The Sports Info Business

This morning, I received an email from an old friend of mine. I am not saying he is old, just that I’ve known him for a long time.  This gentleman is a sports writer and his email asked me to comment on his latest story which was posted on the Internet.

It is not the first time he has asked me, nor is it the first time I have complied with his request.  My comments were also connected to my Facebook feed.

However, today, his email made me think twice about the request.

During the pre-Internet years, this journalist regularly wrote news stories, features and columns for his newspaper.  During this time, I often read up to five newspapers a day, and often chuckled when I came across his stories.

During all of those years of reading his stuff, he never once asked me to comment on what he wrote.  Maybe I brought it up when were were together or chatting on the phone, but that was it.  it was not part of his job description.

Today however, is a different world.  Everything is being measured.  Savvy “old school” sports writers have been coached on what the impact means to their content and the comments and what type of impact it can mean to making a story more viral.

Today, we are all salesman.  A sports writer in today’s world is selling his or her content as much as I am.

Speaking of which, if you like today’s take, pass it on.  Make a comment.  I’m in sales too.

We all have seen in the last few years when a video turns viral.  It gets passed around like a hot potato.

Well, mark this story old school.  For the second time in two years, the Macy’s Department Store had apparently committed an advertising fopah.  It seems that Macys ran a print ad in a local Miami newspaper, the Herald, yesterday congratulating the Miami Heat on winning the 2011 NBA championship.

Talk about Typos.  Oooops.

The ad read:  CONGRATULATIONS MIAMI! Celebrate the 2011 NBA Champions with official merchandise from Adidas!  Men’s Locker room tees available today with more styles for him, her and kids arriving daily.

It also showed a T-shirt with the printed saying RAISE ANOTHER BANNER.

The sad news is, this is not the first time Macys has goofed.

In 2009, it ran a print advertisement congratulating the Philadelphia Phillies as World Champs. The only problem was, the New York Yankees captured the title that year.

Don’t know if Macysgate tops Weinergate or any other gate, but it is quite embarrassing for all involved.

I checked the Macys press room to see if it issues any kind of statement:  Nope.  Just a press release on June 8th touting:  MACY’S MAKES FATHER’S DAY WISHES COME TRUE

It was only when I went to the Macys Twitter feed that I found that it was not the company’s fault at all, but a error by the Miami Herald.  I learned of the result by this Macys Tweet.

This is what the Herald printed:

“A Macy’s advertisement featuring Miami Heat merchandise was mistakenly published June 13 on page 11D in some editions of The Miami Herald. We regret the error and apologize for any inconvenience.”

Now that the Macys has been absolved from this major sports advertising error, it may want to rethink this sports advertising campaign.

I am not so sure we can depend on newspaper advertising departments anymore.  They must not be sports fans.

The headlines screamed A-BOUT TIME from the back page of the newspaper.

Yes, they still sell newspapers here and unlike most other cities in America, New York does not appear to be losing the traditional newspaper business to online content anytime soon.  Business people pack trains and grab the New York Times, the Daily News, or the New York Post. It is sold on so many street corners across Manhattan and by street vendors in small tin boxes for offices along with your favorite candy or chewing gum.

The front of the New York Post yesterday featured a grim shot of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Indicted former head of the IMF and the headline, all caps told us “FROG LEGS IT,” which is New York copy speak that he was allowed to post $1 million dollar bail and was released while the investigation continued into his alleged rape of a maid at the Sofitel Hotel in midtown.

The Back page of the newspaper of course featured a tease for the sports section with photos of Yankee Mark Teixeira and Mets closer Frankie Rodriguez.

In New York, the sports section is not one tucked away between Metro and Business.  New Yorkers love their sports and the newspapers cater to this appetite.

When I first landed in the big Apple last week, amid Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was the sports scandal of the week. Jorge Posada took himself out of a game before it started. Why?  The former catcher now DH was moved to the number nine spot in the batting order, and although at the time he has the lowest batting average of any qualified player in the American League, the five-time World Series champion took exception.

This news simply wasn’t a small side bar of a news story.  Local New York TV stations debated if the All Star catcher should get a pass.  They interviewed fans and asked their opinions.  I sat in executive briefings with investment bankers and business owners who spoke about it before meetings began and while we waited for elevators in gianormous buildings across midtown.

