Forbes on the NBA's social and demographic value for promotional partners

"The NBA partnered with four movie studios–Warner Bros., Universal, Sony and Disney–to create co-promotional spots advertising each respective studio's summer films along with the NBA Playoffs and Finals.  The NBA asserts that the demographics of its fan base were instrumental in securing these advertisements, as according to the NBA, 48-percent of its fan base is under the age of 35.  "The NBA's audience is the perfect match for these studios to market to.  We resonate with the core 18-to-34-year-old audience that they want to reach," Collins explained."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/06/06/the-nbas-extensive-digital-following-creates-unique-marketing-opportunities-for-the-finals/

Sports stadiums, Super Bowls, and zip lines: Crony capitalism's dubious economics

South Florida's 2016 Super Bowl bid promises to blow all previous bids out of the water, both in the size of the expected bid and in the ridiculousness of the expenditures.

From the Miami Herald:

South Florida’s Super Bowl Host Committee expects to spend about $21 million in private and public funds putting on the kind of Super Bowl outlined in the thick binder presented to NFL executives in New York. The confidential proposal includes creating a Super Bowl theme park in downtown Miami, including closing down Biscayne Boulevard, constructing a “Hail Mary Zip Line” along the waterfront and possibly mooring barges to accommodate some of the action, according to interviews and leaked details about the plans.

The success of the bid likely hinges on voters' approval of a publicly-financed renovation of the Dolphins' Sun Life Stadium. The Dolphins are lobbying for the public to chip half of the renovation's $400 million price tag. Public money would be generated through sales tax and a hotel bed tax.

The problems with public financing for the private profit of sports entities are well documented. First, taxpayers tend to pay much more for new and renovated pro sports stadiums than is initially forecast. Second, sports entities and promoters consistently overestimate the positive economic impact of stadium renovations and big-ticket events, including the Super Bowl. Dolphins lobbyist Ron Book projected a $500 million economic impact for the State of Florida from Super Bowl L -- a projection that PolitiFact Florida and The Miami Herald rated as "False." As Baade and Matheson's (2011) meta-analysis "Financing Professional Sports Facilities" explains:

Researchers who have gone back and looked at economic data for localities that have hosted mega-events, attracted new franchises, or built new sports facilities have almost invariably found little or no economic benefits from spectator sports. Typically, ex post studies of the economic impact of sports have focused on employment, ... personal income, ... personal income per capita, ... taxable sales, ... or tourist arrivals. These studies and a multitude of others generally find that the actual economic impact of sports teams or events is a fraction of that claimed by the boosters, and in some cases actually show a reduction in economic activity due to sports. 

Public financing of professional sports stadiums is an exemplar of American crony capitalism; we're capitalist at the bottom, and socialist at the top. And if history is any indicator, we'll see South Florida taxpayers disproportionately holding the debt for the private profit of the NFL, Dolphins majority owner Stephen Ross (net worth $4.4 billion), and other interested parties of the sports/media complex. 

But, hey, maybe zip lines will provide the economic impact that taxpayers have been looking for all these years.

For more on these topics, check out:

The Miami Herald -- Fantasy football: PolitiFact looks at Super Bowl economic impact

The Atlantic -- If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums
Judith Grant Long -- Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities
Dave Zirin -- Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love
Bob Trumpbour -- The New Cathedrals: Politics And Media in the History of Stadium Construction
Kevin Delaney & Rick Eckstein -- Public Dollars, Private Stadiums
Roger Noll -- Sports, jobs, and taxes: the economic impact of sports teams and stadiums

Mobile Video Views Up 300% In 2012, With Tablets Driving The Charge With A 360% Increase - TechCrunch

"Overall, digital video saw growth across all platforms, with an increase of 30 percent year over year in Q4 2012 versus the same time in 2012. TV and sports content was responsible for a large chunk of that new viewership, and streaming video available has grown 50 percent between Q1 2011 and Q4 2012."
http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/04/09/mobile-video-views-up-300-in-2012-with-tablets-driving-the-charge-with-a-360-increase/

Capital One's March Madness plans: "Harvesting voice and pride" through social media

Ahhh... March. The change of the seasons. Time for March Madness sponsor Capital One to head out to the social media fields and harvest some of our "voice and pride" to drive traffic to the company's website. From ESPN's Kristi Dosh:

"Capital One will engage fans through social media channels by allowing the team with the most vocal fans to take over Capital One’s own social media accounts.  

