Cynopsis: Sports
03/19/12

Good morning. It’s Monday, March 19, 2012, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

After a hot 2011 season that featured ratings spikes, higher attendance and new partnerships – as well as edge-of-your-seat races – the IZOD IndyCar Series wrapped up the year with the tragic accident that took the life of driver Dan Wheldon. As the league revs up for its 2012 slate on Sunday, the sport prepares to enter a new era. A race in China, the departure of Danica Patrick to NASCAR as well as new shows and partners that will promote the sport. The season begins March 23-25 with the Honda Grand Prix in St. Petersburg on ABC.

Cynopsis Sports spoke with CEO Randy Bernard about the effects of Wheldon’s tragedy, life without Patrick and how the sport is planning to reel in new fans.

Bernard on the new season: I think 2012 is going to be a very exciting year for us especially with the fact that we have a new chassis and a much more relevant engine. It adds to the excitement. In addition, at St. Petersburg, we are going to have 26 cars on a starting grid which is a very healthy and great place to see our sport. And then to see some of the drivers coming into their own, I think it adds even more credibility and adds to the star power of the drivers that we are getting now.

On the impact of Wheldon’s accident: The very last thing that happened to us last season was the epitome of the low for a sport. It creates this unbelievable lull for everybody to come off of something like that. Now, the drivers want to get back in the car and the team owners want to as well. It’s been a very difficult time, but I think that we have learned a lot. I think that we have to open and have better communication between team owners, drivers and even the engineers. I think that what you want to do is really start focusing on pushing our drivers and our car and focus on what is really going to make 2012 bigger and better now.

On how broadcast partners are growing the brand: Through our deal with NBC Sports Network, I believe that the cross-promotional support that we get from NBC will be very big. One of our objectives is to build up the drivers and the cars, and we have a new show called IndyCar 36 that we are pretty excited about that will help accomplish that. It will follow drivers around from the minute that they get to the track to the checkered flag. That will then be turned into a 30-minute show that will air the following week. I think that it will help us to drive more fans to certain drivers when they start to understand their personality and what makes them tick to drive. I think with ABC, we really understood each other really well last year and I think that we were able to target certain markets and I don’t think that it was by chance that we did see a significant uptake on our ABC ratings last year. We have a long ways to go and we will continue to focus on that.

On Patrick’s move to NASCAR: Danica did overshadow a lot of our drivers. It isn’t a knock on her because she was very instrumental in building her own fan base that of course followed us and I think she will bring in a new demographic to them. But I think that some of our drivers haven’t been given the attention they probably deserved. When you look at a race and how much time has been spent on Danica’s car and how much of that has been taken away from Will Power and Scott Dixon. I think that we have to focus on the winners. I share this with the drivers, I tell them “Hey guys, if you are not winning, don’t expect our PR Team to promote and build you up.” Americans will follow winners.

On the Air

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is continuing its audience strides from the 2011 season, with CBS Sports and Turner Sports drawing the most-watched tournament in 18 years via TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV so far. This year’s games are averaging a 5.3 household rating through Saturday, according to Nielsen overnights, for a 4% spike over 2011 and an increase of 15% over 2010. That equates to an average of eight million viewers this year, up 3% over last year and 14% over 2010. Saturday’s coverage across the four networks delivered the highest-rated and most-watched first Saturday of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship since 2007, with a 6.1 U.S. HH rating and was up 3% over 2011.

ESPN announced its lineup for the 2012 NCAA Hockey Tournament, with Boston College, Michigan, Union and North Dakota scoring top seeds in the games. Regional play begins Friday and Saturday in Bridgeport, Conn. (East Regional), Green Bay, Wis. (Midwest), St. Paul, Minn. (West) and Worcester, Mass (Northeast). The Frozen Four will be played at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Fla. on April 5 and April 7, on the ESPN networks.

Fans voted for a Suns/Heat showdown for tomorrow’s Fan Night presented by Sprint on NBA TV. The night will tip off with the AutoTrader.com Pregame Show with host Matt Winer and analyst Brent Barry as well as guest analyst Bill Laimbeer at 7p. 

Vin Scully is cutting back for his 63rd season as the Dodgers’ broadcaster, and will no longer call games in Colorado. He will instead take the microphone for all home games as well as road games that take place in California and Arizona, for a slate of 100 games this season. Eric Collins and Steve Lyons will again broadcast the Dodgers’ other road games that are not nationally televised.