There is always the exception.  One Vice President of a large financial institution told me that unless he could control the wins and losses and had an impact on the game, he wasn’t interested in sports.  However, the managing director sitting next to him chimed in when he found out I used to work as an executive with the Los Angeles Dodgers, said, “My entire family family hates everything in Los Angeles because of the Dodgers.  My dad grew up in Brooklyn and when they moved to Los Angeles, he swore off the Dodgers.”

Now, many days later and with the Yankees DH back in the line-up, I checked the New York Post this morning and sure enough, under hot topics at the top of the web site, Posada was still the leading topic.

In this part of the world, when it comes to sports, you feel their passion.  You take sides and own your team.

One evening, while sitting in a bar, I began chatting with a bar tender.  Naturally, I asked where she was from.

“Boston.” she barked with a sly smile.

Of course I has to ask if she was happy the Yankees lost the night before.

“I’m a Mets fan,” she said.  ”and I attend a lot of games each summer.”

New York.  Sports. Passion.  They all go together.

and I love coming to visit this city.

Gut check time if you work for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

No, it has nothing to do with the fact that your team started the season with a 3-3 record and are currently 1.5 games behind the Colorado Rockies in the baseball Standings.

It has everything to do with what happened on opening day, when a San Francisco Giants fan was beaten and kicked until he wound up in a hospital in a medically induced coma.

This is crisis communications 101 folks,where events happen that you cannot initially control.  The learning here is what is done from the point an event happens that you do not expect nor plan for and how a person or team reacts moving forward.

Fact: Bryan Stow, a life-long San Francisco Giants fan was attacked by two men in the Dodger Stadium parking lot on opening day.  He remains in the hospital and the two men that attacked him have yet to be found.

Reaction: An initial reward was set for, I believe, $10,000 was raised to $25,000 and currently stands at $100,000.  From a perception standpoint, the Dodgers did not move fast enough t get out in front of this story and the media has dragged the team through the mud as the fan lay motionless in a hospital bed. The team did issue a press release on April 6th and announced that it had hired “former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton to assess policies and procedures related to security and fan services at Dodger Stadium, and to work with the Dodger organization to develop a best practices security blueprint that extends to both the stadium and the parking lots.”

It has not been enough.  News stories have run with this story and as I was driving around southern California yesterday, I was flipping radio stations and it seemed each one were taking their shots at the team and asking fans what they should change to improve safety.

One poll asked fans if they should ban beer altogether at the stadium (this will never happen) to having craned hover over stadium sections to observe people in parking lots.  Everyone was having a field day with the story.

Even former radio show hosts.

Radio personality Tom Leykis, who has been off the air since his former program and station was turned into a pop music station for ratings, added $50,000 to reward for information on Dodger Stadium beating suspects, more money than the team itself.  More bad news on the perception front for the team.

In a related move, the San Francisco Giants, who return home starting tonight, have all sortsof festivities planned.  They will receive their world series rings, honor past Giants stars and the games are sold out.  The team also proactively took a step to dedicate this Monday’s game to the inured Giants fan, Bryan Stow. According to an article posted on the team’s web site, the Giants will collect donations from fans on behalf of Stow to benefit a fund set up for the family to help care for their son.

Additionally, according to a Giants press release issued on April 5th, the team will pay tribute to him during its pre-game ceremonies.  The Giants are partnering with Bryan’s employer, American Medical Response, to collect donations at the gates and throughout the ballpark for The Bryan Stow Fund. Approximately, 100 of his fellow paramedics will volunteer for this effort. The Giants will make an initial $10,000 contribution to The Bryan Stow Fund and encourage all fans to give what they can. The Giants Community Fund will also hold a silent auction during Monday’s game with all proceeds benefiting the The Bryan Stow Fund.

That my friends, is how a team should react when something like this happens.  it is the right things to do.

Here is what the Dodgers need to do to get out in front of this story that, unfortunately will not go away as long as Bryan remains hospitalized.

1) Attack the dangerous security perception like at no other time in team history.  Something must be done, real an impactful as well as from a visible standpoint.  Hiring former LA chief of police to investigate the safety concerns is a no-brainer.  However, I hear chatter from Dodger fans that think the stadium is not safe and will not take children to games anymore.  The team needs strong actions to reverse this perception, be it true or not.

