Can Lacrosse Finally Make The Jump As A Worthwhile Branding Opportunity?

May 10, 2010 by Joe Favorito · 1 Comment 

It has happened consistently for the past three or four springs.  There is a whirlwind of activity around lacrosse, especially at the college level.  Lacrosse opened the new Meadowlands Stadium with over 25,000 fans…lacrosse at the collegiate level is making its way west, with a thriving program now at the University of Denver, a state (Colorado) which has seen immense grassroots growth for the game. The Ivy League chose lacrosse to be its first sport to have a post-season tournament. The NCAA’s are almost here, which will lead to massive- crowds in Baltimore for the Final Four at the end of the month. It has tremendous grassroots interest, especially among girls and its World Cup event does well.  Yet the professional game remains fractured, with the indoor and outdoor games being run by different groups with no continuity, and the indoor professional team in the hotbed area of New York was again a failure and is long gone.  There is no consistent television partner and the brands that have chosen to activate in the space appeal more to its core audience than to the mainstream.  So eventhough there is talk of growth, immense growth at the grassroots level, can lacrosse ever become a viable sport for brands to activate with and against?

Fragmentation In Niche Sports Proves To Be A Killer…

July 3, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

Speaking with one voice, whether it is to a business partner, the media, or to fans is always important, especially in the alphabet soup of niche or second tier sports. With the limited dollars and eyeballs available for the casual fan, splitting the marketplace with alphabet soup of organizations usually leads to confusion and can ultimately drive partners on to a platform which is much more simple to understand. The latest example of split markets being a killer is in indoor soccer, which despite the huge success the outdoor game is seeing in the US, just fell further off the roadmap this week. Last year the Indoor game split into two “leagues,” both of which struggled for any kind of existence in far-off marketplaces, and despite the local success of teams like the Milwaukee Wave and the New Jersey Ironmen (who were in two different leagues by the way) the sport is on the verge of extinction. Another sport teetering but doing better with some unity is lacrosse, where the National Lacrosse League extended commissioner George Daniel this week, sending a positive message to all involved. Still, lacrosse, indoor and outdoor, needs to be presented as one platform to be an effective tool, but at least in their case the sport has a platform of success to build on. Indoor soccer has hurt itself with divergent forces for the indoor game, forces which told the sports world they were too fragmented to present a unified front, and in the end, all suffered. Would having one unified league have worked? Perhaps. But with the alphabet soup presented last winter to fans, media partners and business partners there was no chance of survival in an already tight marketplace. Hopefully the indoor game can be resurrected and lifted by the continued success of the outdoor product, but with too many cooks it will be next to impossible to deliver.