Where there’s sport there’s big money

NEXT week spring training wraps and harkens an annual rite, baseball’s Opening Day, with the US regular season beginning in Tokyo!

Its annual 2,450-game slog towards October’s World Series, which, most duly note, isn’t a “world” series since only one team resides outside the US. But when you’re arrogant enough to foist so many commercials on viewers that they extend a two-hour break into a four-hour marathon, have £800m in television contracts, have players earning £15-20m before endorsements and merchandising generates £3bn to watch grown men chase a white ball … it may not be “World”, but it ain’t half bad either.

I’m convinced rugby and soccer never made it commercially in the US because TV execs could not figure out how to stop the clock every 10 minutes to sell something. But sport is a great international equaliser.

Wales sits on the cusp of ending an 81-year FA Cup drought and as a long-suffering baseball fan who waited 86 years for my Boston Red Sox to win a championship, I can report the sweetness of winning is worth the wait.

The sports differ but our common tie is the long-term suffering.

Sadly though, very early in my career, I helped to create suffering of a different kind.

Had I known then we were planting the early seeds for six-figure kit-naming rights contracts, eight-to-nine-figure stadium naming deals, merchandising that places team logos on every object imaginable and, the ultimate indignity… a £5 stadium pint of lager, I would, hand on heart, have just said NO!

Instead we now face the marketing madness of 2010 Ryder Cup corporate entertainment packages requiring a first-born child as collateral and locals letting homes for the week at 1970s house purchase prices and that’s before anyone starts on 2012 Olympic events in Wales.

It started benignly enough. My employer, The Bank of Boston was presented with an enticing deal. Jan Volk, GM of the NBA’s Boston Celtics wanted us to buy four end-zone banners at £5,000 a year for 10 years.

As bankers, we mulled it over, had our lawyers insert opt-out/review clauses (for us only) at years two, four and seven because, in the true spirit and definition of a banker … someone who lends you his umbrella when the sun shines and ask for it back when it rains… we wanted surety. Every year Jan (and his successor) wanted to re-negotiate our steal, er, deal. Today, stadium naming rights start at £125m (spread over 10-20 years) with New York’s baseball stadium opening in 2009 set to bludgeon that record.

The PGA tour called the same year Tiger Woods hit his first golf ball on The Mike Douglas Show (our Parkinson). Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player were starting to age and Arnold Palmer, well, he was born old. They wanted us to pay the equivalent of a Tiger-era fourth-place cheque, £175,000, to sponsor their event (you know it now as the £3,500,000 Deutsche Bank Championship, the last tournament before the Ryder Cup and £17m FedEx Cup crowning Tour Championship). £150,000 provided the purse for 72 golfers, the rest was to entertain clients. Sadly, £25,000 won’t get you inside the ropes, let alone buy a corporate VIP tent.

The NBA’s Miami Heat were the hot new franchise in 1988. As part of the marketing team, we knew the basketball product would be abysmal the first two seasons, so we set about creating events.

Audience participation was key as the team won 16 of 82 games played that first year and sold out every game.

I returned 13 years later to DJ-choreographed player introductions set to Phil Collins’s Tonight which included six strategically placed flame throwers pushing plumes 30ft skyward as my waitress brought a catered meal to my seat/table.

My head hung in shame over my Pinot Grigio and Caesar Salad sitting in that £200 seat for that evening.

As apeared in The Western Mail

P.S. The Western Mail ran this sports article a week earlier than expected and the sub-editor dropped the Wales tie-in. Below are the missing 3 sentences to the end of the aricle.

"So I naturally shuddered watching the video… “Cardiff’s New Stadium, future home to the Cardiff Blues and Cardiff City FC, announce the launch of the new 2,250 seat members’ club/corporate hospitality facilities, which are set to appeal to Welsh businesses and generate millions of pounds of revenue for the clubs.”

All I can say is, my bad.

And when the next brochure arrives selling you those club boxes, £10 pound plates of bangers and mash and £6 pints to wash it all down with, you know who to blame and, oh yeah, RUUUUNNNN!!!!!"

Make sense now? That's the newspaper biz, happens to us all. Memo to self: need to stockpile a few more articles for just such an emergency...