Cynopsis: Sports
03/26/12

Good morning. It’s Monday, March 26, 2012, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

Believe it or not the NHL season is already winding down with some classic teams in contention for the playoffs this year. Of course, as the season winds down, marketing heats up as the league debuted its 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs campaign last week. According to the league, the campaign represents the “most strategic and creative campaign collaboration ever among the NHL, NBC Sports Group, CBC, TSN, RDS, teams and sponsors.”

Anchored with the tagline, “Because It’s The Cup”, the campaign will look to appeal to avid as well as casual fans and emphasize the social aspect of watching the playoffs with friends. Cynopsis Sports spoke with NHL EVP of Marketing Brian Jennings about the origins of the campaign, how the league is working with partners to prepare for the playoffs as well as the season so far.

Jennings on the 2011-12 season: We’ve had a really good season so far. From that first faceoff in Winnipeg to the new platform we created with year with our NBC alliance with Discover in that Thanksgiving Black Friday window was a great way to begin the season. The parade that we executed with Macy’s was a new one for us but a momentum builder. The Winter Classic this year was another successful outing and was probably the best embodiment of our large scale strategy of executing events. As we continue to go forward for the playoffs, this time of the year it gets very serious and the tone and the stakes are so high as people compete for the symbol of excellence which is the Cup. So far, we have a lot of momentum still behind all of our commercial sectors of our business, consumer products, sponsorship, ratings, and digital consumption. Knock on wood, we are very pleased.

On the development of the “Because it’s the Cup” campaign: Last year, we were incredibly proud of the “History will be Made” campaign and we knew it served our fans quite well. But even with the word “history,” we felt that if you really weren’t familiar with the history of the game, it didn’t really serve as a gateway for you around this time of year. Recently, we held focus groups in New York, LA and Toronto and learned from self-described, casual sports fans who had attended a game or watched a game on television once in the past three months. We learned a few things from that. A little bit of the message we received is that you need to find us, I won’t seek you out. We looked at how effective our tools were on NHL.com and the network and while they served our avids incredibly well, they were probably less effective reaching out to the casuals. But when it came to the end of the session, mind you these are fans who in some instances couldn’t even really name two or three players on the Kings or the Rangers or even on the Leafs, when the facilitator asked what is that trophy they gave out at the end of the season on the NHL, in unison, men and women knew it was the Stanley Cup. They knew there was a Cup Keeper, he wore white gloves, they knew that it had been to a lot of places. So as a marketer, we knew there was a lot more equity in the Stanley Cup in how we market the Stanley Cup playoffs. So how do we open that gateway and be more open to the casual fan at a time of the year when we know we have the best product on the ice? That became our concept. 

On working with partners on the campaign: This is one of those campaigns where we wanted to invite casuals in as well as our avids. Nothing we are doing from a creative or concept perspective alienates them. In fact, it pulls them further in while inviting our casuals in to celebrate the rituals, intensity and magic that make this two and a half months of the Stanley Cup playoffs so special. One of the most important things the league can do is set the tone in what the creative concept should be and then allow your partners to have an ability to pull it out, whether it be at retail, or your content providers in the form of our broadcast partners or our retail partners or MillerCoors. It doesn’t happen without them. For the first time we have all of everybody aligned. We have all of our broadcasting partners in the US – NBC, NBC Sports Net, CNBC, certainly our network – as well as CBC, TSN, RDS up in Canada all talking about the game and using this schematic and their variations of this schematic of “Because it’s the Cup.”

On having all playoff games broadcast nationally for the first time: A key part of the NBC alliance was not just in addition to a Thanksgiving platform but also how we could best serve our fans during this time of the year. So every game, every night televised. So when you look at NBC, NBC Sports Net, CNBC, our own network the fan will be well served to watch and consume all the hockey that they want.

On the Air

CBS Sports’ and Turner Sports’ coverage of the 2012 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Final Four is set to resume with the Final Four beginning Saturday, March 31 at 6p on CBS with the Kentucky and Louisville battle. Kansas and Ohio State will begin 40 minutes after the conclusion of the first game. Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and Steve Kerr call the games along with Tracy Wolfson serving as reporter.

CBS’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 on Friday averaged a 2.2 rating among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen fast nationals, to win the night in the demographic. The network averaged an estimated 6.53 million viewers and a 4.0 rating/7 share for Friday’s primetime games.

With Tiger Woods earning his first PGA Tour win since 2009, NBC’s third round coverage of the 2012 Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday drew a 2.9/7 share according to Nielsen overnights. This marks a 53% jump over the same Saturday a year ago and scored the best overnight delivery for the third round of this event since 2003. Golf Channel’s round two preliminary ratings for Friday saw record ratings for the network scoring a 1.4 and 1.442 million viewers for a 75% spike over the same round in 2011.

