Wasted; Peak Big Eventer; Heir Jordan; Dads and daughters; When the fans are revolting; Steve Wright RIP; Keegan's legacy; Unofficial humblebrags; Booze crews
Overthinking the sports business, for money
Wasted: Peak Big Eventer
They’ll write PhDs about the 2024 Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Witness: The greatest thread in Big Eventer history
Vomit, piss and funny hats; the whole gang’s here.
Cue moral outrage.
How did we get in this mess? Etc.
The answer: Strategy.
This was exactly what was supposed to happen.
Like many other sports rights holders, the PGA TOUR has spent a decade dumbing down its own sport in order to lure fuckwit college bros under the guise of building new audiences.
Seen through this lens, the WasteManagement is everything we ever dreamt of.
As I wrote, back in 2017:
Normal, unassuming people have been marginalised as sponsors pursue a sinister new agenda called ‘fan engagement’, the basic objective of which is to encourage young men to behave like complete bell-ends.
Sport is the medium, ‘act like a twat at the office Christmas do’ is the message.
The modern fan is expected to bring something more to the party than quiet enthusiasm and deep subject knowledge; they must come ready to demonstrate their Passion For Sport™.
Big Eventers looked great on the PowerPoint slides and in TV ads.
They were diverse and beautiful and happy.
But it turns out this was wishful thinking.
People huh? They always let you down.
See also:
Rugby is in a similar place.
Twickenham is an expensive piss-up with rugby attached.
We’re told the England players have been brainstorming…which is one of my favourite phrases.
This gets to a slight build, noticeable across several big sports.
There’s a schism, and it seems to be widening.
The people who run the game don’t like the people who watch.
This has been the case in football for years.
The FA don’t like England (men’s) fans. You see the same dynamic at club level too.
It’s one reason why there’s so much love for women’s sport among the sports marketing industry: the audience is more middle class, less…how do we put it…tribal.
For tribal, read angry and pissed. But without them, sport becomes less exciting.
The dads and daughters meme
Some really interesting research in this piece on trends in fandom in women’s football.
One bit has been sent to me several times.
It’s a good counter to my tendency to take the piss out of people who reference their daughters when talking about the women’s game.
I can’t remember where it started, but it was almost certainly something to do with Gianni Infantino’s infamous open door speech last year.
“I say to all the women — and you know I have four daughters, so I have a few at home — that you have the power to change,” Infantino told the audience.
We talked about it on The Big Idea (below) with Jane Purdon, formerly of the Premier League and Sunderland FC, Sarah Batters, of P&G and more recently Southampton FC and Charlotte Thomson, head of women's football at Copa90.
Anyhow. I’m all for calling myself out.
My defence is probably that two things can be true at once.
Anything that encourages men to support women’s football is A GOOD THING. But some do play the daughter’s card - this piece is a decent critique of that position.
The Tiger Woods Whiteboard
The Brief: The post-career brand. Heir Jordan.
The Why: Money. The Jordan brand still represents 16% of Nike revenues in 2023. Arnold Palmer was the third richest golfer in 2020, 56 years after his final major win at Augusta in 1964.
Last year, Tiger and Nike split after 27 years, leaving the player to develop his own line of golf wear, called Sun. Day. Red (geddit?).
The stuff will be made and distributed by TaylorMade (formerly owned by Adidas, and if you’re sensing a trend, you’d be right. The two biggest sports brands in the world have exited golf, having in Phil Knight’s own words, lost money every year for 20 years).
The How: Tiger’s new line of clothes consists manly of polo shirts and chinos.
Target customer: Ambitious middle manager.
The sort of person who reads Art of War by Sun Tzu and labels their own stapler.
The logo A cave drawing of a tiger with 15 stripes, the number of majors the 48-year-old has won.
Where does the Tiger logo rank?
When talking to sports people of a certain age, I often ask about their post-career plans. To my great delight, the topic of personal logos often comes up, a subject I find oddly revealing.
My top three:
The Jug and Jacket was trademarked by Nick Faldo in 1999 as the basis of a golf themed bar and restaurant chain. Faldo was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of imagination shown by his then-IMG handler John Simpson, so he went off on his own. Hilarity ensued.
Tony Jacklin raged against - again IMG - for their failure to create a brand for him that matched Jack Nicklaus’s Golden Bear and Gary Player’s Black Knight. ‘They came back with a Union Jack idea, which looked the sort of thing you’d have stamped on the side of a fucking egg’.
Gareth Bale’s Eleven of Hearts
Next steps.
As in many areas of the sports business, WWE got there first.
This is how Premier League team sheets will look in five years.
Hear here: I went on Hawksbee and Jacobs to talk about Tiger.
Best football related Steve Wright tribute of the week
Who knew?
Unofficial Humblebrag
A lot of nice things said about this week’s podcast with Roger Mitchell.
You can catch up with the podcast here
Happy Birthday Kevin Keegan, sports marketing pioneer
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