2) Safety has to change inside the stadium (in the seats) as well as in the parking lots.  People say the bleacher sections have turned too rowdy.  I can’t verify this since I have not sat there in a long, long time.  However, perception is reality and the team needs to take a stand now.  Under the O’Malley family, which is the time I had the honor of serving, Peter maintained a truly family atmosphere.  Bring it back.

3) The Dodgers need to make a significant contribution to the Bryan Stow Fund.  Lawyers will probably say that is admitting guilt, but it is the right thing to do.

4) Every series the Dodgers play the Giants for the rest of the season, the team needs to have a prominent button to pay pal displayed on the Dodgers web site, encouraging fans to make donations that will go to the Bryan Stow fund.  This event not only affects the team but the perception might be that Dodgers fans don’t care about others.  Time to prove that perception is wrong and the team now has the opportunity to change that image and ask their fans to step up along with the team.

5) I would encourage the team to set up a rapid response team for anything safety related around Dodger sStadium.  Fans should know about a special number that if anything goes wrong, they can call a special number and someone will be there in two minutes or less.  The team has to trust and live up to this promise or its a worthless promise. I checked the Dodgers website to see if this was in place, team safety tips on the team’s website were pretty generic”  watch for cars, know the speed limit, blah, blah, blah.

6) This last one is a little far fetched, but in times when the perception effects the type of fans they should be attracting, something drastic actions need to be considered.  So, please consider this.  Do what an NFL football team has done in the past.  Hire a retired judge and set up a mini court and jail onsite.  Arrest out of control fans for public drunkenness and other bad behavior and send them to the pokie on the spot.  Create a reason for people to act more responsible.

It was one of the very first rules I learned when I was hired by the (California) Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  No if’s and’s or but’s about it.  When you entered a press box at the major League level, all cheering stopped.  You took off your fan hat, removed it and placed on a mask that made you objective.  There were always old school sports reporters around that at best, gave dark stares at anyone that mildly  cheered on a given play.  Sometimes people who didn’t listen or didn’t know the rules of the media were often chastised.

Here are the basic rules as they were explained to me:

1) Rule No. 1 No cheering in the press box.  Media accused of being partial to a player or team was and is one of the worst insults you can say to a member of the press.  There were no kangaroo courts to plead your case.  If you were found guilty of cheering you were in trouble forever.

2) Rule No. 2 See rule number 1.

That’s it.

So now we learn about a freelance writer who got canned by Sports Illustrated last month for, of all things, cheering in the press box.  His name?  Tom Bowles.

If you did not know about him before, meet racing reporter Mr. Bowles who was covering this fifth Daytona 500 race.

He wasn’t a rookie by journalism standards.  He knew better.

There is no shortage of news reports about his story and the emotion he showed while on the job.

If you want to foillow the latest on Mr. Bowles, he has an active Twitter acount.

He wrote this yesterday:  ”Trying to resume some semblance of a normal life. Not easy; and no, I will not be in Vegas, had to cancel my trip.”

You can judge if it is was right or wrong.  Some media reports claim this as just the final incident that got him canned.  There must have been other employee issues.

All I know is, I learned the rules and chose to abide by them.  If you have trouble following this rule, stay out of the press box and away from the media.

Today’s technology edition is App related and how it relates to the sports business.  According to 148apps.biz, here are the most recent stats related to Apple Apps.  Would you believe that Apple is on the verge of passing 300,000 active Apps.  Here are the specifics.

Total Active Apps: 353,427
Total Inactive Apps: 68,388
Total Apps Seen in US App Store: 421,815

First, I wanted to survey my iPhone and revisit all sports related Apps that I have downloaded.  The ESPN Sports Center App and the MLB.com AtBat Lite App are two I have downloaded and use the most.

Want to know what the top sports Apps are, according to Apple?  I did so I checked and here is what I found.

In “Top Paid” Sports Category, here is the ranking, user reviews (1 to 5 stars) and cost for each App.

