CYNOPSISSPORTS
04.06.15 Good morning. It’s Monday April 6, 2015, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.
Next month sees the Penn Mutual Collegiate Rugby Championship hit Philadelphia from May 30-31, as the sport continues to find footholds stateside. United World Sports, which oversees the event as well as the growing ’
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Jonathan First, President of United World Sports, about the growth of the sport and what lays ahead.
First on connecting rugby with fans: The approach to rugby that we’ve taken here is that it is a blank slate, there is no baggage or negativity. The way that we’ve approached this sport in general is that we have to promote it to a large scale, which is why television was critical to our success. So the NBC partnership that we’ve developed catapulted what rugby in this country has become because it was suddenly available to 130 million households. Our average broadcast, between all the channels we are on, is close to six million a broadcast. That really broke rugby here. Before that, events were not really generating any significant traction.
On next steps: We’ve got to keep moving forward. We are developing new events on both a worldwide and a domestic basis. We’ve focused a tremendous amount of activity into colleges including two events, the Collegiate Rugby Championship and also the Varsity Cup as well as two more that we are probably going to come out with in 2016. We’ve also invested heavily in Rhino, which is our 365-day a year business with equipment, balls as well as apparel and we are placing a tremendous amount of money in that.
On the USA Sevens event in Las Vegas: The city has been a game-changer for this event because it is a destination and an attraction in of itself. It has allowed this event to grow at a tremendous pace. When the event was in San Diego, and before that Los Angeles, the attraction value was much less. As Vegas delivers so much more entertainment value for the fan. Lessons learned: when you have a sport like rugby, you need to surround it with as many attraction values as you can to help get the fan to buy the ticket. That event really became an event in a major way because of the move. We have a lot more to do and now we have to focus on the corporate side of it and get major corporations in to participate as well.
On fans: Rugby fans are loyal and smart. They will absolutely spend money to see the sport and to play the sport if the right events are built for them. Our Facebook following keep increasing and our database is now up to 160,000 and that keeps increasing. What we found with the actual rugby fan is that they are very engaged, and whatever we promote, whether it is a sponsor or an event, they listen.
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The Final Four rallied up a huge spike for coverage across TBS, TNT and truTV on Saturday, scoring 41.7 million total viewers who watched all of part of the coverage. That marks a rise of 24% over year-ago numbers based on Nielsen Fast Nationals. The Kentucky/Wisconsin game averaged 22.6 million total viewers for a 39% markup to rank as the most-viewed National Semifinal game telecast in 19 years and the most-viewed college basketball game in cable television history. The game reeled in a 12.4/23 U.S. HH rating/share for the channels, up 35% over 2014. The Duke/Michigan State averaged 15.3 million total viewers for a 31% increase over last year and the highest viewership for the game window in a decade.
Baseball is back! Major League Baseball and iN DEMAND unveiled details of its 2015 MLB Extra Innings package, which is distributed nationally by iN DEMAND to digital cable customers. For the second year, access to MLB.TV will be included with subscriptions while a free preview will run for seven days through the 12th. Overall, the full season package delivers more than 2,000 out-of-market baseball game telecasts during the regular season, with up to 80 games each week, for $195.00.
MLB Network has its lineup ready to go for Opening Day. The channel has slated 17 hours of live coverage starting at 9a with Intentional Talk, the debut episode of MLB Central at 10a, High Heat at noon, MLB Tonight at 1p and Quick Pitch at 1a.
Finally, new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been hitting the press about his plans for the league, spanning marketing to on-field play. Manfred told Canada’s Globe and Mail that one area of interest is for the league to expand south of the border into Mexico. "Mexico and Canada present the most fertile ground just in terms of the level of baseball interest and the proximity to our existing franchises," he said. He also told AdWeek that he believes that marketing to Latinos will help boost the sport, hiring LatinWorks to produce a Hispanic-focused marketing campaign.
We are down to a week! Join us for the annual Cynopsis Sports Media Awards Breakfast on Thursday, April 16 from 8-10:30a at the NYAC to celebrate the work of this year’s Sports Awards Finalists. Register you and your team here.
SiriusXM continues to bulk up its roster, adding former players and coaches Vinny Del Negro, Rick Mahorn and Brian Scalabrine to its lineup of voices on its NBA Radio channel. Each will be heard on various shows on the channel throughout the year. Next week, Del Negro will host Off the Dribble (12-3p) today, as well as Thursday, April 9. Mahorn will host Above the Rim (10a-noon) on Tuesday, April 7 and NBA Today (3-6p) on Thursday, April 9. Scalabrine will host Above the Rim on Thursday, April 9, and Friday, April 10.
ESPN and Bob Knight formally broke up with the end of the NIT, following his run with the company. “We thank Bob for his contributions to ESPN’s coverage over the last seven seasons and wish him luck in his future endeavors,” said John Wildhack, ESPN Executive Vice President, Production and Programming. “Coach Knight has left an indelible mark on the game of college basketball and he will be remembered as one of the truly great coaches and innovators the game has seen.”
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The PGA TOUR and the Kansas City Crusaders, the host organization of the Web.com Tour’s Kansas City-area event, locked in a five-year agreement that makes Digital Ally the tournament’s new title sponsor, effective immediately and running through 2019. The Midwest Classic has been officially renamed the Digital Ally Open.
Major League Lacrosse announced that The Best Bar Ever is now an official nutritional bar partner of the league for the upcoming 2015 season. The 2015 MLL season will kick-off on Sunday, April 12.
ESPN is hooking up with daily fantasy sports company DraftKings, with Walt Disney Co. announcing a plan to invest $250 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. With this investment from Disney, DraftKings now claims a market value of $900 million and will look for a premium position on ESPN platforms.
AOL announced the official launch of 2 Point Lead, described as a unique sports video experience that “goes beyond the news and offers a mobile-first, humorous take on the world of sports with social buzz in mind.” The show will offer viewers a combo of sports and satire featuring famous comedians and professional athletes in comedy sketches, interviews and man-on-the-street clips. The series will be offered at 2p with comedian Yannis Pappas on board as host.
MLBAM announced that the MLB.com At Bat mobile app hit the five-million download mark on Saturday, its earliest point in its eight-year history and the first time the milestone was reached before the first pitch of the Major League Baseball regular season.
Who takes it, Duke or Wisconsin? The NCAA Championship airs on CBS at 9p.
ON THIS DAY in 1997: Mario Lemieux announces his retirement from the NHL.
In The Know: Which university was the only Ivy League team ever to make the Final Four? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and time zone. Unofficial rules: Only the second four correct answers from each time zone will be mentioned; and once you’ve been mentioned in any of the Cynopsis editions, you can’t be mentioned again that calendar week.)
Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: The only time that all four final spots were held by #1 seeded teams was in 2008. Name three of those teams. Answer: Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina, UCLA. Kudos: Lewis Blaustein-Lewis Brand Solutions/NY; Denis Barry-CBS/NY; Michael Strauss-COXREPS/NY; Todd Hinckley-Major League Soccer/NY; Mike Antolini-Tiger Woods Foundation/Boston; Synda Kollman-Charter Marketing Group/Boca Raton; Matt Marini-MLB Network/NJ; Jeremy Bowman-ESPN/Chicago; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; Kevin Micklo-Pinnacle Advertising/Chicago; Steve Hirsen-Director/Sherman Oaks; Tim Davidson-HYFN/LA; Nick Monroe-Monroe Photography/San Diego; Jeff Mirkin-The Game Plane/Hollywood.
Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports @VegasandVine
04.06.15
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