Social Media and New Markets

Sports Marketing can so easily be confused with selling the game on TV. In fact in its early days for the NFL and all that is American it used to be so true. Well, out here in Asia or for soccer, Europe, it is still very much true.

Think of a game, and automatically you think of the TV stars that made the game. The Tendulkars and the Sehwags in Cricket, the Bhaichung Bhutias in Indian soccer have an umbilical cord link with the game, and for us marketing people that  cord is the TV Remote. India’s fortunes in Cricket are directly linked with its revenues from TV advertising. Other BRand promotions, events and the game itself were almost pushed to a secondary level everytime its revenues were at a peak.

The situation on the ground is the exact opposite. Players have struggled for real remuneration and spend retirement in various stages of ‘disuse’ and ‘disenchantment’. There are rare coaching opportunities, there are rare royalties and no one but yourself to remember your own records. The broadcasters and the marketers are conspicuous by their absence just 5-10 years ago. It was in this scenario that NEO Sports made a start in India as a game broadcaster, asking ESPN Star Sports and DD to face up to competition. The story of the NEO Sports franchise is thus as old as India’s new found hegemony in Sport.

Apart from its Cricket centric beginnings, it has also promoted the German Bundesliga with a recent 3 year contract. The Hockey World Cup is next. All NEO channels are paid additions to Cable and DTH households within the subcontinent and in the middle east and maybe UK. As recently as April 2009, NEO has received $64 million in funding from 3i and Oman Investment Fund.

Perfetti and Hero Honda are the anchor sponsors for NEO Sports and one can easily assume a less than $25 million billing for them at this stage when the entire cricket universe is $250 million, out of which a good $150 million goes to IPL. NEO Sports has made $95 million across the India Australia series in 2009 and the recent India Sri Lanka series. Even for the current SA visit, sponsorship bands are available for less than $2 million and advertising at $8k per 10s. Idea and Tata Docomo are both part of it since Airtel and Vodafone Zoozoos pretty much monpopolise everything IPL next month ( Our Telecom market is growing at 10 million connections a month and needs constant sustenance for the brand in the face of sometimes more than 5 players in each circle)

NEO also brings the Domestic Cricket league telecast to the 20 million DTH and over 80 million Cable Homes. The recent Lanka series infact crossed TRPs of 8 for the series where the Colors Big Boss and IPL opening matches and finals do not cross 12, A 5 or 6 average for TRP is good and that means 5 million TV Sets were on for the game

NEO is floated by Nimbus sports and in an earlier round of funding it had raised $125 million from Deutsche Bank and Americorp with 3i. It has Indian cricket rights only till the end of this year.

Among competitors Times Global and Network 18 Viacom would be looking for public funding this year. In rights bidding, ESPN Star may be still competing with MAX for future Cricket, Hockey and Soccer rights. Doordarshan as the only Terrestrial partner gets to carry any and all TV telecasts of games free. .For the Commonwealth games, TEN in Australia, SIS (UK) and SKY TV ( NZ ) are among those who have landed broadcast rights. DD/Prasar Bharti are host broadcasters for the game, including the first ever HD broadcast.

NEO campaigns are noted for their bent as pioneers of the game. Its tagline in 2007 was ‘The home of Indian Cricket’, its campaigns used as fillers when air time could not be sold in the early struggles. ‘Dhak Dhak Go’ from Hero Honda supplements the taglines for the FIH Hockey World Cup promotions.

NEO won 11 awards in the 2008 Promax BDA Broadcast Awards for its campaign shorts after the rules of Cricket were changed to bkeep spectators engaged.  This years promos to watch are Power play, Rusty Nail and ‘Tension’

Dhoni and Sachin are batting for India as we write, and India are still holding on to the #1 position in Cricket.

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Can the network raise the bar, but it’s not that Sprint stadium

It’s okay, we know you didn’t come here just for the superbowl ads. Let’s tell you more, anyway. Analytics, and not the garden fly variety, are taking over the social world. When Twitter first started paining the game last year with billions of microbuzz d’drib’ molecules last year, it wasn’t early days but a lot of newbies like us built our franchise on it. This time, motorola is shooting for it. Also, there is the other USA today ad meter and hash tags like the #brandbowl #sbads and #SB44 from the company (The Firm)

No longer is it just about wracking your network wires on the you tube page, but that does not mean we have the best ready yet. Here is the USA today page in case you are missing the broadcast..and we recommend the #brandbowl during the game.

