Yankees - A New Home

Today is a day of nostalgia - it's been exactly 3 yrs since I first attended my Sports Management class at the Coventry Business School. There may be a thousand pleasures in life - but going back to Coventry and reliving some parts of my life there would be one of the most pleasing experiences I would get - and I am looking forward to such an opportunity ... probably pretty late in my life.

Talking about the business of sports - last night was one of the most eye-catching nights for sports observers who think business: the New York Yankees bid their last adieu to their almost-century-old home stadium (Yankees Stadium). While the geographical move is not even a mile (the New Yankee Stadium is actually adjacent to the current one), the whole event of playing the last game at the old stadium was so amazingly marketed (they marketed it as the move from an era ... to the other). Nothing was sad about the move - no one wept initially - but if you saw the game, you would have seen the emotions flowing all around the arena. May be this spectacle may turn out to be one of the most watched events on television.

Needless to mention, these Americans would have put a thousand variations of souvenirs and keepsakes on sale - again playing the emotion and nostalgia game. Undoubtedly, that would take care of the money required to buy atleast one good player for the upcoming season.

I just love when marketers make such a fantastic sports product out of almost nothing.

One of the key learnings I had during the sports management studies was that a sports marketer has no control over his product. A toothpaste marketer can go back to the shop-floor and suggest changes in the taste and aroma - but I, as a sports marketer, can never control the levels of excitement in an India-Pakistan or Aresnal-ManU match. It can either be an exciting match - or just another dud match.

What a sports marketer, then, has to do is to make the most out of the other, more controllable, aspects of the sports product (like, the stadium noise can be enhanced to make it exciting for the TV viewer, flags and other such things can be distributed to make it a fun experience for the spectator, revenues can be generated through ancillary in-stadia sales ... etc. etc.)

That is precisely what the US Sports Industry has mastered - market the product of sports to its full potential. In India, we are lagging generations behind. We are yet to even understand the concept - forget about executing it.

The worst part is - we are a country of spectators, not participants (that's our DNA - and we can't do much about it in short time), and yet we haven't done much to extract the best out of the passionate spectatorship. Probably because India is a country of in-house spectatorship, not in-stadia.

What can we do, then, to make revenues out of the 'sport-on-tv' market?

Make all sports channels ppv - Pay Per View. ESPN and STAR should not be freely available - the consumer should be asked to pay for it. After all, it's a special provision - just like a gym or a sports venue. Sports is premium, and moreover, a sports freak is price insensitive to consumption of sports.

You pay for every minute you use it. In my opinion, such a thing would happen soon - when these Tata SKY and Dish TV (and of late, Big TV) completely takeover the market. Subhash Chandra is already playing games with Zee Sports, ICL, and Zee's Dish TV - and in the long run, this clever man will make the best out of the tv-media industry.

Another thing that the IPL and ICL should do is to make the in-stadia experience out of this world. I went to see the inaugural IPL match at the Chinnaswamy - and the experience of being at one of the best international venues of India was no where compared to the experience of being at the Ricoh Arena - the home of the Coventry Football Club - which only the Coventry public may have heard of! 

Right from the entry, to the time spent, to the exit - the experience was like a physical work-out! Getting people to the stadia is of high importance to any sports marketer - since even the TV viewers don't want to watch a game which has no noise from the crowd. 

I applaud the guy who thought of staging the Bhajji-slaps-Shreesanth drama - to enhance the excitement levels of the game in a controlled fashion. Another great idea would be to send in a streaker in one of the matches ... yet another one would be to enable spectators to send sms' or bluetooth messages (or even videos) to display on a big screen in the stadium ... ! 

Basically, let the real sport take a back seat - it's the other things that are more important. :)

The new stadium of the Yankees promises to bring them cool revenues - they have a number of hotel suites that face the stadium - and, hence, they would be able to charge a cracking premium for the same. One of the major problems for a sports infra-manager is to enable revenue generation on non-match days. When we went for a work-visit to Chelsea's Stamford Bridge, we were told that it's the underground parking at the stadium that brings in the maximum revenue (more than the tickets too)! Why not! After all, it's a parking space in the heart of London!

At the new Yankees stadium, I am sure they would have a lot of money-making structures within the stadium - like a modern museum, a bowling alley, bars ... etc. etc. That's some lesson for our infrastructure guys - but the class, as always, is sleeping! 

These are testing times for sports managers like me in India - and probably sticking to new media technology (which caters to the spectator-nature of a typical Indian) is the safest bet. Still, it will take time for MeraSport to make noises - digital media is a dangerous territory.

While I started my sports management career with the hope of changing the face of sports in India - I have realized that to mess with the basic genes may lead to personal disasters. I, today, believe that Indian performaces in international sports can never outclass our expectations - they will remain the same.

The key is to make the process of watching sporting spectacles an experience of it's own. Another key is to try and make it easy for junta to come out and play - or get active. Yoga Rishi Ramdev is doing it so well (he should, and would, get a Noble Prize) - hopefully MeraSport will do it soon. 

BTW, the logo above is often mistaken for New York. It's actually New York Yankees' logo! Just in case you didn't know.