlier best of seven series that only lasted five and six games, and also didn't deliver much in the way of drama. True, the Eastern Conference has had a few Game Sevens, and also looks like it might provide more excitement now that the Finals has become surprisingly competitive, but I'm not going to mince words. The thing that I've been looking forward to the most looks like a dud. (Note to Oklahoma City Thunder fans: I don't have a problem with your club, and I'm sure you are over the moon right now with their performance. I just want games that aren't blowouts. If your laundry wasn't involved, you'd want the same.)

Of course, the NBA playoffs have been cherries and cream compared to the tragedy that happened at the middle jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown last weekend, where a horse had to be euthanized on the track in a preliminary race, and ye gads, I'm not sure how you go on after something that sad. Which also comes on the heels of an extremely dull Super Bowl, with a lack of scoring or fourth quarter interest, beyond the fevered prayers of people with various bets. Oh, and if you want to continue the tale of woe, the myriad miseries befalling Brazil these days are really not casting a positive light for the upcoming Olympics.

Let's roll this back into marketing and advertising now.

If sports were like other forms of entertainment media that was advertising or directly supported -- say, a run of anticipated TV shows, a string of tentpole / franchise movies, or concert festivals from big name recording artists -- that had a similar run of failure, there would be autopsies. Diminished upfront sessions. Tortured moratoriums into What's Wrong With X These Days, and how Kids These Days just had no eye for quality, or put up with substandard product because they knew no better. There would be savage teardowns of the talent, networks, media companies, hype machines, with much sniffing over how it's all going to Hell In A Handbasket (the official conveyance to Hell for lo these many years, which always seems odd to me, since travel by handbasket is never discussed in any other context)...

But sports? Bullet proof. If the Western Conference Finals in the NBA are a snooze and Thunder walk, well, wow, the Finals are must-see, either to determine if they are going to fall apart or continue their run. Horse racing will continue with the Belmont, since death at the track hasn't stopped racing for centuries, and aren't going to stop now. There will be a Super Bowl in February unless an asteroid ends all life on Earth, and an Olympics in four years no matter how badly the Rio Games go. Dull games, one can argue, are necessary, otherwise we'd not celebrate the exciting ones so much; if there were all exciting, none would be.

Which is why the cost drivers for sports placements and sponsorships are so alien to the rest of your media buying plan, and why so much of our media (hello, tightening political races! Surely the media companies' incredibly vested interest in a close race for maximum bidding for ad spots would never compromise the nature of coverage!) seems to be Nothing But Sports now.

It's bullet -- and boredom -- proof.

And probably rollback-proof, too.

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

Giving In To Creepy

Stalk Me

It's been nearly 15 years since "Minority Report", a dystopian sci-fi movie (is there any other kind?) that showed what personalized ads might look like on a biometric and personalized level. Well, if there were no boundaries to personal privacy, frequency control, and advertising was tied into a police state, rather than something that was tied to efficiency. Of course, you might already think we're in that dystopia, depending on your mood, and how often you wear tin foil on your head. But I digress.

As someone who has worked in adtech for most of my adult life, I can't tell you how much head shaking meh that movie has generated. Every time that automated technology has taken a tentative step forward -- adding first person names to email, dynamic elements in banners for e-commerce retargeting, swapping out ads in real-time bidding for more relevant work, upping the ante on offers to reactivate lapsed leads, and so on, and so on -- someone has inevitably brought up "Minority Report." Because adtech workers are still also consumers, and acutely aware of marketing in their own lives.

But the weird part of personalized adtech is how much we give a pass to other aspects of technology that are, well, far creepier than a more relevant banner. Every time you use a transponder in your car rather than interact with a person in a highway toll booth -- and the latter option is becoming nearly impossible, even if you'd like to take more time out of your day to be in the tourists only line -- you are giving up your exact location to an outside agency. The smartphone in your pocket could honestly double as an electronic ankle bracelet for people on parole. Depending on the age of your car, that's more tracking, and frequently it activates to alert you about service.

We have the tech to ensure that cars can't start unless the user can prove they are not inebriated, and if that tech becomes cheap enough, maybe it will be mandatory. That technology is racing the arrival of automated driving, which, given the public safety issues, might eventually lead to actually driving as a prohibited offense. (On the plus side, now everyone who wants to drink can. And we've also got a dramatically better world for the handicapped.) Something similar can be said about the transfer from analog to digital in medical records. And if you'd like to think negatively about any of that, to a world where everyone has to obey the speed limit at all times, has their medical information or credit history used against them in a linked buyer's profile, or has their food intake controlled (too many cheeseburgers this week, you're cut off), you can. The tech isn't good or bad; it just is.

