The Sports Info Business

I have been sitting on this post for a while but thought it was time to post it.  I have debated for a while if I should even post it but now mad at myself for holding it back for so long.

This is an open letter to the folks at Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal and the Sport Business Daily as well as to the folks at Sponsorship.com

Dear friends:

Everyone in the sports management business knows you host the IMG World Congress of Sports, which took place in Los Angeles earlier this year.  This event is one of a select few that is a must attend affair for people in our business.  About three weeks prior to this year’s conference, I emailed a request to attend the event and to write about it for this blog.

After the first attempt, no one even bothered to return my request.

So, I tried again.  After the second effort, I received a brief note that stated  the conference was for working media only.

In today’s age of change and Digital 2.0 media, I ask you, what exactly does that mean?  I am not the Los Angeles Times, nor the Associated Press.  I am not KABC TV nor KNBC TV.  This blog, is all about the business of sport.   I write about the the trends, information and people  in the sports business.

There are thousands of people that visit this site every month and some of the leaders in our business have been interviewed here.  Yet, the person in charge of credentialing did not even give me the time of day.

So I ask you, what qualifies as working media today?  How do you define it?  I guarantee it is not the same definition it was two year ago.

What qualifies for working media these days?  There was poor customer service by the staff in that I had to write a second time just to be told I was being denied access to write about the two day conference.  To busy to answer, you are thinking?  Remember, the sports business is, in a large part, customer service.  When  we forget that, we lose the fans that support a particular sport.

The bottom line is, the folks at IMG and the Sports Business Journal missed the boat.  I am guessing that I am not the only “blogger” who has been denied.

Second point.

As many of you know, I am an adjunct professor and teach at the Long Beach State Sport Management graduate program.  Yet, when I brought up the subject of the conference during a class, not one student was even aware that the conference was happening.  Why didn’t the conference offer special rates, seek out interns for the conference or use the students to help make the conference better.  These same students are the future of the industry. Where is the outreach?  Where is the vision?

On to IEG and sponsorship.com.  These good folks had the best of intentions ahead of their annual conference.  In Match they held their 27th Annual event in Chicago and I spoke several times to folks on their team about doing a feature for this blog.

In the end though, I never received the information ahead of the event and was not able to preview it before it happened.  Good intentions and bad execution.

Remember, today, in this fragmented media market, it is about eyeballs and targeted marketing.   They had a great chance to reach people in a non traditional setting but let it slip through their fingers.  Reaching bloggers is more important that ever.  Was I the only one they missed or were there other opportunities? Dunno…..

This is a call to all executives.  Adopt this developing technology, now.  Use the people and the resources that can help your business.  There is so much more these organizations could be doing to help their own cause.