Sports And The Recession

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the horrific timing for the Yankees, Mets and Cowboys to open new stadiums. With combined construction costs well over $3 billion, the teams have had difficulty selling out luxury suites and personal seat licenses. Companies are hard pressed to justify spending taxpayer money on $250K boxes and multimillion dollar naming rights deals. And forcing fans to shell tens of thousands of dollars for the right to purchase season tickets is putting the strength of the ticket market to the test.

"Season tickets along the sidelines at Texas Stadium used to cost $129 a game, compared with $340 a game for similar seats in the new stadium. To earn the right to buy season tickets, fans must buy "personal seat licenses" -- a one-time, up-front fee that can run as high as $150,000 a seat.

Dallas-area real estate agent Linda Taylor says she was shocked to learn that the $130-a-game Cowboys seats she'd had for years at the old Texas Stadium would jump to $340 in the new building -- and require a $35,000 seat license.

"It just seemed crazy, especially for true fans. It's different if we were a corporation," she says. Ms. Taylor and her family ended up paying license fees of $16,000 per seat for seats that aren't as good as their old ones."

Manny

Book excerpt on the most fascinating man in baseball:

"Manny and Los Angeles fell for each other like teenage lovers. He was enchanted by the city, especially its malls, but also its warm weather and the laid-back, multicultural fan base. Accustomed to celebrities, and hardly as die-hard about their jocks as Bostonians, Southern Californians granted him relative privacy when he left the park."

Good News Everyone

We have a president who thinks that studying stem cells is a good idea.

Product Placement

I am watching American Idol for some reason and there isn't an angle of the show that hasn't been blanketed by the media or around the water cooler (I always found the water cooler to be an awkward place to converse at work. I think it's the small cups and the bending). Stupid expression aside, the thing I always think about when watching Idol is product placement.

According to TNS, in the 3rd quarter of 2008, Americans watch more than 22 minutes of brand appearances and ad messages per hour of Prime Time. Of the 22 minutes, almost 14 minutes are commercials or PSAs. That leaves 9 minutes of brand appearances during the broadcast. Over 37% of your television viewing carries some type of ad message.

This isn't a knock on the practice. Last decade we laughed at the scene in Wayne's World where Wayne sold out by shilling for Pizza Hut and Pepsi during his show. Now, we shrug. DVR and TiVo have made product placement a necessary evil. OMD CEO Alan Cohen revolutionized circumventing the DVR ad skip, but the technology is limited to the ads just prior to the program's restart. As DVR continues its rapid expansion, networks are under increasing pressure to find new ways to deliver the ad message.

Jimmy Fallon's spectacularly awful new show looks to incorporate the internet into show bits. The WNBA put the McDonald's logo on team jerseys. And I don't have to tell you about the ubiquity of Coke cups and Ford music videos during Idol.

While we have become increasingly more tolerant of the tit-for-tat relationship between DVRing viewers and the sneaky advertisers, there will always be a technological battle to diffuse the other side. But we aren't far from the day where you will be able to order a product directly off your TV. When I am in the mood for a Coke and Ford, that might not be so bad.

Brand Appearances vs. Advertising: Q3 2008 (minutes:seconds per hour)

BRAND APPEARANCES AD MESSAGES1 PRIME TIME NETWORK 9:00 13:41 Unscripted Programs 10:12 14:07 Scripted Programs 6:10 12:37 LATE NITE NETWORK (Kimmel, Leno, Letterman) 15:15 15:13

Source: TNS Media Intelligence 1 Figures include network advertisements, station promotions and PSAs. Local commercial time is excluded.

Food

Well that previous post was uplifting. Thank you, JBones.

Let's forget how screwed we are by exploring what got us into this mess...excess!

Bombfood is chalk full of comfort food for these rough times. I prefer a Cinnabon in between two IHOP pancakes. I guess I'm kind of a bread person.

Recession Update 2009, We Are FUBAR

The unemployment number was released today. The US Department of Labor reported the jobless rate hit 8.1% in February, a 25-year high with more than 12.5 million people claiming unemployment. What does this mean you ask? Quite simply, we are fucked. The economy is in such steep decline that not even the largest dose of stimulus Viagra intravenously injected into the arm of our whiskey dicked economy could get it up at this point. And what’s worse is that this number is in fact, complete bullshit. The actual unemployment number is much higher than the Department of Labor is reporting but is circumvented using the same shady number manipulating tactics that are commonly used by our most prestigious Fortune 500 companies.


Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and subsequent stock market fall off, the Bush Administration changed the criteria for what constitutes an unemployed person. People who are not receiving unemployment benefits because they are no longer eligible due to a longstanding period of unemployment (most states permit benefits to be paid for 26 weeks) were not factored into the report. They are technically not considered part of “the workforce”. The reason this was done was to give the illusion of a more positive economic outlook during those times in order to help boost the market.

To break down the numbers, this group of “Not in the Workforce” accounts for as many as 7.6 million people. So, in actuality, there is a real unemployment rate of 13%.

12.5 mm = unemployed receiving benefits
7.6mm = 5.6mm persons who currently want a job + 2mm persons marginally attached to the workforce and are not looking for a job because of discouragement over prospects and other reasons
154.2mm= Total workforce

13% = {(12.5mm + 7.6mm)/ 154.2} * 100

Once the savings and unemployment runs out, people are now beginning to take “survivor jobs”- working part time at restaurants, providing janitorial services, etc. just to get by. And now these jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. This goes from former executives to blue collar workers. Where does it all end people? Pretty soon we will all be immigrating in steamboats to China to work in sweatshops sewing together Nikes.

