Snoop as culture warrior; Swearing by LIV Golf; OPM on P/E; Attractive volatility; Euro Pubs and the Booze Bundle pt2; Big in the States; Morgan gets Hayesed; Trapped in Canva, send help
Overthinking the sports business, for money
Snoop dogs the Overton Window
Virtually every sports marketing story exists on a continuum.
For example, the clip of Snoop Dog commentating on the US Olympic trials.
NBC has him lined up for their Olympic coverage in Paris.
I found myself wondering aloud on Twitter about how the athletes would judge this initiative?
Would they be pleased by the attention or insulted by its mocking superficiality.
From the sport’s perspective, is it a Top of the Funnel Sport in Culture Needle Mover or does it betray a fundamental lack of confidence in the core product of track and field?
That’s the daily exam question in these days of dwindling attention.
What you need is a system…
Such is the frequency of this type of story that I try to filter my own first response.
Interesting v boring? New v Rehash? Substance v fluff? Well intentioned v cynical?
Very quickly, you bump in to the sports v entertainment culture war, a version of which runs through every sport, rights holder, governing body and Olympic federation.
For ease of explanation, I spent 18 days creating this diagram in Canva:
Like all culture wars, it can get binary very quickly and both poles are easily caricatured.
We all think we’re on the side of the angels.
Sport views its role as protecting the soul of what makes the game the game.
Entertainment views its role as saving sport from irrelevance and obscurity.
Every individual story or decision nudges the blue window to the left or to the right.
Sport is Olympic wrestling. Entertainment is WWE.
One has heritage, prestige and authenticity. The other has viewers and money, but is sport-like rather than sport.
Both sides view the other with a mix of suspicion, condescension and pity.
A couple of things to note:
The vast majority of people working in sports marketing today view their job as nudging the window from left to right. You very rarely hear the conservative view articulated at conferences or on podcasts.
Broadly speaking, the less I care about a sport the more Entertainment my view becomes. I’ve come to think this is worrying.
So in cricket, I’m a left side fundamentalist. Test matches are the real thing, The Hundred is plastic. That’s my starting point and I’ll go in search of ‘evidence’ to back up this view.
Whereas in say, tennis, formula one or rugby, I move violently to the right, coming on all no bad ideas in a brainstorm.
For all I care, they can have giraffes on Centre Court, SpongeBob driving for McLaren and players taking off an item of clothing for every minute the ball’s in a ruck.
This ‘couldn’t give a toss’ position can easily be presented as dispassionate expertise.
It’s particularly rife in agency world, where actually liking and caring about sport is often seen as a character weakness.
The incentive for a creative team is to ‘think the unthinkable’ (RIP Frank Field), to challenge sport’s received wisdoms and frame all innovation as clock ticking necessity.
Swearing as authenticity
The LIV thesis is to push golf toward the WWE end of the spectrum.
This is done this via the medium of music - Golf But Louder - and swearing.
In lieu of golfing excellence, the LIV coverage is noticeably laissez faire when it comes to leaving in the dirty bits, particularly when compared with the more po-faced coverage of the PGA Tour.
And as a regular on-course swearer myself, I’m here for it.
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The Booze Bundle pt2
A build on last week’s newsletter.
We’re going to look at the relationship between sport and booze in more detail.
Under the banner of ‘research’, our man Cutler has been touring the pubs and bars of London’s busy West End.
If you have a view, get in touch.
The Budweiser Over Plug
Sir Geoff Hurst’s Euro 2024 Bud work is my favourite clip of the summer.
Agency briefing note: ‘So Sir Geoff, we just want you to land the brand in the conversation, nothing too jarring, we trust you to keep it nice and natural. Just think, seamless integration of brand in to content’.
Sir Geoff : ‘Fuck that shit right off’.
Morgan enough
In other ambassador news, the curse of Jack Grealish has spread to the US women’s game, as Alex Morgan is left out of the US Olympic squad.
A typically big call from Emma Hayes, so early in to the Team America job.
But also a bummer for Coke, Nike, AB InBev and others who’d paid her to front their summer campaigns. (Thanks to Ricardo Fort for spotting).
Attractive Volatility
Nice phrase from Tim Dunn, partner at Phoenix Capital, our guest on Other People’s Money this week.
 I think you have to avoid areas where there is potentially big volatility depending on results, which are completely unpredictable or largely unpredictable. And therefore in this enormous market, which is developing very rapidly, there's a whole realm of B to B technology enabled services and institutions which will definitely continue to prosper, even though the various members of them may go up and down with their fortunes. And those are long term, wonderful investment opportunities in my view. I think where you're particularly in the public eye, you have to be very careful. And we've seen this across lots of different sectors: healthcare, care homes, consumer products as well, where there is volatility in your fortunes. And my own personal sense is that investing in individual teams, for example would be beyond the scale of attractive volatility.
Do you have many American listeners?
Yes.
Yes, we do.
UP Coming
Inside the Cannes Lions for Sport Jury Room
Beat It: Biometric data storytelling
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