For All The Segmenting and Shrinking, Broadcast TV is Still King For Big Events…

February 9, 2010 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

Maybe it was the bad weather that blanketed much of the Middle Eastern states, or the rain that hit the Western United States.  Maybe it was the allure of a quarterback who has been able to flourish as a marketing maven for brands like Oreo and Direct TV despite being in a small market.  Maybe it was because America wanted to see a team from a devastated region rise higher than the flood waters did that tragic August day.  Maybe it was because we wanted to see Betty White and Chevy Chase again.  Maybe it’s because football is really America’s game. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter.  The record crowd that tuned in…made even more amazing in this 30 second, HULU infused, Twitter possessed world…showed once again why we love sports as a release, and why the industry and the medium used to show it…broadcast TV…remains king to brands.

MMA Takes The Big Stage To Try And Grow Audience and Interest…

November 7, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

The World Series is now over, the NBA and NHL seasons have begun their long stretches, college football is missing a compelling weekend matchup, the luster of the NYC Marathon is gone and the NFL is passing its midpoint. So into the mix when there is a lack of marquis events this weekend falls the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, which returns to CBS in primetime still looking for a challenger to provide any mainstream competition to the UFC. Can either capture the casual fan on a slow weekend? The CBS/Strikeforce show will feature perhaps MMA’s largest and most enigmatic star, Russian Fedor Emelianenko in a heavyweight bout at the Sears Center in Chicago. With nowhere near the mainstream hype that Kimbo Slice had during CBS’ earlier MMA test with Pro Elite, and without female star Gina Carano on the card, Emelianenko will have to carry the card and try to find a way to endear himself to a public and to marketers that appear to be even more agnostic to MMA as a whole than they have been in some time. Make no mistake about it, the UFC continues to be the number one experiential brand in the sport and maybe in all of fight sports, but the strides to add new partners and even build mainstream names other than the MMA vets that have grown in the past few years, continues to hold MMA back from jumping to a level of growing mainstream acceptance. Saturday night could be another chance to provide that move forward, even with a promotion in Strikeforce that is a great regional event but has not caught national acceptance with the casual fan.

Mixed Martial Arts Fights Its Way Toward The Mainstream With Two Big Thursday Moves…

February 29, 2008 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

For the last few years a host of sports marketers have looked toward the relatively new sport of Mixed Martial Arts with an interested by skeptical eye.  However the sport, which combines no less than five disciplines and has enjoyed great box office and pay per view success with the UFC, threw a pair of punches that may move the sport tword the mainstream.  First, EliteXC announced a series of events to be seen live in primetime on CBS (the first time the sport will be seen on a major broadcast network in prime time), and then the UFC announced the much-anticipated addition of Anheuser Busch (the Bud Light brand) as its newest sponsor (Darren Rovell’s blog has a good look at the deal).  The two moves, on the same day, will give the sport a nice boost of visibility (check out Adam Swift’s MMA Business blog for a nice macro look of the CBS deal) and give the sport a chance, if they can drive ratings and attract more sponsors, of succeeding.  Of course both moves were met with some skepticism, the best of which was Tom Hoffrath’s L.A. Daily News piece, while Yahoo’s Dave Meltzer’s Yahoo Sports piece gives good balance to the Elite-CBS move.  Still, for a sport looking to join the Dew Tour, the AFL, the Crocs AVP Tour and even the NHL to cut through the clutter and advance past its core base, it was a great day.