The difference, of course, it that seeing the benefits of invasive tech advertising requires you to, well, work in advertising. Cut down on my time and costs at toll booths, and I'll let you monitor me. Smartphones are so useful, people get panicky if they are deprived of them for even a few minutes. No one wants to be misdiagnosed, or for their doctor to lack information. But no one believes that advertising has a similar benefit, or that the system would break if they somehow got their content without it.

But here's the thing... advertising actually *does* make your world better. It enables the production of expensive and beloved content, from high-end journalism to exceptional television, and if you want to live in a world where citizen journalists and user generated content take your media consumption from "Better Call Saul" and the New York Times to YouTube "stars" and whoever wants to write for free for the Huffington Post...

well, I'm sorry, but I'm not with you on the swap.

Because that's what at risk if cord-cutting and ad blockers achieve critical mass. An expansive and expensive increase on the audiences that remain, with a dramatically worse user experience.

So... who else is willing to put up with a little creepy?

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

Ads on Sports Jerseys: The Seventy Stubbers

Let's Just Call Them The Stubs

This Monday, the Philadelphia 76ers became the first team in the four major U.S. team sports to sell an ad on a jersey. StubHub will pay $5 million a year for three seasons to get a 2-inch patch on the top left of the basketball team's game day duds, in what may be the first step to an inevitable rush to revenue.

Some background... Philadelphia, the team I've rooted for my whole life (can't say it's been a very good ride, though it's had its moments), hasn't been trying very hard to win games for years now. Under the leadership of a new management and ownership group that comes from the world of corporate takeovers and tear downs, they've played the youngest roster in the league, haven't signed any significant free agents, and traded assets in the here and now for the potential of picks in the somewhere else and later. They've also run into some bad luck, drafted some injury risks, and also invested in players in foreign leagues who might come over later.

They've been so blatant about not winning games (and, of course, paying the lowest possible salary that the league will allow) that the rest of the league has complained bitterly about them, because they can't sell tickets to see this team. When the team has shown signs of competence, they've doubled down on the strategy and traded even more players for picks. It's been controversial, and now that the team is finally ready to transition away to try to win games again... well, this.

Typically as a marketing and advertising consultant, I'd applaud a client for a willingness to innovate in an attempt to increase revenue streams. But a pro sports team isn't a traditional business. It's a participant in an artificial monopoly, where competition is limited to a set number of partners, who get to share in mutual revenue regardless of competence. No matter how badly the Sixers have played basketball in the past three years -- and last year's team barely avoided winning the fewest number of games in a regular season in the league's history -- they have gotten to stay in the league. Last night, they even won the draft lottery, and get to pick first in the upcoming next influx of talent. If this strategy comes to full fruition and lays the ground work for a championship team, it really could threaten the nature of how leagues operate.

Which brings us back to the jersey move. Given where the franchise is from a PR standpoint, this is the literal floor for what a jersey sale will bring in... but it will also possibly stigmatize the practice, and may make it even harder for the team to bring in free agents. The money is basically pocket change in something like the NBA, and won't do anything more than cover some missed ticket sales. And while it's easy to imagine that sports fans will just learn to accept the ads, the same way that they have for teams and sports in other countries, it's also possible that this does brand damage, and maybe even cultivate a backlash. (To wit: an NBA tank top isn't exactly the most flattering piece of apparel for non-athletic bodies. And it's hard to imagine the Sixers have sold many commemorative jerseys recently.)

Finally, on the off chance that this just seems like a sports fan wanting things to stay the same... well, sure, there's some of that. But not all change is good, and at some point, the camel's back of revenue from a fan base has to break... especially when it's placed in front of a younger fan base that spends much of its time blocking ads, questioning corporate interests, and wondering if, say, they need to have a full cable package (which subsidizes pro sports teams to a shocking degree), vote for new stadiums in local elections (increasingly unpopular), or go to live games at all (graying audiences, especially in baseball).

Because that's the problem with diluting your brand with sponsorships. Once you break it, it stays broken.

And maybe leads to two logos, or five...

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