Here’s how it works: Use the hashtag #rallycry any time you discuss your team on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. The team with the “loudest and proudest” fans will be featured prominently on Capital One’s social media websites, which will be bathed in that team’s colors ...  

'It’s harvesting that voice and pride -- the loudest and proudest fans -- we’re going to be sweeping all that together and funneling it into a bit of a virtual scoreboard through our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel.'"

We've heard the metaphor of trying to "harness" users' social media productivity for several years; however, marketers like Capital One aren't nearly as passive in producing buzz as the "harness" metaphor implies. They actively create or "harvest" it.

Susan Crawford on telecom monopolies and sports programming's role in high U.S. Internet prices and slow speeds

On the Majority Report yesterday, Susan Crawford chatted with Sam Seder about her new book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. It's a generally insightful (and frustrating) talk about the absence of competition in the telecom marketplace -- especially the market for home broadband service.

Crawford "explains why the Internet should be treated like a electricity, why Wired access is essential for success in today’s economy, why private companies have no incentive to provide universal access, the industry push back against her ideas, why market concentration is so high in the wireless market and educating the public on the need for an communications policy."

Of particular interest to me was an exchange between Seder and Crawford about the role of sports in these processes (transcript below). Since sports content is so highly valued by consumers (and, arguably, the one type of programming that's holding the traditional cable model together), companies like Comcast can use their sports holdings/programming to erect barriers to entry to competing providers. Providers that, as Crawford explains, could offer (or force the big fellas to offer) faster and cheaper broadband services.

Profit Slides 6% at Disney as Movie and TV Divisions Lag

"ESPN had a significant impact on Disney's quarter, with programming expenses increasing for football and basketball. Those costs held back results for Disney's media networks unit, which houses the cable sports behemoth; operating income there increased a tepid 2 percent, to $1.21 billion. The growth came from the Disney Channel, ABC Family and higher ad sales at the ABC broadcast network."

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/costs-at-espn-depress-disney-profits/

Sent from phone. Sory for tpyos.

PaidContent: How social media is becoming as important a live event as the live event itself

"Most of us will have to accept the fact that seperating live events from their social media counterparts is a losing battle at this point, but for brands like Oreo, the knowledge that they have a dual-platform audience creates real possibilities"

http://paidcontent.feedsportal.com/c/35063/f/648056/s/28405000/l/0Lgigaom0N0C20A130C0A20C0A40Chow0Esocial0Emedia0Eis0Ebecoming0Eas0Eimportant0Ea0Elive0Eevent0Eas0Ethe0Elive0Eevent0Eitself0C/story01.htm

CNBC: Advertisers Bet Big on the Super Bowl

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100424213

"So why are advertisers flocking to a single event, where a mere 30 seconds of ad time costs as much as $4 million, plus often another million or so to produce a commercial?

Because it's still the best way to reach a massive audience, who treat the ads with just as much respect as they treat the game itself. And now brands can get more bang for their buck by extending their ads for weeks before and after."

Nielsen: Avid sports fans are a particularly tech-savvy demographic

Perhaps the most over-used phrase in my dissertation was "tech-savvy affluent males." This is the specific audience that Vox Media -- the company I studied -- is most interested in attracting to its network of 300+ sports blogs (SB Nation), its consumer technology news site (The Verge), and its video games news site (Polygon). As Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff explained of the company's expansion from sports to technology:

Nearly all of our advertisers are looking for young, tech savvy affluent males so there is great overlap and expansion opportunity there.

