A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CBS SPORTS NETWORK

Cynopsis: Sports
04.08.13

Good morning. It’s Monday, April 8, 2013, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing. 

Last week’s announcement that Minor League Baseball had hired Michael Hand to serve as the organization’s first Chief Marketing Officer, marks a strategic shift from the sport. Minor League Baseball President & CEO Pat O’Conner is charging Hand with oversight of the organization’s Project Brand initiative, designed to shore up marketing and sponsorship efforts for the sport, which offers a highly activated community of fans throughout the country.

Cynopsis Sports spoke with both O’Conner and Hand about the state of the game and how Project Brand will look to offer a new take on the country’s national pastime.

O’Conner on the decision to bring in a CMO: We realized that the brand of Minor League Baseball had become a tangible asset of great value that was being underutilized. We felt like it was important for us to really harness all of the asset value of 160 clubs as well as the overall brand we possess. That was the emphasis, and I named an ad hoc committee about a year ago at this time, to forget everything they know about marketing at this level and draw me the program that they see in the future. We ended up developing the Project Brand moniker in recognition of 160 teams and one brand under the Minor League Baseball umbrella designed to give status to the brand that it’s deserved over the last 20 years. When we spoke with Michael, it was almost like he had been sitting in committee meetings for months. It was a validation of what we had been thinking.

Hand on the opportunities for MiLB: I previously spent 15 years on the corporate side before I spent four years at IMG. You see a lot pitches come across your desk, and it always struck me the Minor League Baseball was this untapped opportunity. When the chance presented itself to come here and help elevate the sport, it was a hard thing not to have a deeper conversation about. It is ripe for a broader understanding within corporate America to get a grasp on what this is all about.

O’Conner on Project Brand: This is not a transactional program, it’s not a short-term play, we are actually looking for partners that go beyond traditional marketing and exposure to form advanced partnerships. This footprint of our clubs consists of 43 states, and 40 million fans. Because marketers are multi-tiered, international companies, sometimes reaching “B”, “C” and “D” communities can be difficult. They can get all over “A,” they can do the big campaign stuff. But if they are looking to reach people 34-55, homeowners, parents, educated, and affluent, that’s really right down our demographics list. That’s our profile. So for us to be able to arm Michael with that kind of asset, that kind of venue, that kind of potential distribution point, we can attack virtually every marketer’s plan. We are based on affordable, family entertainment, with brand loyalty aspects that marketers want.

Hand on the impact on teams: One thing that a lot of people were concerned about was what we were going to do with the relationship with the individual teams, and, quite candidly, they are the guys who are most excited about it. When you think about it, they are the experts in their community. They’ve gone out and they’ve positioned their brand in a very solid way locally, with the local insurance agent, and the local auto dealer and all the other people who were really solid in these B, C and D communities across the country. There is a lot of power in that. There is a reason schools make trips, and little league teams go and everyone is involved. When you really talk to the ownership and leadership of some of these teams, there is an untapped potential to elevate it on a higher scale and go to new categories and talk to brands and companied that maybe they can’t get to locally. 

O’Conner on benchmarks for success: It’s going to be quality and length of partnership. I think what would be successful, would be 6-8, maybe 10 quality partners in three, five or ten years down the road who have five years of experience with us and is something that has been crafted into a complete package that we are able to deliver. There’s obviously a lot of work ahead, but we believe in our brand.

On the Air

Saturday’s Final Four games for the 2013 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament on CBS drew an average household rating/share of 9.4/18, rising 4% from last year’s 9.0/17. That marks the highest-rated Final Four in eight years, according to Nielsen Fast Nationals. The two games averaged 15,702,000 total viewers, up 3% from last year, to deliver the highest viewership average for the two Final Four games since 2005. Individually, Louisville’s win over Wichita State scored a 8.7/18, while Michigan’s victory over Syracuse delivered a10.2/18. Championship game is tonight on CBS at 8p.

The NHL Winter Classic is back, with Commissioner Gary Bettman confirming yesterday that the game, which was cancelled this year due to the lockout, will return on Jan. 1 at Michigan Stadium for a Toronto Maple Leafs/Detroit Red Wings matchup. Bettman also announced that HBO’s 24/7 reality franchise will return next season leading up to the game in 24/7 Red Wings/Maple Leafs: Road to the Winter Classic. The series will return in December.

