2012+10 LegacyPorn; Gold medals v False hopes; Buildings v People; Gotta ticket; UP Live; CEO of the Human Race is an actual job; The Olympic slogan genre; Google's ABC; Unreliable tropes; Gladwell
Overthinking the sports business, for money
UP LIVE at Arsenal
5.30pm Wednesday 21st September.
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2012 LegacyPorn: 9 major event trade-offs
1. Projection v Edges
a. Big events have failure baked in. To bid means to overpromise and to invite hope. Ten years later, your child’s stuck on TikTok eating cheese and onion. It’s all Seb Coe’s fault.
b. We don’t talk about the limits of sport very often. The edge of the promise. Where it starts and stops.
2. Gold medals v False hopes
a. Look at Jess Ennis. A bit of work and you’re daughter can be like her.
b. Jess Ennis is almost superhuman. Using her as a role model will make your daughter unhappy.
See also, Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson’s ‘false hopes’ speech.
3. The L Word v The Big Mo
Words lose their meaning when you repeat them ad nauseam. This is called semantic satiation and is sometimes used to treat phobias.
Legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy.
We’ve gone deaf to it. It’s been politicised in to just another culture war.
On our next podcast, Sport England CEO Tim Hollingsworth prefers to call it momentum. It’s a nice thought, but won’t catch on.
4. People v Buildings
People are unreliable. You give them a big, expensive sports event and they stubbornly remain fat and lazy, ten years later.
Swimming pools and hipster flats are a backdrop to the photo op. They are inarguable.
Governments find it easier to say yes to buildings. By comparison, people are always moaning, and they might not vote for you anyway.
See also: why schools build computer rooms rather than give teachers a pay rise.
5. Liberal utopia v Multicultural crap
Did the London 2012 opening ceremony lead to Brexit? Discuss. And show your working.
6. Blair v Boris
Which politician do you most associate with London 2012?
It’s a version of one of those post-event sponsor surveys (A: Coke or McDonald’s).
See 5 above, did Johnson’s idiotic 2012 boosterism as London Mayor build his national identity and ultimately lead to Brexit?
The answer to, ‘Which politician do you most associate with London 2012?’ SHOULD be Tessa Jowell.
Here’s a nice tribute from Godric Smith, who ran Downing St and London 2012 comms.
7. Public service v Gravy train
London 2012 management salaries.
8. Dictators v Democracies
We have a zombie government. It’s incapable of planning beyond the next electoral cycle.
Major events compel action. The personal/careerist/political/national embarrassment of failure is too high.
Things happen.
By contrast, China and a few billionaires are the only ones thinking longer term. This has consequences.
9. Slogans v Reality
I find major event slogans oddly revealing.
UPcoming: a series of podcasts exploring legacy and the major event question.
By your ticket shall you be judged
Digital transformation. Data is oil. ARPU and LTV. The ticketless stadium.
We hear the dream. A lot.
It’s usually an abstract conversation. A series of what ifs. A wish list.
Then, we get to tickets.
Tickets are the single most revealing object in the sports business.
They work or they don’t. They’re a seamless mobile experience or a dog eared PDF. You’ve done the work or pushed it on to me.
I get in to the game or I don’t. My family’s safe or running from arse flame man on Wembley Way.
How an organisation handles this critical moment tells me all I need to know about the reality beneath the futurist rhetoric.
Hear this week’s UP258 podcast on The Ticket Problem.
Good it is.
Unreliable Sportsbiz Tropes: #1 Drive to Survive breaks F1 in America
Malcolm Gladwell loves Drive to Survive. Hear him go on about it here.
The New York Times loves Drive to Survive. See the headline to this love letter:
The counter, from Entertainment Strategy Guy:
This is a notion that I pretty thoroughly debunked here. So how did this “hit” do on the Nielsen charts? It never made it. Nielsen provided me with data on the show, since I write about it a lot, and it maxed out at about four million hours. Which isn’t terrible, but also ranked second to last among fourth season debuts in my Nielsen database. In terms of perception vs. reality, Formula 1: Drive to Survive could easily be our winner.
Drive to Survive threads -
Drive to Survive as Strat du Jour
Did you just read Google’s ABC of sponsorship sales?
Alphabet is awash with cash, who knew?
This week they posted headline 13% growth to reach $69.7 billion total revenue in Q2.
But.
The second line is worth your time, particularly if you’re selling sport sponsorship.
Search accounts for almost two thirds of top-line growth, compared to just 4% delivered by YouTube.
So what?
It’s a funnel thing. (This via Enders Analysis):
Gathering economic clouds have driven the divide between Search and YouTube. Many businesses are entering survival mode: this means cutting costs from investments to hiring, and including advertising spend that does not produce short-term results. Ecommerce drives online advertising, exposing anything that is not at the bottom of the funnel during a crisis.
What’s that got to do with sport?
Sport sponsorship is sold as a panacea to all ills, able to ladder up and down like a pissed window cleaner: Its proponents claim it works as a big logo brand play and as an enabler of one-to-one performance marketing.
If Google’s experience is anything to go by, and it obviously is, many companies frame brand building as a nice-to-have luxury, in favour of the dopamine hit of direct sales channels.
This isn’t great news if, like many sports properties, the majority of sponsors are buying media numbers (for brand reasons).
If you’re worried there’s no such thing as the long term, a three year logo platform ain’t gonna cut it.
There may be a particular hit on women’s sport, which is currently being framed as all about the brand purpose signal rather than sales utility.
The Job: CEO of Human Race
The Blurb: Executives in Sport group are working closely with Human Race to find a brilliant new CEO. Since 1999, it’s been a story of continuous growth, hosting events such as the Cancer Research UK London Winter Run, Manchester Marathon, Royal Windsor Triathlon, Dragon Ride and L’Etape UK.
Ideally they’re looking for someone with a real passion for mass participation events, an understanding of the charitable sector, and the ability to help improve lives and deliver real impact through their events.
The Link: Apply here or contact Darren Simmons, Managing Director, Executives In Sport Group – Darren@eisg.com