Indeed, Nielsen research published this week suggests that avid sports fans are a particularly tech-savvy demographic. Some highlights:

• "Avid sports fans are 52 percent more likely to own a tablet"
• 42% more likely to own a DVR
• 33% more likely to own a gaming console
• 21% more likely to own a smartphone
• 20% more likely to own a HDTV

• "Nearly 60% of tablet and smartphone owners who access sports on their device check this content at least once a day"

• "41% of all TV-related Tweets are about sports programming, although sports accounts for only 1.3% of all TV programming."

• Users of the top six sports apps spend more than 1 hour, on average, using that app each month. ESPN Streak for the Cash users spend an average of 2 hours each month using the app.

As Stephen Master, senior VP of sports for Nielsen, told Mashable:

"Live sports are all about real-time action, and mobile devices allow sports fans to keep up and discuss that action, while also providing instant access to the sports content they want — whether that's score updates, fantasy stats or tweets to their favorite athlete ... Smartphones and tablets haven't quite changed the live sports viewing experience yet — TV is still the top platform — but our research shows that more and more people are frequently using these devices while watching TV, indicating that these devices are enhancing that viewing experience."

For Super Bowl Ads, It’s Go Viral or Go Home - cnbc.com

"We are seeing more teasers because they have been effective," said Steve Posavac, professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University. "This year, many advertisers feel that if they don't release a teaser, they will fail to gain consumers' mindshare, and that their ads will be lost in the clutter."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100410648

All Viewers Pay to Keep TV Sports Fans Happy - NYTimes.com

"Sports are the television industry's bulwark against rapid technological change: while the companies fear cord-cutting by customers who can cobble together a diet of TV on the Internet, they rest a little easier knowing that former customers would be hard-pressed to find their favorite teams live online."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/business/media/all-viewers-pay-to-keep-tv-sports-fans-happy.html?smid=pl-share

Dodgers, Signing Lucrative TV Deal, Plan to Start Regional Sports Network - NYTimes.com

"The multibillion-dollar deal with the Dodgers seemingly flies in the face of Time Warner Cable's public statements about tamping down on the rising costs of programming. SportsNet LA is likely to amount to $4 to $5 a month per subscriber in southern California, and some of that cost will be passed on subscribers through their monthly cable bills, with Time Warner Cable also absorbing some of the cost."

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/dodgers-signing-lucrative-tv-deal-plan-to-start-regional-sports-network/

Who are behind Super PACs? A collaborative class wiki project

(Originally published 11/7/12)

This week my Media History and Institutions class completed a collaborative research project that worked out pretty well. Each student was asked to research one of the largest individual donors to this election cycle's four largest Super PACs, and to report their findings on a collaborative class wiki. Students gathered information about that donor from ProPublica's PAC Track tool, Bloomberg Businessweek's company look-up tool, reputable citations at the bottom of their donor's Wikipedia article, and the power and influence mapping website, Muckety.com. The information they were asked to gather included: the donor's giving levels to Super PACs, their economic/political/ideological motivations, and their connections to other wealthy people and powerful groups. They completed the project in conjunction with a reading on the history of "dark money" in politics and political advertising.

Here are the directions for the project and the collaborative class wiki where students reported their findings. Feel free to borrow what you'd like.

Up with Chris Hayes: Media monopolies thrive as local newspapers fold

(Originally published 10/6/12)

Here is a great three-segment discussion from Up with Chris Hayes about newspapers monopolies and the often powerful corporate interests behind them. Hayes' guest is Harper’s Magazine's David Sirota who recently published two articles on the topic -- “The Citizen Kane era returns” & “The only game in town.”

