A lot of catching up, moving about, listening and learning at the end of this past week, roaming from the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame dinner on Thursday to our sold out Columbia Sports Symposium on Friday. Some quick highlights and best of learnings along the way.
500 billion
That was one of the little pearls Kelly Pracht, the CEO of NVenue, had on her panel Friday morning. The amount of predictions that were pulled from data during this recent MLB season. What does that mean? If you are a casual gambler, a diehard stats person, a brand marketer looking for engagement the pathway to stay engaged during the season is pretty endless. It also means that there is a lot of clutter and white noise that needs to be sorted through in order to present a narrative, and an opportunity to the time challenged. Still, when you think about all those opportunities, it shows how deep engagement can go in a sport like baseball, and what can be channeled to various groups/demos to make the sport interesting and engaging even in short bursts of information and storytelling.
1.3 million
The rumored amount of money that Caitlin Clark will make by STAYING at the University of Iowa this year and playing college basketball. While Name Image and Likeness continues to be the unwieldy monster of influence, this is very significant for another reason…it is more than twice what she would make playing in the WNBA. The number is only rumored thus far because the state of Iowa does not force disclosure of NIL dollars, and she remains a private citizen. But with all the engagement and excitement around women’s sports right now, it shows that the professional market for most elite athletes is, actually in select colleges where deal flow at least for now remains bigger. As long as you can stay eligible, and eligibility rules out you well beyond four years, why make the jump?
65 and 66
One of the side conversations going on with regard to NIL, eligibility and brand value for college athletes pertained to the professional drafts, and the fleeting value. Several NBA and NCAA coaches who were around both events mentioned that the draft for a league like the WNBA and the NBA or MLS or the NWSL is becoming a disincentive for many athletes in the middle of the eligibility portal and is limiting career choices unlike say, the Premier League in soccer, where it is open season every year to find the best talent. The NBA was used as one example. The athlete who is drafted towards the end of the second round is slotted in for a salary and may not be a good fit for that team. The guy who isn’t drafted in the two rounds has a chance to go anywhere and actually has a chance at more money and playing time. The questions of whether drafts in most sports will even exist in the coming years as collective bargaining deals arise, and athletes continue to maximize their own earning potential…note several elite athletes in the past year choosing to stay home and craft their own story on Draft day vs walking on stage…is a storm on the horizon.
Streaming The Symphony
NBC Sports President, Acquisitions and Partnerships John Miller talked Friday about the continued evolution across all platforms for large scale content that NBC has now and will continue to have into the future. One of the keys to acquisition and engagement is to make sure consumers can find the content on all the platforms NBC can provide, from USA Network to peacock, and making sure that the content, especially live games, is being cross promoted to partners and events are getting optimal brand value. NBC’s platform to make sure that is happening is Symphony, which makes the broad effort to keep every platform up to date with what is happening where, especially in the high stakes must watch world of live sports. Parceling out relevant content to regional channels who may have an interest in an athlete featured in the Olympics or the NFL or the Big Ten brings not just added value but added awareness to the bigger event and can drive tune in for the time challenged who may not know where to watch. The use of a streaming platform like Peacock for example, will also give the die-hard fan of The Premier League or rugby the ability to watch and engage live 24/7 and can expose those consumers to all other offerings that Peacock may have. NBC’s work with Telemundo also fits into the mix, as it presents opportunities to drive viewership and awareness to the fastest growing ethnic demo in America, the Hispanic audience. Ironically Harlem Globetrotters President Keith Dawkins pointed out on Friday that their growing partnership with Telemundo is going to be essential as The Globe’s find new ways to engage and story tell to a Latino market that is growing its interest not just in the NBA, but in all things basketball.
Bottom line, the goal is to play the whole symphony, not just the orchestra, and NBC is keenly aware of the value of maximizing all its platforms to deliver for fans.
“People Buy On Amazon, They Watch on Netflix”
I’m not sure if Otmar Szafnauer would have drawn a packed house for anyone not a Formula One fan a few years ago, but this week he did. Szafnauer, the engaging, glib and always interesting former engineer turned team racing executive, was one of the key personalities in the uber successful docuseries “Drive To Survive,” which many point to as the key engagement point for the growth of casual awareness tied to F1 business and fandom in the United States in recent years. While Otmar touched on a myriad of topics during his talk, one of the more enlightening ones was about F1’s choice of distribution partner for the series. They needed a platform which could proactively lean in and find new viewers for the storytelling, and ultimately, they chose Netflix over other like Amazon and ESPN. Why? Netflix ability to market and target a global audience who may have known about F1 but was really coming for the dramatic storytelling. Without that choice, even at a risk of less money, he noted the series may not have reached the widest audience, and consequently, may not have given F1 the massive bounce in North American popularity it is getting. Sometimes the drive and the survival is tied to making tough, sometimes counterintuitive choices, and in this case F1 rode the path to success.
60% of consumers who found a new sport during COVID became avid followers
That stat came from a combination of Melanie Wallner from The Drone Racing League and Farzeen Ghorashy, CSO at Overtime. Both were keen to note a Pandemic pivot, where consumers were sitting home waiting for traditional leagues to come back to a normal level. They looked to see what else was out there, and discovered the streaming content of Overtime’s stories, and boosted DRL, which was delivering virtual races live on NBC Sports during the pause in play. What was even more interest is that as things returned to normal, a majority who made the discovery came back and stayed and increased engagement in sports and platforms that may not have seized attention without The Pandemic, giving growing sports like DRL and others a window of opportunity that they not only seized, but exploited even wider and will continue to do. All about opportunity and engagement.
There was so much more, but those were some of the aha moments that resonated and ones worth watching as we keep moving through the fourth quarter of another amazing year.