Jbones OUTRO

Links

12 "Dead Technology" Advertisements

On Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan

Jim Cramer and puppies on Colbert

Radiohead vs. Miley

A study on doodling

Ping-pong chick

Cool Song - Animal Collective (My Girls)

Public Enemies Trailer

Starring Johnny Depp as Chicago mobster John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis (Mervis diamond?)

Unemployment

A new addition to the club

Perez Conversion

For all the daily visitors of Perez Hilton, I implore you to defect to DListed

The Sports Executive

Sports Marketing Class, Wednesday, 6:45pm.

Ah, the guest speaker. The graduate school version of flipping on "Good Will Hunting" in lieu of teaching a high school calculus class. A time to wedge your Blackberry between your legs to find something, anything, anyone to distract you from the awkwardness that is an industry executive promoting their trade with a smugness in a suit. They've seen it all- from the slopes of Nagano to the Super Bowl flash seen around the world. They were there, behind the scenes, in the war room, in on those billion dollar transactions for the rights to rule the airwaves.

Except the reality is that sometimes the people in charge aren't particularly good at their jobs. Tonight our class was treated to the VP of Communications at CBS Sports (not pictured, that's just some old guy). He is the gatekeeper to granting interviews of CBS talent and the first responder when something goes awry on air (don't click on that. okay do it). But for tonight's intimate night with a mighty exec, we were treated to a man without a vision and without a clue.

There was an awkwardness in the air from the start. Mr. Comm stood and introduced himself to a class of 16 with a nervousness reserved for an awkward group presentation among randomly selected classmates. Awkward is an awkward word. Awkward aardvark Aeropostale. Anyway, for two hours Mr. Comm umm'd and uhh'd his way through his ESPN bashing and "Big Bang Theory" hyping, leaving us wondering how a VP of communications could be such a poor communicator. I looked over at the southern girl who raved about 'Friday Night Lights' before class and even her "aww shucks"iness turned her southern hospitality into the more familiar and comforting northern hostility. Breaking them Confederates down one disappointing Yankee speaker at a time.

He was everything you wouldn't expect out of television's "most watched network" and rights holder of the NFL, NCAA Tournament, and Masters. Dismissive of the internet's potential, while at the same time touting the Big Dance's online platform. Confused over what a Nielsen rating represented, as he couldn't figure out if one rating point equaled 12,000, 120 million or 120,000 viewers (it represents 1.1 million viewers). There was no charm, no insight. Just a man in a suit bumbling through his notes and his words like Clemens testimony to Congress.

The presentation was comforting and horrifying at the same time. Comforting, because Mr. Comm showed that literally anyone can rise to such a prominent position. Horrifying, because my industry appears to run by a collection of out-of-touch dolts. The juxtaposition of a man in such an enviable position exposed by the inability to provide insight one couldn't find in a WSJ article reinforced my belief that qualification is often measured in years, not qualities.

I've Got The Golden Ticket

Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. Please let it be paternity tests. But I'll settle for boot camp or out of control teens.

Michael Lewis On Iceland's Backruptcy

Vanity Fair has the piece:

"Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown."

Jbones Asks : Where Have All The NYC Girls Gone?

I can't begin to describe all the ways that the show "Sex in the City" has ruined the image of women in New York. While the program itself is now an afterthought, its influence still resonates throughout Manhattan. An influx of Southern and Midwest girls has become a rampant virus upon our city, just as this terrible show at one time had taken over and desecrated the airwaves with a reign of pretentious shallowness and girlpower. They strive to be like their favorite merry band of socialista nitwits; life imitating art in Murray Hill.

You can smell the stench of their middle-American mediocrity all the way up in Westchester. Their annoying foreign accents pierce my brain and disturb my general train of thought. They live among us sipping cosmos and apple-tinis in tiny overpriced apartments driving up rents and forcing most to find accommodations in some sort of den of inequity. They exude a level of horniness unsurpassed by the most nymphomaniacal dog in heat (okay, I don't really have a problem with that). They are the girly nouvelles of New York. The ones that have recently moved to Manhattan from your generic small town bible belt upbringing and are guaranteeing that the Jindal/Palin ticket will MAKE IT HAPPEN in 2012. However, they are also unaware that the lifestyle they have emigrated for, the one depicted in all of the sexy shows, in reality lies with only a privileged minority.

The realization of the 'sexy lifestyle,' as I call it, obviously never comes to fruition even though it often appears as if it does. How many of us have scrolled across the over-informative profile on the newswire of our facebook page only to find some pseudo friend of ours from college is "grabbing drinks with the girls" or "don't stay up, we're partying like rockstars." Loosely translated this means, “We are playing grown up at Tonic East with 3 d-bags we met from Long Island.” It's not that I dislike the girly nouvelles. I can fully appreciate why they would love New York. It is the best city in the world. What I can't seem to wrap my head around his how 4 girls from Columbus Ohio can seriously run around the city proclaiming how New York they are as they giggle like morons about mindless minutia ranging from pinkberry to what happened on the last episode of the bachelor. This has got to be joke, doesn't it?

Unfortunately it isn't. And the problem only seems to be perpetuating itself. With the looming economic crisis appearing unending, rents are on the downturn only making it ever more affordable for the seemingly infinite amount of silly public relations people and Devil Wear's Prada wannabe's to move into the cultural mecca that is Murray Hill. What has happened to all of the hot, stylish, free thinking girls of NYC? Where are you, honestly? Please take back your city.


Jbones OUT