For media studies instructors, the video could pair well with news media concentration readings, such as Bagdikian’s The New Media Monopoly, Jhally’s The Political Economy of Culture (p. 45 here), Chapter 1 in McChesney’s Political Economy of Media, or C. Edwin Baker’s Media Concentration and Democracy. Could be an especially nice jumping-off point for discussing the relationships between structural trends (e.g., concentration) and instrumental control (e.g., “consciousness industry”).

SEGMENT 1 

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In Media Res looking for curators to critique Olympics media

(Originally published 6/12/12)

In anticipation of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the media and textual criticism site, In Media Res recently listed "The Olympics" among its current calls for curators. This "theme week" of curated Olympics videos/slideshows and critical responses will be published on July 30-June 3.

The call asks for brief proposals (due June 18) that:

. . . address a wide variety of topics relating to the Olympics and its media representations. Topics relevant to the event may include but are not limited to: branding of/at the Olympics; nationalism and spectacle; narrativization of competitors’ or nations’ participation; issues of gender, race, class, or sexuality; globalization and viewership; and/or representations of the Olympics beyond the athletic games.

Americans' hugely distorted wealth perceptions

(Originally published 5/31/12)

Image: ocregister.com

On the David Pakman Show yesterday, David and friends talked about a 2011 study by Michael I. Norton (Harvard) and Dan Ariely (Duke) titled "Building a Better America−−One Wealth Quintile at a Time." I'd read about this study a few months back. The study highlights the wide disparity between (a) how "regular Americans" think the distribution of wealth in the U.S. breaks down, (b) what their ideal distribution would be, and (c) what the actual distribution of wealth really is. As Norton and Ariely explain, they:

ask[ed] a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to ‘‘build a better America’’ by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

Dan Carlin interviews 3rd (and 4th and 5th) party candidates

(Originally published 5/30/12)

Independent presidential
candidate Buddy Roemer

Some of you may know, I'm a podcast junkie. As my poor fiance will tell you, most of my conversations start with the phrase: "So I was listening to this podcast and..." One of my favorite podcasts is "Common Sense with Dan Carlin" (Note: Dan's "Hardcore History" podcast is my #1). Dan doesn't usually have guests on his show, but as he explained on his show this week:

Carlin: For a long time we've told you that it's kind of a crime that more third party and independent candidates don't get a higher profile and don't get more coverage amongst the media out there so that people could know the options that are available to them besides the big two party members. That kind of compels me, doesn't it, to have some of these people on myself ... certainly I can have some of the major people you're not hearing enough from.

Carlin's conducted three such interviews so far (shows 226, 227, & 228 in the Common Sense archive): one with independent candidate, Buddy Roemer; another with Libertarian Party nominee, Gary Johnson; and most recently with Justice Party candidate, Rocky Anderson...

On The Media looks at why we continue to pay ESPN's live sports 'tax'

(Originally published 5/27/12)

This week's full episode of On the Media (WNYC, New York) is dedicated to "Television's Trying Times," "including how the industry is coping with changing consumer habits, the future of the communal viewing experience, and television on the web." One of the episode's segments looks, specifically, at a topic close to my heart: why television consumers continue to pay so much of our cable and satellite bills for ESPN and other sports networks.

The segment explains that we all pay an $80 annual "tax" to Disney for ESPN -- whether we watch the network or not. While the segment should have pointed out the importance of sports' young male demographic in these networks' high carriage fees (and, subsequently, our cable bills), the segment does do a great job highlighting the value of live sports in these high costs. OTM host Bob Garfield and guest Peter Kafka of All Things Digital explain the dynamic after the jump...

Special issue of Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies examines Penn State tragedy

(Originally published 5/25/12)

The August 2012 issue of Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies is a special issue dedicated to the Penn State tragedy. The issue contains 27 articles from a range of scholarly perspectives, including cultural studies, sociology of sport, education, and critical media studies. Jennifer Proffitt (Florida State) and I contributed an article on "brand logic" in intercollegiate athletics and the detrimental role of that logic in ethical decision-making.

The issue's table of contents is available after the jump, and here is a link to the online articles.