MessiWashing; 20 years of the SIAs; Fun with betting euphemisms; Grandstand nostalgia; What happens when brands stop advertising; TAM is sooo over;
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MessiWashing
The great one’s move to Paris triggered a conversation about ROI.
As in, will PSG make back the outlay?
It’s a regular trope and riddled with attribution error. Not least because it assumes that football is a rational business, where books must be balanced.
This is an idea that fell out of fashion at about the same time as spats and the monocle.
‘They’ll make it back in shirt sales’: Piers Morgan vs Anyone who’s thought about the question for more than 25 seconds.
‘They’ll make it back from sponsorship’: Tim Crow gave good thread.
‘It’s all about media rights’: Messi will likely be retired when France’s football league rights come back up for auction. Yannick knows.
‘A long term increase in brand value’: This is where we reach the flakier end of the evidence spectrum. When someone mentions brand value, you know they’ve lost the argument. It’s what people talk about when they don’t have real, financial numbers.
‘But did you see PSG’s social numbers in China?’: They might be going up, but are they real?
As my nan used to say, when nothing seems to make sense, go the geopolitical thought leadership route.
This requires you pepper the analysis with phrases such as soft power and Realpolitik. These are a signal that the focus on marketing and business returns is just a conversation for the kids’ table.
But it all feels a bit Dr Strangelove tbh. I’m never convinced there’s much strategy to Big Football, beyond rich kids wanting shiny new things.
The rich kids in question are billionaire sons of petro-dictators and oligarchs. Messi is their new toy. The rest is noise.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Messi leaves a shitshow in his rear view mirror.
Like democracy, the concept of revenue sharing in Spain is a surprisingly recent phenomena, dating back to 2015, when a Royal Decree meant Real and FC Barca pooled their media rights with the rest of La Liga.
Betting’s 80:20 rule
As previously mentioned, I’ve come to view fan engagement as a euphemism for betting.
And gamification is the gateway drug.
The aim is to offer a gambling-lite experience at the top of the sales funnel.
From there it becomes a straightforward conversion question, using content personalisation to turn fans in to bettors.
The received betting industry wisdom is that between 20%-25% of sports fans bet. This varies between sport and territory. The US market is around 20%, according to Brian Joseph, head of sales at Sportradar, a guest on tomorrow’s podcast.
That leaves a big TAM #BigTAM. And explains the current gold rush in the US gambling market. That’s ‘the why’. ‘The should’ is another story altogether.
UP Coming: Tomorrow’s pod goes inside the US sports betting market, with guests from Sportradar and LiveLike. It opened my eyes.
See also, The language of crypto. This is a really good piece on how fans and clubs are using the same words to mean different things.
HT Dan Ayers for pointing me to the article.
The Grandstand milkman analogy
The milkman went bust because his business model was flawed: Electric vehicles delivering groceries to the doorstep was never going to survi…oh, hang about.
Like compulsory national service and shag pile carpet, Grandstand is an old idea that’s being looked at afresh.
Judy Murray called for its return, as a home for niche sports: The Olympics raised the profile of BMX and rock climbing, so Saturday afternoons would return to a free to air home, enthusing a new generation and Yada Yada Yada.
I’m there in sentiment (and I really like and admire Judy Murray). But I'm suspicious of supply side solutions to what I think is a demand side question.
It feels like I’m being asked to eat broccoli: I’m not going to enjoy BMX, but the struggle will make me a better person.
My bet: I'll see the milkman again before I see Grandstand.
TAM is very last year
Typical. Just when I start using a self-aggrandising new financial acronym, the smart crowd deem it passé.
From Ed Rhys’ excellent Skin in the Game newsletter:
I just took part in Sports Loft’s fairly brilliant webinar on “Investment In High Growth Tech Companies In Sports & Media” and everyone present (investors and founders) was pretty skeptical about making investment decisions based on Total Addressable Market – whilst TAM is always going to be a factor, it’s notoriously hard to size. At best, it’s a line item on the investor’s checklist. At its worst, this top-down approach to understanding the potential of a product is reductive and ineffective. It’s a static measure that ignores the autonomous quality of markets that grow, overlap and diverge over time.
When brands stop spending
When I went to work at an advertising agency, Professor Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow was on every strategist’s desk.
Many of the ideas you’ve heard about how marketing works are his, or versions of them.
So, when he and his collaborators at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science give away stuff for free, it’s worth having a look.
The Sport Industry Awards in 8 Gifs
This week’s podcast was a look back at 20 years of the SIAs.
Keith Lemon presents an award with Kirsty Gallagher
Nick Keller tries to ban the internet because someone looked at their phone during Alan Pascoe’s acceptance speech
TMW you realise dessert is just a donut
When you mistake Richard Keys for the waiter
Hearing you’re able to take drinks to the table
Nick Keller gathers initial feedback on the Agency of the Year decision
Listening to Alex Coulsen explain why you didn’t win
Showing your face at the office was laudable but ultimately flawed
Go deeper: Why I love awards ceremonies.
That’s it for a couple of weeks. We’re going on an Unofficial Hiatus.
See you in a fortnight.