The Super Bowl ad touts not a single phone, but Motoblur, the company’s proprietary service that collects social networking data and sends content such as Facebook and Twitter updates to a phone in real time.

I never rooted for any of the Mannings, that ’s a lie — only Manning, Eli mid way in the Giants Season..but Drew Brees is our fave. Get in there.

Like other advertisers, Motorola is building online buzz for its Super Bowl spot. Its Web site has a video of three short, seemingly unrelated vignettes: a boy staring at a phone while something explodes in a microwave behind him; an Asian couple sitting sullenly at a table; and a truck running over a taco stand. Meanwhile, a teaser image for the ad shows a stylish bathtub filled with suds.

Alterian, a Chicago-based marketing company, has been tracking Super Bowl ad-related online conversations since early December. Heading into the weekend, Motorola ranked eighth of 35 advertisers in total volume of social media buzz. The company was 19th on Alterian’s social engagement index, which measures reach and popularity, and 33rd in sentiment.

Keith Tsang, product marketing manager at Alterian, said Motorola’s relatively low ranking could stem from its decision not to reveal its full ad online, as other brands have done.

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Those space frames look awesome. Again the adverts look stunning and might even be mandatory viewing during the Superbowl. Nah! just sayin’

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Good to see Kobe and Yao Ming..Wait for the details as we figure out which brands are paying their earning potential. NBA sure has improved its take. In a couple of years, we will have the IPL franchise owners here…lol, maybe a coupls of athletes can start buying teams in April. Yao Ming has been through Nike, Reebok, Pepsi and was signed with Coca Cola till the Olympics. His current partnerships include Visa, Garmin, Apple and McDonalds.

Along with Jordan , Kobe also has shoes made for his franchise with Nike and carried $45m in 2009. In this second reincarnation he still supports Coca Cola company’s Vitamin Water franchise and does a lot of cover stuff for Video games like NBA2007 and “Guitar Hero World Tour”

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The above is of course the concert for Australia Day onstage in Canberra. The Who is performing at the Superbowl in two weeks, and our own Colors is taking charge of entertainment at the IPL. Not just another Bud and BBQ concert though! We were at an Indian/Hindustani music event in Bangalore organised as part of an Indo-Pak campaign to promote peace between the two peoples. Aman ki Asha is a year long campaign organized by TOI and Jung. Hariharan and Ghulam Ali appeared on the stage in Bangalore.

We are ourselves game to organize a Seminar or two in Bangalore on things Facebook and Twitter.

Wish you all on the happy day of India’s 60 years as a Republic

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At $351 m, Manchester United (Michael Owen and Rooney below) is twice the value of AC Milan and 2.7X that of Football club Barcelona (Barca), all soccer teams count in the Top Global Sports Brands. Phil Mickelsen earns $39 million in sponsorships every year and was till now listed behind David Beckham and Tiger Woods.

Cricket has never been counted in the same league and NFL’s Peyton Manning or Tom Brady have not been as high either. internationally, however, A Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag sign 5-6 endorsement each worth INR 10 million and Rajasthan Royals sold its 10% take a year back for $25 million making its valuation of $250 million within a whisper of Manchester United. A Superbowl spot sells for $2.6 million for a 30 s, while Sony sells the Cricket spots for 6 lakhs for 10 s this season or $0.04 million for a 30s push, thats the gap.

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It isn’t early days, no sir

Getting together for the Mountain and the 2012 rush

Of course, out here in this part of the world Soccer is a more easy Football name to mind. But it is not happenstance that America and MNCs led by Marketing of Strong Global Brands from around the world have a time-tested affinity for the Superbowl. Global diaspora have time and again, found the Superbowl to be an exacting opportunity, even as GM, Pepsi and Fedex bow out this year. The Social World and the recession has had a normative effect. We’ve definitely accelerated the availability of Superbowl information this year. Before we in the social media glitterati start congratulating ourselves however, this phenomenon could be derailed sooner with the next Superbowl bring back the previous higher spends and low-marketing dollar Superbowls. This February event would still net the larger dollars as the bookings are full and that would keep us glued to more brand action for the hoi polloi amongst us and the farther reaching shores of the sport.

