Golf's Super League moment; W+K's team problem; Frankenstein Sport; Coldly rational v Passion for Sport; $10bn = 20 Ryder Cups; Nike at 50; Bach's cricket overture; Don DeLillo; Sports biz jobs
Golf's Super League moment; W+K's team problem; Frankenstein Sport; Coldly rational v Passion for Sport; $10bn = 20 Ryder Cups; Nike at 50; Bach's cricket overture; Don DeLillo; Sports biz jobs
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Frankenstein, McKinsey and Greg Norman: LIV Golf is sport by numbers
The first line of any story about LIV Golf is the source of the money: ‘The Saudi Golf League’.
As I mention in my conversation with one of its key architects - Sean Bratches (UP243) - the project may never get beyond this issue.
Not because the players are ethical heroes; they’re just too rich to have to deal with the reputational hit that comes with the sportswashing label.
(Btw, the best conversation I’ve had about sportswashing is this one (UP231) with Robert Barrington, Professor at Centre for the Study of Corruption and former UK head of Transparency International).
What’s below the bonnet?
So, to the second line: the actual product.
There’s much in it I like:
Teams; formats; global over US focus; the questioning of the status quo.
Every element of the event presentation is antithesis of the weekly diet of four day, individual 72 hole stroke play events stretched over 12 hours: ‘Tees in the ground at 7.30am, final putt at 7.30pm’.
This format squeezes the most players in to every tournament, because the tours’ first thought is to its members, not fans/viewers.
This is the key strategic weakness being targeted by LIV and rival disruptor, the Premier Golf League.
And bits I don’t like:
The absence of women: a peculiar omission, given the Saudi regime’s other female-focused branding efforts and the growing evidence that women might - if not patronised and/or excluded - actually like the game. See this week’s story from Front Office.
Ticket prices are weirdly high, perhaps revealingly so. You’d have thought there’s an argument for letting people in cheap/free to the first few events, given the need to make friends quickly and to take everyone’s mind off the obscenely massive prize money for five minutes (and the source of that money, see above).
The whole Beefeaters at the first tee schtick at The Centurion Club rings a horribly familiar bell: whenever American sports ‘do London’ they go the Dick Van Dyke route, all black cabs, Big Ben and ‘Gawd blimey Mary Poppins’.
Frankenstein’s guide to the sports business
It’s tempting to over read McKinsey’s role in this story - an ex-ESPN and F1 exec, Sean Bratches was consulting at McKinsey when the project was first passed to him. (Greg Norman came on later).
I’m jumping on McKinsey as a proxy for the coldly rational approach that’s being applied to sport by the big consultancy and banking groups.
LIV Golf is a case study in what happens when sport is modelled.
The result can be a too-obvious joining of dots.
Pared down to its basics, LIV is a greatest hits album of received wisdoms: a bit of this, a bit of that; from the IPL to The Ryder Cup, F1 to the NBA.
Betting on anomalies?
Golf, tennis, cricket, motorsport, drone racing, swimming, rugby union, padel, triathlon…the modellers are assembling to disrupt them all.
The question comes back to specificity.
Are you stealing the right bit? Or are you making an attribution error?
The IPL is one of the great success stories of our age. But is it just about India?
The Ryder Cup is golf’s cash cow, so good the PGA Tour copied it and created The President’s Cup which has all the same moving parts. But it’s shit.
Bloodless consultants v Passion of the Fans.
Viewed through a spreadsheet, Passion For Sport is just another chemical in the test tube: If we crack the marketing, these idiots can be made to cheer for anything.
For LIV to work (and The Hundred, the PTO, the next Super League of Something) people need to be made to care. In large numbers.
And that’s really hard.
Yet it’s clear from Sean Bratches that teams are the main driver of asset value.
Forget everything else, teams are the bet being made here.
If they can make golf tribal the whole thing starts to make sense: The central v local revenue splits; the merch and the licensing deals; the fantasy and betting layer; the buying out of player apparel contracts to sell centrally to Nike or Under Armour, a la NFL.
Wieden + Kennedy are toiling on this problem as we speak.
They’re creating names, identities, uniforms and cap logos. It’s all predicated on building team allegiances from scratch.
Bratches tells a story about being in the ESPN office when Jerry Jones walked in. ‘At that point, Jones was famous as an oil wildcatter. He’d just bought the Dallas Cowboys and wanted to know if media rights will still go up’.
That was 1989 and Jones paid $140million. If Chelsea are worth $4bn, what’s Jerry sitting on today?
When spreadsheets collide
The Premier Golf League are the People’s Front of Judea in this story (That’s a LIV of Brian reference).
PGL was talk of the town last year, like LIV but backed by less politically charged money.
This week PGL wrote a letter to every PGA Tour player, to remind them they’re still in the game.
And it’s fascinating.
The gist of it comes down to whose consultancy road map do you believe?
Rory McIlroy has come out as an Allen & Co fanboy. Who knew?
Rory is using Allen’s numbers to undermine the PGL, saying their numbers don’t add up, and that getting to $10billion by 2030 requires creating ‘20 Ryder Cups a year’.
To counter, the PGL are pushing on player ownership, aka The Michael Moritz/PTO Angle (UP179)
‘You should not fear the wrath of Jay Monahan’….brilliant.
See also: The view from Wentworth courtesy of our recent Guy Kinnings podcast UP228.
And finally: Consultancy lingo, summarised below.
I love ‘Community - strangers who once clicked’
Via @AdContrarian
World Pentathlon’s Gen Z Taskforce
The answer is obstacle racing. I’m not sure what the question was.
Life imitates art
Boy takes home the ball and the world is changed.
Which is pretty much the plot for one of the greatest books ever written.
‘…they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day - men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game’
The body heat of a great city.
Not bad Don, not bad.
Nike at 50
Former global comms chief Charlie Brooks shared Phil Knight’s letter to staff.
And here’s some Swoosh shirt porn:
Trendspotting: When sport’s C Suite plays sport
Pictures have emerged of Thomas Bach playing cricket in weekend shirt and work shoes.
Any excuse to return to this clip of Gianni Infantino taking a corner. It’s the length of the run up that gets me. And the embarrassed silence as he sends it straight out. See also, the look from the big lump of a centre half who made the effort to get there and now has to run back.
Job of the Week
The Job: Strategy Manager, Nielsen Sports, London
The Blurb: We are looking for an enthusiastic individual with a collaborative approach to work. Above all, you’ll need an interest in the commercial side of sports and entertainment. If an exciting career working closely with many of the world’s largest sports rights holders, brands, agencies, and broadcasters sounds exciting, this could be the role for you.Nielsen Sports is a trusted adviser and partner in sports and entertainment strategy, we help clients worldwide to maximise their commercial success and understand their fan base. Our projects are wide and varied, spanning commercial strategy, rights package creation and go-to-market strategies, sponsorship ROI modelling and broadcast rights valuation.
The Link: Job details here