ESPN Deportes and impreMedia entered a content and promotion agreement for expanded coverage across both companies’ media platforms for Hispanic sports fans. The alliance will feature the two Spanish-language brands sharing content, and executing cross promotional activities on online properties, impreMedia’s print publications and ESPN Deportes TV programming. Among the features expected to be launched: content from impreMedia’s products will be incorporated within studio broadcasts; impreMedia’s sports writers will also appear on NacionESPN; and videos will be available to impreMedia.com and ESPNDeportes.com‘s users.

Golf Channel is offering 20 hours of coverage of the Tavistock Cup today and Tuesday from noon through 5p with prime-time replays at 7p. Rich Lerner hosts with analyst Frank Nobilo. Matt Gogel will report from an on-course tower, joined by Jerry Foltz, David Feherty and Gary McCord reporting from the course.

Sidney Crosby’s return to the NHL last week attracted an average audience of more than a half a million Canadians to TSN2, according to overnight data from BBM Canada. The Penguins/Rangers game drew an average audience of 547,000, making it the second highest audience ever recorded on TSN2. Meanwhile, an additional 206,000 viewers watched the game in French on RDS.

Join us on April 24, 2012 at the Cynopsis Sports Business Summit in NYC. Game-changing executives from networks, leagues and teams will be on hand to deliver key perspectives on growing brands, monetizing value & building communities by tapping into the unrivaled passion of the sports fan. ***REGISTER NOW***

Sponsorship & Promotion

2011 MLS Cup-Champion LA Galaxy locked in a 10-year extension with Herbalife that will see the nutrition company continue as the official presenting sponsor and jersey sponsor of the team. The agreement will run through the 2022 MLS season and is valued at over $44 million, which would make it the single largest and longest sponsorship agreement for an MLS club in League history. Through the deal, the Herbalife name will continue to appear on the front of the club’s jersey, and Herbalife will remain the Galaxy’s official and exclusive nutrition partner.

The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) announced that IMG, Dentsu and XYZ are being tapped to market the organization’s commercial rights for the period 2013-2020. All three agency partners will collectively handle marketing for the FIVB, while IMG and Dentsu have been appointed to handle the media rights sales to all FIVB events.

Digital Fields

Turner Sports is again tapping Ball State University’s Sports Link program to help handle operations of the NCAA March Madness Live social media functionality, aka Social Arena. This marks the second year in a row the university will be utilized, with students researching and collecting tournament trivia, assisting in creating and monitoring the 68-team feeds found only in the March Madness Live products, monitoring and participating in fan-generated clip grabbing and sharing and editing and producing featured game clips for the Social Arena.

NASCAR pillar Michael Waltrip has joined the Advisory Board for Motorsport.com, where he will help reach a new generation of motorsports fans by leveraging his industry knowledge, expertise and personal contacts to broaden the site’s appeal to global race fans.

The Main Event

Conference contenders Bulls and Magic square off on TNT at 8p.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

ON THIS DAY in 1991: Brett Hull becomes the third NHL player to score 80 goals in a season.

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: What basketball coaching legend gave UCLA 10 national titles in 12 seasons? John Wooden. Kudos: Larry Kahn-Golf Channel/Orlando; Chris Crowley-203 Studios/Stamford; Tony Intelisano-Mark Anthony Entertainment/NY; Jeff Pomeroy-JDP Communications/Atlanta; Bob Ramsey-WCIU/Chicago; Pam Tierney, actress, voiceover/Chicago; Mike Patterson-Turner Digital/Chicago; Bill Robertson-Tunheim Partners/Bloomington; Greg Moloznik-GLM Media/Scottsdale; Daniel Paul-Boulder/IMM; Matt Sautter-OpenTV/Golden; Bob Wooden-Brienne Chance, Republic Media/Phoenix; John Sutton-Charter Digital Media/LA; Randy Sollenberger-One Three Television/Santa Monica; Matthew Morse-KGPE Television/Fresno; Valerie J Tucker-VALJTUC Management/Garden Grove; Miriam Aardahl-OMD/LA.

In The Know: In 1991, Syracuse became the first two seed to lose to a 15 seed. Who beat them? (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.)

Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports
03.19.12

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