1. ESPN Radio, 3 stars, $2.99

2. Golfshot: Golf GPS, 5 Stars, $29.99

3. LiveNascar2011, (no ratings), $0.99

4. Race Fan Ultimate, 3 stars, $2.99

5. Paintball Gun Builder, 3.5 stars, $0.99

6. Ultimate Fighting, 2.5 stars, $0.99

7. Knot Wars, 4.5 stars, $0.99

8. Ray Lewis Workouts, 3.5 stars, $0.99

9. Primos Hunting Call, 4.5 stars, $2.99

10. Hockey Goal Horns, 5 stars, $0.99

Here is a demo of the ESPN App

In the Top 10 Free Sports Apps, here are the rankings and to no one’s surprise, look who is ranked #1 in this category.

1. SI Swimsuit 2011, 3 stars,

2. ESPN ScoreCenter, 4 stars

3. ESPNcric, 4 stars

4. NBA Game Time 2010-2011, 3 stars

5. GolfLogix: Golf GPS, 4 stars

6. MLB.com at bat 2010, 4.5 stars

7. The Official 2011 Big Ten Network Basketball, 2.5 stars

8. Fox Sports Mobile, 4 stars

9. ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, Official, 4.5 stars

10. Paper Football 3D, 3 stars

Quick observations

* There is not one league or professional team listed in the top 10 paid apps.  Can you say, Opportunity?

* ESPN at one point had 3 of the top 10 paid Apple Apps.  Now, it is down to just one.

* Look at how many non traditional sports apps are listed here, knot wars, paintball gun?  The business of Sport is far behind the rest of the traditional business community….

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Photo of the Day (from my Camera)

Charles Harris Photography

Sal Alosi.

There has been so much happening in the world of sports.  While everyone is certainly talking about Brett Favre’s consecutive game streak being snapped at 297 games, I wanted to focus on the camera.  The video camera to be exact.

The following two examples show you just how prevalent video is these days.  One was used with a full stadium and the second captured a natural disaster without anyone in their seat.

The first is an example of how Sal Alosi, the Strength and Conditioning coach for the New York Jets tripped Dolphins player Nolan Carroll as he was running a ball back.

Simply put, this was just uncalled for under any circumstance.  Did Alosi, the coach who was fined $25,000 and suspended for the rest of the 2010 season think he could get away with this?  Does he know how many cameras there are for one NFL football game and it goes without saying that the move is just classless.

Tripping should be reserved for hockey players not professional football coaches.  Enough said.

The second video, if you have not seen it, was played before an empty stadium.  From a safety perspective, thank goodness no one was in the stadium and a game was not being played at the time.

However, that does not mean camera’s were not there to capture the Minnesota Metrodome roof from collapsing from snow on its roof.

What’s my point?  Always act like a camera is watching you and you’ll never have to apologize.  There may not be anyone filming you but as you can see, one is usually turned on.

Leave it to retired basketball superstar Michael Jordan to upstage Miami Heat’s LeBron James.

This video was posted to YouTube two weeks ago, yet I only saw it yesterday morning. The video, titles “Michael Jordan’s Response To Lebron James What Should I Do Commercial!” has garnered nearly 2,500,000 page views and counting.

Its one thing to produce a video when you have well known and very marketable athletes like Jordan and James.  Think it takes a big name to bring in those kind of numbers on YouTube or a blog?  Think again.  For your viewing pleasure, I am including a few other videos I recently found on the net which have no known marketing behind them.

This first video includes Ducks.  Yes, Ducks.  It was added two weeks prior to the Jordan/James spot and has 1.4 million more views as of yesterday morning.  The video has drawn 13,754 likes and 674 dislikes on YouTube.  Oh yeah, there are seven pages of comments about the 45 second Duck video.

Here is one more video example for you.  It is called “Natalie Time Lapse:  Birth to 10 years old in 1 minute and 25 seconds.  The video has been around much longer (since 2008) but seems to be gaining steam in popularity in the last few weeks.  The video shows countless photos of Natalie from birth to 10 and you cannot help but watch the 95 second video to see how she turns out.

I guess people are more passionate about Ducks than Natalie.  This video “only” has 2,100+ likes.  I say only because it is still a significant number of people commenting on any one video.

Lessons learned?  Love the Michael Jordan take and marketing effort and it is keeping LeBron in the news while the Heat have endured early struggles this season.  However, it is all about the content.  Ducks, kids or basketball legends.  Create something interesting and people will watch the videos.

