Cynopsis: Sports
10/31/11

Happy Halloween! It’s Monday, October 31, 2011, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

NBC’s coverage of the Professional Bull Riders Built Ford Tough World Finals on Sunday capped a season of growth for the sport. PBR boasts more than 100 million viewers annually with more than 400 hours of primetime PBR programming on VERSUS, NBC, CBS and other networks around the world. Online, the organization saw a 115% increase in Twitter followers in the second quarter, ranking as the highest among major professional sports leagues, with a 106% jump in “Likes” for Facebook that ranked as the highest among major sports leagues through the first half of 2011.

Cynopsis Sports spoke with PBR President and COO Sean Gleason about the future of the organization, Chad Ochocinco’s attempt at bull riding, and why digital media is a natural outlet for the sport.

Gleason on the state of PBR: This is our 18th World Final, and, I believe the 8th year here in the city of Las Vegas. It’s yet another year of growth for us, so it’s 18 consecutive years that we have seen growth in our live attendance across the season.

On broadcasting in 3D on DIRECTV: Whether or not 3D catches on or not remains to be seen, but if there was a sport that was intended to be broadcast in 3D, I think it’s bull riding. With a two-thousand pound bull and 140-pound rider and the dirt flying, and the rider flying and the bull spinning and the bull bucking at you, I think the action plays very well in a 3D environment. The way that we cover our sport and the way that the sport takes place in a relatively confined space also gives production opportunities with 3D. When you are covering a football field or a basketball court, you don’t have the same type of opportunities to set the 3D camera so you can maximize the benefit to the viewer and bull riding does that.

On maximizing social media: In a social space, a lot of our success has to do with the fact that you can watch a bull ride on two different angles of replay, get some commentary on it, and wrap all of that in a minute. In the social space, the consumption of content in our sport is designed to match the attention span of the social media user. The other thing is that we are still being discovered by a lot of people. We are not widely known, but we have a very big and growing fan base, yet we haven’t tapped into the psyche of mainstream pop culture and so we are an interesting discovery for a lot of people. That’s an important ingredient for social media because people are looking for new things, looking to learn.

On his challenge to Chad Ochocinco to ride: The other thing that I think is important in social media marketing is to make it really opportunistic. You can’t create a nine-month plan to do something and then execute against it and then to expect it to be a social media phenomena. So when Chad Ochocinco started popping off that he was going to ride bulls at our event in Atlanta, Georgia, I just picked up on the challenge and gave him an offer that if he actually showed up we would give him 10 grand and if he rode the bull we would give him a brand new truck, as part of our partnership with Ford. To Chad’s credit, he actually showed up and took the challenge and despite his desire to probably not get on the bull, he went ahead with it and did it. It was a great opportunity for him too. His Twitter growth blew up after that and so it’s a great promotion all the way around.

On the Air

With labor talks between NBA owners and players breaking down on Friday, the remaining games scheduled for November have now been officially scratched form the schedule, and Commissioner David Stern told reporters that the league would no longer be able to reschedule a full season of games. Meanwhile, analysts said that while a cancelled season would mean lower revenues for TNT and ESPN’s parent companies, Time Warner and Disney, profits would actually be higher.

The final two games of the World Series delivered for FOX, as Game 7 posted a 14.7/25 household rating/share with 25.4 million viewers to score as the highest-rated, most-watched game since 2004 when the Boston Red Sox broke their World Series drought, according to Nielsen. Game 7 also gave the network its highest-rated Friday night program in FOX history. Game 6 was also a dinger with a 12.7/21 fast national household rating/share with an average viewership of 21.1 million viewers for the network. Overall, the 2011 World Series on FOX averaged a 10.0/16 national household rating/share and 16.6 million viewers, for a 19% spike over last year’s 8.4/14.

In other ratings, ABC’s Saturday Night Football coverage drew 6.72 million viewers and a 2.1 rating/7 share among adults 18-49 in primetime, according to fast affiliate numbers from Nielsen.

The Big 12 officially made its move on Friday, snatching West Virginia from the Big East although the timing of the university’s move remains a question. The Big 12 said in its release that WVU would begin play in time for the 2012 season, however the Big East stated that they plan to make the university adhere to league rules mandating two more years in the conference. Also of note, the press release noted that WVU would be joining the likes of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, etc. in the league, notably absent was Missouri, long rumored to be set for an SEC move.

