Another busy week of learning and listening and talking with colleagues of various ages, backgrounds and areas of focus. Some items that seem to keep popping up worth following.
LEGO expansion into sports. It’s subtle but it’s always worth watching how the folks at LEGO find their ways into trends and conversations tied to growth areas for a business of plastic blocks that seems to always be adapting. Case in point this week, stories about a LEGO collab for footwear with NIKE, and an in-depth story from the Times about how Chelsea’s Levi Colwill has used LEGO as a calming spot to stimulate his mind in creativity and strategy. We have also seen the business start to form partnerships again with some of the elite leagues and franchises around the world and start to build content series tied to women’s sport. None of it detracts from the imagination generation that LEGO does for millions around the world with their core product, it just helps to find more ways to listen, engage and create new areas of relevance as a first-mover brand worth watching.
MLB and Softball. Softball as a growth business has been hiding in plain sight for a long time. From the grassroots to the numbers the NCAA softball Championships each spring to the expansion of the game globally as we head towards LA28, softball is another of the “permanent emergent” properties that is always on a short list but never seems to get the push needed…until now. MLB announced this week that they are investing in Athletes Unlimited pro softball venture, the bright next step in the vision of co-founder Jon Patricof to make softball have its spot with the capital and ancillary support needed. The league, with Kim Ng leading the sports side, got what is seen as pretty rare these days…deep financial commitment from an established business that happens to be focused on a sport played by men (professional baseball). While we have seen the NFL invest in Flag Football on the grassroots level, there has been no real commitment to tackle football for women, and while the NHL has been interested in the growth of women’s hockey, you have not seen the league step into the PWHL or the other iterations of women’s hockey with dollars and brand extensions. The WNBA has had its ties with the NBA from the start, but even those have dissipated, and while MLS has relationships with the NWSL, there is no hard tie to the league. On the softball side, some had thought women’s baseball, and a league in stages of launching, would have been MLB’s play. The reality is that softball has earned its chance and has the pieces needed for growth. MLB, after kicking the tires for decades, fully sees the opportunity now, and can help support at a measured level, but with assets that make sense and a marketing machine that is invaluable in assisting. While we talk with starry eyes about soccer and volleyball as women’s pro sports, softball seems to have snuck into a position worth following more closely, MLB just woke a bunch of folks up.
Pinterest Returns To Sport. This past week at the Sports Blockchain event Alexis Ohanian talked a good deal about Reddit and its position as an undervalued community in sports. He should know since he is the co-founder of the platform. Sports, he reminded the audience, is tribal in nature and sometimes leagues forget about how to build community internally. Those core communities which grow in places like Reddit are pretty invaluable. Communities can also grow on other platforms we sometimes take for granted, and one of those is Pinterest. There was a time when Pinterest was all the rage for sports teams…everyone had to have a Pinterest strategy because…everyone else did. That came and went quickly, as the dollars and the investment took time to build, and few could figure out the ROI. Maybe that is changing, as this past week the New York Liberty announced a Pinterest partnership. Like LEGO, anything the Liberty looks at and invests time in seems to be a way to reach different communities and expand a fan base…or to engage with a fa base that was at a distance and needed to be embraced. Let’s see how this one goes, but don’t be surprised to see a Pinterest strategy returning or teams and leagues if the Libs and others make it work well. What’s old is new again.
Music To Our Ears. As all things “Inside the NBA’ are cheered this week, it was great to see the composer and the chooser of the music on the show get his due in this piece. It seems to be yet another growing trend…identifying and celebrating those who are coming up with the soundtracks that get athletes, and fans charged up. We have seen a bigger connection with walk up music for baseball, music that athletes choose to listen to in warmups, how theme songs for big events like Champions League gets put together and so on. Music and sports have always been tied together, but in our quest to learn more and more about how the sports sausage is made as consumers, those building the soundtracks and their science is now getting a spotlight. Bravo to those recognizing it, and for those picking the tunes and writing the words, stand up and take a bow. Rock N Jock returns.
Lastly, One More Piece from The Blockchain Sports event. Our summer intern James Gumina did a great job if summarizing the event, and you can read it again here. However James missed the first session between co-host Corey Leff and Alexis Ohanian, a guy we can always learn from. One of the key messages Ohanian delivered, around all the value of Blockchain information, were his thoughts on the relentless pursuit to deliver an experience worthy of the fan every day. “Our mission in the tech world was to make sure we could earn a user…their time, their money, their loyalty…every day. In sports at most levels, which work to earn sometimes gets lost because fandom is so sticky sometimes. Fans don’t come and go that easily. However, if you take sports and treat team ownership like a high-performance tech company where you are listening and learning to earn that trust and that support every day, you can be so much more successful. Your community will appreciate it and derive value at a much higher and deeper level. That is where sports has its biggest upside still to come.”
Agreed.
Let’s see where these go.
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