Nearer home in Asia, IPL has had a exponential normative effect at the same time. And the calendars clash too. So sooner than later despite the different sports followers in both ‘worlds’ we are going to have a unique competitive saga which has never been replicated earlier (muse delta) with NBA or MLB. The game of cricket and the IPL format have run the run-rate of a jingling theater to perfection causing a little heartburn and greater celebration in the cricketing fraternity for the higher dollars and the higher ad-spends. Howver the hyper eclectic ramp up also means the cricketing dollars roi has been weak for the exacting spends ( Obama would’ve stop criticising Landry and Chrysler if he knew) Also, we are just about setting up the benchmarks for each new channel. but, to sign off for now, it isn’t early days, no sir.

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MLB.com just joined the social media revolution in a way that is still as obvious, but probably hasn’t found its way into public domain. The question is if sharing the brand with Twitter officially makes it business-friendly for the sport, ( or consumer brand and advertiser like P&G, Sprint ) In fact as one might feel to be important , does this spread of ‘co branded’ Twitter and MLB/NFL/IPL/NDTV/BofA count for more than the reputation management and the catching up?

Before we move on with the discussion, let’s give the @mashable it’s due

MLB.com Shows You How Twitter Reacts Inning-by-Inning to Playoff Games

With the MLB playoffs in full swing, it’s been hard to miss the chatter on Twitter during pivotal moments during games. MLB.com is now tracking all of that action, and compiling it in an interactive inning-by-inning timeline of each game that compiles Twitter buzz alongside video highlights.

The result is MLB’s “Pulse” feature which now accompanies the Wrap Up of each game. In addition to the graph for each team’s tweet volume and highlights, you can also see all of the tweets that MLB pulled in, so you can see specifically what people were saying at any point during the game.

Unfortunately, Pulse is only available after games, though the team that worked on the project tells me that real-time is in the works for next season. Nonetheless, during games, MLB.com has added a Twitterfeature to its GameDay view where you can both watch a pitch-by-pitch description of what’s happening, and also see all the tweets coming in about the game. There’s also an option to login and post your own updates.

One must first put the facts in place:

A. Twitter chatter has created its own distinctive brand and brand pull for the social maven, the sport and the consumer brand – as Steve Jobs might have once done to Microsoft, It’s hard to ignore.
B. Twitter chatter is fun only real-time for the sports brands, NFL, IPL, NBA or F1 – you can set the watch by the tweets that come, for the game, the plays, the controversial moments or some real tweets as well! – The chatter dies away in twitter gloop soon after the last hit of the game..FACT!
C. The most important for marketers right now is to get into Twitter and stop getting shredded by opinion makers, twitterati and the cognoscenti or just common folk and similarly capitalize on the happy moments for the brand and the game
D. Twitter hasn’t sold the Healthcare bill to anyone
E. Twitter isn’t getting paid. None of the Twitter tools are
F. I believe, in most cases above you can easily substitute Twitter for Facebook. Only that Facebook has advertising and Twitter has more content per second than you would ever think possible and you cannot ignore it! People love to ignore Facebook
G. A lot of celebrity mistakes are already floating around. Bad spats in public domain, recorded in history

So, what does it mean? Well, for one thing the marketers seem to be doing it right. Only there are not enough of them. As usual I find only the Giants of the business game taking notice and spending bucks on Twitter. That is where we are and we are repeating the mistake we made last time as well. This is the crowdsourcing moments that need capturing, revolutions by the moment that can give tremendous leverage to the game.

There is beginning of the rudiments of policy for social media from the NFLs, IPLs and MLB. There is a lot of intelligent analysis real-time that makes my game day much more interactive and me more responsive to the word play and the brand fabric. There is the immediate impact on the brand’s visibility. There has to be now a commercial framework that does not overcharge the premium but also that sheds unresponsible engagement. It does not have to be a discouragement to new users, because any paying mode could be a big discouragement for millions of students, but apart from the crowd’s sway in making you add value there has to be a firm style from each sport brand that keeps tweeters that well tweet great and those that just ride. There has to be encouragement for the millions of listeners who are not there to ruffle any feathers but curious to read on twitter and see where the trend is for the game going on. And there has to be measurable incentive for brand owners and influencers to provide that culture.

Maybe we are the infomediaries of this Invisible Continent. But, maybe there is another revolution around the corner..The consumer’s ‘infrastructure’ requests have changed irrevocably, however.

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