CBS Sports’ NFL Today staple Bill Cowher told viewers that his future will be behind a microphone, rather than behind a clipboard. Cowher had been mentioned to potential vacancies for teams such as the Dolphins, but he quickly shot down rumors of a coaching return. “I am here to say to you today, I do not plan on coaching next year. I love where I work, and more importantly I enjoy the people that I work with up here. So I can put all the speculation to rest. And if I have to repeat this in December again, I will. But you know what, J.B., it’s a tough profession, I know there is speculation out there. I’m flattered by it to be honest with you. But at the same time it affects too many people’s lives. I like what I’m doing right here, and I plan on being back in the same seat next year.”

FUEL TV is getting ready to launch a UFC Champions Roundtable, according to multiple reports. The special will be hosted by Jay Glazer and feature current and former UFC champions such as Chuck Liddell and Frank Mir. The special will debut on Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 9p. FUEL TV has also announced plans to feature a pre- and post-fight show for the Nov. 12 UFC on FOX 1 event. Glazer will also host the pre- and post-fight specials.

ITV took another one away from BBC, snagging rights to the French Open beginning next year as part of a three-year deal. The tournament marks ITV’s first ever live coverage of Grand Slam event.

Oklahoma pillar Bob Barry Sr. has passed away. The longtime “Voice of the Sooners” handled the university’s football and basketball play-by-play announcer from 1961-1972, and again from 1991-2010 before he retired last spring.

Sponsorship & Promotion

Officials of the Super Bowl XLVI Indianapolis Host Committee told reporters that it is on schedule for the event, which is expected to draw over 150,000 fans to the city. Among the highlights set to welcome fans will be a Super Bowl Village, the 20thNFL Experience at the Indiana Convention Center. In efforts to help the community, NFL partner Rebuilding Together will feature the annual Kickoff to Rebuild, which helps elderly and low income residents with repairs and the construction of a playground in the neighborhood. Habitat for Humanity will build home wall panels during its Super Build on Feb. 3, and the Legacy Loop 5K & Health Bowl presented by Anthem will raise funds to benefit ongoing Legacy Project work beyond Super Bowl XLVI.

Digital Fields

NASCAR.com is launching NASCAR.com Live, a new app available on Google TV that will offer fans interactive features that include HD video on-demand clips, driver profiles, standings and schedules for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Nationwide Series as well as the Camping World Truck Series. NASCAR.Com Live marks the first racing app for Google TV and will feature a “Live Mode” allowing users to access the app’s lap-by-lap updates as well as follow lead changes and statistics with the live leaderboard. Users can complement their viewing experience of the live race broadcasts on FOX, TNT and ESPN/ABC by pairing the app’s “Live Mode” with their existing TV service’s picture-in-picture feature.

Red Bull Media North America has announced that the company is producing content for one of YouTube’s new channels. The Red Bull channel will re-launch in January 2012 and feature exclusive series which will chronicle the competition and daily lives of action sports athletes in snowboarding, skateboarding, mountain biking, surfing, freestyle motocross and more.

The SEC finally announced the addition of Missouri as the 14th school in the conference Thursday night, only it wasn’t a real announcement. A press release appeared on the SEC’s website detailing the university’s history with the SEC, interviews with reporters covering the conference, and more before the news was pulled from the site. SEC Associate Commissioner Charles Bloom tweeted on Friday “Web vendor made mistake. No agreement between #SEC and Missouri.”

The Main Event

San Diego Chargers @ Kansas City Chiefs in a wide open AFC West race on ESPN at 9:30p.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

ON THIS DAY in 1908: The 4th Olympic Games wraps up in London

Answer to Yesterday’s Sports Trivia Question:  Who is the Buffalo Bills all-time rushing leader? Answer: NOT OJ Simpson. The correct answer is Thurman Thomas. Kudos: Rick Rosenfelt – New York Jets/Florham Park; Lisa Zuniga – Detroit Pistons – Palace Sports & Entertainment/Auburn Hills; Peter Finan – Optimum Sports/NY; Bret Roy – Turner Broadcasting/NY; Mike Patterson – Turner SI Digital/Chicago; Bill Goodfriend – Charter Media/St. Louis; Jessica Schoep- STARZ Entertainment/Englewood; Keith Wienke – CBS Corp./Sacramento; David Chill; DIRECTV/LA; Mark Tye Turner – Notes from a 12th Man/Los Angeles; Paul Gygli – NBCUniversal Television Distribution; Universal City

In The Know:  For which university did Bill Cowher play football?  (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 Cyn opsis | Sports
10.31.11

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