NBA TV’s final NBA Fan Night presented by Sprint telecast of the season will feature the Suns/Rockets, according to the channel. The game will take place Tuesday, April 9, at 8p.

Thursday night’s Bellator season finale reportedly tied for the franchise’s second-largest audience in the company’s history, drawing 901,000 average viewers on Spike TV. That marks a 26% uptick over the previous week.

With Michigan in tonight’s championship game, BTN is offering coverage tonight live from Atlanta at 8:30p with a 30-minute pre-game episode of Big Ten Basketball & Beyond: Tournament Edition. Dave Revsine hosts alongside analysts Jim Jackson and Mike DeCourcy. The crew returns for post-game analysis once the game ends with another edition of Beyond.
 
The first three games of the 2013 Atlanta Braves season generated the team’s highest rating for a season-opening series in over 10 years. The trio averaged a 6.68 Nielsen score on FOX Sports South.

MSG Network is poised to air Lost and Found: The ’73 Knicks Championship Tape tonight at 7p, showcasing a refurbished copy of the May 10, 1973 Knicks win over the Lakers in Game 5 that clinched the NBA Championship. The one-hour presentation of the original broadcast will include interviews with the stars of the ’73 Knicks team, including Willis Reed, Walt ‘Clyde’ Frazier, Bill Bradley and Earl Monroe.

Canadian broadcasting legend Johnny Esaw died at the age of 87, according to local reports. Esaw was a pillar of the likes of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, as well as the likes of the Canadian Football League, as well as figure skating, golf, tennis as well as racing.

Sold out! I look forward to seeing everyone at the Cynopsis: Sports Media Awards on April 17. The event takes place at Yale Club in Manhattan. Click here for more info.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Sponsorship & Promotion

Wrigley’s new AlertEnergy Caffeine Gum signed on to make its NASCAR Sprint Cup Series debut with Joe Gibbs Racing and driver Elliott Sadler on April 21 at Kansas Speedway. The deal will see Sadler pilot the No. 81 Alert Energy Camry at the event, as well as at Talladega Superspeedway on May 5 and Oct. 20 for a total of three races during the 2013 race season.
 
Digital Fields

Pac-12 Digital, part of Pac-12 Enterprises, is partnering with NeuLion to help create a “unified digital platform” for all Pac-12 schools, while offering fans of the conference access to school content via multiple devices. The new partnership allows Pac-12 Digital to offer a common, video centric digital platform that all member universities will be able to leverage.

NeuLion also announced a strategic partnership with LiveU to deliver an integrated solution that utilizes LiveU’s portable live video-over-cellular solution coupled with the NeuLion Sports and NeuLion TV Everywhere Platforms. The LiveU solution content is acquired and transmitted from anywhere directly to NeuLion’s cloud-based transcoding service for provisioning and ultimately delivery to consumers worldwide. 

Bright House Networks and Cox Communications added fully enabled, on-the-go capabilities for Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Time Warner Cable Deportes. All network programming, can now be watched by customers via TV Everywhere.

The Main Event

NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship featuring blue bloods Louisville and Michigan on CBS at 8p.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

ON THIS DAY in 1991: Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker is paralyzed in a car accident.

In The Know: Who was the first-ever draft pick for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats? (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: Tusk is the name of the mascot for what university? Answer: The University of Arkansas. Kudos: Marc Wollis-NBC Sports Group/NY; Bobby Coyle-New York Yankees Radio Network/NY; Ken Nice-Yoh/Silver Spring; David Koonin-CSE/Atlanta; Ged Young-GC Marketing/Garden City; Jerehmy White-BusyBuddy Books, Inc./Glen Rock; George Finkel- MegaSport Productions/Myrtle Beach; Michael Bell-NCC Media/Dallas; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; Joyce Ikemi-Mission Control/LA; Joe Snell-Fox Sports/LA; Judie Henninger-Valentine Productions Inc./Santa Monica.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Cynopsis Webinar:
Leveraging Social Media and TV Ads: Best Brand Strategies
Tuesday * April 30 * 1:30-3:00p.m. ET

Moderated by: Arthur Greenwald (President, Greenwald Media, Inc. + Contributing Editor, Cynopsis Media), along with:
Seth Shapiro, New Amsterdam Media
Karie Ford, Subway
Mike Freeman, Hallmark Channel & Crown Family Network

Register here: http://www.cynopsis.com/webinars/best-brand-strategies.

Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports
04.08.13

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