Recently, I attended an industry breakfast hosted by Businesswire which included a three-person media panel.  It was a held at a local hotel and many of the attendees wanted to meet the reporters and pitch their ideas.

Since I already knew all three reporters, my goal was to see if any of the three had new insight to offer the audience.  We can never stop learning.  If you ever walk into a room with an arrogance of been there and done that, you might as well put a bulls eye on your back.

One reporter, from the Associated Press actually handed out a Do’s and Don’t s List for Pitching the Associated Press.  Interesting.  It is certainly one way to educate the crowd on what journalists want from us.  Here is what was written on the handout.

1) DO some research and figure out the right AP reporter before you pitch a story.  AP reporters have beats and AP also has national writers who specialize in certain areas, including business, entertainment, medicine, health, sports and lifestyles.

2) DO make sure your story pitch is national in interest and sharply focused.  AP is for national and international news.  Stories about 5K runs, bake sales and a new product developed by a local company aren’t AP stories — but they might be a better fit at another publication.

3) DO write succinct press releases, preferably with bullet points noting the time, place and date of the event and a FEW sentences explaining the “what” and “why” of the story.  AP’s Orange County bureau receives hundreds of press releases each day by fax and email.  Long winded pitches fall through the cracks.

4) DON’T shop your story around to multiple AP reporters at once.  If one AP reporter turns down your pitch, its likely all AP reporters will turn it down.  If a reporter can’t handle your pitch or  it isn’t in their beat area but he or she thinks it has interest, the reporter will pass it along to the appropriate person.  Please keep in mind, we talk to each other and pass along pitches all the time.

5) DO tell reporters that if (despite no. 4)you’re sending a pitch to multiple people within the AP.  We are a huge organization and I have had many experiences where I begin a story based on a pitch, only to find out one or two other reporters in other bureaus have done the same thing.  That will make reporters more cautious the next time you pitch something.

6) DON’T call to follow up on a pitch.  If we are interested, we will call to let you know.

7) DON’T call about getting on AP’s daybook.  All 13 Western states now have one daybook, which is compiled by our new regional headquarters in Phoenix.  The daybook is dedicated to news events, such as government press conferences, court hearings, and other hard news events — not corporate releases.

8)DO take no for an answer.  Nothing drives a reporter crazier than getting multiple pitches for the same story from the same person aftyer we’ve said no once, twice or even three times or having a spokesperson argue on the phone over a “no” response.  If you accept a no this time, maybe the next time we work together.  If you drive me nuts when I’m on deadline, that won’t happen.

9) If you really have a great story, DON’T wait until the day before, or even two days before, to pitch it.  The best stories may require a week or more of planning and reporting.  Too often, we receive pitches that could have been a good story for AP, but we are first notified of them the day of the event or the day before.  That’s just enough time to turn around a story, alert all the editors, coordinate any video or photo coverage and edit the piece.

She also said the following as she addressed the audience:

** Two thirds of all staff at AP are in the field reporting.

** The video department of AP continues to grow and you should think about pitching that specific department for story ideas.  You can see some of their work at video.ap.org

** A VJ is known as a Video journalist

Here is a new way to feature media guides that I stumbled into this morning.  The process makes reading sports media guides online easily and feels like you are reading a magazine or a book.

I have included three examples from  a few 2010-11 college basketball programs.  There is an arrow to click just to the right of each picture and it will help you thumb through the pages.

First up is the 2010-11 West Virginia Mountaineer men’s basketball media guide.

Open publication – Free publishing – More men

All of these publications are made available by ISSUU, a free digital publishing platform that delivers reading experiences of magazines, newspapers, catalogs and of course sports media guides.

Here are some interesting statistics from the company.

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Here is Issuu’s Youtube video which provides a general overview of the product.

Yes, media still need a hard, printed copy.  But now, in an easy fashion look at how you can repurpose your media guide without having readers to download pages from the Internet to read the history, records and information on the basketball program.  Plus, embedded ads stay with the guide.

Issuu’s format allows other reports and documents to be uploaded for sharing as well.  I like the technology.  It looks easy to use and plan to test it soon.