A flurry of NFL offseason news helped propel ESPN last week. Announcements for Peyton Manning, Tim Tebow and the Saints handed ratings and viewership spikes for ESPN’s SportsCenter shows and NFL Live on Monday through Wednesday over the same period a year ago. The three days of NFL Live airings averaged 666,000 households and 721,000 viewers, based on a 0.7 rating, for increases of 73%, 63% and 75% respectively. All editions of SportsCenter averaged 559,000 households and 600,000 viewers based on a 0.6 rating, marking rises of 21%, 15% and 20% compared to the same three days a year ago. In addition, ESPN2 saw gains as well with First Take up 68% percent among households and up 58% in viewers. Online, ESPNNewYork.com logged its best day ever with over 2.6 million unique visitors and 4.6 million page views on Wednesday.

NBA TV announced that viewers had selected tomorrow’s Lakers/Warriors game for Fan Night presented by Sprint. The game begins at 10:30p, following the Cavaliers/76ers matchup at 7p.

Tennis Channel selected its greatest player of all-time on Friday, picking Roger Federer ahead of Rod Laver and Steffi Graf as the greatest tennis player of all-time. The series culminated after a five-night run of the Top 100.

The NFL Network is reminding its talent of their duties following the Warren Sapp/Jeremy Shockey war of words. Sapp tweeted that the tight end was a “snitch” from the Saints bounty investigation and Shockey denied the claims subsequently said in an interview that he wanted Sapp to be reprimanded as a result of the charge. As a result, NFL Network Senior Vice President of Programming and Production Mark Quenzel told NBC Sports that “We have discussed it with Warren and stressed that he is an analyst and not a reporter for NFL Network. In the future, if he comes across something he thinks is news he will let his producers know and before it is reported or Tweeted, that content will be subject to the same verification procedure that our reporters follow.”

While we are on the Saints, The New York Times reports that coach Sean Payton, who has been suspended as a result of the investigation, is being considered for employment by FOX Sports for a role on their coverage. The report states that representatives from CBS, ESPN and NBC all said that Payton would not be hired on their end.

Sponsorship & Promotion

Turner Sports is bringing new meaning to the “Big Dance,” announcing that the company was working with AT&T, Coca-Cola and Capital One as well as the NCAA and Turner Sports to announce the slate of headliners for the 2012 NCAA Big Dance Concert Series in New Orleans. Among the names playing the event will Jimmy Buffett, KISS and The Black Keys. The free, three-day music festival is produced by Turner Sports and the NCAA, and will take place at Woldenberg Park in New Orleans during the 2012 NCAA Men’s Final Four weekend. The concerts tip off on Friday night with KISS anchoring the AT&T Block Party, Saturday brings the Coke Zero Countdown featuring The Black Keys with Buffet topping Sunday’s Capital One JamFest. Additional artists include special guest Blondie, the Avett Brothers, New Orleans legend Dr. John, the Funky Meters, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, Cowboy Mouth and Vintage Trouble.

Five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson kicked off the 2012 Helmet of Hope campaign at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., announcing that Blue Bunny Ice Cream would serve as the title sponsor of the program. The Helmet of Hope program, which began in 2008, allows charities to be nominated to receive a $10,000 grant and special recognition on Johnson’s race helmet. This year’s Helmet of Hope campaign will run for six consecutive Sprint Cup race weekends beginning at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in April and wrap up at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway in May.

Digital Fields

comScore released the results of a study of web usage related to the 2012 NCAA Tournament that showed that consumers dramatically increased their access of sports content across all three primary screens for web access – computer, tablet and smartphone – during the first 32 games of the tournament in real-time. For all time periods studied, the percentage of sports category traffic coming from non-computer devices was approximately 20% while other categories had approximately 10 percent of traffic coming from these devices. During the first day of second round NCAA tournament games on Thursday, March 15, total sports-related traffic jumped 79% compared to the average of the three previous Thursdays.

Today, ESPN’s Colin Cowherd will host his first Google +Hangout, the multi-person video-based live chat available on the ESPN Google+ page. Several randomly selected fans will gt the chance to interact with Cowherd at 1:15p as part of the Hangout.  Meanwhile, ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb will return for his second Google+ Hangout on Wednesday morning.

The Main Event

Nuggets/Bulls on NBATV at 8p.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

ON THIS DAY DAY in 1973: UCLA wins their 7th straight NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: Since Peyton Manning was drafted, only three non-Quarterbacks have been taken with the first pick of the NFL draft. Name two. Courtney Brown, Mario Williams, and Jake Long. Kudos: Paul Brewer-Turner Digital/NY; Daniel Weber-Nat Geo TV/NY; David Kalan-NHL.com/NY; Frank Costa-CBS Sports/NY; Kathryne Copeland-XOS Digital/Orlando; Derek Callahan-MLB Network/Secaucus; Spencer Wade-ION Media Networks/West Palm Beach; Mary Ryan-Raycom Media/Dallas; Kevin Micklo-Initiative Media/Chicago; Jess SchoepSTARZ Entertainment/Englewood; Paul Gygli-NBCUniversal Television Distribution/Universal City; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA.

In The Know: Mascot week. What is the name of the mascot of the University of Southern California? (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
03.26.12

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