Miami Comms Machine; Death by thread; How the internet happened; Greg Norman's long game problem; SportsPro mag RIP; Purpose is boring and doesn't work; A right pair of Spectacles
Overthinking the sports business, for money
Starfucking in Miami
The Miami Grand Prix was a success for the F1 comms team and a car crash for many of the reporters sent to cover it.
Any sense of objectivity was handed in at the doors of the Paddock Club, as they made their way to the same hallowed VVIP grid ground as Beckham, Brady and Serena.
Twitter-wise, I’m weary of the thread genre, which has bled over from the tech sector: the unthinking deification of privilege; the celebration of ostentatious wealth as a proxy for entrepreneurial talent; the whole Wanna know the wild part? This is what I’ve learnt self help schtick; the blatant industrial scale plagiarism; and the partial and hugely optimistic analyses under the guise of storytelling.
Fuck off.
Trendwatch: Drive To Survive has created a new line of attack that builds on the trope that decries the prioritisation of entertainment over sport. Great for people seeking to sound interestingly knowing over the course of 500 words. See also, Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham takeover is a content play.
Don’t read that, read this. Joe Saward’s blog of the Miami weekend is worth a hundred pluggy threads put together. A summary: F1 is doing very well, with caveats.
Ten year runways v Perfect at launch
Greg Norman is talking the long game.
This week he said of LIV Golf: "We've just got approval to launch our schedule into 2023, 24 and 25. We've got $2bn to back that up so we have additional funds in place. And just because we are talking about 23, 24 and 25, we're looking way beyond that too. We are looking at decades."
This is an intriguing point. It runs counter to the short term investment cycles embedded in to investor owned businesses: nobody’s getting decades in which to build a business. You get a couple of quarters, a year maybe, before the ROI police come knocking.
A half arsed idea - NFTs for example - can’t survive the tyranny of five star rating culture.
This is a build on something Sean Bratches said in last week’s podcast.
He likened the LIV Golf launch with the early days of ESPN, before it became the Disney-owned sports behemoth we know it as today.
Bratches: When I was at ESPN, we launched with a slow pitch softball game between the Milwaukee Schlitzers and the Kentucky Bourbons. That was the first event we had. We had monster truck jumping. We had Australian rules football for years and years. But we had a vision and we put our head down, we blocked, we tackled, we came into work early every day, we left late.
This is part of the startup mythology that is routinely applied to new sport projects, such as LIV Golf: Don’t worry about launching a perfect product, fix it as you go.
This might work for software, or in markets away from the white hot glare of 24/7 sports media coverage.
Dictators, oil empires and tech billionaires might be the only category of business owner left who can play the long game.
Bit depressing.
Beyond print, SportsPro will thrive
A good decision to close the magazine imho. More time and resource to create new things where the people are.
Meanwhile, this was a fun listen.
Other good listens: How the internet happened
AZ16 is VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’s tech podcast. This is from the archive, with guest Brian McCullough whose book chronicles the history and evolution of the internet - from college kids in a basement and the dot-com boom, to the applications built on top of it and the entrepreneurs behind them. But it’s really about how tech adoption and innovation happens and what the past can tell us about the next phase of the internet and technology.
Unsigned is a story to follow
Purpose is boring and doesn’t work, but apart from that it’s got a lot going for it…
Interesting graph.
Purpose campaigns have made sports marketing as much fun as chartered accountancy.
This is a good piece on the death of humour in advertising.
Oi Oi, look at specky four eyes
Good luck to Scott Bowers and Richard Conway on the launch of their new sports reputation advisory thing, Spectacle Partners.
Quite the brand promise:
The Job: Octagon are looking for a Senior Account Manager to work on one of their biggest accounts with a focus on European Football
The Blurb: We are currently seeking an exceptional and highly-motivated candidate to manage the partnership of the world’s most prestigious club football competitions for one of our key clients. This could be the perfect role for you if you have integrated marketing experience, outstanding client service and project management skills, are a real team player and are interested in working as part of a local, regional and global team. We are looking for a strategic thinker with a deep understanding of sports and entertainment sponsorship marketing and a great knowledge of the European football landscape. We offer a wide range of benefits for employees and support a fully Flexible Workplace to ensure that our team have the ability to balance work with their lives, including flexible holiday and working options.
The Link: Send a cover letter and CV to recruitment@octagon.com
Awards, what are they good for?
We’ve opted for Spurs Arsenal over the Sport Industry Awards tonight.
See: Why I Love Awards
Have a great time. And network like Zelig.
