PGA Tour

As we head into mid-July, what has normally been a slow season for sports brand activation has unveiled a host of positive programs and good signs for sports on all levels. Starting with Mixed Martial Arts and the hundreds of brands and thousands of fans that have descended on Las Vegas for UFC 100 this weekend. The LA Times had a good look at the UFC’s success and its ability to build fans around the experiential platform that they have created and can execute for their followers, both on site and on pay per view. Great weekend for the UFC, which continues to be the only true national brand in the sport.

As we head into mid-July, what has normally been a slow season for sports brand activation has unveiled a host of positive programs and good signs for sports on all levels. Starting with Mixed Martial Arts and the hundreds of brands and thousands of fans that have descended on Las Vegas for UFC 100 this weekend. The LA Times had a good look at the UFC’s success and its ability to build fans around the experiential platform that they have created and can execute for their followers, both on site and on pay per view. Great weekend for the UFC, which continues to be the only true national brand in the sport.

Press release from PGA.com,

The PGA of America and Turner Sports have extended their broadcasting and interactive media agreements covering the PGA Championship, PGA Grand Slam of Golf and PGA.com through 2019. The new agreement between the two organizations will also expand to include licensing, with Turner’s Cartoon Network Enterprises (CNE) serving as the PGA’s licensing agent in the youth marketplace. In addition, Turner and the PGA will collaborate on a number of new media and consumer marketing initiatives to increase awareness and brand recognition of The PGA of America among key audiences, as well as introduce new, younger audiences to learning, playing and following the game.

This week in New York The Sports Business Journal will award it’s Sports Business Awards for 2008. The nominees in 15 categories are all more than deserving, and in many ways are very reflective of the leaders who will help innovate and lead the industry thro9ugh the continued tough times and into the future. Many on the list read like the usual Who’s Who, but as with many things SBJ does, there are a few surprises.

It remains the million dollar question…can you sell women’s athletes just as athletes with good stories, or do you need the sex appeal to make them interesting to the casual sports fan. The LPGA is again trying to play that balance as it comes to the New York area next weekend, pulling in the business community, the athleticism and just enough sizzle to try and lure interest from brands looking for the best possible ROI, and priming the New York golf market before the men’s US Open rolls into Bethpage Black in a few weeks. So how do you balance both sides?

As MLB works through the messaging of Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada, there were a number of solid examples of brands and their staffs finding great opportunities for spin, especially on the human interest side. From NASCAR, which gets going with Daytona this weekend, to hoops and tennis, finding the story and then executing through the media really came through with these efforts, let’s take a look.

We have all seen the doctor “tips” usually affiliated with sports medicine sponsorships with teams and leagues.  The obligatory in-arena and on-air quick factoids on injury “sponsored by” have been around for years.  However it seems like the indicidual doctors have looked to sports more as a way to more directly reach the consumer on their own.  Maybe its the affordability of space, the need for individuals to stand out more as the competition for the health dollar gets more competitive or media and brands looking to create more one on one contact between a fan base that needs to exercise and is more health conscious these days, but the doctor as brand is on the rise, especially on the recreational side.  Some examples include the Florida Pa

The engagement of the fan with the athlete, whether it is onsite, online or in another area, is always the key component in activation and building in long term support for the brand, the team or the athlete.  Once a fan can connect on a personal basis with the athlete, there is more trust and support in lean times and more emotion in good times.  In team sports, where the athletes are in market for large portions of the year, that connection is much easier to do.  In individual sports, like tennis, golf, volleyball, even auto racing, that connection sometimes is more difficult to do because of the lack of potential physical personal contact.  Now NASCAR has overcome many of those issues with their huge play into retail and television…the athletes are tied to

One of the smaller and seemingly missed controversies in Beijing was NBC’s handling of openly gay diver Matthew Mitcham of Australia, whose gold medal in platform diving prevent a sweep of the event by the host country.  It is either a sign of more accepting times, a sign that the Olympics is more accepting as a world platform than American team sports are of such issues, a great credit to NBC for deflecting a non-issue or all of the above.  Our vote is for all of the above.  The story went largely unreported by the mainstream press and never touched off any firestorms by groups when it wasn’t singled out (nor was it significant or even possibly newsworthy) but NBC’s Bob Costas went all out to diffuse the story by doing an <

This week’s Atlanta Journal Constitution took a look at Georgia Tech’s efforts to try and increase ticket sales for football in a market, like South Florida, the traditionally has been slow to respond to athletic onfield perfromance, especially at the professional level.  However, in the football-rich Southeast, the Business of College Football blog went one step further and examined all the programs in Georgia, their ticket costs, and the potential ROI that lower prices and even promotions could have on a fan base.  The result…success breeds success, where even in a